Pintesting - Untangling Doll Hair

One of my daughters dolls had begun taking an increased beating with the arrival of her little brothers burgeoning toddler-hood. Both of them were getting food in her hair and the doll hair was of course getting tangled and matted.

I got everything that was going to be needed together.

The pin says to use 2 tbspns fabric softener. Already having my hands full with other things I just went with two "glugs" out of the fabric softener bottle and into my spray bottle that seemed the appropriate equivalent. Then i filled the rest of my bottle with water and shook it up to mix.

I believe my spray bottle is supposed to hold around 6 ounces.

I began by using a fine mist but by the end I was going pretty heavy handed with the spray. Just remember it's always easier to add to than to take away.

To de-tangle the dolly in questions tresses you should, like with your own hair, begin at the tips and work up to the roots to avoid fairy knots. The entire process took me around 5 - 10 minutes which is about as long as it can sometimes take to do this same thing with my daughter.

The results were worth the effort though :)

Pintesting in the Kitchen - Deconstructed Guacamole Salad

I love avocados, tomatoes, onions, and guacamole. So when I saw this pin for a deconstructed guacamole salad I was too excited. It seemed as if I just couldn't make it fast enough. Soon enough I had.

How was it? Kind of terrible :( I'm going to operate under the assumption this was my bad and that I made it incorrectly somehow. I guess I'll have to try it again.

Must Dash For Girls

After watching me work on her brothers Must Dash quilt I watched my little lamb spend the next few days running around holding my mustache template up to her face and talking about mustaches.

It seemed only fair to make her one too.

This pattern is too too much fun!

Must Dash Quilt

Nearing the end of my second trimester and entirely through my third trimester of my pregnancy I became worried and obsessed with finishing my sons nursery before my due date. This was something I didn't manage to accomplish to my satisfaction.

My pal Sweety Darlin remarked at one point that my son would never notice, know, or care that his nursery was finished. Right as she was, I remained a woman possessed. Now that he's here I've calmed way down and very few of the unfinished nursery items bother me.

Two weeks into happily co-sleeping with our newest addition I realized that I actually had months until it mattered how finished it was.

Once his umbilical cord came off I was happy that now tummy time could begin. I'd already seen this quilt on Pinterest but now I had that "my-son-must-have-this" feeling. So I set to work.

I had my husband print out the template from the source post and bring it home.

Began digging through my fabric to see what I thought might best suit this project.

Hit up WalMart and checked their fat quarters, took a picture of the ones I was considering, texting them to a friend and asking her opinion.

Going to JoAnns after I was once again unable to get someone to help me at the WalMart fabric counter. Get more fabric. Take pictures. Load them to instagram.

I had my husband cut fat quarters off of the half-yards I'd bought at JoAnns.

Then I cut the 10" blocks off as instructed.

Create a mustache template using some leftover cardboard. Cut myself with my rotary cutter. Bleed on the paper print out. Post the whole shenanigan to Instagram. Soldier on like a boss.

Cut the mustaches.

Cut out some mustache shaped fusible webbing. This I didn't do as well as I'd hoped so I ended up fusing the webbing to the mustache and then cutting off the excess.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the mustaches with the fusible webbing on the backs to fuse to my blocks.

I was able to cut all my template, the mustaches, the webbing, and sew the mustaches onto the blocks all in the same day.

Now to begin laying out blocks and figure out the most appealing configuration for the blocks.

Sew them together.

I chose to get more of this adorable mustache fabric from JoAnns to use on the back of the quilt. I hope to have this finished soon.

Meanwhile I'll still making other quilt tops.

Chemical-Free Deodorant

The baby was going to be here any day, we had $40 in the bank to make it another week until pay day, there was next to no gas in my car to even make it to the hospital, and we were out of deodorant.

On occasion when I see we are running low on a particular item I tell myself, "When we run out of this I'll just make some here at home." The time was now - actually the time was about 2 days earlier but I continued to use that teeny amount of remaining deodorant barely sticking out of the container.

After checking Pinterest for chemical-free, home-made deoderant I put together a recipe that I felt good about.

Just a couple of days before my husband told me that although he agrees with and supports my efforts to save the environment he was hoping I could stop keeping quite so many of the glass jars that were ever so slightly, taking over out kitchen. This was a good project to use one of my most recently saved glass containers.

I chose this jar because it has a  mouth wide enough that my husband or I could dip our hand in with relative ease when we were running low.

Here's my recipe:
1/2 c baking soda
1/2 c corn starch
10 tbsp organic coconut oil

20 drops of tea tree oil

Combine these ingredients and mix.

Word to the wise - this is a lot easier to thoroughly mix in a nice sized bowl. I started by using a spoon but got better results once I just dove right in and used my hands.

Once it's all thoroughly mixed put it in your chosen container and store someplace cool.

Because of the coconut oil I don't recommend storing this anyplace super warm or even hot unless you want runny deodorant.

How well does it work? So far so good! I'm pretty happy.