Household Quickie: Sticker Residue Removal

If you're anything like me, then you tend to re-use things, most times until they pretty much disintegrate from usage.

I'm also a crafter, and I make glycerin and gelatin products as well, so I'm always on the lookout for bottles, bottles that won't cost me a fortune (I like to pay about $1 per bottle; I found a great deal on bottles at my local dollar store, Mighty Dollar, and cleaned them out. Sadly, they've never re-stocked.).

And so I came upon the idea, after much consideration, of going back to the Mighty Dollar, or even Wal-Mart (because their brand costs right around 88 cents), buy new bottles of hand soap, dump the soap into the big refill bottle in my cabinet, and use *those* bottles for my soap and lotion products.

The down side to this is, the Wal-Mart bottles come with some pretty labels that leave a hideously sticky residue on them.

DIY Project: Jewelry Box

How many of you have trinket boxes, junk boxes, photo boxes, or any other kind of box piled around the house with no idea what to do with them?

Oh, just me, is it?

Well, I am a box collector. I have quite a few, of many varied shapes and sizes, but the box in question, that precipitated this whole project, is one I've had for eighteen years; it was a senior gift from my high school the year I graduated, and over time, it's served as a pencil box, trinket box, necklace box, bead box, storage box, empty-box-sitting-around-looking-pretty box... you get the idea.

I also collect rings. I rarely wear them; they get in my way when I type, and when I get hot and cranky, my hands swell and the rings get really tight and uncomfortable. But I love collecting them, especially unique ones. Like these ones.

And so, I made this:

You can, too, and for under $10. More likely, it'll be under $5, depending on if you already have felt at home or not.

Cross-Stitch For Life

Shockingly enough, I cross-stitch. I'm not as good as my mother or my aunt, but I get by. I've been doing it on and off for a few years now, more than I'll actually admit to, but I've never really progressed beyond the intermediate stage.

I've been stitching a lot more lately, and I've found some patterns online that are amazing. Carrie Luhmann Pieniozek maintains a site, Free Patterns Online, that offers a nice variety of free and relatively simple-to-use cross-stitch patterns. I've printed a lot of hers out, and are using them this Christmas.

For now, though, I'm sharing some of the projects I've actually finished stitching.