Challenge #5

Given the later date of this post, you can see that we have been having a little trouble either coming up with ideas or being motivated enough to get them done. I have been collecting some great ideas on Pinterest while Mom has been visiting yard

sales. I find the Pinterest route much easier. It’s difficult to come up with an idea on the spot at a yard sale. Most often you find a lot of the same household stuff and it isn’t especially inspirational.

So I was cruising along on Pinterest the other day and came across an idea to make hats out of old sweaters. There is no shortage of used clothing stores in my area so off I went in search of materials. There was so much to choose from! The sweaters with some type of banding on the bottom work out the best because they hold their shape very nicely. No sweater cost more than $2. I did feel a little badly about cutting up perfectly nice sweaters and maybe taking them away from some poor little child, but there were plenty more from which they could choose. I tried on the peach sweater and decided it fit nicely and was too cute to cut up so I replaced it with a yellow cotton sweater (not pictured).



I already own a nice little knit cap so I used that as a pattern by tracing it onto some graph paper. I thought it might be a little big so I made the pattern a little smaller. The gray sweatshirt was the first casualty. It turned out way too small. A tape measure might have been a good idea. I was also using some of the worst scissors ever. My family is apt to grab my good scissors and just ruin them by cutting inappropriate material. As I chomped away at the fabric with the ruined scissors I got even more frustrated. Off I went to buy new scissors. What a difference the right tools make!
I really got addicted to this little craft. I tried to use other little bits of the sweaters as embellishments just to add a little extra interest. These are so fun to make that I’ll have to come up with an outlet for them.

Mom lives in the country and birds and bird watching are a normal part of her day. It is natural for her to think of projects that work in the garden and yard. Her latest project is a bird house. She used the base of a sconce for the base of the bird house. The bird house itself is a china teapot. I had to laugh when I saw her
collection of teapots. She found so many pretty teapots at good prices while she was shopping that she couldn’t help herself and stocked up. Maybe she will look at her collection and come up with some new ideas to use them. I’ll have to check in and find out if she has a resident in the birdhouse. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Bonus Project:

My husband came up with this clever idea. You know how nice it is to look outside and see some little solar glow lights sparkling. The only lights we have seen get planted into the ground. These are pretty but we thought it would be nice to raise them up to put on a building. We looked around at the various designs in outdoor lighting and chose this lantern style. He crafted four of these lanterns from wood for our camp and screen house. They add a nice little glow in the dark Adirondack night while not adding any light pollution. What a great idea!