ideas – Long Island Chick

Don’t Let Sandy Play the Grinch – Craft New Christmas Ornaments!

Kathleen — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:39:48 +0000

The devastation wreaked by ~~Hurricane~~ Superstorm (or whatever they are calling it) Sandy is sobering. But, not only did people lose their furniture, boilers, sheet rock, cars etc., they lost their memories – family photos, keepsakes and Christmas decorations. While some things just can’t be salvaged or replaced, you can create new heirlooms. Now we all have our favorite standbys like the tricolor bead candy canes (don’t have any? come on, you know you do!), I wanted something different so I searched my favorite site, Pinterest, for some inspiration and came up with a bunch of beautiful ornaments you can easily make (and they don’t look like something that came out of a Kindergarten classroom either). Here are a few of my favorites:

These felt stars are easy and adorable to craft (from Purlbee) and are the epitome of the primitive look. You could easily make them into a string garland or incorporate them into a primitive theme (along with salt-dough ornaments below) with some burlap garland!

I absolutely adore these wood ornaments with scrapbook paper modged podged on (from Brown Paper Packages) – another easy project:

These swirl nail polish ornaments (from Beautylish) are gorgeous:

My kids have made salt dough ornaments before and with the stamping here, they make a nice personalized ornament (from Design Editor):

It would be a great idea to host an ornament crafting party to make these for friends and neighbors who lost their Christmas Ornaments. These are all fairly easy to make and you could definitely crank a bunch out over some hot cocoa (maybe with some schnapps). I hope you are as inspired as I am!

Happy crafting!

Ready For Some Spring Cleaning?

Kathleen — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:20:56 +0000

So the clocks “sprung” ahead this past weekend and so our thoughts turn to those of Spring…Cleaning! Does that get you excited? Yeah I know, not so much. But, it is a good time to declutter and deep clean. Think of all the germs that have been gathering in our homes and incubating during the winter months. Time for some fresh air and a clean home.

One of the biggest things I am battling, besides the clutter monster, is soap scum. This crap is just impossible to get off!!! Even elbow grease doesn’t do the trick! I hate seeing that gross film on the shower tub and enclosure. Hell, I can’t even see well through the glass at this point. Yeah, I know that is pretty gross. Well, I’ve been trying different products with no luck. Some of them stink so bad, I nearly passed out before I escaped the bathroom and, of course, the soap scum remained. So I was perusing Pinterest the other day and of course, a fellow soap scum hater came to the rescue That is how I found Jen at Life, Crafts & Whatever with her magical soap scum killa recipe.

Pretty easy too: White Vinegar (magical stuff really) and Blue Dawn Dishwasher Detergent…heated up. Spray it on that disgusting soap scum and it magically disappears. Seriously. That is it. I am going to try it and post my results. I don’t know if I am brave enough to take “before” pictures though. Take a look at Jen’s “before” pictures – mine would be not much different.

Let me know if you tried her recipe and your results. Do you have your own recipe or trick to getting rid of this stubborn problem?

My Favorite Pinterest Pins for the Week of March 10th

Kathleen — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 16:41:12 +0000

I am an admitted Pinterest fanatic and I wanted to share with you my favorite pins from the past week:

Sweet Italian Sausage With Penne Pasta

I do so love pasta and this just looks absolutely delicious! I have found so many wonderful recipes through Pinterest – can’t wait to try them all!

Childhood Memories

I love these posts of things we did that we not might have remembered. The game of not allowing a balloon to reach the floor brings back so much memories. My kids played this too!

DIY Chip Clips

To me, buying chip clips is such a colossal waste of money – the damn things always seem to break or just mysteriously disappear! Now, instead of throwing out those crappy hangers you get from Target, upcycle them!

The Ultimate Vanilla Cupcake

Ok, it has a golden crown and is up on a beautiful pedestal – it must be the ultimate vanilla cupcake! This blogger went through a lot of trouble to try different recipes and even involved readers in taste tests. I am definitely going to have to bake this one!

Monsters!

I love the look of these monsters – will have to blow the dust off my sewing machine!!!

So there you have it, a small sample of what I discovered this week on Pinterest – stay tuned for next week’s segment!

Pinterest Weekly Roundup – Fav Pins June 17th

Kathleen — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:01:18 +0000

For more pinterest brilliance, follow me on Pinterest! Need an invite? Comment below and ask!

Pinterest – My New Fav Site!

Kathleen — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:27:40 +0000

I know I am not the only internet fiend culling all of the goodies all over the web. My biggest issue (other than the only tan I get is from the LED glow of my monitor) is where to store my stash of ideas, recipes, crafts, party ideas and every other thing I think is worth saving on the web. If I were 60, I would be killing trees left and right by printing this crap out. But, no, I’m rather PC and I try to do everything digitally. I am a OneNote junkie and usually store all of my stuff there. But, that requires highlighting, copying, pasting – wasting precious time and I could miss the next, greatest THING dammit! But, then Pinterest came into my love and I am in NERDY LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve been on there for a little over a week (lost track of time while I was in YEARBOOK HELL) and I have 30 boards and 365 pins. I shit you not – I collect a lot of stuff! But only the good stuff, ya know – like lemon vodka slushie recipes (now that’s a party!). Now I was nice enough to link to the recipe and have it open in a different window so you don’t have to even leave my site – hows that for convenience!!! Who loves you huh?

So you can create all sorts of “boards” to store your pins. Pinterest gives you a few boards with some boring titles but you can come up with your own. I like the slightly vulgar “Party In My Mouth” for tasty tidbits and of course stole it from someone else. But, you get the drift. I also installed a little bookmarklet so that whenever I come across something I need to keep, just click the little button and I can pin my new found thing to one of my boards. Also, you can “repin” other people’s pins so you don’t even have to go trolling for your own goodies, you can scroll through other people’s stuff and pin it to your boards. Voila! Instant boards with cool stuff! Here is a screenshot of some of my boards:

Now, I guess Pinterest wants to feel all exclusive so you need an invite to start pinning. But, you know me. So comment and ask me nicely and I will send you an invite. So come follow me on Pinterest (very easy like Twitter @kasesq94 and check out my goodies….and I want to get a hold of your goodies too – get your mind out of the gutter people!!!!