Christmas Tree Skirt

I know, I know, it's not Christmas season! My mom told me in January 2010 that she was going to make me and my sisters quilted Christmas tree skirts for that next Christmas. Well, Dec 1 arrives and she hasn't started :)

I offer to help, because I know she feels overwhelmed, and because I love to sew. I've never really done any quilting so I was eager to learn new techniques.

I picked out fabric I loved and we cut them into 2" strips. My mom got the pattern from a friend, and then we altered it to make it bigger (my Christmas tree is 12' tall!).

I didn't take any pictures during the construction of the project, but I think it turned out beautifully. I sewed most of the diamonds. My mom sewed them together, and my Grandma did the binding. We have 3 generations of blood, sweat and tears in this!

The original pattern for this skirt was for 5 diamonds, so the entire skirt was a 5 point star. I wanted a larger skirt, so I added a sixth diamond, but still wasn't happy so my husband and I figured that we should add sideways diamonds around the outside of the star. I didn't have enough fabric to do identical diamonds so I did some repeat fabrics and others that match. I am thrilled with how it turned out.

I love the depth that the different textures of fabric give this skirt.

Trimmed with twisted fringe.

This is the back of the skirt.

I still have scraps leftover so I am hoping to make stockings for the family throughout the year.

Lanterns

I found some awesome and amazingly cheap lanterns on Amazon the other night. I was shopping for my husband's birthday gift and came across these.

I want to hang the hanging one above our bathtub, and I'm not sure where the others will go, but I'll find a place :)


Ready for the prices?
The hanging lantern was $4.69
The blue lantern was $2.92
The amber lantern was $1.08

Fantastic deals on beautiful pieces!

Back from Florida

We are back from spending 5 wonderful days in the Florida sunshine. It was wonderful! We spent Thursday at the Magic Kingdom and had almost no lines. The kids loved it. I was surprised that my 6 year old loved Space Mountain.

On to the money savings :)

First of all, vacationing in Disney World is expensive! Luckily our hotel and flights were paid for by the company. With our group rate at the Disney Contemporary Hotel we were able to get slightly discounted tickets to Disney World. I didn't attempt to go through tours or any of the other advertised tickets on Craigslist since we didn't have time to waste and we didn't have a rental car to get places. We were at the mercy of the monorail and buses. So, we ended up saving about $35 on our 2 day tickets (over four days).
I stocked up before we left at Costco and bought rice crispy treats, fruit snacks, granola bars, and beef jerky. These came in handy on the plane too since Southwest Airlines doesn't serve meals on board. We were able to limit our buying meals only and no snacks. Ok, well we did buy the Mickey Mouse ice cream bars a couple times. There was a nice cafe in our hotel that was about $5 for the kids meals and $8-$12 for adults. They had an excellent steak salad there with fresh goat cheese I had a couple times. They also have a restaurant there called Wave which was healthy and very reasonably priced. We ate there for our one "nicer" meal.

Finding Great Recipes

I get a lot of compliments on my cooking. I always tell people that it's the recipes that are great. When you look through cookbooks you will see lots of recipes that look good, but how do you know whether it'll turn out well? I find that the ratings are the best way to know.

Grilled Chicken and Roasted Red Peppers with Fontina Sandwich

A while back I had a healthy catering company, most of my recipes came from the Internet. Cooking Light is one of my favorite resources. They use the database of myrecipes.com. For example when I was looking for awesome sandwiches for my business I searched for sandwiches at Cooking Light and then sort it by the rating.

When you see a recipe you want to try, go into the ratings and read what people have written. Many times people will suggest some variations that you may want to try.

Here are some of my favorites - all from Cooking Light.

Chicken Pesto Salad Sandwich

Grilled Chicken and Roasted Red Pepper Sandwiches with Fontina Cheese
Proscuitto, Pear, and Bleu Cheese Sandwich

Bedskirt Dilema: Solved

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I recently got a steal on a bedroom set from Macy's. I picked up the California King Chantilly set from Martha Stewart for $139.00.

I really like it. Well, for the price, I really like it. The sheets are a little thin as is the Euro Shams (I can see my pillow print through it), but I plan on resolving that by lining it with white fabric.

So here is the dilema. We have a Cal King bed and I cannot lift it by myself, but I am eager to get the new bedding on. I decided I would make it a velcro skirt. I cut the skirt about 6 inches into the cheapo white fabric. Once I was finished I just started tucking it between my mattresses even though I didn't have the velcro yet.

Surprisingly, it has stayed this way for a month now with no slipping. I don't know why they don't make all bedskirts like this! Why oh why do we have to lift up the entire mattress to put the skirt on when the skirt usually gets messed up anyways when you put the mattress back on top! If not that, then when you step on it wrong it gets pulled out or a seam comes undone, or it just looks bad. This way I can fix whatever goes wrong with it. This was a great "light bulb" moment for me - although it's probably a no-brainer for you :)

I still have a lot of changes I'm doing to my bedroom now so I will reveal how it looks later!

Disneyworld - Pauper Style

We are taking a trip to Disneyworld this next week. We were fortunate enough to get some free airline tickets and hotel for the family through my husbands work. So, we just have to pay for food and Disneyworld. That still adds up. We are guessing about $1000 for the 2 days of Disney for 4 people, plus food.

I've been asking around about how to get Disneyworld tickets cheap. Unfortunately, there is no cheap way to get them. I know that you can take tours and get discounted tickets, but we don't have any extra time on this trip to do that.

A friend suggested looking on Craigslist to see if anyone is selling their unused days from their Park Hopper passes. I haven't had any luck yet, plus I'm a little nervous of getting ripped off.

Worst case, we'll just have to *ugh* pay full price. Not the end of the world since our airfare and hotel are covered.

I'll let you know what we end up doing.

For food, I am taking snacks with us. Ok, I know that may sound hokey to fly with snacks. However, we're staying at a disney resort so we won't be close to any grocery stores, and I don't want to buy all snacks and meals at disneyworld (it'd cost us a fortune!).

Today I bought Rice Krispie Treats, Beef Jerkey, Soy Nuts (like a trail mix), Fruit Snacks, and Granola bars. So, none of this food is chocolate and won't melt or make a mess on my kids. Secondly, none of this will get crushed if our bags are handled roughly by baggage claim. Thirdly, the beef jerky and soy nuts are acceptable for my diet :).

I'm also planning to bring some apples, but I realize they may bruise.

We will see what happens. If anyone (I know no one reads this yet :)) has any suggestions on how to make this trip better, let me know!!

Buying presents for kids birthdays

We have several kids in our life that we like to buy birthday presents for, but I try to limit how much I spend.

Kids are easy to shop for. Often I find myself stressing about them, but they always work out better than I think they will.

Tip 1: If you find a great deal on something stock up. For example, Costco had a hotwheels custom motors set that started out at $39.99. They kept dropping the price until it finally reached $9.97. (Hint: Anytime you see a price ending in .97 at costco it is a clearance deal). When it hit this I bought 3 of them for birthday parties of little boys.

I don't spend more than $10 on birthday presents even for nephews and nieces. Just a rule I go by.

Tip 2: The dollar store can have some fun things. One year my sister gave one of my boys 2 "laser guns" from the dollar store. They have so far lasted 2 years, and the lights still light up, and they are still played with every week. You don't have to spend a lot for it to be enjoyed.

Tip 3: If you are handy with sewing or drawing or any other art form you can make something for the child. I have made several dresses, tutus, etc for birthday presents. These can be more meaningful and can be very cost effective.