Christmas in July: Wool Dryer Balls

Have you ever used wool dryer balls instead of fabric softener? They really do work! Putting 4 - 5 wool dryer balls in your dryer with a load of clothes saves energy by cutting down your drying time, it reduces static cling and wrinkles, and you can use them over and over. You can also add essential oils to make your clothes smell great!

You can buy wool dryer balls, but it's so easy to make your own, and they make great homemade, practical gifts. It's really simple to do. Here's what you'll need:

• 100% wool yarn

• Essential oil (I like lavender)

• Panty hose or tights

Here are the instructions that I used for DIY Wool Dryer Balls from the Frugal Girls which includes a picture tutorial, but it's really easy:

1. Wind the yarn into a baseball-sized ball and tuck in the end so it won't unwind.

2. Cut off the leg of some panty hose. Stick a wool ball into the toe of panty hose and tie it to keep the ball of wool inside. You can tie several balls of yarn into the same leg of panty hose. Just tie a knot after each ball of wool is put inside.

3. Put the panty hose chain of wool balls into the dryer on the highest heat setting a few times so you can "felt" the wool. (That basically means it won't unwind because it becomes sort of matted together).

4. Untie the pantyhose and take the wool balls out. Then add 3 - 5 drops of essential oil to each ball and put 4 wool balls in with your next load of laundry.

That's it!

There are some things you need to watch out for, however,  to make sure it works for you:

• MAKE SURE YOU ARE USING 100% WOOL: I tried the 2 brands of wool listed above and they both work because they are 100% wool. Be sure to check the label. Lion Brand has some yarn called wool-ease, but it is only 20% wool. Even the Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool (listed above) is not 100% wool in certain colors, so be sure to check. I personally preferred the size, colors, and texture of the Paton's Classic Roving Wool, but it is a bit more expensive per yard. I could only get 3 balls out of 1 skein. 
• USE NO MORE THAN 5 DROPS OF ESSENTIAL OIL PER BALL OF WOOL: I am new to using essential oils, so I don't really know the rules. I didn't count how many drops I was using the first time I did it and I just shook a bunch of oil onto the balls. The smell was WAY too strong! I put the wool balls in with sheets, and the smell of the sheets was overpowering for a little while. You don't need a lot to make your laundry smell great! 

These wool dryer balls make great stocking stuffers! I modified this free crochet pattern from the Creative Jewish Mom and put the wool dryer balls that I made inside with the label above that I made using Canva. Click the picture above to print your own (4 labels to a page)! 

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Kid-Safe Bug Repellant Bracelets

Unfortunately, summer fun usually comes with pesky bug bites. I, especially, seem to be a magnet for bug bites! 

Most bug sprays like Off! are made with something called Deet. According to this article from Parents Magazine,  "The American Academy of Pediatrics says that insect repellents containing deet are safe for children as young as 2 months. . . Although deet is safe for use on children, many parents prefer to use bug repellents that are deet-free. Natural repellents are made with plant oils such as citronella, lemongrass, peppermint, and cedarwood." 

So it is safe to use Off!, but you can also use essential oils as a natural alternative (and it smells much better!). I was inspired to make these bug repellant bracelets by this post from One Crazy House. I made my bracelets a little differently, but the idea is the same. By soaking a bracelet in the right essential oils, you can wear a bracelet to keep the bugs at bay! 

You'll need:

• 100% cotton
• Pinking Sheers
• Size N crochet hook
• Nature Outdoor Blend Essential Oil

Using pinking sheers to keep the fabric from fraying, cut 2 one inch strips about 1 yard long. I put the 2 strips back to back so the wrong side of the fabric wouldn't show, and I single crocheted the fabric.

After measuring the wrist of my little guy, I tied the 2 ends together. 

When I made my first bracelet, I mixed different essential oils and witch hazel to create my own bug repellant, until I found this: Nature Outdoor Blend Essential Oil. It's already mixed and ready to use, and bonus–it's on sale until July 30th! Only $3.59 for a 5ml bottle and $6.84 for a 15ml bottle! That's cheaper than buying all the different oils and mixing it myself!

Just put some Nature Outdoor Blend Essential Oil in a bowl, soak the bracelet, let it dry, and it should help keep the bugs away for about 24 hours!

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Christmas in July: Chalkboard Paint Projects

I've found all kinds of uses for chalkboard paint lately! Here is an idea for chalkboard labels that would make a great gift or just help you organize your own kitchen. They're quick and easy, so if you're running out of summer (like me), this is a great way to accomplish a lot in a little bit of time!

A favorite gift that I am going to be giving away this Christmas season is homemade extract. This summer I discovered how easy it is to make your own extract, and it tastes amazing in things like ice cream and yogurt. This really is a unique, thoughtful, and practical gift because it's hard to find real vanilla. Whether buying a bottle of imitation vanilla extract at the store or buying vanilla ice cream, vanilla is not really what you're getting. And don't worry! It's safe to give to a family with young kids. Check out this article from Leaf: Is Alcohol in Vanilla Extract Harmful to Give to a Toddler?

To make vanilla extract, you just need 2 ingredients (vodka and vanilla beans) and a little time. I found this recipe from Natasha's Kitchen, and it includes a cute printable (pictured on the right). There is a place on the label to write the date that it will be ready to use, but after I used the first bottle, I refilled it, and I couldn't change the date, so I decided it might make sense to turn it into a chalkboard label instead.

All you need is chalkboard spray paint, a little glass bottle, and some paper with a hole cut in it. I used a circle punch, but a cricut machine or just tracing and cutting out a circle would work too.

Just tape it on and spray paint the circle. I hand wrote the label when I was done, but I'm looking forward to trying this trick for writing nicely on a chalkboard from The Wedding of my Dreams.

The vanilla recipe worked great, and I quickly made as many bottles as I could. I kept 2 for myself– one to use and one to steep. I leave the vanilla beans in the jar, and when it's empty, I just fill it up again and give it a shake once a week until it is ready to use. It takes 2 - 4 months before the vanilla is ready, so now is a good time to start, especially if you are giving it as a Christmas gift.

My FAVORITE thing to make with my homemade vanilla (which tastes SO much better than the imitation vanilla you buy at the store) is ice cream! I don't have an ice cream maker, and I am nothing fancy in the kitchen, but this ice cream is the best thing I've ever made from scratch! It's 3 ingredients and super easy to make. I first learned how to do this from Zoom Yummy's recipe: Easy Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream without a Machine. I will never buy ice cream from the store again! This ice cream looks and tastes like real ice cream (or even better!) and it doesn't have any preservatives in it. It does still have a lot of calories though. I guess you can't have everything!

After I fell in love with this ice cream, I started playing around with different flavors. Cookies and Cream ice cream is delicious and still very easy to make. I just had to add one more ingredient–Oreos. You can check out Zoom Yummy's recipe for step by step directions on how to make the original ice cream. Her recipe uses 2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk, but I wanted to use the whole can because I didn't know what to do with what I had left over, so I adjusted the amounts. Beware it makes A LOT of ice cream if you use the whole can. I had to put it in 2 separate containers. I also made mine a little less sweet in order to use the whole can, but since I added cookies, it was still very sweet and delicious! 

Here is how I made the Cookies and Cream variation:

2 cups (1 pint) heavy whipping cream

1 14oz can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk

3 teaspoons homemade vanilla extract

Oreo cookies (crushed up)

I used an immersion hand blender to mix the heavy whipping cream until it formed stiff peaks, just like you would when making whip cream. You can use a mixer to do this, but I love this immersion hand blender. It works so fast; it's like magic! 

Next fold in the vanilla and sweetened condensed milk with a spatula. (You don't want to use your mixer or immersion hand blender anymore or your heavy whipping cream will turn into butter!) I specifically put Eagle Brand in the directions because I used generic once, and it was not great. The color and consistency changed the way the ice cream looked. It tasted okay, but it was definitely not as good. The ice cream was clumpy and more of a caramel color, so I suggest sticking to Eagle Brand. I might also try making my own sweetened condensed milk next time with The Gracious Housewife's Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk Recipe. 

Then put 8 - 10 Oreo cookies (or amount to your taste) in a ziplock bag and crush them. You can use a rolling pin or just a mason jar to crush them like I did. Then fold the Oreos into the ice cream and freeze! Yum! 

The basic idea for making any kind of extract is the same, so I'm making a few more kinds of extract. I am growing chocolate mint and sweet mint herbs (which I got in the herb garden at Home Depot at the beginning of summer), and I'm turning them into extract too. Just cut up leaves to fill the jar about 1/4 of the way full and fill the jar up with vodka (I use Skyy Vodka). Be sure to cut up the leaves to release the juice. Then shake about once a week and in a 2 - 4 months, you will have mint extract. That's it! 

Mason jars are always a practical and cute way to give a gift or just store things in your pantry. I usually use a wet-erase marker to write what is in the jar or the date, but it always seems to wipe off. Then I decided to try making the tops into chalkboards. It seems to stay on so much better, and it looks cute! I saw mason jar chalkboard lids for sale on Amazon for a little over a dollar each, but I can make them MUCH cheaper myself. It's very easy too! 

I just laid the tops on a tarp and sprayed them with chalkboard spray paint. That's it! You can reuse old lids to give them new life too. I ran the spray-painted lids through the dishwasher before I used them, and they still look great. 

Now I'm going to put these 2 easy projects together to make a cute neighbor or co-worker gift. I used the chocolate mint extract to make another homemade ice cream variation: No Churn Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream from Like Mother Like Daughter. SO good! I think the green ice cream looks very Christmasy, so a pint of homemade Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream with a chalkboard lid (the recipe made about 2 pints), a bottle of Chocolate Mint Extract, and the recipe for the ice cream will make a great homemade gift! Since the gift-giving season is still 5 months away, I'll have to eat this pint of ice cream myself! 

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Christmas in July: Kid-Safe Hand Sanitizer

Do you remember the scary stuff that was in the news a few years ago when schools started banning hand sanitizer? There were a bunch of reports that kids were being poisoned from the alcohol in hand sanitizer. This article from WebMD in 2015 gives a good summary: Hand Sanitizer Poisoning More Kids. Yikes! Since then, it has been recommended that you DO NOT use hand sanitizer with kids under 12. But we still need an on-the-go solution for washing hands, right?  If you're having a picnic at the park or kids are eating a snack in the car after riding in the grocery store basket, you want them to have clean hands.

I am super excited that I found this Three Ingredient DIY (non-toxic) Hand Sanitizer with Essential Oils from Eat, Craft, Parent. It totally works, and it's not hard to make at all! You just need:

• Aloe Vera gel

• Vitamin E oil 

• Thieves Essential Oil or Shield Protective Blend

• Distilled Water

The Thieves Oil (which can be up to $40 a bottle, so I replaced it with the cheaper version - Shield Protective Blend -- same oils, but different brand) is what makes it anti-bacterial. The Aloe Vera and vitamin E oil make it gentle and moisturizing on your hands instead of drying them out like alcohol tends to do. For directions on mixing your own bottle of hand sanitizer, see this article: Three Ingredient DIY (non-toxic) Hand Sanitizer with Essential Oils.

                              

I found 3 oz. travel bottles which work perfectly as hand sanitizer bottles. Inspired by this post from Micah Makes,  I made a crochet cover that would fit the bottles, added some accessories, and a clip so it can hook onto a child's backpack, a purse strap, etc. I have tried crocheting the strap that is in this pattern, but it doesn't last. 100% cotton stretches too much, so the little clips work much better.

You can adjust to fit any container!

Even a lotion bottle!

I made this label using Canva. Click here to download the labels.

These hand sanitizers make great, practical gifts for kids, teachers, and moms! You can use some of these cute free printable gift tags to go with it:

Spread Cheer Not Germs from Lil' Luna

Thank you for your helping hands from What the Teacher Wants

 Have fun making your own, or you can purchase from me!

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Christmas in July: Reusable Cling Wrap

I found a unique, practical, and creative gift I'm looking forward to using this year: Reusable Cling Wrap! I found this post from Nourishing Joy: DIY Homemade Cling Wrap: A Natural Plastic Wrap Alternative.  I was thinking that this would be a great way to wrap homemade food for gift giving! This reusable cling wrap can cover bowls, plates, or you can wrap homemade bread in it. 

If you have some furry friends who are part of the family, you can use it to fill their stockings with homemade treats too! 

While I love the idea of this reusable cling wrap, the first time I tried it, I made a crazy mess! Never having used beeswax before, I did not know how messy it was. It got EVERYWHERE! My husband said, "Now we know where the saying, 'Mind your own beeswax' came from!" You really do have to mind where that beeswax is going! So I encourage you to check out the original post from Nourishing Joy, but I'm going to show you how I have done it differently after my first messy attempt.

You will need:

• Beeswax (click here to get 100% organic beeswax pearls)
• 100% cotton cut to the size you want your cling wrap to be (a fat quarter can make one really big piece for a rectangular pan or you can cut it into 2 bowl-size pieces)
• pinking sheers (optional) to keep the edges of your fabric from fraying
• scraper
• wax paper
• sponge brush
• disposable container

1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Cover the bottom of your container with beeswax pearls. Put them in the oven until melted. I don't think you can over heat them at this temperature, so just keep checking to see when they have melted.
I learned the hard way that it is practically impossible to clean beeswax off of whatever container you use to melt the beeswax, so I suggest using something disposable like an aluminum loaf pan.  I didn't originally, so the pan I used became my beeswax pan!

2. Dip a sponge brush into the melted beeswax. I suggest a sponge brush because you will need to throw it away when you're done. The beeswax hardens pretty quickly, so don't take your time! If it hardens before you're done, just pop it back in the oven.

3. With your fabric on top of wax paper, paint the beeswax onto your fabric. You don't need a lot! Just enough to cover the piece you have.

4. Personally, I could not get the beeswax on without clumping. Whether I dipped the whole thing into the pan (which was a crazy mess!) or painted it on (so much easier), it left clumps. Using a scraper to smooth it out worked great! Just scrape as much off the top of fabric as you can. It pushes the beeswax into the fabric and gives it a nice smooth feel. It feels pretty amazing! You can also just throw the part you scraped off back into the pan and remelt it.

Now you can try making your own reusable cling wrap! Your wrapping will be beautiful, and it will be part of the gift because they can reuse it. I made this tag using Canva to attach to your homemade cling wrap so people will know how to use it. Just click on the picture below to print. There are 4 on a page.

Now I'm going to try making some holiday-themed reusable cling wrap to make it festive!

Here are some of the recipes I'm going to make and wrap up this Christmas:

• Lemon-Thyme Tea Bread from Taste of Home
• Peanut Butter Banana Dog Treats from Damn Delicious

Happy Holidays (in July)!

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Christmas in July

I am a terrible procrastinator. I have good intentions of creating thoughtful, practical, handmade gifts each year, but it always seems to be a scramble to get them done. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to start preparing sooner, so I'm doing this series called: Christmas in July! I'm going to be posting a different handmade gift each week (I hope!) for the rest of July and link it back to this post. 

This is a linky party, so please link up at the end of this post to share your best handmade gifts for the holidays too! Just add this button to the post you are linking with the html code below. You can link a new post or one you've already done. Then add a comment on the blog of one other person that linked up! This linky party will be open until July 18th!

<div align="center">
<a href="https://emilyartroom.blogspot.com/2017/07/christmas-in-july.html" rel="nofollow" title="Emily's Art Room" target="_blank"><img src="http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/vv38/Emilystout15/Christmas%20in%20July_zpsyc92kzvh.jpg" alt="Emily's Art Room" style="border: none; height: auto; width: 200px;" /></a></div>

Generate your button code

When it comes to gift-giving for coworkers or adult family and friends, it can be tough. My budget isn't big enough to get them something they may REALLY want because let's face it, if they want something that I can afford to get them, they've probably already gotten it for themselves! That's why something unique, thoughtful, and practical is the best way to go. The fact that it is handmade is part of the gift too. No one has a lot of time these days, so spending the precious commodity of time on someone is a very special gift. 

 

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From Entertainment Center to Drive-Through Restaurant

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience, for which I do receive commissions if a purchase is made, but at no cost to you.

We finally finished another furniture makeover project that we actually started a few years ago! Since  we started it a few years ago, I don't have a very good "before" picture, but this was an old entertainment center that I had before I was married. I was inspired by this post: Before & After: Turn an Old Cabinet into a Kid's Play Kitchen from ehow.com. A few years ago when my son was 3, he would have loved a play kitchen, but it never happened. Now that he is 5, we decided to make it a drive through restaurant!

He loves McDonalds. When I  was pregnant, my husband and I said, "Our kid won't be obsessed with McDonalds . . . " famous last words. I don't what it is about that place. It's not like we go on a regular basis, but he gets SO excited about McDonalds! Is it the toy? Probably. So this old entertainment center became a drive through restaurant. He has one of those plasma cars that you can wiggle the handles and it moves without using your feet. They're pretty cool, so in our unfinished basement, he rides it around. That seemed perfect for a drive-through restaurant! In the picture you can see him driving up to the drive-through window in his plasma car!

This is how we refurbished this old entertainment center into a drive-through restaurant. We painted it using a spray gun (which is my new favorite way to paint! Check out this post: DIY Furniture Makeover), and we replaced the glass doors with doors made from dry-erase board and added these handles to make the refrigerator:

At Lowe's or Home Depot you can buy sheets of the dry erase board over in the section where you buy plywood. It's inexpensive, sturdy, thin, and it is easy to cut. We also replaced the cheap cardboard back with dry erase board so we could write the menu with dry-erase markers. Of course my son wanted to make it look like McDonalds, so we made a big curvy yellow M for menu. (He came up with the prices!)

We used disposable aluminum burner liners as the stove, and we flipped the hinges on one of the doors on the bottom so it opens like an oven. A few years ago (when we started the play kitchen!), Target had the little hotdog and french fry holders in the dollar bin. They also had stuff like ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles and a menu pad, so that is all in his restaurant. He cut out and colored fries to go in the fry box, and he had play food that we added to the refrigerator. He had a friend over the other day, and they added toys to the meal too to make it a happy meal! 

Now we can check another project off the list! This one was more involved, but our little guy has fun making us food and driving up to the drive-through window in his car or big wheels! Have you done a furniture makeover like this before? I would love to see pictures!

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DIY Furniture Makeover

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience, but at no cost to you.

I'm pretty excited about something new I've decided to try in my art room! I've seen such cool furniture makeovers on Pinterest, and I've seen some amazing furniture makeovers from my friend Jenna from At Home with Kids. Now I'm finally giving it a try for myself! 

I started with an old night stand that my husband had as a kid. As you can see, he didn't take great care of it. We thought it was real wood, which is why it stayed with us through the years, but it isn't. Oops! I decided it was the perfect piece of furniture to use as my first project. If I messed it up, no big deal! 

First, we took out the drawers and knocked out the little divider for the drawer. I knew I wanted it to be open so I could put a basket or crate in the bottom. I scraped off all of the stickers and wiped it down with Savogran 10632 Liquid TSP Substitute Cleaner. It is specifically for cleaning wood before painting it. 

To be honest, I don't like painting with a paintbrush or roller. In fact, I kind of hate it. There's nothing particularly creative about it, and the results are disappointing. At least for me. Probably because I'm not very good at it. BUT . . . we got a paint sprayer, and that has changed everything! It hooks up to my husband's air compressor, and the results are awesome! I don't mind painting when it looks so good in the end! There are no streaks, and it's very professional looking. I don't know very much about the different kinds of paint sprayers out there, but the one below is the one we have. It works well, but the spray isn't very big. For bigger projects it takes a long time to paint with such a small paint stream, but it still does the job. 

After I painted the night stand, the inside was just exposed wood. My husband used a sheet of whiteboard, which is strong but thin, and cut the sides, back, and bottom to fit inside the night stand. I covered it with Chevron Aqua Pop contact paper, and we secured it with a brad gun. 

It's definitely not perfect. If you look at it up close, you will be able to see where the stickers peeled off the laminate and the mistakes I made in my first project, but I'm still pretty excited about how it turned out! As long as you don't look at it too closely, it looks pretty good, and it's a great place to store my son's crayons, markers, and coloring books!

Have you done any furniture makeovers? I'd love to hear about your projects as I learn more! And be sure to check back for more refurbished projects I'm working on this summer!

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