Scrapbook: DONE!!

Yay! I finished Robin’s hospital scrapbook! I think it turned out well.  I don’t have super-cute and involved layouts and decorations, but it’s still interesting to look at as well as read.

Here are a couple of my favorite pages. This first one I especially like because I used string to point to the things that were on Robin.  I think this helped emphasize how bound he was and how it made people feel that he was unapproachable.

This one took a lot of time. At Doernbecher there was a family relations person who hosted luncheons and craft times. One of the things she had was “story beads”. She had made a list of common things families with babies in the NICU went through and paired a unique bead with each event.  The idea was that you could string all these beads together to represent your child’s story.  I decided to be super elaborate (of course) and made it a timeline.  Each silver bead is a day starting with February 26th (the day I was put on bed rest).  Each event I put immediately after the appropriate day. Finishing that up took a while (I just *had* to run to the bead store, now didn’t I?) but then, since it would be too thick and awkward in the scrapbook, I scanned the strand and deleted all the scanning junk around the beads before labeling all the beads!  In the photo I’ve included the actual bead strand above the finished printed version.  The strand will hang up in Robin’s room someday.

I’m leaving it out for a while so people can look at it, but then it’ll be packed away and brought out only once in a while until all the kids are older.

{this moment}

{this moment} – A [Sunday] ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. As inspired by Collecting the Moments … One by One and SouleMama

Unexpected extras for cloth diapering

Well, not *completely* unexpected – I know I have seen people discussing “wet bags” as I’ve been reading up and shopping for our cloth diaper transition. But I didn’t think to apply it to me: I need wet bags!  And, since I’m broke, I decided to make my own!  I bought supplies for $7.80 at Joann’s (using coupons, etc) and made three wet bags. One is perfect for holding dirty dishes, another for prepared and clean cloth wipes, and the third is not ideal for the used diapers and wipes (yet).  I sewed up each bag slightly differently.  I primarily looked at this All Wrapped Up blog article (great photos, simple, efficient, and nicely finished instructions) and added my own methods as I went.

For all three I decided to put the shiny side of the PLU as the interior of the bag – open the bag and there is the shiny PLU.  It made sense to me that if poo got smeared on it, it would come off the plastic more easily than the fabric side of the material.  So, for my zipper I placed PLU (shiny side up), zipper (right side up) and fabric (wrong side up) before stitching, turning, and top stitching.

I also did not cut the bottom of the fabric pieces. I cut the material expecting the fold to be at the bottom of the bags.  I left an opening for turning in the side of the cotton fabric. I decided the extra sewing might damage the PLU if I did it there and soiling might get in the exposed ridges of the stitching otherwise.

I created box corners on the two yellow bags and left the corners flat on the grey bag.

Now, my first bag had issues.  Well, they all do , of some sort… I was using zippers I had on hand. This zipper wasn’t long enough and after it was installed and top stitched, it left big gaps between the zipper and the edge of the bag.  I cut scraps of fabric and PLU and sewed them over the gaps.

 

I think it looks cool stitched up!  This one is for clean wipes.

 

 

The second bag didn’t have any significant issues.  I just don’t like how the bulk of the zipper makes the corners bulge out. This one is for used dishes and can be attached to the diaper bag strap.

This zipper was also a little short, but I prepared better and it fits relatively well.

The downside is, while it’s a good size to hold several wet diapers, the zipper opening is not very wide and requires two hands to put the dirty diapers in. This can be problematic when handling a squirrely naked baby! 😀

So, all done! They match my diaper bag and are darn effective. I more than payed for it in the use they’ll get and the hours of entertainment I got from playing with fabric! 😀

 

Experiment: Home made laundry detergent

I’ve been using home made household cleaners for several years now.  I got tired of my lungs getting irritated every time I cleaned.  Now, I mostly use some combination of baking soda, vinegar, castille soap, and/or borax.

Recently, I have gotten sensitive to our usual laundry detergent and all the blogs/articles I’ve read about laundering baby cloths and diapers have recommended some form of home made laundry detergent.  I could easily see how it’s less expensive to make your own. I could believe the claims of greater environmental friendliness, but I had to wonder: did it really work as well or better than what was offered in the detergent aisle?  Experiment time!!

Hypothesis:  Home made laundry detergent cleans as well as “regular” laundry detergent.

Prediction: Home made cleaners have been observed to effectively clean other household items (windows, oven vents, cupboards, tubs, etc). I predict this laundry soap will clean as well as regular laundry detergent.

Independent Variable: Detergent type (Home made and regular detergent).

Dependent Variable: Three types of cloth soiling (Baby feces, grass, and strawberry stains).

Materials:

• Home made detergent (2:2:1 borax:washing soda:oxyclean)
• Regular detergent (ALL)
• Two new, pre-washed and dried (without fabric softener), 100% cotton flannel cloth wipes.
• Washer (top loader) and drier (both are old!).
• Baby feces.
• Grass.
• Strawberry.

Procedure: Soil each cloth with equal amounts of each baby feces, grass, and strawberry. I applied each item to one wipe, placed the second on top of it, and rubbed them together until the soiling amounts appeared equal.

I washed one cloth with home made detergent and the other with ALL. (Too bad the lighting is poor on this one!)

Observation:

• Neither detergent got all of the grass stains out. DRAW
• The home made detergent did not get as much of the strawberry out as ALL did, but (despite this picture) ALL did not get all of the strawberry out. DRAW
• Both detergents removed any visible trace of the baby feces. DRAW

Conclusion: This home made laundry detergent cleaned as well as regular laundry detergent. Further tests need to be conducted to determine if other detergent recipes with a variety of ingredients and their ratios are more or less effective than regular detergent.

I would like to be able to find out if either one had any bacteria on them, but I do not have the equipment available to test that.  I have decided that the home made detergent is effective and I will use it on my family’s cloths.

This experiment and some of the reading I’ve been doing about borax (there is debate about whether it is safe or not) and all purpose cleaning recipes has me designing a second experiment! Yay!  Stay tuned!

{this moment}

{this moment} – A [Sunday] ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. As inspired by Collecting the Moments … One by One and SouleMama

Making progress

I have used up all the pages for the hospital scrap book and I still have a possible 15-20 to go!  O.o  Since this is my ‘Current’ project, I am leaving it on my desk.  But I am looking forward to finishing it up and putting it out on a shelf.  Well, I’ll probably put it in a box for a little while – at least until the “crawling and pulling everything off the shelf to tear it up” phase is over!

And with the chair done (and looking smashing, I might add!)  I have a pile of sewing to do:  2 summer sleep sacks for Robin, a shirt for me, hemming two pairs of my pants, mending several of my husband’s shirts, and (just added today) two wet bags.  Some will be done on the serger and some with my standard sewing machine.

So here is my craft room again … getting closer and closer!! AND getting projects done – woohoo!

{this moment}

{this moment} – A [Sunday] ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. As inspired by Collecting the Moments … One by One and SouleMama

Princess cakes

My cousin needed help decorating cakes for her daughter’s 4th birthday present. We had a lot of fun hanging out. She made the cakes and the icing and cleaned up after me and I colored and iced the cakes. We both added bling.  I liked how that worked out!  I got to eat the cakes and did no cleaning!!  😀

{this moment}

{this moment} – A [Sunday] ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. As inspired by Collecting the Moments … One by One and SouleMama

Chair affair!

I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to refinish this ugly office chair:

 

So I did!  It looks so much better now!  I am not going to go into the details on how, since I did it and didn’t take any photos, but mostly because there are lots of other sources that tell you how to do this stuff and I’m not much better at explaining it.  So, here’s my pretty chair!!

 

Thank you, Helper Baby!!