More crafty buddies for your stitching pleasure! These cute little guys will jazz up any craft bag, knit basket, or make a nice framed embroidery piece for Your Crafty Buddies studio wall.

You can get the Hand Stitching Crafty Buddy Set here and the original Machine Stitching Crafty Buddy Set here.

And, as with last time, you can always get started with this cute little thimble:

Have a great weekend! Happy crafting!

Kristin

There are so many reasons that meal plans are a great idea. The two I look to the most are that it helps to save money (if you are prepared to eat out less) and it helps to keep you on track with healthy eating (if you tend to eat out). Seeing a trend here? Yep.

When I eat out not only do I tend to over spend, but I over eat too. I have tried more meal plans than I can count. Well, okay, more than I can count on one hand. Point is that I’ve tried many solutions, from simple to complex.

The most complex was the “cook once, eat well for a week method.” Not only was the up front time and money investment huge, it was hard to translate into anything other than what the book stipulated– you know, to use it with recipes I actually like. And we ended up with way too much food, food we didn’t really care for in the first place.

Then the most simple was to just go to the grocery store whenever. Basically no plan. That was unhelpful.

And I tried some middle of the road methods with mapping it out day by day and buying to the groceries. That failed because it was too specific. And mapping out snacks and lunch? Meh. My tastes vary too much.

It was a hard balance between too much food, too little food, variety of fickle tastes, and a varying schedule.

I finally have it figured out. I’ve been just mapping it out in lists on paper.

After week 3 of successful meal planning, cooking said meal plan, and eating it, I’ve decided to make it up official like and fun.

Here is how it works:

1. List all the things you want to have on hand for breakfast, snacks, and things to pack with your leftovers for lunches (that’s what the add on means).

2. List what you like to have for sides with your dinner (could be the same or different from the lunch add-ons).

3. Dig through all your favorite recipe books and list 2 or 3 new recipes to try out. Try however many you new recipes you feel comfortable with. It’s always a good idea to try at least one new recipe each week. It makes it fun and helps expand your skills. Then list all your oldies but goodies you know by heart to fill it out.

Now here is the thing, if you want to put a day with each meal, that’s your choice. Me, I like to just have everything I need for 4 home-cooked dinners. I come home and if I have time I’ll make one of the 4, whichever I feel in the mood for. I shoot for 3 easy and one more complex. Then lunches, snack, and breakfasts are all grab n’ go.

You can download the meal plan as a pdf here.

I tend to get all tweety when I’m working on my meal plan on Sunday afternoon, snacks especially. You all are so great at helping me out, especially when I was stumped on healthy snack options a few weekends ago.

Do you use a meal plan? What works best for you?

I the last Crafty Business post, I went into how a weekly task list can be a really helpful tool for staying on top of those “not quite daily” tasks. Today, we are going to explore the options for those every-once-in-a-while tasks.

In many ways this is similar to finding your weekly and daily tasks. Like the rest, make a long list. Make this list as long as possible, every task you might ever want to hit up in your business month or quarter.

I brain dumped everything I could think of into one long list:

There were just a few categories that all these things fell under. I jotted those down, used a different color for each one, and started mapping it out.

I realized that three things: update homepage, update homepage feature, and enter sales should be weekly items.

Then I also realized that I only have 1 item for “long term cl growth” and that’s not a good thing. I do have “project development” as a weekly task, so maybe I should just include “look for places to submit work” as one of the things I can do as a weekly thing and eliminate that category all together.

And this list may be the hardest because it’s filled with all those things you forget to do and they fall to the way side until say, cough, taxes are due in just a few weeks. Or you’ve let the fabric get so out of control you can’t make anything without it falling off the shelf.

In cleaning terms, which is where I got this idea to begin with, it’s like cobwebs in the corners, washing of the baseboards, or purging all the “where the heck did the bottom to this lid go to” in your food container cabinet.

It’s all the things we don’t think about. That being said, you should leave room on your list so you can add things later.

Here’s how I wrote up my new list:

1. Use one page per category.

2. Leave loads of extra lines for adding more things to each category.

3. Leave space between each item so you can list sub-categories if you want.

Here is where it all comes together. Each week you just focus on one category for 15 minutes a day. You can increase the time of course, but just start out doing 15 minutes a day. It’s kind of hokey, but set a timer and just start with the first item on your list. You can check them off as you go, make notes on where you left off, and add more items to the category as you think of them.

Just remember that these are the things you don’t normally work on, so any work done on them is progress. I mean, really, when was the last time I filed receipts (no, dumping them into a box does not count as filing btw)? Last April!

Each week move on to the next category and get done what you can. For me each rotation is a month and a half, but for you it could be monthly, quarterly, or weekly. If you want, you can spend 2-3 days on each category instead of a whole week. It’s totally flexible and it’s totally up to you. You will find what works best once you get going.

I have to admit, while I’m pretty good with this at home for cleaning, I have yet to fully implement it here at the studio.

I just started consistently doing my daily and weekly tasks, so I’m going to keep that up for a few more weeks, maybe the whole month of feb. In March I’ll start up with the every once and awhile lists.

How do you keep track of those every once and awhile tasks? What’s your routine like? I’m totally curious and would love to hear about it!

Happy crafting and good luck!
Kristin

It’s strange to think that I moved into my studio just 2 (well, okay, getting closer to 3) months ago.  How could I ever have done Craft Leftovers without it? And how could I have lived and cooked with it all smashed into every nook and cranny of the apartment?

This is a two part post:

One is that I’m checking in on my new studio here, how it’s going, if I’m fully unpacked (no, yikes!), and what my plans are for the studio’s future set up.

Two is how my home studio is doing. How does it exist now? Am I drawing and painting more (you bet!)? How is the home/work division going? And how is my stress/overwhelmed with work feelings going?

First I’m going to show you the things I do like about the studio. I love my fabric covered boards. They are so cheery that it really makes up for having a window (well, not quite, but as close as it can). And I’ve started to really fill them out.

Here are some drawings, my color wheel, the cover for this month’s issue, some quilling, some recycled paper boxes (will be used for starting seeds in a bit–project in feb issue of clm), and my christmas stocking–which I enjoy so much I have not put it away with the rest of the xmas supplies and decorations.

Here we have 2 notes from friends and a collage I started in a collage workshop a few months back. I still need to finish gluing things down, haha. I like it all the same.

This cute little print was given to me by my friend Jill. This little guy is hand carved, painted, posed, and then photographed by a local artist. So neat! I love the candy matching the spots on what I’m going to call a ferret even though I’ll bet a weasel was more in mind.

I finally have all my craft books down here and they pretty much fill the whole book shelf! Awesome! It’s so inspiring to see them all lined up and having them on hand is great. I’ve kept them fairly organized too, even though I rifle through them a few times a day.

This is the darkest corner of the studio, so please excuse the blur here. I’ve done pretty well keeping my fabric organized. I need to give the smaller stacks a good reshuffle, but I’m not too worried about it. Everything is in the proper area it should be in, even if it’s not a neat pile–which we’ve already discussed is pretty much impossible to maintain.

I’ve kept up with the shipping area too. It’s pretty tidy and I know where all of it is. I could do a general straightening up, but I don’t think it would take more than 5 minutes.

And my desk has stayed really organized too. I make sure to clear off all the clutter on a regular basis. It’s really just that little basket of random bits in the front right and then some loose cords because I’m charging my iPod and syncing my calendars. Usually those cords are in a drawer and it’s completely straightened up.

Having that filing shelf (inbox/outbox/filebox) has really helped. I picked it up at the ISU surplus sale for $3.00 last month. The top shelf is for ready to be dropped off orders (I already went to the post office today), the second from the top is for invoices and general outgoing mail that still needs a stamp, the third from the top is for bills/tax forms/things with due dates that I need to deal with, the second from the bottom is business things to be filed, and the bottom shelf is an all purpose shelf reserved for Ames C.art business stuff. All that used to just be in a stack, no wonder I was always losing important documents! No more. :)

This area looks a little more cluttered than maybe it really feels. It’s actually pretty tidy. I was cutting a bunch of fleece and just need to wipe down my mat. And my sewing machine needs to be turned around so the cord runs across the back of the desk instead of across it. Then the planter box, yep that is a window box right there, is holding all my measuring and cutting rulers. I have a “tea station” right there and I just finished eating my yogurt snack, so I put it on the shelf to get it out of my workspace/so I will remember to take it home and wash it out too.

Okay, now for what I’m not so thrilled about.

These two areas of my studio pictured above is all stuff that needs to make it to the storage unit. Most of it is cast offs from the things that my studio used to hold (office supplies/cubical equipment/office furniture). It’s really come down to the fact that it’s too cold and too icy to deal with so I’ll just have to live with until it thaws out a bit. Annoying, but not horrible. It’s out of the way and pretty much just makes that side of the room feel more cramped than it should.

And then this shelf I’m not even really using. In fact, I have a few spaces like this, which makes me think I need to reorganize my supplies in general quite a bit.

This is my big clutter area. Okay, granted it’s really only this bad because I had a workshop on Thursday and just dropped off all the supplies today. It bothers me when stuff collects here, that it  gets put away pretty quickly.

The main issue is actually that rubbermaid. It’s full of random yarn/fabric/lace that I really am just not sure what to do with.

One of my friends, Sarah, gave me this great idea to post a “craft leftovers challenge” where I take a nice assortment of goodies and post them, see what you guys think up to make from them. Then I’ll write up the pattern and the winner gets a kit (with the supplies or similar supplies, and the pattern!).

I really love this idea and I think this bin has so many great things, it’s just a matter of getting a new perspective. Maybe that’s how I’ll finally start paring it down. I think I’ll start up next Monday actually! Hooray! What a great way to start the month of February!

So my main goals with the space is to:

1. Take all that stuff to storage as soon as it thaws enough.

2. Re-organize my supplies so I’m using my space more effeciently.

3. Go through the rubbermaid and sort/organize/use/make into kits/make into challenges everything that’s in there so I can ditch the big rubbermaid completely.

4. Hang up my peg board. It’s not pictured, because it’s still in the garage! Another “as soon as it thaws” on the list. :)

Next week I’ll show you how my home studio is coming along and how great it is to have a “kitchen” table.

Happy Crafting!
Kristin

As you may or may not know, the February issue of Craft Leftovers Monthly is divided in half between friendship and gardening. While digging around for ideas I came across quite a few wonderful garden themed items. I was going to have a page devoted to these great goodies, but the issue is so packed full of fun projects and articles, that I had to leave them out. Instead of just leaving them on a virtual dusty shelf, I’ve decided to share them with you here today!

You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening
This is my all time favorite gardening book. It’s down to earth, easy to understand, realistic and hilarious! I love the way Gayla Trail writes with wit, sarcasm, and a pinch of compost. I was lucky enough to hear the tale end of her talk at BlogHer ’07 in Chicago and chat briefly (and by that I mean gawk and tell her how wonderful I think she is and stammer a bit and then run away).  She’s also a wonderful photographer and she regularly shares pictures of her garden on her blog.

I am such a tool fiend. I think that a nice little set like this would be great to have. Somewhere between here and DeKalb I’ve lost all my garden tools. And for under $25 who can resist? Well, one does have to ask oneself, “Is this getting what you pay for?” Well heck, let’s see how it goes.

I came across these sweet little produce sacks on Etsy. I’m a sucker for burlap and veggies, she so stole my heart with this one.  Such a perfect bag for hulling some onions, potatoes, or hey, here’s a thought: beets! She has all sorts including the cutest garlic I have ever seen, you can check out her shop, Nurtured Threads.

I have to admit up front that I have not read Four-Season Harvest all the way through. What I have read I love and I have skimmed the whole book so that has to count for something. Either way, I love the idea of having a harvest all year round. Even though he’s pictured in front of the biggest cold frame I’ve ever seen, he offers many practical solutions for smaller accommodations. So far it’s been a fun, educational read. I have grand visions that soon  I’ll be tying on boots in a snow storm to harvest my own salad greens, beets, and potatoes.

Organic Gardening is the first and only gardening magazine that I have ever subscribed too. That was in 2005 and I’m still enjoying it just as much as the first issue. I have to say it’s hard to find a magazine in any genre that accomplishes that feat. From designer gardens, to community plots, to little containers propped around your door stoop.

And this I love! It’s a KIT for a terrarium! And what a sweet little terrarium it is. I’m hemming and hawing about whether or not to get it. I’m pretty sure that within the next month or two it will be arriving at my door. :) You get everything you need to culitivate a variety of moss and lichens except the glass. This is great in my mind because this winter I exchanged a gift for a lidded jar with this very project in mind.

You can see this small kit and the large kit and ready made terrariums all here in Teresa’s Plants & More Store.

Last week I told you about my search for a new lunch box.  I took a look around with *cough* what’s on hand before I ran to the store to purchase new fancy lunch box supplies. Read more →

Last Friday night Jason and I broke away from the studio and office long enough to take a cooking class hosted by the local Indian Student Association. It was wonderful!

We started with a short intro of the history of food stuff in India and then trooped off into the kitchen. It was so packed that we had to rotate out of the kitchen so others could have a chance to watch.

I took ridiculously detailed notes and am going to share with you what I learned.

Pakora Cauliflower and Green Pepper (Fritters)
You can use pretty much any veggie with this batter recipe. Just make sure the oil is deep enough to fully submerge the veggie.

Make the batter: (heat up the oil in the pan while preparing the batter – medium heat, not too hot)
1 cup chickpea flour
1 t. red chili powder
1/2 t. asafoetida
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. garam masala

Mix all ingredients together and sift them into a small mixing bowl. Add 1/2 – 3/4 cup water. You want the consistency to be that of a nice crape batter. If you lift your fingers out of the batter, it will drip down in one continual stream.

Put your veggies into the batter and mix it around until they are all thoroughly coated.  If you can’t fit them all in, work in batches.

Place gently into the oil so it doesn’t splatter.

With a slotted spoon gently move around and turn over the veggies until they are evenly brown on all sides. Remove from the oil. Remove any little crispy bits of batter before adding the next batch.

Keep coating the veggies in the batter and frying them until you run out of veggies to fry. :)

Other veggie options recommended:

eggplant, onion, avocado, potatoes, pretty much anything!

Time to make the Cranberry Chutney!

We learned that the base of most Indian dishes is called a chaunk. A chaunk is the word for frying spices in hot oil. The most common are mustard seeds, cumin seeds, asafoetida, green chili, ginger root, coriander, and garam masala.

Heat up 1 Tablespoon oil in a skillet. Add 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, stir until fragrant and they start to brown.
Add 1/2 bag of cranberries (6 oz of a 12 oz bag) and a few dashes of asafoetida.
Stir.
Add 1/4 cup water.
Stir.
Cover, turn up the heat to medium high, cook for 10 minutes; stirring occationally.
Remove from heat. Stir and mash up the cranberries into a paste.

Add:
1 1/2 t chili powder
1/4-1/2 t black pepper
2 t salt (heaping)
3 T sugar (heaping)
1/2 t turmeric

Stir well and serve up with the Pakora.

+++++++++++

After showing us how to make these great dishes, our hosts played a wonderful piece for us in honor of Rama and Krsna. It was very moving.

Then they treated us all to a full course meal including what had been demonstrated for us. It was so delicious. My favorite was the chutney and the chickpea soup. So tasty!

It was a great night, we learned so much, and it totally expanded my culinary sights. It’s every Friday night from 6:30 – 8:30 and is free and open to the public. They do take donations though and Jason and I were happy to support them.

I don’t have any pictures of the event, but when I try my hand at making these great dishes, I’ll make sure to post some. :)

Enjoy your kitchen adventure!
Kristin

I’m happy to tell you that despite an ice storm, Craft Leftovers Monthly is in the shop!

You can get this months issue here or sign up for a subscription here.

This month is full of great tutorials, articles, and of course, illustrations! Fanie of Art vs Craft is now a regular contributor of Craft Leftovers Monthly. Check out her great Crafty Life comic in this month’s issue! It made Jason and I laugh out loud. :)

Craft Leftovers Monthly is printed on 100% recycled paper. It is 36 pages of crafty goodness. Two guests grace each issue’s pages and the Crafty Life Comic is a regular feature. Craft Leftovers Monthly is all about making with what you have on hand. Living life creatively!

Happy Crafting!
Kristin

p.s. – Also related to being stuck at home, I’ll send out subscription confirmations as soon as I get down to the office, as well as renewal reminders.

{cover image for Feb pictured above}

I am so happy to announce the release of Craft Leftovers Monthly Vol 2: Issue 2! You can buy a subscription to Craft Leftovers Monthly any time of the month. Starting tomorrow at noon central time, the February issue will be in the shop and ready to go out the door!

While February always makes me think of pink hearts, loads of doilies, and romantic get-always; it also makes me think of everyone I love–my fiancé Jason, my pets, and, of course, my crafty buddies. This month I have recipes and projects to share with those you love, humans and animals alike. Let’s celebrate those best friends forever.

Camp Smarty Pants’ Rachel Beyer has infused this issue with summer camp friendship inspired projects. With a great interview in the mix you can read about her process, inspiration, and the crafty ladies in her life, not to mention the tastiest cookie recipe on the planet!

February also reminds me that winter is in its last throws AND it’s time to order seeds again. Those photos of summer produce in my seed catalog are so inspiring. By the end of the month, I’ll start my first batch of seeds. I just can’t wait. The first part is my favorite: mapping out my garden. Living in an apartment has its constraints, and many of us have space limitations for gardening.

In this issue I’ll focus on small space and indoor, low light solutions. Learn how to build your own seed starting light stand, mix up your own starting soil, plan your garden, and how to compost on a small scale indoors.

Have a great day and happy crafting!
Kristin

This beautiful tiny zine is, literally, the size of a match box. The introduction and then the history of the Borrowers with a cute little accompanying magnifying glass. You will need it.

This zine is all about post. I love getting mail and mail art is even better. The page above is an adventure in sending woven tapestry. A great story. Plus there are your own woven post card templates included right in the zine.

This little guy is a Zinalogue. I’m going to totally make up some Craft Leftovers Monthly zine stamps and send this on to another zine making friend of mine. :)

This is such a neat way to send a note. It’s so cute. It’s the same design as her art stamps and in fact, reminds me of a book of stamps.

And this is the newest zine I’ve received from Su. It’s a completely new format. In fact, it’s styled after a newspaper. It’s a fairy tale newspaper–Enchanted Times! I love it. Check out that cute little sewing kit.

And this beautiful chart is so tempting to make right now. It’s next on my cross stitch list for sure! So fun!

You can read more about Su on her blog. And you can pick up any of these great zines and more from her Etsy shop here.

Happy Monday!

Kristin