Photo Tutorial: Altered Altoid Tin

I happen to be the Creative Activities mom for our MOPS group this year, which is a fancy title for saying that I'm in charge of the crafts. I consider myself "craft-challenged" (in spite of my Etsy shop), but since the MOPS philosophy is that any craft should be well within the capabilities of your typical frazzled mom who never has time to finish even the smallest project, this works for me. My personal philosophy for MOPS crafts is that they should be fun and functional: something painless that you wouldn't mind doing again and might possibly have a future use for. So, for our first craft, I chose to explore the joys of Mod Podge by decorating some cute little Altoid tins (which I actually ordered fairly cheaply from here since I needed 2 dozen faster than I can eat Altoids!) I think these little tins would be perfect for holding gift cards or stocking stuffers or other tiny treasures, so I'm posting my first photo tutorial here in case anyone from the group wants to make more. So, here goes:

Supplies: You'll need an Altoid tin, some origami or scrapbook paper (I like origami as it's a bit thinner and you get several patterns for your buck), and some Mod Podge. (I used the Gloss for a lacquer finish.) You’ll also need a pen or pencil, scissors, & a paintbrush or foam brush for the Mod Podge.

1. Use the lid of the tin for tracing your piece of paper.

2. Cut inside your guide line so the paper doesn’t hang over the edge of your tin lid.

3. Brush a moderate layer of Mod Podge onto the tin lid and place the paper on.

4. Use the brush handle to smooth out any bumps.

5. Place a thin layer of Mod Podge on top of the origami paper to seal. Voila!

For our group, we added a business card with all the MOPS meeting dates for the year, so we repeated the process inside the lid. At the meeting, we also realized we had enough paper to do the inside bottom, so we added a bit more pattern there. Didn't get the picture of that step, though.

Hope you enjoyed my first tutorial for the craft-challenged!

ISO: Economical Green Laundry Soap & Dishwasher Detergent

Since this week is a backwards edition of Works For Me Wednesday, I thought I'd ask your thoughts on green laundry soap and dishwasher detergent. We use green options for both our (top-loading) washer and dishwasher now, but I don't have any particular brand loyalty yet. Or maybe you've got a homemade option that works and you don't mind sharing the recipe.

So if it's cheap and works great, I'd love to hear about it in the comments below!

Overcoming my Domestic Challenges: Baking Bread

Being that I don't consider myself a cook and can only bake cookies, I've never dreamed of baking a loaf of bread to accompany the evening meal. All that kneading and rising, I was pretty sure that bread was something I'd wreck pretty easily.
However, that has all changed, thanks to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. Now not only am I baking bread (and "artisan" bread, no less), but I consider it the easiest chore of my day. Before this book and its Master Recipe, I never would have believed you if you had told me that I could mix up a batch of bread or get the day's bread into the oven in less time than it takes to do the dishes.

I first found the Master Recipe online here, but the basic premise is this: you mix 4 ingredients together (in your stand mixer to make it truly easy-peasy) and you let the giant batch of dough rise in a giant container for at least 2 hours before you stash it in the fridge overnight. The next day, you take out a chunk a couple hours before dinner, shape it, let it rise like this:
and then after 30 minutes in the oven, you have this:
The genius of this recipe is that you have enough dough for at least 4 loaves and it will keep in the fridge just fine. In fact, the older it is, the more of a sourdough flavor it develops. Yum!

I also learned that Hertzberg and Francois have a website for the book with a great Q & A section. When I messed up Batch #1 with dead yeast (told you I was no baker!), Zoe responded to my query in less than a day with a way to salvage my batch.

Being the non-baker that I am, I have come up with ways to make this even easier. When baking the basic loaf, I still bake it on a pizza stone, but I bake it right on my silicone mat so that I don't have to mess with sliding the sticky dough onto a hot stone. Or, I just dump the whole thing into a loaf pan and bake it without the stone. Simpler, and just as tasty, according to my family.

We also created a variation, due to a shortage of all-purpose flour in the pantry, that I later discovered was the exact recipe for the Light Whole Wheat Bread in the book. Instead of using a full 6 and 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour, we substitute in 1 - 2 cups of whole-wheat AP flour. Since we eat mostly whole wheat bread, this was even tastier to us than the master recipe.

It works for me. For more tips, head over to this week's post at We Are THAT Family.

WFMW: A little grass roots campaigning...PART 2

In this post, I talked about how the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act is going to shut down my shop and many others on Etsy (and elsewhere) who sell children's products because of some misguided lead testing requirements. Many of us have long said that those who make the paint, fabric, snaps, clips, or whatever other raw material should be responsible for the lead-testing, not those of us who take those materials and craft them into a finished product. Well, here's what's happened according to Fashion Incubator:

"If you are on the CPSC listserve, you likely already know this too. If not, it would appear all of your emails have had an effect. I’d been waiting for this rumor to bear fruition since last week. Apparently the the US Consumer Product Safety Commission’s web page on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008 has been updated with a request for comments (pdf). Please contribute your information in an attempt to modify the regulations as they exist for mandatory third-party testing. The deadline to contribute is January 30, 2009."

So, what works for me? E-mailing the CPSC, that's what!

Want to help raise awareness? Grab the "Save Handmade" button from Cool Mom Picks' Save Handmade page.

For more Works for Me Wednesday, head on over to Rocks in My Dryer.

P.S. Due to our icy roads, my Christmas Tour of Homes giveaway for a pair of my Ladybug Limited hair clips is still going on here. I'll draw a name as soon as I can get to the Post Office so enter today!

WFMW: A little grass roots campaigning...

I hesitate to file this under "Works for Me Wednesday" because I don't know how all this will turn out yet. But a little background first...

In case you didn't know, in my spare time, I sell hair accessories and just recently opened my Etsy shop. However, my fledgling business and all the other shops selling handmade children's products are in danger! The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act has been passed and as of February 10, 2009, all of us selling handmade children's products will have to shut down because of the prohibitive costs associated with lead testing and third-party certification.

I'm all for no lead in children's products, but seeing as how this has been a made-in-China problem and this legislation does nothing to address products from China, I would urge you to take action! If you'd like some more info written for consumers, please start with this post over at The Smart Mama. Cool Mom Picks also had a very good post up about this yesterday with a checklist of how we can all be involved.

And, yes, I'm the Diana mentioned in the "Edited to add..." on CMP's post. I think it's important for everyone to realize that this affects ALL children's products: toys, clothing, ANYTHING intended for kids 12 and under, so I spent my evening e-mailing a lot of my favorite blogs and websites about this. So far I've contacted Z Recommends, Rocks in My Dryer, Thingamababy, Northwest Mom Finds, Goody Blog, and 5 Minutes for Mom.

Taking action with a little grass roots campaigning Works For Me. What will you do?

For more WFMW posts, head on over to today's post at Rocks in My Dryer...

Managing Materialism at Christmas...

As Other Half and I try to keep the focus of Christmas where it belongs, one thing we've done is limit the number of Christmas gifts. Why? Well, up until this Christmas, Mugger and Bug were the only grandkids on both sides of the family and we were a little concerned about the effects of excess...

So, the rule we've come up with (and tried to share with the grandparents) is that they'll receive only 3 Christmas presents from us-- they think the stocking is from Santa and being that they're only 5 and 3, we're willing to play along.

So why 3? Well, as we've explained to the Kiddos, if 3 is good enough for Baby Jesus (gold, frankincense, and myrrh), then it's certainly good enough for them!

Now I know we're not the first ones to think of this, but it's been a novel idea to enough of my friends that I thought I'd share it with the rest of you. It works for us! I'd love to hear any thoughts (via the comments) of other ways that have worked for your family.

For more Works for Me Wednesday tips, head on over to Rocks in my Dryer...

Works-For-Me-Wednesday: Good News Network

My first WFMW is a bit of linky love...

After reading about Cool Moms Care on 5 Minutes for Mom, I decided that getting their 5 Minutes of Caring in my inbox might be a good thing. Anyways... today's e-mail from Cool Moms Care contained a link to Good News Network. I don't know about you, but we tend to never have the TV news on in our home because I don't want my kids to see those images. Now I have a source for just good news!

My 2yo daughter isn't really interested in what's going on in the world at this point (what toddler is?), but my almost-5yo has already found some good news to perk up about: since his Uncle served in Iraq and we just got our delivery of Girl Scout cookies, hearing the news about Girl Scout cookies being shipped to Iraq was pretty cool for him. (Though hearing that they were just getting cookies caused him to comment, "Maybe they should be sending vegetables, too.")

For more WFMW, head on over to today's post on Rocks in my Dryer.