Easter Blessings

Blessings,
Kelly

Double Sided Table Runners

The solid green side can be for Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day, Christmas, or any day you want to use green! The shamrocks are for St. Patrick's day. You can't really tell in this pic, but the green has a gold sparkle to it, while the shamrock side has a silver sparkle sheen.

The solid purple side is for Lent, the print is for Easter. I absolutely adore the Easter print, which was the only Easter print that I could find that wasn't completely secular. This has "He Is Risen" and "Rejoice" printed on it, so it is truly a print worthy of the occasion!

Yesterday I mentioned that I was able to do some sewing. I had wanted to make a table runner for Lent. In an article I had read about sharing Lent with your children, the author suggested using a purple table cloth for the season. Table cloths + my family doesn't work unless it's vinyl, which I'm not sure if I could find a purple vinyl table cloth, unless it had bunnies on it. So, when I had purchased the fabric for the chicken saddles I saw the shade of purple that I really liked. (And yes, the chicken saddles now match my Lenten linens.)

 Anywhoo, the kids went with my mother in law yesterday afternoon, so I pulled out the iron and sewing machine. I knew exactly how I wanted my table runner and shelf scarves to look. I had purchased a sort of gold shade of thread and wanted to use one of the fancy stitches that my machine can do. I wanted to iron the hems in and pin them so all was straight and neat. But then I looked at the clock and felt a twinge in my back and thought how in the world was I really going to do this? (And along with my Martha tendencies, I am also very instant gratification oriented. Sound like fun, don't I? Wanna come over and craft? ;0)

I looked at my fabrics and decided that the easiest and neatest way to make these (sorry, I forgot to mention that I wanted to make the green table runner for Mardi Gras, too!) was make them double sided. You see, I'm also rather cheap frugal when it comes to craft supplies, preferring to wait for sales, coupons and (the best!!!!) clearance. I had only bought 1/2 a yard of the shamrock print and saved 1/2 yard of the purple material for my table runner. I had plenty of the green sparkle because that had been on clearance (yay!!!) for like a dollar a yard years ago before I even had children. (I know, yada, yada, yada, get to the point rambling woman that has conversations with her cat) With only 4 pieces of fabric, each 1/2 yard, I ended up with two table runners for about 6 holidays/seasons.

Reasons to make double sided table runners:

• it saves time- you don't have to sew 2 runners for 2 different holidays/seasons/occasions
• it saves money- you don't have to buy more than you absolutely need of a costly fabric or buy another piece of fabric to back it
• it saves space- you'll only have to store half the table runners that you need

Now, I'm not going to give any sort of tutorial here. I think we can all agree that I'm not that good at it! And besides, it rather easy. Sew your fabric faces/right sides together, leaving an opening so that you can turn it right side out. Once you have it turned right side out, iron it so it is nice and flat, the seems pressed out neatly. Now, keeping a consistent seam allowance, sew around the edge of the runner all the way around. Voila! You've got a table runner!

These are the two shelf scarves that I made. The one with the fancy stitching on the right is on the secretary that is on our family faith wall. The one on the left is on a little shelf in my bedroom where I've made a little prayer corner. Unfortunately the fancy stitching made the fabric pucker, so I was only able to do it on the two sides of the shelf scarf, and not at all on my table runner. :(

Well, it's time to turn in for the evening. I'll be sharing more about our family faith wall and preparing for Lent. Have a lovely evening, Friends.

Blessings,

Kelly

Our Easter and The Search for The Right Coop



Our Family Faith Wall on Good Friday



The FFW on Easter morning!

We found the Alleluia and restored it to it's place of honor.

It's hard to see, but it says "With God all things are possible." So true!

The kids' stained glass crosses.

Breaking ground for our original concept for the coop.

A very "egg-cited" Princess!



Happy Wednesday! I'm VERY behind on my blogging, I had started this post on Monday!It's going to be short and sweet! I just wanted to share about our Family Faith wall (you can read this post for more info and to see what it looked like before Good Friday) and how it transformed. I also have some updates on the homemade cleaners from this post.

For our Family Faith wall, I hung up a sheet to cover it on Good Friday. I thought it would show the solemnity of the day and symbolize Jesus' coverings for the tomb. Saturday night after the kids had gone to bed, I went to work on transforming the wall into a picture of joy and life. I had planned ahead what I was going to use and got the flower garland made before hand, so it only took me about 5 minutes to put this up. I changed the middle picture, but kept the same Scripture verses. The large golden cross was a gift from my Mom and the quote on the wall is actually from the dollar store! I'm planning on keeping the Family Faith wall as is for the 50 days of Easter until Pentecost.

We had a lovely Easter day, and after our yummy dinner at my sister-in-laws, we went to work on our chicken coop plans. After to heading to Home Depot to get lumber, we realized that our original plan was going to be too costly, so we looked around at the pre-built sheds and brainstormed. After visiting a local garden and shed center, we found a coop that is pre-built and absolutely gorgeous, but entirely out of our budget! We've decided to build a close replica of it, and my dear hubby is sure it will be more cost effective of a design.

An update on the homemade cleaners: I'm very pleased with the dishwasher detergent! The few glass cups that we have look better than when we used Cascade and everything is nice and clean! As for the soap jelly, I tested it out on some really bad grass stains on Wheels' pants, and I've had to reapply and wash again. When I first treated the stains I used the Oxy Clean Max Force stain stick on one knee and the soap jelly on the other, and felt they worked about the same, but as every mother knows, grass stains are tough. I'm thinking that the soap jelly will work just about the same as any store bought stain remover for only about a fraction of the cost. (A bar of Fels-Naptha is only 97 cents at my local Walmart and i only used 3/4 of a bar!).

Hope you have a lovely Wednesday and I hope to post again either later or tomorrow!

Blessings,

Kelly