XX DIY: Post Surgery Craftiness

Well, to tell you the truth, I thought I'd be back at the power tools by now. Unfortunately not the case. I was told at my post surgery appointment that I have to wait a bit longer to play with the big toys. However, this presented a good opportunity to embrace some of the other DIY stuff that I have been ignoring in favour of trying to work towards a nice looking and fully functional house (how dare I!). So, with lots of inspiration from fellow bloggers and a burning need to do something creative, here is what I've been up to...

Firstly, I have to say that I put that cross stitch away the first opportunity I had. I finished the letter "C" and I don't feel (too) guilty. After discovering this blog by Lucy at Attic24, I decided that it was high time I learned how to crochet. Her stuff is amazingly beautiful and her blog makes me miss those lovely years I lived in England. Day one of learning to crochet I made this;

It's a wash cloth, or at least that's what I told my daughter when I gave it to her. She was happy, I was happy I'd actually created something. It was all good. Then I made this dog sweater. It took about 2-3 days including all the times I ripped it apart and started over.

I apologize for the really bad photos. My goal at the moment is to get stuff up here and not to make beautiful pictures. Maybe one day I'll get stuff up AND have it look nice (what's all that training good for otherwise?). Anyway, I completed the dog sweater, complete with pattern alterations and additions, which I was quite proud of. Now I'm working on a blanket to lie across the bottom of my bed. I'm a quilt lover and I managed to find a crochet pattern for a blanket using the "Grandma's Flower Garden" theme. I bought it off eBay and though I'm still not sure I'm doing it correctly, even after about 15 little flowers, I'm having fun trying. I'll save photos of that project for another day because Lucy's photos of her work at Attic24 (the site I mentioned earlier) are always so lovely that I want to do the crochet justice.

I also made some wiggly watermelon with my daughter. I got the idea from the Gourmet Mom On-The-Go blog and you can read about and see pictures and get links for the recipe at my daughter's blog since she's already posted it all.

After all that, I kept reading and seeing posts all over blogland about people making custom menu boards and calendars to hang on their walls or fridges. This was something that had been on my To-Do list for a very long time and was so far overdue that I'd almost caved and bought a cheap white board solution at the dollar store. I"m glad I didn't. Someone, I can't remember who unfortunately, did a post about making a calendar and putting it in a regular old frame and then you could write on the glass with white board markers. *BING* a light went off over my head and I was off and running with that idea. I used to be a traditional scrapbooker, I was a rep for a big direct sell scrapbook company for a very short and expensive stint too. A while back I'd looked into starting digital scrapbooking but without the Photoshop knowledge, I was lost. Now, since I use Ps all the time for photography it was the perfect opportunity to try and put it all together in one project. This is what I ended up with...

The darker blue one at the top is our weekly menu board, the yellow one is my daughter's chore chart, the lighter blue one is my daughter's weekly calendar and the one that isn't finished yet is my To-Do list. They turned out amazing and I'm so happy with them all. I just haven't decided what I'm going to do for mine. It took me all day to complete just one of these items. That's with searching the internet for free scrapbook elements and arranging and all that fun stuff. I got them printed at COSTCO and that was less than five dollars per chart. Each one is shrunk to fit on a 12x18 print size and then trimmed to fit in the 11.75x15.75 frame. Here are the three finished designs.

I'll have to add info and links to all the sites who kindly give away every single element I used in these projects. I think they turned out amazingly well. Here's the menu board...

And the Weekly Calendar ( I was in a rush and didn't add the proper accents on the French words)...

And lastly, the infamous chore chart. This was the best thing I could have ever made. My daughter has to check off each item as she completes them throughout the day. There's blank spaces at the bottom to add in extra chores on a particular day (like helping to take out the garbage on garbage day). If she gets everything checked off for the day she gets to put a check in the circle with the letter corresponding to that day of the week, located at the bottom of the page. If she doesn't get them done, no check. At the end of the week we count up how many checks she has on the M-F circles and she gets a dollar for each check. Since we only have the chart M-F, the maximum is $5. If she's gone above an beyond the call of duty I write a little note in the margin and she gets another dollar - like when she completely weeded, deadheaded and trimmed back the front garden for fall last week. I'd love to redesign these for all the various seasons but that will have to wait for another day, I'm just happy to have gotten this far).