Little Corbin Hill

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Pallet fail…for now! Mwah Ha Ha Ha!

Besides the fun in inserting a maniacal laugh in my title, this weekend was a dud in the craft department! I got so excited about my pallet project I had in mind so I was crushed when it didn’t pan out right =(

Here we are pulling out nails and whatnot, preparing it for staining at 9 pm Friday night!

Saturday staining and sanding! <—loving that alliteration there, hehe

Isn’t it amazing what stain will do? I can’t even tell it’s a pallet. Note: after this picture, I did flip it over and stain everything else so there was not any natural wood color showing through.

Okay, this is where it all went wrong. After cutting out my design, my ~~cheap~~ contact paper would NOT stick to the wood =(

Soooo, I am going to head over to the store and buy some contact paper for transfer paper because I am completely out now and I’m going to try WHITE contact paper too. Maybe it’s a bit thicker and I’ll be able to SEE it, lol

Open to any suggestions, of course =)

Friday, August 24, 2012

A masterpiece in the making (I hope)…

Squuueeeeaaaal! Look at what my husband FINALLY picked up for me today! A pallet/crate thingie! You know? One of those, lol. He definitely knows how to make my day =) I have big plans for this baby and I hope it turns out as well as it looks in my mind, lol.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Making blue Mason jars

I know, I know! You’ve been seeing these everywhere but I had to try it. I love the look of old antique Mason jars but I have not had any luck finding any on thrift stores or flea markets. Well, I take that back, I’m still regretting buying the old jar I seen a completely full of buttons at the flea market! I bypassed it because it was $20 and ended up getting three vintage Pyrex dishes complete with lids instead. Ahhh, love my Pyrex =)
Anywho, all you need is Mason jars, ModPodge, water, and food coloring. I used this tutorial from Six Sister’s Stuff that I found on uCreate.
Then you preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Mix 2 tbs. of water and 4 tbs. of Mod Podge. Next, add your food coloring until you reach your desired shade. At first I only used 5 drops but after I popped it out of the oven and seen how light it was, I added more. Make sure you coat the entire inside of you jar, including the mouth.

Then, you poke it in the oven for a couple of minutes upside down. Take it out, wipe the rim off, then place in the oven right side up for the and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until color starts clearing. And voila! You get prettiness =)
Update: Forgot to mention this! My favorite jar that turned out the bluest, I actually let it cool and then repeated the process again--recoat, oven for 2, wipe, oven for 30. The bluer the better, I think =)

Speaking of prettiness, see my milk glass finds over yonder? Picked them up for $3 at a little auction house down the road.

Can’t wait to collect more. Love the look of the white.

Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Crock-Pot Beans and Ham

This was pretty tasty considering I have never made this Southern deliciousness. I leave that to my granny =) I found this recipe from Plain Chicken via Pinterest. Anywho, this was so simple and, if you know me, I love simple!
Slow Cooker Great Northerns & Ham
1 lb package dried northern beans
ham bone, hocks, shanks or diced ham (about 1 pound)
2 tsp onion powder
6 cups water
salt & pepper to taste
Rinse and sort the beans for any pebbles. Add the the rinsed beans, onion powder, salt, pepper, and ham to the crock pot. Add water. Cover and cook on low about 8 hours, until beans are tender. Remove ham bone, shanks or hocks and pull off the meat. Add meat to the crock pot and mix. Serve with cornbread.
Personal note: We used diced ham because I sent my hubs to the store and that’s what he came back with, lol. It was still yummy but I know a ham bone would make this so much better.
Also, I soaked my beans overnight so I didn’t get the same consistency/color of the broth as Plain Chicken did. It’s amazing what comes out of the beans after you soak them =/ Nevertheless, her picture looked better, lol.
Perhaps this was because we used diced ham instead of an actual hambone, but our beans needed A LOT of salt. We’re big salt people though =)
DEFINTELY A PINTEREST SUCCESS! Hope y’all try this. Was super easy and super good!

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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Refashioning a Too-Small Shirt

I went down to a conference for work for four days in April. I was ecstatic about some t-shirts I seen at one of the vendor’s booths but they only had small left so I got my co-worker one who is small. The last day of the conference, the vendor had just one left so I snatched it up thinking maybe I could cut it up and frame it and hang it in my cubicle or something of the sorts.
Inspiration struck after I seen Love and Laundry's reverse appliqué tutorial on a uber cute shirt. So I decided to refashion my too-small work shirt and put the design on a bigger shirt.
Here is the before pic. It’s a very tiny small shirt. I like my shirts roomy and I typically wear an XL, sometimes larger.

I picked up a plain men’s v-neck shirt from the big box store.

I cut out an oval template. My oval was 12 inches wide and because I only had standard size card stock, I cut each side of the oval and overlapped to make it the size I had on the screen. I then traced the shape on contact paper.

Sitting indian-style on the living room floor with my supplies!

I centered the contact paper shape over my graphic.

Then I cut it out. Whew, I was nervous!

I turned the shirt inside out and pinned my cut piece, right side down.

I then sewed along the circle. After my cut piece was attached, I turned the shirt right side out and CAREFULLY cut the circle out. Make sure you are only cutting the outside fabric from your new, plain shirt. We want the cut graphic to be in one piece!
End result!