I have sat at my computer screen the last two days, watching with HOPE for victims of the Moore tornado to be found. My family and I have texted money, and posted links, and prayed and prayed. And cried. I think of the young boy I saw last night on the news, happy to be alive with nothing but the clothes on his body. I can’t get that out of my mind.

While right now the needs are immediate, money for food and water for rescue  workers, places for people to stay, etc…I keep thinking about having everything you own be gone.

I want to help my friends and family in Oklahoma. I want to wrap them in a big quilt and comfort them.

I can sew. Some of you can sew.

I have started a Facebook group, Quilts for Oklahoma,  for people who want to sew a quilt for the people displaced by the Tornado.  If you or someone you know sews, send them a link. My sister’s church in Edmond will collect and distribute the quilts. So, if you are like me and need something tangible to do in addition to sending some money, please join us!

There are many places who will eventually collect clothing and household goods for the victims. I would like these to be new quilts, wrapped up in a clean plastic bag, with a note of encouragement for whoever gets the quilt. They can be lap quilts, kid quilts, or giant bed sized quilts. Please make them HAPPY QUILTS! Thank you!

If you would like to post a picture of your quilt, please do! I would like to pin the pictures on Pinterest as well. If you do not want your quilt pinned, please let me know!

*UPDATE*

A quilt shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma is doing a quilt drive. I think that having all the quilts go to a central location is perfect, so I am sharing the news here and in the Facebook group. Thank you to everyone who wants to help!!

This is from Ellen Medlock of the Ellen Medlock Studio Store in Tulsa, OK.

“I am honored to start a QUILT DRIVE for OKLAHOMA Tornado Families. If you wish to donate a quilt, please send to our shop- and we will make sure it is placed in the right hands!

Ship to:

OK Quilt Drive,
 c/o Ellen Medlock Studio Store, 
10032 S. Sheridan Rd, Suite H-1, 
Tulsa, OK 74133. 

(We will be happy to place any kind of blanket, for that matter!)”

Kym Thurman

It all started long, long ago. I stopped cleaning with the store bought stuff, and started cleaning with mostly vinegar and baking soda. When Baylee came along, I stopped using scented detergent, most perfumes and tried to coupon and recycle. Couponing lasted about six weeks. Recycling involved collecting just aluminum and glass and hauling it to the recycling center. That lasted a little longer. I also tried cloth diapering….for 8 long months. And then life intervened and I got disenchanted with trying so hard to figure out which was better for the environment….and we moved six times, and….

Fast forward twenty years.

We moved to a town that has separate recycling bins. We still have to haul it there, but it is easier, somehow, and so we sort into buckets at home and haul our recycling when we take our trash. Couponing became a way for me to save our family money, especially on personal items-deodorant, tooth paste, shampoo…and help me continue to stay at home. I still cleaned with baking soda and vinegar. And in my stumbling around trying to do the right thing for my family, the environment and save money in the process, I started seeing lots of ideas on Pinterest for making my own laundry detergent, lip gloss and lotions. So I pinned and thought and pinned some more.

To me, several things have to happen before I try a pin. I have to be “in the mood”. I won’t try something just because it would be good for me-if that were true, I would eat a lot more vegetables and a lot less ice cream. It also has to be relevant to me and my family. And I have to compare different pins and ideas and read other peoples comments about the pin. I love blogs, because in addition to the blogger’s experience, you get the reader’s experience in many cases.

My first experiment involved saving a LOT of money on laundry detergent. It took me a while to get started because I had stocked up on detergent for around $3 a bottle, it involved a trip to the hardware store and to a big box store that I was not particularly interested in making the trip across town for. So….once I had my extra large paint bucket and a list of things I needed at the big box store, I started my laundry experiment. I was skeptical that I could buy everything for $20 (not counting the bucket), but I could! I used this recipe from Pinterest, and I have been so pleased! The first thing I noticed was that the “stinky towel syndrome” we had been having, was gone! That alone sealed the deal for me, but I was also impressed that in my family of 8 kids, two adults and various long term college friends here with laundry, my bucket of detergent lasted around SEVEN MONTHS!!!! I did add the oxy clean, and use the oxy clean container to keep a smaller amount on top of the washer. We use 1 TBSP for each load in our front loader. So, in addition to saving money, I saved myself the time and aggravation of clipping those coupons, trying to work the deal at the Pharmacy, and I had cleaner clothes. I was now a lot more interested in seeing what else I could make.

I understand just exactly what may be going through your head right now….Why in the world are you not just buying in bulk, or Why not just spend a little more and get the “all natural” products from the health food store??? Why are you throwing in the towel on convenience?? Don’t you know how hard we women have worked to have all the new convenient stuff??? I was raised in the You Don’t Have to be JUST a MOM, You Can Be ANYTHING You Want To Be Seventies. In elementary school we were encouraged to define what we wanted to be that wasn’t a mom. In Junior High, it was the beginning of the 80′s and we were encouraged to explore, discover, reach for the stars….and by High School, well, being a mom was the furthest thing from my mind, and “Just a mom” was just not an option!

Funny, though, after all the brainwashing and encouraging, That is exactly what I am. JUST A MOM. And, I love it. I love chillin with my kids, helping them grow, hearing about their day, loving them and their dad….NO ONE in school ever told me that I COULD just be a mom. So, when we are looking at all the ways we have “come so far ahead”, sometimes we forget that we lose something in the process. And just like being Just a Mom, some of those simple things are exactly the right things for us.

Well, I haven’t even gotten to tell you about the dirt toothpaste…

That is a blog post for another day.

David and I have been married for 25 years this month. Last year we went for a fabulous weekend in Asheville. We stayed at the Hilton down by the new movie theater. It was amazing.

And then we came home.

To our wonderful kids. And our 1984 foil pink butterfly wallpaper and pink blinds.

sigh

My room made me want to throw rocks at it. I love my house. I love my kids.I really LOVE my husband.

But my room….not so much!

So, this year, I asked David if we could turn our room into the amazing getaway and spend our weekend away at our house!…. With the help of my kids, we set out to redo my room in the weeks leading up to our anniversary. We scraped wall paper. Jay scraped popcorn off the ceiling. We patched holes and smoothed the ceilings rough spots. Finally we were ready to paint. Jay first painted the ceiling while I trimmed the edges. That night when I went to bed, it was so nice. Just having the ceiling done was a vast improvement! My goals for this room were to keep my black and white bedding and to use my same furniture. I also wanted to create a warm, cozy environment that we could relax in, while fitting in with the mountain cabin house we live in. So, after looking at a million colors, asking my friends on Facebook and looking at lots of bedrooms on Pinterest, I chose a warm rich green.

Jay rolled the walls while I trimmed. We got one coat on and decided to wait until the next day for the following coat. Boy was it hard to wait!! I love the color. It is not something I would have just picked out of all the paints, but I am learning that sometimes the room dictates the color. My kitchen is a good example of that. It is painted a warm marble color I would not have chosen, except when I looked at the paint samples with all the other elements of the room, that is the color that the room needed. Same here. I LOVE sea glass and turquoise colors. I especially love them with black and white. But when I looked at them with my room, they were not the right color. Also, one blog I read recently said that to blend your house, colors from one room should reoccur throughout your home. This green shows up in paintings, in the rug downstairs, in my Italian horse cart stick hanging on the wall….I had never really thought about how having colors show up all over the house brings that cohesive look to a home, but it really does. So, I am going to be a little more deliberate with that from now on.

As I was pulling the room together, one thing that bothered me before we redid the room was the clutter David and I had all over our tables beside the bed. We both read, and so books and things we want to look at pile up. Again, on Pinterest, and in the stores, I saw a lot of little chests next to the bed instead of just a table. As I was brainstorming, I remembered that we had several pieces of furniture in other places in the house that would work if they fit. This saved me some money, just by looking at what we had! And in moving them, it really freed up the space where they had been.

Okay, so I know you are looking at the groovy pink blinds and wondering…I had to leave them up till I could find what we wanted. This is the hard part of pulling a room together on a budget. Waiting until you can get what you want. In my looking for nightstands and headboards and curtains…I went to my favorite stores, Goodwill, Salvation Army, The Second Blessing, and Habitat’s RESTORE. While I was looking, I saw these big comfy chairs. I don’t know about you, but one of the things I love in a great hotel room, is a nice chair. I don’t always use the chair, but I like the way they look! In our room before, we had only one rocking chair, and it was usually piled up with stuff. Not very conducive to relaxing or sitting to watch a movie. (I am blogging from one of these chairs now and I can honestly say, I am so glad we got them!) I was not sure about the size or the color (I know I can slip cover them later…) but when I told David about them, he said, GET THEM!! So I called the store and they put them on hold for me! YAY! I don’t know where they came from, to me they remind me of a hotel lobby, but there are many wonderful homes around here that are vacation homes, so they may have come from one of those. I found them at the Habitat store.

Back to the anniversary weekend. We had a blast!! The older kids volunteered to keep the younger ones and give us two days together! We went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, The Chefs Table. We came home to our wonderful bedroom! David had stocked the tv cabinet (a dresser I moved from somewhere else in the house) with small bottles of alcohol just for fun…The next day we ate breakfast in Maggie Valley at the Holiday Diner. We had farm fresh eggs and everything was great! Then we drove into Asheville for a day of looking around and shopping and just being together. We loved the time we had just to talk, walk around, go to some of our favorite stores. We tried a new restaurant in Asheville that had big burritos. I can’t remember the name, but it served humanely raised chicken! It was great!!

We found curtain rods at Tuesday Morning and bought some curtains that we ended up taking back. After looking online and in lots of stores, I ended up getting them at Wal-Mart. I love the look. They are a sea-glass blue green that ties in our bathroom to the bed room and I love the way they look with the green walls. It took awhile, but the pink blinds are now gone for good!

For our bathroom, I moved in one of the benches that goes with our dining room. I bought a great “spa bathroom” curtain at Lowes for the shower. At Belks, I found lovely towels in the color I wanted, and I got really nice bath rugs at Wal-Mart that match and are so nice feeling on my feet! We still need to paint the bathroom, but I haven’t decided on a color yet…one thing at a time!

What I learned from doing this is that sometimes the best get-away is the one in your own home. That taking the time to make my everyday environment beautiful is not just a luxury. Having our room nice has lowered my every day stress in ways I did not expect. I used to avoid coming upstairs, because my bedroom was just yuckky. Now, when I need a minute (or an hour) to myself, my room is a great place of retreat. I also learned that rooms can dictate color, and to be flexible in my ideas of what I think something should look like. I learned that small adjustments, such as repositioning the bed and borrowing furniture from other places can pay off in major ways. I learned that speed thrift shopping can yield unexpected treasures, to keep my eye out for things that I can use other places while I am looking for something specific. I was looking for an old door for a headboard, and found two comfy chairs instead. (So, I still don’t have a headboard, but that will come, and the chairs make the room so much nicer!) I also learned that even though I am not one to shop and shop and I am not a fan of Wal-Mart, that nice thing can be found there, if you look.

So, I will leave you with a few pictures of the bathroom…and if you have color suggestions for paint, I would love to hear them!

What projects are you working on? I would love to see them!

]]> http://www.stringbean17.com/25-years-500-and-2-rooms/feed/ 4 http://www.stringbean17.com/25-years-500-and-2-rooms/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/stringbean17/lcgw/~3/Cs3avN07ETU/ http://www.stringbean17.com/mini-corndogs/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:05:30 +0000 Kym http://www.stringbean17.com/?p=655

I love the Pinterest idea of making mini corn dogs. I love corn dogs, but since I am allergic to soy, I try to avoid buying them. The first time I made them, they were great! My kids loved them and wanted me to make them all the time. However, getting my mini pans oiled enough to make them come out was kind of a problem!
Then, the other day, my daughter had a genius idea! She said, “Why don’t you trysting them in that new cake ball machine?”
I was skeptical. But I heated it up anyway….WOW!
These were so much easier!! We got so excited, we added some cheese and jalapeños to the batter and made some spicy mini corn dog balls.
Now they are asking for some mini jalapeño poppers, made in the Bella cake ball machine of course!
Well, good for me, these are sooo easy!

So, I was on the hunt for a couple of really personal graduation gifts for two special girls graduation from college.

I saw these Instagram gifts on Pinterest, and since I have worked with photos on fabric before and I am a cheapskate, I thought, I could make that! I would say that this is a moderately involved process if you have not used a slideshow program. If you have a sewing machine and can sew a straight(ish) line, this should be a fine project. I spent several hours doing the picture/computer part and another hour or two sewing two pillows….

Materials Needed:

• 1 pillow insert
• fabric printer paper-this can be found at a fabric/craft store and comes in different size packages. I have used several brands and they all seem to work very nicely, just takes some adjustments with each brand.
• printer
• computer
• scissors, thread, zipper (about 14-18 inch) if putting one in the pillow
• sewing machine (a basic one works fine!)
• fabric for back if you only do pictures on one side. If you are purchasing fabric buy a little more than 1/2 yard, if fabric is more than 36 inches wide, you should be able to get two backs from this!

The first thing I did was ask my niece, “pocketbook, bag, small throw or pillow?” And pillow was the answer! So I went to the craft store and bought a pillow insert. I got 18 x 18, because I thought this would allow me to use lots of pictures and look nice on either a bed or couch.
Then I stalked the girls Instagram albums on Facebook and downloaded about 40 pictures I liked. I tried to get a variety of serious, funny, lights and darks…I went to my nieces page and found her pictures, she has an instagram album. As I went through the album, there is an option button. When you click on it, one of the options is download. I just downloaded the ones I liked.
Once I had the pictures, I opened up my slideshow program on my computer and made slides of the pictures I wanted to use. I use open office that I downloaded for free. It worked great! If you are not sure how to use the slide program, ask any kid over 12….all of my kids learned at school how to do slide presentations! I ended up making six slides with six pictures on each one. I made each picture 3.1 inch square and since my printer cannot print all the pictures at once on the fabric, I chose to put four pictures together for the four center squares, then did sets of two to go around the edges.

I then chose four for the corners and left white space for seam allowance. Sounds tricky, but I wanted to get the most out of my photo paper, and have a pleasing visual. At first I was just going to print 6 sheets of six pictures and sew them together. That would work perfectly fine. If you are a beginner at sewing, I would recommend that option. One of my daughters wanted me to make it more complicated. I feel like it is nice to have more seams, but they do not show very much and an easier arrangement would be perfect, too!
The fun part to me is printing on the fabric! I love watching something flat become textured and alive. Depending on your photo paper, follow printing instructions and print one page at a time so that you can see how it turns out and make sure your pictures are like you want! One kind of photo fabric I use messes up if I leave the backing paper on, one does not. (Trial and error!!)
Now, after rinsing, drying and setting the fabric, I cut the pictures apart and arrange. Play around with your arrangement both on the computer and after you have the  fabric printed…you may like something different than you first envisioned.

After getting the arrangement like I want, I sew each row together, press seams (very important, don’t skip this, it just makes everything better), and then see each row together.

Make sure you don’t sew some pictures upside down (believe me, it happens) and press your whole pillow top one more time. As you can see here, the seams do not show up much.
Now, decide whether you want to have a “flap” back or a zipper. I am going with zippers. You could also just sew back on and stuff the pillow. I want the girls to be able to take it off and wash it!

For a great tutorial on putting in a zipper, check out this one from Design Sponge! If you want to add a flap style back, this gives the basics on E-How. the third way you can do this is to just leave an opening and then, after your insert is in, whip stitch the bottom closed. You will have to cut open your stitches if you need to take the cover off if you do it this way. (I have done it this way many times!)
Clip corners, then turn right side out. Really smooth out seams and press before inserting your pillow form.

As you can see, I am not the neatest at trimming everything really straight. It does help with piecing things together, though!

Now, grab a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy your awesomeness. That is, until someone else sees your pillow and you are asked to make another one. Here is the finished pillow one more time!

Saturday we loaded everyone up to go see the elk in the National Park. We had a van full and as we got up in the mountains to the narrow, dirt road, one of the kids said, ” they should have a sign that says ‘he who enters here abandon all hope’.” Ha! I guess they were a little nervous! The road is disconcerting, but completely okay! We went all the way up to the top of their taints and then down, down, down into the valley to see the elk. In the thirteen years since the elk have been reintroduced to the park, the rangers have kept tabs on their growth. Volunteers come and share their love of the elk so that visitors learn more about them. The park volunteer brought out this set of antlers for us to touch and play with….he said that almost everyone who sees the antlers has to take pictures…we were no exception!
If you are in the mountains of Western North Carolina, it is worth the drive to see the mountains, the valley and the beautiful elk!

I have this box.

It holds parts of my past. Parts of my present. Parts of my future.

And I don’t take it out very often, but it is always a part of me.

It influences the decisions I make.

It determines some of the choices I hold most dear…..

It has been a special time for our family this fall! We have been blessed with having our two oldest kids home this fall. Baylee has been student teaching, and Jay is going to school at the local community college. We also have a friend living with us while she attends the community college… So our house has been full of laughter, love and chaos! As the leaves begin to fall off the tree, I realize how fleeting this time in our lives will be! We are embracing the chaos and having a blast as the leaves come down.

On our way to church the other day, we came across our neighborhood black bear. He was hanging out at our neighbor’s bird feeder. Fortunately, he was in the Bear Crossing!

Each day is a new day to experience the wonder that comes with having a little one.
Yesterday Tyler watched over and over a video of himself. Each time he watched, his face had a look of pure joy and delight. He would yell along with the video, “Dad!!” and then laugh.
We just sat around, stolen moments of time, and enjoyed him learning…and it reminded me that each day we too have the opportunity to learn and grow and find the joy and magic in simple things.
So, I am going to try and be more child-like in my delight and wonder at all the new things I encounter!