Watch Out

 There should be a saying or a maxim or a true-ism or a proverb to the effect that when any two Hanna sisters get together for any length of time...watch out! No, seriously, Watch. Out.

After spending an evening and a day with Marcy earlier in the month, I figured that I had learned just enough skills to enable Suzanne, Keira and I to each make a necklace or two this weekend. Yeah. About that. Um...I've got pictures of around 26 necklaces (and one bracelet),  that we made over the past two days. (there are two or three more glass tiles that didn't make it into the pictures)

Impressive? Sure, but you've also got to factor in the dress that Keira made, the pile of mending Keira brought to put through my serger, the skirt (complete with zipper and waistband) that Suzanne made, and the curtains that I whipped up.  And two trips to craft stores.

Watch out.

The Betty Neels Collection. From L-R: Fate is Remarkable, Never Say Goodbye (aka From Poland with Love), Ring in a Teacup, The Girl with Green Eyes (aka Lucy Lockkit's Locket), Henrietta's Own Castle and Caroline's Waterloo.

$21 Challenge

As I am now a stay-at-home Mom again, we find that even though Kevin's new job absorbs my $800/mth income, it still doesn't leave a huge amount left over for savings. We do put a little away each month, but we would like to put away a bit more. Kevin has asked me to try to our food budget down to around $400/mth, which is a bit daunting for a family of 5. I am already pretty thrifty, but I haven't been able to get below $500 for the last couple of months.
So, I am taking on the challenge!
I spotted this challenge while perusing thrifty tips on Youtube (you can really get sucked in!). I do have a pretty well stocked pantry and have been dabbling with meal plans for a while... and I love a good challenge! So, I am going to start this on Thursday 4/11.
Anyone game to join in?

Spring Cleaning... Results Show

Spring Break is a big cleaning week in our home. As I tell my kids, "If you don't work hard in school you will get stuck doing a job you hate... like doing manual labor and cleaning up after others." For some reason they are always very excited to head back to school.
Our goal was to get rid of a bag-a-day of stuff and unpack a bunch of boxes too. We cleaned and painted, and organized 10 spaces in 7 days.

We purged 3 bags of stuff from our laundry / linen closet area.

After putting up 2 extra shelves, and reinforcing the existing one, we finally have a great storage / laundry area. Best thing: the 8" shelf just behind the washer and dryer.

The boys' room took a day and a half to sort through. I didn't take a before picture, but suffice it to say, it looked like an episode of hoarders. We purged 2 bags of stuff, a bunch of old books, and organized an entire bin of future clothes.

After many, many hours of cleaning and sorting, the boys are happy with the results. Best thing: Found a $10 bed frame with attached spring to maximize storage space underneath and head room above.

The garage! What can I say? We pretty much moved in and chucked everything that we didn't need right away into the garage. I didn't keep track of all of the stuff we threw out, but surprisingly, it wasn't a lot.

After one and a half days, this is the result. It could still use some more organization, but at least it is usable now. Best thing: Bike storage area Kevin put up.


Overall we got rid of 10+ bags of stuff, put up 11 shelves, painted 3 spaces, hung countless pictures, unpacked 7 boxes, and taught my rugrats a great lesson :D

Crafting with Marcy

I spent Thursday evening crafting with Marcy. I'm hopeless at making jewelry on my own - there's just too many tools and wires and pins and beads and and and...my eyes tend to just glaze over when I'm in the jewelry section of Michael's and I always end up walking away empty-handed. Not this time. I now have a little firmer grasp of how the stuff goes together and what I would need to make some types of necklaces (the easy types).

Marcy put this together while coaching me in remedial jewelry construction.

One necklace, three options.

This was pretty fun to make - and super simple. Love the alcohol ink used for the aging effect.

Same-ish technique here.  Again, simple.

                  Two more necklaces...has anyone noticed a common theme to all of these?                    Interchangeableness (my spell checker assures me that interchangeableness is not a word, but I disagree).