Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Tool Time Tuesday...I'm Hooked on These

Before I begin the Tool Time, I want to thank everyone for all your comments about my new sewing room. Wow, that was a lot of blogging love coming my way...there were 100 comments!! There were some questions about different things, so I'll do a post and answer them all in one.
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Today's Tool Time is a quick tip, but one of my absolute must haves in the house. They are Command's 3M removable strips and hooks. I know you have probably seen these on TV, but they really do work. The hooks come in different sizes and can be used for anything. They mount to just about any surface and really remove without harming the wall, paint or wood. The tip with removing it, is to pull the tab straight down close to the wall. It stretches as it comes off without any damage. Here is a small sample of some that I have.

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I use them in a small cabinet in our bathroom. The cabinet stores supplies and all my jewelry. On the inside of the door was wasted space, so I used the hooks to hang all my necklaces.
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Here is one on our front door which is metal. There is one issue with this...it will pop off in extreme temps in the winter.


Great to hang your favorite wreath.


This is what the hook looks like. You will have to apply the sticker to the hook. One side says "wall" and the other is applied to the hook. See the black arrows on the bottom tab...that's where you pull it straight down to remove.



I used these hooks to hang two wreaths over our bed. I move furniture so much, I would have holes in the walls everywhere if I didn't use these.



You can't tell where this one is, but it's on the top of our fireplace mantel. I leave them up all year, because you can't really see them. They work great for hanging the evergreen garland at Christmas!


They also stick to glass.



Oh, look another wreath. I think I have a problem.



These are the covered cork boards in my sewing room. See the little tabs sticking out of the corners of the black one. I used the poster stickers for these. No hooks needed, you just stick them to the item and then to the wall. I never use the stickers that come with the cork squares. They will ruin the wall.



This one is a large hook I have mounted to the inside cabinet door of my pots and pans. This holds the cords to electric skillets.



This one holds little flashlights. You know when your family isn't feeling well and they want you to check their throat. Well, hang this next to the medicine cabinet, so you always have one on hand.


and this is a decorative wall art that may change with the wind, so sticker hooks are better than nails.



This was a quick tip, but one you can use in a million ways. For quilting you could sew little rings to the back corners of the quilt and then hang it from the hooks. Make sure the hooks are below the quilt edge so you can't see them. Just think...quilts everywhere and no nails. The hooks are labeled with the weight that it can hold, so make sure you use the right size.
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Have a wonderful Tuesday,
~Karen~
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ps...I have no affiliation with this company, I just love them!

Friday, November 20, 2009

Woo Hoo..My New Sewing Room

It's finally done!! My sewing room in the basement was flooded on October 20th. I didn't plan this post to be today, but it's November 20th and it's been one crazy month. My sister was the biggest help to us throughout the whole process and I thank her from the bottom of my heart. She really pushed to get this done, because she knew I was at my wits end...especially with the flood part.
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I've never told you, but my dad (who lives with us) has flooded our basement 4 other times before this. Two times he put a big soup pot in the sink to fill it up and walked away for hours and never checked it. Because the pot was covering the drain, the water just over flowed and rained in the basement. The 2 other times I won't even get into. I thought my sewing room was in a safe zone down there, but there is no safe zone from an 85 year old forgetful man. LOL!!
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I needed to move back upstairs some where and my only option was a room we have that connects my dad's kitchen to our family room. It 12' x 24' and we use it for all our family functions. When my family and my husband's family get together here for most holidays, there are over 40 of us, so this room is used a lot. It had 2 big long tables, bookshelves and a buffet for serving food.
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Well, we clear everything out, brought up old furniture from the basement, cleared all the books out of the bookshelves and my sister and my niece gave me 3 butcher block tables...and this is what we did.
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  • we painted everything single piece of old furniture black to bring it all together
  • my sister is a master at adding crown moulding to anything to make it more my style. She used left over crown moulding from her house projects.
  • I gathered up all my recycling projects for storage boxes
  • I scavenged the house for all my galvanized metal things so it all would match
  • the only things we purchased was 3 sheets of bead board for the back of the bookshelves, pipe straps for all the handles of the boxes, foam letters for my name, cork board, and a gallon of black paint. My sister brought some other things from her house that she said she "had", but I know she lied and bought them for me out of sympathy! I just didn't want her to spend any more money!

So here it is...

This view is from the door from our family room looking in. That's my dad's kitchen door in the back. The door from our family room is a French door, so you can see in...I have to keep this room clean. Yikes...wish me luck on that.


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The table to the left is my work/craft table, the center hutch is storage and that's my computer desk to the right.


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The back wall is a bookcase for storage and floating in the middle of the room is my cutting table, ironing board and sewing table (which you can't see)



This unit was made from three old cheap bookcase. We replaced the back flimsy backing with bead board, my sister added the top wooden boxes to make them taller and then added crown moulding to tie the 3 together. Paint, paint and more paint!


These are the boxes from one of the TTT when I used the pipe straps. These hold all the different colored scraps of fabric.



This is another piece that I painted. It stores all those boxes I had in my sewing room. Each one is labeled with something.



Here's a close up.




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This is my work/craft table

  • fabric covered cork board (still have to glue some buttons on the tacks to have them match)
  • hot glue gun and drill are already set and plugged into a surge bar, so all I need to do is click a switch. The surge bar is attached to a lamp, so if the lamp is on, I know the hot glue gun is still on. Safety feature for me.
  • the little wooden drawers in the back hold all the little beads and screws.
  • the galvanized buckets below are from Home Depot for $12. I bought those a long time ago to hold soda, bottled water and beer when we have parties. For now it holds my batting and polyfil. Easy to bring them back out for parties.


The hutch is for storage. This is a super old piece of teak wood furniture that we had in the basement. Again...paint and crown moulding.


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Cereal boxes from a Tool Time Tuesday. I covered these with fabric on the spine, but painted the body of it black.



I used the pipe straps for handles and key rings to label.



This is another recycled box project. Those are all the bottled water boxes covered in fabric. Still need 3 more.



Same handles and key chains.



This is my computer desk. The frame above is waiting for a piece of sheet metal from Lowe's. Our Home Depot didn't carry it. That will be a Tool Time Tuesday at some point. My poor desk misses the laptop. That poor computer didn't have a chance in the flood.



This is on my desk. It's a globe paper weight. I had to buy this at a consignment shop. Every time I look at it, it reminds me of all the blogging friends I have made around the world. You have all made my world a better place...and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.






This is my cutting table. Take a good luck at this now and all the other areas in this room, because they will never look this clean again. EVER. Even now as I type, this table doesn't look like this anymore!!



These are old plate racks that I use for my rulers.





This is a mini DVD player that I watch the Walton's on all the time.



This is from my sister. She bought it an office supply store for her work, but she doesn't use it. It's used to hold a paper as you type on the computer. I'm using it to hold a pattern as I'm cutting the fabric, so the directions are always there, not lost under piles of fabric.



Here's my ironing board covered to match the fabric on the boxes.



Just don't look underneath. I was too lazy to sew one, so I staple gunned the crap out of it!! lol



This is a super old fridge that we use for soda and water. I kept it in here...had to paint it though.



This is the before.



Here are other befores and durings...painting all the table legs. See the little bookcase in the back?



This is the bookcase before...the third one isn't in yet. See the cheap backing, it's almost like card stock that looks like wood.



This is a during picture before the shelves went in. That's the new bead board.



This is the before of the hutch when it was in the basement.



We brought the top upstairs and added to a different bottom (the buffet that was already in the room).


and here's a during picture of it painted.




I hope you enjoyed the tour of my sewing room. This is why I've been behind on visiting all your blogs and trying to catch up on emails. Once the holidays are over and I buy my new machines, I'll be back in business. Some of you have asked how I made out with the insurance. The major things are covered like my Bernina, my serger and the computer, but with a major catch. Our insurance has full replacement coverage, but the only thing is, it has a "Hold Back Policy". This means they pay me for the "depreciated" value of the items up front, then I have 180 days to go out and purchase the new items, send them the receipts to prove that I purchased the same items that I lost and "then" they will repay me the difference. We also have a $1000.00 deductible, so I think I will be doing all of this after the holidays, because that means fronting a lot of money...which we don't have at the moment. In the mean time, I will borrow a sewing machine from my sister.
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I will try to take some pictures of our Thanksgiving when I turn this room back into a food buffet area. Shouldn't be too bad. I just need to store all the stuff that is on the top underneath and cover the three tables with tableclothes. Wish me luck.
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Thanks for all your well wishes during this time. I can't thank you enough for your love and support.
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Have a wonderful weekend,
~Karen~

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Tool Time Tuesday...Hardware Store Jewelry

You read that correctly...Hard "Wear". You will be wearing something from a hardware store after this Tool Time. I know what you're thinking right now..."this girl has a screw loose". Hey, screw loose, that's a TTT joke!!
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Monday morning I ran to Home Depot before I went to work to pick up a piece of sheet metal that was going to be this week's TTT. However, Home Depot didn't have the same piece that I saw at Lowe's, so I had nothing to take a picture of for this week's Tool Time idea. Hmmm, what do I have at home in my box of goodies. I'll do my conduit pipe idea. So off I went to find the bracket I needed.
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Well, look what I found instead of the brackets...conduit locknuts (what ever the heck that is), but it looks cute to me. We have conduit pipe in our basement. It's that pipe they run electrical wires through and it attaches to an outlet box. These must be a locknut for that, but it looks like jewelry to me...WOO HOO!!! A whole new world in the hardware store for you and me. I didn't have time to explore other possibilities, because I had to go to work, but my mind was ticking all day.


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You will need a bag of these. They are only 73 cents for 20 of them!!! I'm telling you, we need to keep this on the hush hush. If the hardware store big wigs find out what we do with their cheap stuff, they're going to raise the prices for sure.
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Then I ran over to the aisle where they have all the little bags of screws, washers and nuts and I found these. They are lock washers that are split. See the little picture of it...the 2 ends meet, but aren't attached so they separate easily. All the little bags of things are only 98 cents.

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They separate easily with these two...one for each hand when you open up the little ring and when you close it.



Figure out your design. I was doing mine at 10:00 am Monday morning when I had to leave at 11:00 for work. If I had more time, I would have experimented with colorful beads.



First, you need to open up a little ring, slip on a big one and another little one. Close that one up with the pliers. Open up the third little ring and slip it into the last little ring and add a big ring. Close it up and continue on.



The first step will look like this. Two little rings are attached to the big ones with a little one in the middle.



Keep going until it is your desired size. I used 6 big rings and 18 little rings. I didn't use any jewelry closures, I just squeezed my hand through and it fit fine. You can add a clasp if needed, I just didn't have any on hand. There is a black shadow on the rings in this picture, but it isn't there in person. They are really shiny.



And here it is...isn't it pretty?!!! What's it made out of...who knows. The bag of little rings says stainless, but I'm not sure what the big rings are made of. Will it tarnish, will it turn your wrist green, how long will it last. Not sure of anything, I just made this up this morning. It's definitely a Tool Time experiment, but so cute. Not to mention cheap. I figured the big rings are 4 cents a piece and the little ones are 8 cents a piece. So for $1.68 it not bad.



If you were a fly on my wall this morning, you would have cracked up. I was all dressed in my work uniform ready to go to work. I wanted a better picture of the bracelet...not just sitting there on the table. So I undressed and put on an outfit just to show it off. I changed my top twice so the color would look good in the picture. I know...screw loose! Not to mention, I hate taking a picture of myself in the mirror, so I took a bunch...was my butt sticking out, why does my hand look like a man's hand in certain pictures, how did I get the cat's tail in this picture. I had to suck in my stomach, hold my breath, try to snap the picture with one hand, while making sure the camera strap wasn't in the picture!! Oh well, all in the name of blogging, right?!


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Have a wonderful Tuesday,
~Karen~
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ps...I just thought of another idea for this...wouldn't it make a really cute belt? Just need to think of a closure for it. Back to the hardware store.
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