Making a T-Shirt Quilt
I used to be a swimmer, and when I stopped swimming, I had an astonishing amount of swimming gear, and not very much use for a lot of it. I decided to make it into a t-shirt quilt.
1) I cut out a large square from a piece of cardboard.
2) I put that cardboard square on each shirt over the area I wanted to use, and traced the outline and cut out the square.
3) I cut out a material of my choice into long 3” strips
4) I sewed the 3” strip on the top of a square, and then cut it flush with the end of the square,
5) Next I sewed the bottom of a new square to the strip on the top of the last square.
6) Then I sewed a 3” strip on the top of square #2, and cut it flush with the end of the square.
7) I repeated this until I had a row of six squares sewed together with the red strip in between, then I started at the bottom of a new column, until I had five columns with six squares each.
8) I sewed long strips of red on each side of each column, thereby sewing the columns together, and then added borders to the whole thing.
The whole thing was really easy. The only problem that I ran into was that I made the quilt too big—I didn’t really want to display the quilt on my bed, but it was too big for any other purpose. I ended up going back and removing a column and a row and the borders to make a smaller throw that fits better into my life.
Craft: Dove Paper Airplane
My son has been really interested in paper airplanes recently, so we made a dove paper airplane for a recent craft.
First, we cut a paper late in half.
We cut one of the halves into thirds again, and left the other half in tact.
Next, we taped one of the wedges onto the half of the paper plate (for the tail.)
We got two spoons, and a tiny rock, and tapes the spoons together with the rock inside them.
And finally, we taped the spoons onto the bottom of the dove.
The verdict? This was an easy craft to assemble, so my son enjoyed it. It was even easy enough that my two year-old and five year-old made their own doves by themselves later. That’s a mark of a great craft in my book. However, this dove didn’t actually fly all that well. (T. was so enthusiastic about it though, that I’m not sure the ineffectiveness of his paper airplane dove really sunk in and it definitely didn’t hamper his enjoyment.)
Easy Wood Project for the Under 7 Crowd
My five year-old recently made this chair in about an hour, with my husband only cutting the parts, showing him what should go where, and starting some nails.
The chair is surprisingly sturdy and has lasted several months already, at the kids’ craft table inside.
My husband cut four pieces of wood the same length for legs, found a nearly-square piece of plywood for the seat, and made a back out of a wider, thicker piece of wood.
My son hammered each part together with two big nails.
He was really proud!
Plant Identification: Reedcanary Grass
Meet reed canary grass, an invasive grass around here that tends to move into disturbed wetland sites and form dense monocultures of its own. It can grow so densely that it chokes out streams, and aggressively displaces more desirable grasses. It is not good forage for livestock, and can cause indigestion.
Reed canarygrass is tall (3-6’), and is a bunch grass, with sturdy hollow stems up to a 1/2” in diameter. The leaves are flat, wide and hairless, and its seed head spike comes out in June and July.
Source: King County, Washington Noxious Weeds
Low Cost, No Contact Doggy Discipline
Our adolescent lab is just the best—except for when he is just the worst. We rescued him from a shelter, and have had a hard time correcting him because when we went to get him by the collar to remove him from a piece of furniture, he would turn around and try to get our hand. I’ve dealt with aggressive dogs before, and this was not real aggression—Clarence was mouthing, but mouthing with a growl that said, don’t do that.
We needed to teach him the rules, and who is in charge, without putting ourselves in that situation. What has worked is a tin can. We took an empty tin can, and put a handful of rocks from our driveway in it, and taped it shut with packaging tape. When Clarence is bad. We get the can and shake it at him—and Clarence hates the noise, he immediately turns from alpha to beta dog and goes slinking away. Perfect.
Does Latex Paint Stick to Oil?
When we bought our house almost six years ago, one of our first tasks was to paint. We went to the store and got a can of paint, picked colors and started. But several rooms into our work, we realized that all the trim we were painting on was oil. Ooops.
We went to the paint store and asked: will latex paint stick to oil? We got disheartening news from the paint store: no, latex paint won’t stick well to oil. The woman working the counter told me that everything peeled within six months in her experience.
Let me tell you our experience: after more than five years, we have not had problems with latex-over-oil. I would not tempt fate and do it again (ie next time in this situation I’d use primer) but when I went looking for places where it’s peeled, I couldn’t find a single place to take a picture of.
So, while latex over oil is not ideal, it is not the death knell that the paint store will tell you it is.
Going into the summer months, I want to share a dip for keeping table salt usable. Living in central Virginia, everything is so humid, that our salt just clumps, and even putting rice in it to help absorb the humidity doesn’t help. Salt grinders also get gummed up and stop working.
This salt shaker with a closeable top is the perfect answer. It’s amazing the things you never knew existed.
Makeshift Recycled Chicken Shelter
In our chickens’ new digs, they don’t have as much cover as they used to from hawks, so Austin made a shelter out of some old pallets we had on hand. He leaned two up together, like an A, and then one leaning on the A from an end.
It is nothing fancy, but it was easy, quick, free, totally upcycled and it is getting the job done.
Clarence vs. the Squirrel
Clarence, our crazy young lab mix has devoted his young life to chasing the squirrels in our yard. Recently, he succeeded in either almost drowning one, or in rescuing one from drowning—we are not quite sure which.
Clarence’s typical modus operandi for squirrel hunting involves taking a flying leap off the top of our stairs onto the millstone when we let him 
outside so he can stage a surprise offensive. One day recently we came out in the afternoon to find that Clarence had dug up all of the buried plastic pipe that diverts the water from the downspout away from the house.
My husband was not impressed. When he went to investigate later that day, he started taking apart the piping and when he removed one piece, out gushed all this water—and this gruesome looking animal, running at top speed. We weren’t sure what it was, just a scraggly black mass, slowly creeping up the trunk of a nearby tree. My first thought was that it was a newborn rat or something, but it was way too big. (You can just make it out on the middle branch close to the trunk of the tree in this picture.)
WWe finally figured out that it was a squirrel that had gotten stuck in the drainpipe underground, and somehow had gotten caught up in section that was blocked with water and had nearly drowned.
Either Clarence is responsible for forcing the squirrel in, or is responsible for smelling the trapped squirrel and getting him out. I’m not sure which. But I sincerely doubt his intention for the squirrel was altruistic.
Make a Feed Trough for Chickens
As part of our new chicken coop, my husband made a built-in feed trough for our chickens. He wanted something that would hold a full bag of food, and that would dispense evenly, unlike our hanging plastic container.
The touch that I like best on it, is how he lifts open the lid: he put two nails on the top, and drilled two matching holes on a piece of wood so the top will simply slide down on the nails and its weight will keep it in place. This idea is so beautiful in its simplicity.
Growing Our Green Beans 