Spoony jewelry

I have a big box of silver plated silverware from my grandmother. It's nice and all -- really, it's really nice, and I'm grateful to have it -- but I'd never actually USE it because honey, you can't just drop that stuff in the dishwasher. So what else could I do with it? Anything meaningful?

I heard once that "spoony" was an old slang term for "looking good." Or something like that. Anyway. A friend of mine recently graduated from seminary. I want her to look spoony.

From the top:

From the back:



I used a Dremel to cut off the bowls of the spoons and sand the ends smooth. I taped felt pads onto the business end of two pairs of pliers (otherwise it would chew up the metal) and just bent, bent, bent ... bent back ... bent ... bent back a little more ... ugh ... bent ... yay! Done!

I used a jump ring to hook the front sides together. It was a bit tricky to get it on myself with a lobster claw, so I switched to a magnet clasp. Works so much better.

Adult shirt to toddler dress

I have seen a couple tutorials online (mostly Craftster.org -- just search shirt toddler dress there and you'll find them) for these dresses, and it occurred to me that this would be a much better use for that shirt with the weird collar that I always loved but now never wear because it's got that one stain on the shirttail ...

Anyway. I cut off the sleeves:

And the collar ...

I hacked off the bottom to make it flat and hemmed everything. Then I sewed on a simple tube of fabric with elastic inside to make it gather a little. Normally I think that fabric is really cute, but once I got it sewn on, I see that it's actually hideous on the shirt. See, even the camera wouldn't cooperate and take a decent picture of it.

I quickly ripped that out and put on a tube made out of matching fabric from a discarded sleeve. I also turned the collar area and added some elastic.

This was a gift for a friend's daughter, but she wasn't around, so I paid my 3-year-old son a quarter to pose for me. I told him he could look as crabby as he wanted to.

Battlestar Galactica series finale party

I made Eye of Jupiter dip. Sour cream in a circle of guacamole (with blue food coloring ... didn't look too bad in person) in a circle of salsa in a circle of yellow chips. Mmmm-mmm. Fracking delicious.

And Cylon Raider rolls. They're crescent rolls filled with spaghetti sauce and mozzarella. The eye is a strip of pepperoni.

Bride and Groom

I made my friend Denisse jealous when I made my friend Tom the crocheted Jabba the Hutt and Sculpey Boushh/Princess Leia set. My friend Melanie gave me "Creepy & Cute Crochet" and I'd been looking forward to making something out of it. Aha!

Denisse's upcoming wedding didn't really call for creepy, though. Just cute. So I skipped the creepy skeleton ribcage embroidery and just stuck with cute toulle.

Robot Day!

The boys and I taped together cardboard boxes and cut out arm and face holes. I mentioned this to our buddy Melanie (the art teacher who lives down the block). She said, "Bring them over tomorrow!" The next day our next door neighbor asked if her son could come over for a while so she could run errands. Absolutely! Plenty of boxes to go around. So we threw together a box combination for him, too.

An hour or so of kid-led painting and construction-paper-ing later:

Even more T-shirt stencils!

Fun Christmas gifts for the boys' friends for only $2! Gotta love the sales at Michael's.

For Silas next door:

For Silas' sister Bird:

For cousin Hadley (a real-life Texan cowboy, according to the boys)

Doll dress

My sister very compassionately suggested a $5 limit on gifts for nieces and nephews this Christmas. It's really hard to find something that doesn't suck for $5.

Aha! My niece is two, and she has a doll she loves! Sweeeet! This stashbuster cost me nothing.


I didn't have a pattern -- or the doll. (It's in New York and I'm in Minneapolis.) My mom in South Dakota, though, has the same kind of doll at her house, so she sent me the measurements and I made a cardboard dressform. I sent the dress down for my mom to try on her doll, and it fit! Now if only my nephews played with dolls ...