Friday, September 11, 2009

A Homemade Life

Well, finally I'm getting a Homemade Life post up! I hope to be able to start doing this weekly again . . . we'll see how it goes. :) Here are a couple things I've accomplished recently.

First: a newly-decorated cover for my homeschooling instructor's guide (aka IG). I wasn't terribly fond of the cheapo binder that came with my curriculum, so I put the IG in my own binder and put the cover that came with it on the front. Then one day Josiah spilled a glass of water all over the table (and all over my binder), which destroyed the cover. I also decided that binder was too small and moved everything over to a 1 1/2" binder instead. A friend of mine mentioned that they make covers for their kids' binders with pictures of themselves on the front, and I thought, what a fun idea! Well, we had just purchased iWork (a fun document, etc. program for Macs) and so I went to work with one of their poster templates. Within a very short time, this is what I came up with--it was super easy and so much fun to personalize it. It makes me smile to look at it, much more so than my old cover! Sorry for the photo quality; it didn't come out so great due to the flash, but you get the idea. :)
Second: I made some curtains for one of our bedroom closets. Eventually all our closets will have doors, but in the meantime I decided to pretty this one up with some fabric I had on hand. This fabric has been sitting folded up in my stash for several years, so even though I ironed it, it's going to take a while for all the wrinkles to fall out. :) Still, I was happy with the result . . . a couple of tension rods that cost me under $5 were all the investment I had to put into this, and when I'm done with the curtains, I will still have the fabric to put to good use in other projects. Please excuse the messy upper shelves; I haven't had energy to do much organizing this week, but I wanted to get a picture up anyway! :)
Do you have anything homemade to share? Please feel free to add a comment!

4 comments:

Arlene G said...

what good ideas!! I think all of us are trying to Make Do with what we have instead of running to the store to buy more things these days.

Mrs.T said...

I love the binder! What a terrific idea! It makes it so special that it's for homeschooling Sam and has his photo on it. The picture fits so well with the title, too.

Curtains look great as well, and isn't it nice to think you will be able to use that nifty fabric again sometime!

I have posted a placemat purse and a tote bag for my homemade life post.

Unknown said...

Great job on the binder! I bet Sam is loving seeing his smiling face on the front!

Excellent curtain rod ideas. Too bad I don't have any door-less closets. :(

I made some seat mats this week for our preschool co-op group. It was fun! I appliqued letters on them and made them double-sided. That was the extent of my sewing for the week!

Samara said...

Nice, Carrie, I need to make curtains for our dining room. We actually bought curtains, but they need to be shortened and a new rod hung for them.

This week I learned to knit (again), this time more thoroughly, and made nine (so far) bean bags to help out a friend who'd volunteered to make 40 of them for her kids' playschool.