Plastic Grocery Bag Crocheted Tote

This project took what felt like eternity and a million plastic bags! About 1/2 way through I said I would never, ever make one of these again, but now that it is finished I might do more, just not nearly as large.

I cut up plastic grocery bags into rings and looped them together to make plastic yarn, or "plarn" as the tutorial I was inspired by referred to it. I have no clue how many plastic bags this actually took. My best guess is at least 100?

The only other good use for the plastic grocery bags is as small trash bags since they don't recycle them around here, so I guess I make more? I think next time I might make a lunch bag sized one. I might also branch out to using a wider variety of colored bags or make a more complex patten than just the one stripe.

Up-cycled Dress-up Wardrobe

It must have been about a year ago that I reached a breaking point of dealing with Lucy's 1/2 broken dresser.  The bottoms of the drawers always seemed to know the absolute worst time to crash through.  I had seen so many up-cycled kids furniture projects on Pinterest and showed this one to Rudy.  He embraced the idea and did this project 100% by himself! 

He haggled for the pink drawer knobs a few months earlier at a flea market, bought butterfly fabric for the inside, found butterfly stickers and mirrors for the outside, painted it obnoxious pink, reenforced the "floor" of the closet, fixed the bottom drawer, and added the clothes rod. 

We filled it with dress-up clothes and gave it to Lucy for Christmas.  I'm not sure that as a 2 year old, she can fully appreciate it, but she certainly is enjoying all the dress-up things and I appreciate that it contains them all and that it is so freakin' cute!

Upcycled Wool Mittens

Some of you may be wondering why I had scraps of wool sweaters lying around to make Lucy's Christmas Stocking with . . .  I have been making WOOL MITTENS!  They are so much fun to make and I absolutely love the way they turn out!  I gave a few as Christmas presents this year and some I am still working on.  They are so easy to make and it has let me fulfill my desire to discount shop, as the best place to get a variety of fun colored wool sweaters is yard sales, Goodwill, etc. 

A co-worker was recently talking about how expensive handmade wool mittens were at a local shop and that it couldn't be too hard to make a pair.  So I found a pattern online and adjusted it a bit to what worked for me and voila!  After a couple test pairs of liners to get the sizing right, I started cranking out mittens!  They are wool sweater material on the outside (after it has been washed in hot water/ soap and dried on high heat to shrink up the wool)  and the inside is new polar fleece.  So far I have made solid colored mittens with the exception of this one pair with the grey palms.  Soon I might venture out into mixing and matching sweater colors to be a little more festive.

  

Bring it on, WINTER!

Wool Christmas Stocking

Lucy's stocking last year was a cute pink "Baby's 1st Christmas 2010" stocking given to her by her Grand-dad, but this year I wanted to make her a unique stocking that had more of a Christmas feel.  I have been making things with old wool sweaters this season and had quite a few scraps left, and thought that would make a cozy, festive wool stocking!  I traced a stocking shape from one of ours that I like the shape of.  Then I cut the paper stocking into shapes for a pattern and left about a 1/2 inch around all sides for a seam allowance.  The whole process of making the pattern and sewing it together took less than an hour and was very easy.   I love how it turned out and it looked even better full of presents!

Milk Jug Case

I found this "lunch box" made out of a plastic milk jug on Pinterest.  Since we have quite a few infant water jugs siting around waiting to head out to recycling, I decided to give this a shot.  It was really easy to cut the plastic, although I didn't cut very evenly.  And I already had some self-adhesive velcro dots in my sewing supplies. 

 

 Now I just need to decide what I will use it for.  Perhaps pencils, crayons, small toys, brownies, cookies, or carrots?