Prep at the Beach

Thursday, June 21, 2012

S'mores Puppy Chow!

My brother had to go on a road trip today with his lacrosse team for a tournament in New Jersey, so I wanted to make him and his teammates something fun and yummy to eat while on the road. I decided to make puppy chow, but add a few extra ingredients.

You will need:

1/2 box of Chex cereal

2 cups of powdered sugar

1 package of semi sweet chocolate chips

2 cups of marshmallows

2 tablespoons of peanut butter

1 tablespoon of hot fudge

Step 1: Pour the chocolate chips into a microwaveable bowl and heat them for 30 seconds.

Step 2: Add the peanut butter to the chocolate chips and then heat for another 30 seconds. This should completely melt the chocolate and peanut butter.

Step 3: Put the hot fudge in the microwave for 15 seconds then stir a tablespoon of it into the chocolate peanut butter mixture.

Step 4: Transfer the chocolate mixture into a larger bowl.

Step 5: Add the cereal to the chocolate and mix it up.

Step 5 or 6: Add marshmallows to the mixture and stir them in.

Step 6 or 5: Pour half of the powdered sugar onto the cereal mixture and stir it up.

Step 7: Transfer to puppy chow into a large plastic bag.

Step 8: Pour the rest of the powder sugar into the bag.

Step 9: SHAKE IT LIKE A POLAROID PICTURE!

Step 10: Eat!

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Pinterest Obsessions: Seersucker

This week I have been obsessed with seersucker, but as I look around at my belongings, I have very few things in this marvelous fabric. I think that calls for some shopping. Here's what I've found:

I am getting this ASAP! I had a wristlet like this from Vera Bradley that I loved, but since I'm a girl I got tired of it and I'm ready for a change.

I am almost positive I could make a koozie like this. I guess I'll have to try!

These two sort of tie into my last obsession blog about clutches!

I seriously need everything here!!!

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

My Craft Area Organization

I am only 18, so I still live with my parents which means I can't take over a spare room in the house just for my craft supplies. As a result, my bedroom is also my craft room. I'm warning you; it's nothing fancy! Let's get started...

This is my desk. On the top, I have my embroidery machine and my sewing machine forming an "L" shape with a task lamp in the middle. I also have my rotary cutting mat with my computer placed on top of it. Behind the computer, I have a phone, pencil holder, cup of water, a mini stapler, and a box of tissues.

In the desk draw there is just a lot of random things. In the top right corner, I have my computer charger. Below that, I have some playing cards and sticky notes. To the left of those, I have a lighter and a wireless mouse. On the left side of the drawer, I have some stationary. My calendar is that pink notebook thing with my favorite pens on top of it.

Underneath the desk is pretty boring. I have a wicker basket to the left with some scrapbooks in it; some are empty, some are full, some are forgotten. I have my wastebasket in front of that, and to the right I have a filing box with a bunch of college stuff in it.

Now this is where all the fun stuff is. Please ignore my mess of a closet and focus on the 4 draw Sterilite cart that stores all of my crafting items.

The first and second draw are very shallow, so I was limited in what I could put in it. I decided that the top draw was perfect for scrapbook paper, card stock, and colored notebook paper.

The second shallow draw is home to my sticker binder, my paper cutter, my crazy scissors, my letter stamps, and my colorful pens, pencils, and markers box.

I organize my stickers in a pink three ring binder with page protectors. I put each sheet of stickers into a page protector. It works wonders when looking for something specific.

The third draw is much deeper; it holds a mish mash of random crafting things on the left and clothes to be used for crafts, to be monogrammed, or to be tailored are on the right. The left side has things such as tape, hot glue gun and sticks, ink pads, buttons, paints, rulers, and even jingle bells.

The bottom draw is devoted to all things sewing. I have all of my threads in pencil boxes, my bobbins in a bobbin case, some random trim, owners manuals, sewing notions, stabilizer, and my USB cord for my embroidery machine.

I keep my fabric and my patterns in a storage crate on top of my draw cart. I used filing folders to neatly store the fabric in a way that is easily seen. I just put my few patterns in another file folder within the storage crate.

This is how I organize my fabric:

I take 1 file folder and...

cut it in half.

Then I wrap the fabric around half of the file folder and stick it neatly back into the storage crate.

Next to the storage crate I have a small dollar store basket that I use to keep my ribbon, elastic, velcro, and zippers in.

I wrapped all of my ribbon around pieces of cardboard. The thicker, larger spools of ribbon were wrapped around larger pieces of cardboard, and the smaller, thinner spools were wrapped around very small pieces of ribbon.

I stuffed my velcro and elastic in front of the ribbon for easy access.

I also had to find something to do with the smaller pieces of ribbon that couldn't be wrapped around cardboard, so I put them into a mason jar. It is not the easiest way to get to the ribbon, but it will work.

Well that is it! Nothing much, but I do what I can with the space.

Linky Parties

http://abowlfulloflemons.blogspot.com/

http://www.thethriftyhome.com/http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/2012/06/whatever-goes-wednesday-122.htmlhttp://www.theshabbycreekcottage.com/2012/06/transformation-thursday-no-157.html#morehttp://delightfulorder.blogspot.com/2012/06/delightfully-inspiring-thursday-party_20.htmlhttp://www.somewhatsimple.com/blog-link-party-with-4th-of-july-t-shirts/http://thebrambleberrycottage.blogspot.com/2012/06/time-travel-thursday-102-talented-time.htmlhttp://www.houseofhepworths.com/2012/06/20/hookin-up-with-hoh-105/http://abowlfulloflemons.blogspot.com/2012/06/one-project-at-time-tuesday-link-party.html

Monday, June 18, 2012

How to download fonts to your Brother PE500

I have been obsessed with my new embroidery machine, but the fonts and images it came with weren't really my style. Luckily I am able to download more fonts from the computer. I had some issues figuring it out at first, but now that I've gotten the hang of it, I thought I'd show you.

1. First you must download fonts from whatever website you want. I used Apex Embroidery Fonts because their prices were reasonable and they had a great selection. If you have Brother machine they have a website designated just for their machines called ibroidery.com. I have never used it, but from what I've seen it seems pretty easy.

2. Once your fonts are downloaded, you will need to locate them under downloads in My Computer or Finder. They will usually just be zipped files with the name of the font or design on them. I save all of mine under a folder called embroidery fonts.

Click the pictures to make them bigger!

3. Next you must make sure your machine is plugged into the computer using the USB cord provided with your machine. It will be under My Computer or Devices. Mine is named "brother," but if you are plugging it in for the first time it will probably be under No Name or RemovableDisk.

4. You will now go to your embroidery fonts and pick the letters you want. Unfortunately, the machine does not have enough memory to hold every letter, so you will have to drag them in when you need new letters. Drag each of the letters you want from downloads to your machine.

5. Check the machine's folder to make sure all of the letters you wanted were transferred over.

6. Now you can eject your machine from the computer if you want.
7. Go to the machine and click the button with the computer screen and USB symbol on it. It will take you to a new screen and all of the letters you uploaded to the machine should be there. You can browse through them using the arrow buttons on the panel to the right of the LCD screen.

Now you're ready to embroider!

Thursday, June 14, 2012

My Bike!

I never wrote a blog about this, but for my birthday back in April, my parents bought me a bike to use in college. I was super indecisive about which brands, which color, and how versatile I wanted it. All I knew what that I wanted a beach cruiser. I went to a local bike shop and saw a pink Sun bike, but I didn't buy it that day. This turned out to be a bad decision because when we went back two weeks later they had sold it. I knew at that point which brand I wanted, but I couldn't find anywhere to buy it. My dad and I ended up going down to a bike shop in Wilmington. We went to a shop called Bike Cycles; they had a huge selection of all different styles and brands. I test rode a Sun Revolution and a Sun Drifter. I ended up choosing a hot pink Sun Drifter, and I couldn't be happier with it. It is super easy to ride and very comfortable on my behind. I would recommend this bike to anyone who is looking for a beach cruiser.

Brother PE500 Embroidery Machine!

For graduation my grandma was kind enough to buy me an embroidery machine. I got the Brother PE500 embroidery machine. I absolutely love it! I have zero experience with embroidery; I avoided it at all cost in freshman year apparel development. With that said, this machine is perfect for beginners. It has diagrams on the machine to help you thread it, the owners manual is very straight forward, and the parts require little assembly. I mainly use the machine for monogramming, and I monogram everything. It used to cost me $20 a piece to monogram things at a local shop, but now I can do it for free! Although there are certain things you can't embroider (odd shaped things mainly), a vast majority of my belongings are able to be embroidered. The machine comes with tons of patterns and 5 fonts. However, none of these fonts are particularly good for monogramming, so I decided to download some more from the internet. I thought this was going to be super difficult, but it wasn't at all. I used Apex Embroidery Fonts because they had a large amount of fonts to chose from and their prices were reasonable. I purchased the fonts, hooked my machine up to my computer and just dragged the fonts into the E drive. I will post an in depth tutorial later on. Here are just a few things I have gotten around to monogramming.

The running shorts were just an experiment since I wasn't sure how to position the hoop, but eventually I figured it out. This was the first pair I did and the monogram is positioned way to close to the crotch area. Luckily, I only used a cheap pair of Target shorts.

This is just what the screen looks like when you are setting up the image you embroidered.