Feeling Crafty: A Running Toolbox

Back for a second project designed to get the Dallas Galloway running group a little more organized.

Last season, our medical supplies were tossed into a box.

And our medical supplies were pretty basic: Advil, band aids and a bottle of insect repellent. Hardly as thorough as we would have liked.

So after the season ended, I picked up an inexpensive storage box (just $4). I went with red because that's a universal first aid color.

Then I filled it with all types of things that come in handy during the running year, from avoiding chafing to fixing ripped clothing, and from cuts and scrapes to depleted electrolyte levels.

Contents: 

• KT Tape
• Bandaids
• Non-stick gauze pads
• Non-stick medical tape
• Advil
• Electrolyte pills
• Personal-sized anti-chafing lotion (for the days that runners forget!)
• Vasoline
• Insect repellent
• Safety pins

Now we've got everything we need in one handy small container. More importantly, our runners know exactly where to look if they are in need of emergency supplies.

Feeling Crafty - And Organized

We've learned a lot after our first season leading the Dallas Galloway marathon/half marathon training program.

One thing I learned was that I needed to be a bit more organized with our running supplies.

First up: Organizing the piles of training shirts that our runners receive at season kick off.

To keep the process simple, I purchased several self-seat laminating pouches - the kind you would use to create a quick and easy luggage tag.

Then I used Canva to create tags for each type of shirt. The photo is one our runners took during the running season. I just changed the color overlay to blue for guys and pink for gals. That way we can tell at a quick glance which is which.

Tags go into the laminating pouches, press to close and attach a hanging strap. Very easy!

I fastened each tag to a separate bag of shirts - no more fumbling to find the right size when we're distributing shirts next season!

On Experiencing a Foundation Repair

Have you ever wondered what getting your foundation repaired looks like?

Here's a glimpse at the process. For reference - We had 21 helical piers installed; two inside and 19 outside.

From arrival to departure, the foundation crew was onsite for 6-and-1/2 hours and took a 30 minute lunch break. Most of that time was spent in prep and clean up. The installation of the piers and lifting the house went very quickly - maybe 30 minutes total.

Step One: Move all furniture away from the work area. Side note - realize that you really should clean behind your furniture more often, so quickly clean before the work crew arrives.

Step Two: Wonder if your foundation might go back into alignment naturally from the weight of all of your furniture in a different part of the house. Also: Realize that this is an excellent time to purge the crazy things that you've kept for far too long (like that 1999 hardback edition of Roget's Thesarus).

Step Three: Take a final glance at your landscaping as you once knew it. In our case, wonder how much worse it can look than it already does. (You'll regret that question later.)

Step Four: Goodbye holly bushes. We were going to remove those within the next few months anyway, so we opted to have the foundation crew cut them out rather than dig and replace.

Step Five: Make sure you verify where they should be drilling before they start drilling. Our sales rep forgot to write down that we wanted the porch-side piers installed from the inside of the house rather than through the brick of the porch itself. At least we stopped it before they went further than the two starter drill holes...

Step Six: Protect the tile entryway and pull back the carpet and padding. Fight the temptation to pull the carpet out altogether - even though we're going to do something different with our flooring within the next 12-18 months, the carpet will be nice, even in its old worn-out state, for the interim.

Step Seven: Make sure you put any pets in the house far from the action. Jackhammering sounds like gunfire. In our case, we should have taken Bridget to be boarded. She had a seizure from the stress of everything later that night.

Step Eight: Realize that you shouldn't have worried about cleaning.

You really, really, really shouldn't have worried about cleaning.

Step Nine: Ready for piers.

Step Ten: Meanwhile outside, similar holes are being dug (without the jackhammer and dirt thrown around the interior of the house) along the foundation at points identified by the engineer.

  

Step Eleven: Piers go in.

Step Twelve: A machine helps drive the piers in.

Step 13: After the piers are installed and the house is lifted (the crew measures as they go to make sure it's being adjusted correctly), the crew cleans up and fills in the holes.

But surprise (or maybe not) - the concrete has to cure for two days before you can replace the padding and carpet. If you're thinking of letting your pets out and about in the house, beware of doing it too soon because you may end up with little pawprints in the concrete. (They are very cute, by the way.) We quickly learned that we had to keep the boys locked up until we could put the carpet back after Jasper jumped onto a carpet tack and left a blood trail throughout the house. Kittens just aren't careful or graceful enough to stay safe.

Part of the final clean up was putting all of our holly bushes in the back yard and stacking them according to our city's guidelines for collection. The work crew carried the bushes to the back, but Kelly took care of stacking everything.

The next steps are to get a plumber to check our water and sewer lines within the next 30 days or our pier warranty is voided.

We've also been given a laundry list of MUST DO's (which we already knew) with prioritization and timelines (which we weren't sure of, so this is helpful). Here's what's in store for the Hayley House in the days to come:

• Plumbing check | 30 days. Since we just discovered a water spot in a guest room ceiling, we'll have him check if we have an interior pipe leak as well
• Gutters | 60 days. Thank goodness Kelly works for a gutter/roofing/painting company
• Drainage | 120 days. We have an irrigation company coming to talk to us in a couple of weeks
• Landscape plan | This isn't necessary, but it's crazy to put in an irrigation system without thinking through what we're going to do with the yard. We can't afford to do the whole yard at once, but we can do it in stages if we have a plan. The irrigation company we're talking to is also a landscaping company.
• Tree removal | Six months. We have to remove the two trees in our front yard and our redtips in the back yard because both are killing the foundation. The trees in the front yard have also successfully killed our grass, so it's time to move on (they are nearly 30 years old and too big for the yard size we have - right trees, wrong place).
• Relandscape the front yard | Six months. Because when those trees go, we can't leave the yard as is. There's only so much public humiliation that we can endure.

What will have to wait?

• Fixing the broken tile in the entryway (we want to take out the raised entryway so we have a single level throughout)
• Repairing and repainting drywall cracks
• Removing worn out carpet and putting down new flooring.

What does the house look like now? The furniture is back in place, many books and other knick-knacks have been packed up to donate and our front yard looks completely different.

It's hard to look much worse than the Yard of Desolation did in the first place, but we've always been overachievers. The good news is that while the yard looks bad, we do think it looks more open without the bushes against the house. That gives us some idea of what to do with our new landscaping.

A State of Mind Project

My friend, Lori, lives in the UK - we were friends before she moved there, we were friends while we all lived there and we're still friends these many years later.

So when I saw that she'd pinned this on Pinterest:

Source

I knew I'd have to make one and send it to her.

I bought a painted wooden plaque, finish nails and two colors of tatting thread. I also found a good map of Ohio (her home state) and sized it to fit before printing it out.

The process is pretty simple - tape the map with painter's tape to your work surface.

Then hammer the nails along the outline of the map.

I kept the nails reasonably close to one another.

For my centerpoint, I found a sticker heart in my scrapbooking supplies.

Once I hammered around everything, I carefully pulled up the map. Apparently, not carefully enough...some nails came up with the map. No biggie - just hammer them in again.

Voila: Ready to string it up.

I tied my thread to the nail where I planned to start and stop.

Then it was a ton of looping in and out from the outside nails to the centerpoint nails. I actually looped twice for each nail to make it stand out nicely.

I used my red thread to wrap around the inside and outside of the border and centerpoint to make them stand out more.

Doesn't this look great?!?!

This was a super-fun and easy project to do. All in all, it took about 2 hours. But with all of my starts and stops, it took about 3 weeks.

About the same amount of time that it took to have it shipped to her.

Now to make one for Kansas and one for Texas and...

(We love you Lori!!!!)

My Little Garden

I've killed more plants than I care to count. The only one I seem moderately successful at keeping alive is my ivy - and I'm pretty sure that's because ivy is notoriously difficult to kill even if you use Roundup.

I've even killed a cactus. But that's a story for another day.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to try my hand at a terrarium. They're supposed to be easy. They're certainly cute. Bonus: They can be DIY'd with minimal effort.

Fine and good on the minimal effort part, but no one told me that I might buy a platter and cloche last summer and let it languish on my dining table for 8 months. Then buy decorative shells and a plant pot, only to let them languish on my dining table for another month.

I guess minimal effort doesn't necessarily mean that you have time to give even that.

Finally I did. While grocery shopping, I picked up an interesting succulent (poor thing...I hope I don't kill it) at Whole Foods:

Then I assembled my supplies:

All I had to do was pour the shells onto the platter, repot the plant into my decorative pot and cover it all with the cloche. Easy!

And super cute in its new home.

Pray for the plant. I have high hopes for it.

Pinterest Challenge: DIYing the Urban Outfitters Corner Ruffle Duvet

Sigh.

I was saving this post for the next Young House Love Pinterest Challenge. Then they announced they were on a break, which has officially become a very looooong break. 

Sniff - I loved that blog!

But I'm all about bucking up and moving forward, so here's my personal tackle that pinned onto Pinterest project - creating my own Urban Outfitters-style corner ruffle duvet cover.

***

What I wanted to put in our guest bedroom: The corner ruffle duvet from Urban Outfitters.

What I didn't want to spend: The $170 for the queen size (now out of stock at Urban Outfitters, I could track one down for nearly $200!).

Urban Outfitter's Corner Ruffle Duvet
Pure love at the low low price of $170.

But I'm smart, I know how to sew and I know how to google - I was sure I could recreate this with some creative sewing and some tips from other crafties on the internet. I relied heavily on this tutorial from Kiki and Company.

Making your own duvet cover is fairly simple - you simply need fabric in basic white (or whatever color that you want), thread and time.

To recreate the corner ruffle duvet, I decided to simplify matters and purchase a plain Ikea duvet cover to serve as my base. For the ruffles, I repurposed king sized white sheets that had been living, neglected, in our linen cabinet for nearly four years. 

The first step is determining how many strips you will need. Because my math skills are (ahem) poor, I made sure I took notes to keep myself on track.

Then prepare to cut. Ask for assistance if necessary.

There are lots of options for finishing edges. If I owned a serger, I would have simply cut strips with my sewing shears, then serged the edges. I could also have sewn the edges with a fold-over and straight stitch, or quickly with a zig-zag stitch (no folding required). However, I really wanted a loose, shabby chic feel so I simply cut my strips with pinking shears.

For non-sewers, pinking shears will reduce fraying without requiring extra sewing.

Kiki and Company had wisely suggested making a variety of ruffle types to add volume and interest to the duvet.

Ruffle Type #1 - Single center ruffle.

This is what you think it is - sew down the middle of the strip and ruffle. To do this, you have some options.

• You can use a ruffling attachment to your sewing machine to quickly ruffle. I don't have one, so that was out.
• You can sew a basting stitch (extra-long stitches) down the middle of the strip and hand-gather each. To quote Sweet Brown, Ain't nobody got time for that.
• Or you can save a lot of time and scrunch the material as you're sewing a standard straight stitch, essentially ruffling the material with a secure stitch as you go.

I didn't take a picture of Ruffle Type #2 - Double stitched ruffle because it doesn't look significantly different than type #1.

Imagine with me: Two rows of stitches, dividing the strip into thirds, instead of one center stitch. That's all there is to it.

Ruffle Type #3 - Pleated tube.

Making this ruffle is a two-step process. First, sew your strip into a tube (place right sides together, stitch, turn inside out). Then hand-pleat the strip to make a ruffle. Sew down the center to secure.

Do I need to mention that it's helpful to ask someone to check your work periodically?

Be aware: You will end up with more ruffles than you need. Better that than too few ruffles. That would be a sad day.

Once all of your ruffle strips are sewn, place your duvet cover on a large surface and begin laying out your ruffles.

Ask someone if it looks good to them, too.

Handy important frustration-reducing tip: If, like me, you use a premade duvet cover as your base, take time to rip out the side and bottom seams. This step will save a ton of time when you are in the midst of sewing on the ruffles because you're working with a massive volume of material.

With seams ripped and ruffles placed, it's time to begin pinning the ruffles in place for sewing. Again, make your life easy and pin the bottom edges of all strips to hold them in place as you're working.

Next pin the first strip completely in place. This strip will serve as your guide for all consecutive strips.

Pin the remaining strips in place, then head to your sewing machine.

You may be freaking out because your strips aren't long enough to go the length of the duvet. No worries! That's why you made a ton of ruffles. As you get to the end of one ruffle while sewing, fold the edge of the new strip under and place on top of the sewn strip - about 1/2 inch before you get to the end of the old strip. That will both finish and hide that raw edge, making for a clean imperceptible full ruffle.

Take your time - and believe me,  sewing on all of these ruffles takes some serious time.

As I said, you will have more ruffles than you need.

But that's ok - you can find something fun to do with them. Like decorating the pillow shams that came with your duvet cover!

Isn't it gorgeous?

And even better than the looks? The price - I saved $142 by making my own. 

And, like I said, it's gorgeous.

Budget breakdown:

• $170 for Urban Outfitters (now out of stock)
• $25 for duvet cover at Ikea
• Sheets - had already (add in another $25 to buy, or purchase plain white fabric)
• One spool of thread $3 (I already had a partial spool)

Total cost: $28

Getting Bridget's approval? Priceless.