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Summertime S'mores

I was having a few ladies over last night for some glasses of wine and laughs and wanted to make an easy dessert.  Everyone that knows me knows I hate grocery shopping, so my cabinets are pretty bare, but I had some s'mores stuff left over from a camping trip so I decided to work with that.

Supplies:

Chocolate

Graham Crackers

Peanut Butter

Marshmallows

Sprinkles

Cookie Sheet 

Tinfoil

Stove or microwave

This is a fun and easy dessert if you have little ones who want to help in the kitchen.  It's all pretty kid friendly (minus the stove part)

Lay out your grahams and spread a layer of peanut butter on each. Plop a marshmallow on top and put them in the oven at 350 degrees.  They only need to be in there for about 5 - 10 minutes so check on them every few minutes and pull them out when your marshmallows begin to expand.

Melt your chocolate via stovetop or microwave. (I chose microwave, my apartment was about 91 degrees when I made these so I was trying to not keep adding heat to it)

Take out your graham crackers from the oven, top them with another graham and drizzle your chocolate over the top.  I originally tried just dipping them in the chocolate but they are so gooey and slippery from the peanut butter, it's much easier to just drizzle.  Then I sprinkled some pink sugar crystals over the top (because clearly this wasn't sugary enough)

Pop them in the fridge for about 2 hours...

...and enjoy!

It got a Katie thumbs up approval.

I learned 2 things from making these: 1- I've clearly been living a lie because spellcheck just informed me that it is 'marshmallows' not 'marshmellows'. and 2- anything you add peanut butter too just makes it that much better.

--Emily Jo

Reader Feature - Abbi's Embroidered Earbuds

Abbi over at The Lovely Prelude tackled the tangle-free headphone project and they came out fantastic! Take a look at her take on them and don't miss her blog because it is equally as adorable!

Keep those reader submissions coming, we love to see what you guys are making too!

--Emily Jo and Heather

T-shirt To Tank Top

Okay, so I was really jealous of Emily's adorable dip-dyed shorts and decided to try it out on a t-shirt turned tank top.

Supples:

T-shirt

Scissors

Needle and thread

Bleach

Plastic container

Here's the shirt - picked this baby up at Marshalls for $10!

First I cut off the bottom hem, the sleeves and then cut the neckline. I made the armholes a little bit bigger, but not enormous(though I thought about doing that, it made me nervous, haha).

Next I set up my bleach station. I also tested the bleach on one of the scrap pieces to make sure I knew how long to let it sit and to see if I would actually like the color the bleach turns the fabric. 

While the scrap piece was working it's magic, I decided I didn't like the seams on the shoulders. So, I took another piece of scrap fabric and wrapped it around like I did with the jersey scarf tutorial.

Here's the tank top, ready for the bleach!

Just a close-up of the shoulder seams now that they are wrapped. 

This shirt had not been previously washed, so I noticed that when I put the scrap piece in, the fabric wouldn't soak any of the bleach up. So I pre-wet the fabric with water and wringed it out then put it in the bleach. This step is probably unnecessary if the shirt has been washed before. 

Wizzy was feeling left out and wanted his tail dip-dyed too.

So once the bleach has soaked into the fabric, wring it out, but do not rinse yet, and let it hang. Keep an eye on it and when it gets to a point you like, rinse the bleach out completely. 

Either tumble dry or air dry. 

New fun shirt time! I debated cutting the bottom into fringe, thoughts? I have been (lovingly) dubbed the fringe queen by my friend Liz(with good reason, I love me some fringe), so the obvious answer seems to be yes. I'll update you if that happens, haha.

--Heather

Dip Dyed Shorts

In honor of Independence Day, I decided a good, timeless, Summer project was on the menu for today. So here is an easy way to update those old jeans you haven't worn in awhile.

Supplies:

old jeans

bleach

scissors

plastic cooler

string

Try your jeans on and mark them with a pen how short you want your shorts. It's important to try them on from past experiences where I've cut too high and wound up with booty shorts.

Now you have a new pair of shorts.

I rigged this up because I knew I didn't want to inhale bleach fumes for the next hour.  I'm sure there are many other ways to do this, but this was pretty easy to me.  I used a cooler and flipped up the handle, then slid my string through each belt loop and tied it to the handle so just the portion I wanted bleached would end up in the cooler.

Fill up your cooler with warm water (don't know if it makes a difference the water temperature, but I used warm and it worked so let's just go with that.) I used about 2 parts water, to 1 part bleach.  Have the solution touching about an inch up your shorts (the bleach will bleed up a little).

Check on them every 20 minutes or so until you get the color you want.  I left mine in there for about an hour. I should probably mention to wear bad clothes when doing this incase the bleach gets on them.

Hang to dry...

Then wash them on cold the first few times you wash them.

Happy 4th of July!

--Emily Jo

Apartment Redesign

I told you guys I have been working on some big projects and I wasn't lying! My friends Patrik and Francine live in a little studio apartment that was in desperate need of some reorganization and furniture upgrades. They had seen the work I had done for the blog and asked if I would be interested in helping out. A real life interior design project? Yes please!

Supplies:

A truck

Power tools

Lumber

Paint

Stain

Brushes

Wood glue

Wood putty

Screws

So here is a look at what the apartment looked like a couple months ago. The clothes armoire took center stage on the most prominent wall, along with a small shoe rack and some storage bins.

The couch was essentially unusable and sagging in the middle(as covered by the pillows). 

The windows were blocked off by the tv, a desk, a catch-all table and other odds and ends. The bookshelf to the left also took up valuable floor space. 

So with all these things in mind, I drew up a few quick sketches for a new desk, a shoe rack and some wall-mounted bookshelves. 

With the sketches and a list of materials in hand, we headed to Home Depot and stocked up. 

Patrik got to work drilling the holes for the shoe rack. We just used a couple 2x6 boards with 1/2" wooden dowels as the shelves. 

Once the shoe rack was put together, I sanded down all the dowels so they were flush with the boards, filled in any imperfections with wood putty and let dry. 

Meanwhile, Patrik started drilling the holes for the shelves on the desk - we made a row of holes on each section so that the shelf height can be adjusted as needed. Also, you probably want to prop up whatever you are drilling onto something else so that you don't accidentally drill holes into your floor. But if you do end up drilling through, rub a little olive oil(or any available oil) into the holes and no one will ever notice!

Here is the desk all put together. Afterwards we decided that the desk would look better with some feet on it, so we just picked some up at Lowes and screwed them onto the bottom. 

Their pans were taking up a lot of counter space so we screwed some hooks to the underside of the shelves in the kitchen to hang them from. 

Here is the shoe rack all painted. We had decided to paint one of the walls an accent color so the shoe rack corresponds with that. 

The desk got a coat of stain to finish it off and the bookshelves were stained as well.

Here is the accent wall!

The bookshelves all in place above their bed - looks like Patrik and Francine can now expand their library!

We moved the armoire over to the wall where the couch was and put the shoe rack conveniently by the door. 

The wall sconces were a faded brassy color so we gave them a facelift with a coat of sleek black paint and crisp new white shades.

The tv was mounted on the accent wall with the desk below. This allowed them to watch tv both from their new couch and from their bed. 

We also found some organizers at Ikea that we mounted on the wall behind the computer to collect little office odds and ends - pens, pencils, mail etc.

I wish I had gotten a better picture of this. But we picked up a nice fairly new couch from a craigslist ad and almost everything is gone from in front of their windows. The last thing to do is frame and hang some artwork above the couch! We did all of these projects in a total of four full days, just spread it out over the course of about a month and a half. The total cost, including the couch, came to just around $500 - not too shabby for a couch, desk, shoe rack, bookshelves, tv mounting bracket and a fresh coat of paint on the accent wall! The apartment is so much more efficient now and really feels spacious. 

--Heather

Branded Leather Luggage Tags

While working on all of the wedding projects, the one thing that took me the longest to decide on was a wedding gift. I knew I should probably make something for them, rather than buy a traditional gift, but my creative inspiration tank was running low and everything was coming up so quickly! About three days before the wedding, I finally got an idea and ran with it - branded leather luggage tags.

Supplies:

Leather scraps

Stencil cutting tool

Leather Glue

Scissors

Nail polish

Paint brush

Hammer

Nail

So once I decided WHAT I wanted to make them, I had to figure out HOW I could successfully accomplish it. I wandered around Michael's for a while before I saw the stencil cutter. It is essentially just a pointy piece of metal that gets hot - exactly what I needed! 

I picked out two pieces of leather that I thought would look good together to use as the front and back of the tags. It turned out that the lighter brown was a faux leather(though convincingly leather-like) which ended up being an issue later on. So make sure that you use real leather, or account for this later on.

Next I measured out rectangles 2.5"x4" and cut off the corners of one end. 

Here is the front and back together. 

Next, spread a thin layer of the leather glue on each piece. I used a business card to get the glue nice and thin.

Once glued together, let the tags dry under something heavy. Fortunately I am studying for the MTELs and have a few hefty books laying around that worked perfectly. It only took about 10 minutes to dry. 

While the tags were setting up, I started working on what exactly I was going to brand the tags with. I had thought that maybe my technique for the printed wooden signs might work, but sadly it didn't. What did work was just simply printing out the template and tracing over it with the stencil cutter.  

After you've traced your stencil, remove it and go over any lighter spots  a few times. 

Next I used a hammer and nail to poke a hole through the tags for a place where the hanging attachments to go. 

I just cut long thin pieces of leather to use as the attachment strings.

Now here is where you can see that the faux leather didn't work so well with the branding. I had traced their names onto the back side of the tags, but they just don't show up as well. Here I added little leather hearts to the corners. 

I initially tried using watered down paint to fill in the edges that the branding tool made, but it just looked sloppy. So in a last ditch attempt to save these, I whipped out some gold nail polish and painted over their names. Luckily the craft gods were smiling down on me and the nail polish did the trick.

All finished and ready to be wrapped up! This project from beginning to end probably only took a couple hours, and the total cost ran me around $35 and that includes a tool that I can use in the future as well. So if you're looking to make something customizable either for yourself or as a gift, I would definitely recommend this!

--Heather