DIY: Dryer Balls

Long time, no blog! I've been slacking, I know. But I wanted to finally write about how I got rid of dryer sheets with our nifty DIYed dryer balls.

I shared in this post about how and why I got rid of all my cleaning products and made my own. I knew then that I wanted to stop using dryer sheets, I just needed to find the right tutorial and get the supplies. Here's the tutorial I found on Pinterest, and even though my post will pretty much be a carbon copy from hers because we followed it exactly, I figured I should give credit where credit is due.

Materials needed:
-100%, non-washable wool yarn
-panty hose
-essential oil (optional)
-an incredible amount of patience

So here's the total and honest truth: I couldn't make these stupid dryer balls to save my life. Maybe if my life was literally on the line I would have been able to pull it off, but every time I tried I ended up making some grunting noises, sighing heavily, and throwing it down within about seven minutes. The tutorial I followed made it seem so easy...and maybe it is for everyone other than me, but it was no fun at all for this girl. So once again I called on my wonderful and ever-patient hubs to help me make them entirely for me. You'll notice that it's my fingers in all the demo pictures, which is really misleading because I've already confessed that the hubs did it all for me. Those were taken during a brief stint in which I thought I could make them myself.

Step 1:
Wrap the wool around your fingers (about as much as what's in the picture).

Step 2: 
Wrap the wool around in the other direction. 

(This is where I would start to lose it. I still have no idea what my issue was.)

Step 3:
Bring the ends together to form the small spherical center of the ball.

Step 4: 
Keep wrapping the wool, alternating directions as you go to eventually build up a tennis ball-sized ball. 

You will notice that this picture doesn't show much, and certainly doesn't show a tennis ball-sized ball. That's definitely my fault. Between my frustration and the hubs actually making this entire project for me, I failed big time in the photo opportunities. Womp womp.

Step 5: 
When you finish each ball and it's the size you want, tie a knot in the end of the wool and tuck it under some other wool. This is a pretty important step, which you'll see later in the post. 

Step 6:
Put the balls into the panty hose, tying a knot in between each one. We made four balls because that's how much our 400 yards of wool got us.

We did make four, but as you can see one was a little bit teenier than the others.

Step 7:
Wash and dry the balls, in the panty hose, at the highest temperature. According to the tutorial I followed, this helps fuse the wool together so it won't unravel. Also key to the prevention of unraveling, as it turns out, is that knot and tuck I mentioned in Step 5.

We lost one - the smallest baby one, thankfully, in the first run through, but the rest are still kicking, and they're working well! Once you put them through both the washer and dryer one time in the panty hose, you can cut them out and they're good to go. I just keep mine in the dryer.

Here they are! (except for that baby one which is no longer with us. No way I was going to rewind it again.)


The essential oils I mentioned as optional in the materials needed is just if you want the fresh scent of a dryer sheet. You would probably need to apply the oil to the dryer balls every four loads or so; I have opted to not use any at this point and I haven't really missed the scent.

They were a pain to make - and it's possible I'm exaggerating...I don't want to scare you away from making them because I have such a short fuse - but they've been pretty awesome little additions to our home in the weeks since. And the best part is not having our clothes, sheets, and towels covered in the chemicals of a dryer sheets.

One last thing: I have heard that the more dryer balls you have, the faster the clothes dry. I'm using three and I think everything is getting dry at the same rate as before, so maybe someday when I'm feeling extra patient I'll make a couple more just to see if it makes a difference. Until then, though, this is working well.

Requiem: a brief review

from Goodreads.com

When I finished Lauren Oliver's second book in her Delirium trilogy, Pandemonium, I was eager to plow ahead right away and read her conclusion as soon as possible. Pretty soon after I started reading, though, the Olympics started and then I got a stomach bug where I just wanted to watch 30 Rock on Netflix instead of read my book...and then came the shocking email reminder from my library that my book was going to disappear from my Kindle in two days. Oh right...it's a library book. After a little research I discovered that I can't renew it because there's a hold on it. But the great state of Virginia decided to be blasted with snow for the 47th time this winter, and the 15+ inches (it's still snowing) outside have allowed me the gift of a reading day. And I finished before the library took it away from me. Boo-ya.

I really want to try to give a minor description of the book without giving anything away, but just like I said last time, that's hard. So all I'll say is that the plot picks up right where the last ends, and this time the chapters switch back and forth between Lena and Hana, her best friend from Portland who doesn't appear at all in the second book. There are a couple of truly great "whaaat" moments, a couple twists that you see coming but that still make you smile when they happen, and plenty of action and suspense. There's even a love triangle, and even though the fact that there seems to always be a love triangle started to annoy me years ago, it works well enough.

I talked quite a bit in my last review about how I didn't love the first book in this trilogy, Delirium, but I enjoyed both Pandemonium and Requiem a lot. The action and suspense kept me hooked, her tactic of switching perspectives between chapters (through place in time in Pandemonium and through characters in Requiem) kept me really engaged, but I think the discussion of what love is and how it really affects us is what puts the trilogy on a deeper level than some other dystopian novels out right now. In the end, both Lena and Hana see the pros and cons of their very different situations and question their life choices to the core. Lena certainly learns that having freedom doesn't make life as simple and ideal as it seems. They're good books: entertaining, engaging, and thought-provoking.

Delirium and Pandemonium: brief reviews

Okay so this post is going to look a little different than most of my book reviews. I read Delirium, Lauren Oliver's first book in her YA dystopian trilogy, about a year ago. I was in a blogging slump, though, and a review was never written. So since I just finished the second book in the series, Pandemonium, and since I'm freaking out about it, I figured I might as well do a really short review of what I remember from the first one too.

In Delirium, the stage is set: Lena lives in a world where love is a disease to be feared above all. According to her government and the new system they've set up, love - the delirium - is the source of all of our world's problems. Any strong emotion, whether negative or positive, is unnecessary and dangerous. So all 18-year-olds receive the cure, which removes your ability to feel those emotions. You are matched with a spouse and you raise children, but no emotional attachment exists. Everyone does their job and follows the rules and become good, complacent and content adults. Lena is a strong believer just months away from her own cure when she meets Alex, an uncured boy living in plain sight in Lena's community. It doesn't take long for Lena to begin questioning everything she's been taught her whole life...no matter what the risk.

When I first heard about this book, I was really intrigued with the plot. I thought it sounded like a great new worst-case scenario idea on what the distant future might hold. I was a little disappointed with the book, though, and when I finished I was curious enough to continue reading the series but not in much of a hurry. I thought some of the writing was a little slow and over-detailed, and I just didn't think it was as mind-blowing as a plot as I had anticipated. The second one, though...

taken from Goodreads.com

I finished Pandemonium this morning, and I'll be honest...my mind is a little blown.

This one picks up almost right after the first one ends. (So I'll try not to spoil too much but it might be a little impossible.) Lena is in the Wilds, and has been found and nursed back to health by some people living in a settlement nearby. As she spends more time with these people, she joins them in an underground resistance movement against the government so determined to keep everyone in their robot-like state of complacency. Eventually, Lena gets caught up in a kidnapping gone slightly wrong, and is locked in a cell with none other than the son of the leader of the Deliria Free America, poster boy for all things cured. (I told you it was going to be super hard to keep from spoiling something.)

Whoa. I might not have loved Delirium, but I really enjoyed Pandemonium. I didn't notice the slow-moving plot or too many details like I did in the first book; the plot flowed smoothly and fairly quickly. But the plot itself was so much more interesting, I thought. I felt like Delirium was a little slow because of the foundation of plot that needed to be set, whereas in Pandemonium she was able to zoom forward to new information. The most important part, though, was that she split the book into two different places in time: Lena as she's being rescued and nursed back to health in the Wilds, and Lena six months later working with the resistance in New York City. By flipping back and forth with each chapter, my interest was so piqued. I was being given little breadcrumbs into what would happen eventually, but yet at the same time there were so many gaps in information I needed to keep reading to find out what was really going on. I got hooked pretty quick. And with the mind-blowing ending she left me with, I'm pretty stoked to start book 3, Requiem.

A few thoughts about gallery walls

We've currently set up two different gallery walls in this house, and two very different approaches went into each one. And although I'm no expert on much of anything, especially gallery walls, I wanted to share some of that thought process.

In the fall, we put up a wall of photos I took of some of my favorite places and buildings around town. Because they were all pictures of the same town, we wanted a more uniformed look for the wall. We made all of the photos black and white and got the same white frames for them all.

 

 

For the gallery wall we just put up in the family room, though, we had a completely different approach. The huge world map in above our couch was starting to bug me. I love the map, don't get me wrong, but all the empty space around it was taking away from the map's effect. The original plan had been to surround the big map with smaller maps of places that were meaningful to us, but it became too hard a task to find the maps I needed. (I gave up. I'll be honest.) So it was time to fill that space. With whatever I could find.

I got spontaneous on a snow day with the hubs last week and went through our whole house grabbing whatever frames I could find and spare (most of which were still in boxes in our spare room) and spread them out on the family room floor. Because I wanted to have frames on both sides of the large map, I divided the big group of frames into two small groups of frames, one for each side of the map. To decide what would go where, I looked only at the frames. We changed most of the pictures from inside the frames anyway, but the most important part for me was that the variety of frames spanning the wall seemed balanced. Not all the black on one side, little ones spread out, etc. Here's the finished product:

Here's the breakdown for each side: 

-each side has one frame that was bigger than the rest

-each side has a rough, weathered wood frame

-each side has a small frame

-each side has a metallic-looking frame (one is silver and one is gold)

-each side has at least one piece of artwork (either mine or from Etsy)

And because the frames are balanced out nicely, all we had to do was figure out the layout we wanted and spend some time on Shutterfly to fill the frames with some new pictures. Here's each side close up:

The beauty of this gallery wall, as opposed to the one in the kitchen, is that it can and will grow and evolve over time. It works for now the way it is, but there's also plenty of room on both sides to add frames and fill in the rest of the wall space as we collect more pictures, prints, and frames. We knew we didn't want to ever add to the kitchen gallery wall, so it fills the wall and it all matches perfectly. With this wall, though, we never have to worry about a specific frame going out of stock or having to maintain some kind of theme with what's inside the frames. It's all random and different which means it has the freedom to grow over time pretty easily. 

Both types of gallery walls are great and I love both of the ones in our house. I love them for different reasons, but I'm really happy with both of them.

Thrift store tray

I think I've mentioned before that I have a thrift store/antique store nearby that is near and dear to my heart. There are several within a ten mile radius that I love and have had great successes in, but this one...sigh...it was love at first sight. I walked into the store this summer and literally stopped and stared, and then spent a half hour in only the first six-by-six front window of the place. The elderly lady who owns the place laughed at me when I told her I wanted it all. This place, needless to say, is awesome. I've gotten some big pieces there (my nightstand, my kitchen desk) and a lot of little pieces (several wooden trays, the wooden duck sitting on my entertainment center, baskets) and they have all been super reasonable. Truly antique pieces, some of which hundreds of years old, only for a couple hundred dollars instead of several thousand like in so many antique stores.

So obviously the subject of this post was purchased at that store. My favorite of all stores.

I bought this tray a while ago, maybe this fall sometime. You can't quite tell in this picture but there's a piece of glass in there as well. I can't remember exactly when, but I remember that I loved it immediately and I couldn't wait to spend some time on it making it beautiful...and I remember that it only cost me $12. Told you this place is great. It came home and put up on a shelf in the guest room closet so it wouldn't accidentally get bumped or cracked at some point, and waited for me to one day take it out and fix it up. That day was today.

Step one was removing the nails that were holding the glass in. We were a little scared of this step, since the glass is pretty fragile and we didn't want to crack it when the nails came out. Turns out, though, it was pretty easy.

The nail is super hard to see in that first picture, but basically a bunch of tiny nails were put into the frame and the glass was just resting in there, free to flop around. Obviously, this wasn't going to work long term. So the nails came out.

We needed a new way to secure the glass and whatever backing we used, so we got these picture frame clips from Michaels. The nice lady behind the custom framing desk gave them to us for free! They're the kind that swivel to secure the back of the photo frame. Same principle here. Just a simple screw head and you're good to go.

With the frame prepped, it was time to have fun with the inside. Because this frame would be sitting on my coffee table, and the frame is almost the same color as the table, I wanted something other than just the glass on the inside of the frame to help it pop. I didn't want this awesome tray blending in to the coffee table it's sitting on. So I thought for a while about what I wanted to use (scrapbook paper, fabric) and figured fabric would be the best way to go when I had a major light bulb a couple days ago. The hubs bought a new duvet set (with pillowcases) while we were dating that got replaced about six months after we got married. The duvet was recently passed on to my poor college-kid sister, but she didn't need the pillowcases. I went and grabbed one from the hall closet, put it under the frame, and did a happy dance. The kind of happy dance that is inspired by the word "free." I do love that word. Hubs cut the seams to give me one big piece of fabric, we ironed it smooth, and it was go time. Here's the fabric:

And here it is up close (and slightly darker than I intended):

It's a little bland, but it's the perfect color for the room and those ridges gave me some great ideas. One really one idea: stripes.

I used a foam brush, because I wanted the coverage to be a little bit washed out rather than harsh, and I also liked the control having such a long straight edge would give me when following the ridges on the fabric.

I started with white. I just traced ridge lines on the fabric, in a random sequence. I really didn't want it to be or look like a pattern, so I didn't think too hard about it and instead just went for it.

I looked at the white for a minute to make sure I wasn't sold on it as is, and then decided some gray would be a good idea. The grays and tans and whites in our stone fireplace were the inspiration, by the way. I liked the idea of pulling those colors in, especially since this tray will be sitting across the room from the fireplace.

I went with much wider gray stripes, filling in the space between ridges this time rather than tracing the ridges themselves. Wherever I had left two ridges empty in between white stripes, I filled it in with gray.

Now for the back. I mentioned that the glass wobbled a lot inside there originally, because the depth of the tray was much deeper than the glass itself. I didn't want that to be the case anymore, so I cut out some matte board - like for behind pictures in a frame - to the size of the frame. This way I would get some added thickness as well as a hard back for the fabric. It wasn't thick enough, though, and still had some wiggle room. So I snagged some soft shelf liner from the garage and needed two layers of that before everything fit snugly inside the frame.

So as a recap, that's a layer of matte board, two layers of shelf liner, one layer of (very thin) fabric, and then the glass. No more wiggles or wobbles!

We did need to secure the fabric to the matte board and shelf liner, though, which was the trickiest part of this project. The stripes required some extra care, since we really had to make sure everything was straight and not crooked at all. Thankfully, my incredible former military, slightly OCD husband was there to help. And he did a great job.

Yeah, that's duct tape. There's not too many products better, and you know it.

With everything taped securely and tightly, we put it in the frame (after cleaning the glass), closed the clips, and we were only one step from being done. We didn't want the wood frame sitting directly on the coffee table, but the need for some kind of padding was made definite when the screw heads on the little clips stuck up pretty far. Meaning: it wouldn't be the wood frame sitting on the coffee table, it would be the metal screw heads sitting on the table with the frame floating above. No bueno. So I retrieved some bottom-of-the-chair pads from my desk, put one on each corner, and the problem was solved.

And that's it!

There are a handful of brown spots on the glass that wouldn't come off with cleaner, but I'm okay with it. It adds character to the piece, I think.

And that's it! I'll add some kind of decorative something to the tray soon, but I'm in love with the finished product. The painted lines aren't perfect up close (from the couch it looks great) but it's the kind of handmade look I was going for. I'm excited to layer some things on top but I think it's great on its own for now too. Because it's an older piece and the handles aren't the most sturdy, I won't use it for anything other than just looking pretty. But look pretty it does.

My favorite part about this project is its cost. Let's do a quick money recap: the matte board was from my craft closet, the shelf liner was from my garage, the fabric was a pillowcase from my hall closet, the paint was from my craft room, the frame clips were free from the nice lady at Michaels, and the tray was $12 from my favorite thrift/antique store. That means the total cost of this little DIY project was $12! Need I say one more time that I love using what I already have? I'm telling you, guys. You'd really be surprised with what you have to work with.

First Light: a very brief review

photo cred: Goodreads

So...remember when I told you all about how I got my library card and downloaded my first ever library book downloaded to my Kindle? Remember how I said it took me a half hour to find a book that wasn't already taken by someone else? Well when I eventually got one, I snatched it because it was an author I had once heard of. Not the book, but I've heard of the author. I crossed my fingers and hoped it was enough. Sadly, it wasn't. Total dud, guys. And don't look on Goodreads, because I seem to be the minority opinion.

Peter and his scientist parents spend some time in Greenland to do some experiments and such. Thea and her family live in a secret underground community within a glacier, in Greenland. As both teens explore and discover the truth about the world around them, they uncover generations of secrets and eventually, each other.

I honestly had no idea what was going on until about 60% through the book, and even after that I wasn't super interested. I thought her writing was unclear and the plot a little ridiculous. And I also had a hard time picturing anything that was happening at any given point. And even though that's a pretty harsh review, I've heard really great things about her other books and I still want to read them. I have total faith, Ms. Stead.

For when it just isn't in the budget...

This winter has been pretty rough on our budget. Between Captain's leg and the heater breaking and the Mazda needing to be fixed after hitting a deer and Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas presents and I'm sure some other things I can't remember...there definitely isn't extra money laying around for unnecessary house decor. I had a little bit of an immature hissy fit the other night when I sat down and combined all my various lists on my phone for house project ideas and put them all on one single sheet of paper. Looking at all my ideas and all the things we want to do to and around the house, I let myself get upset instead of excited. Even DIY projects, that are much cheaper than just buying everything straight up, most likely cost some kind of money because you still need supplies. I felt so frustrated because I want the freedom to do the projects I want and be the happy homemaker who makes her house look beautiful immediately.

But that's not real life. Money is real, and that freedom of doing whatever you want whenever you want to is not. I don't say that to be a downer on our specific situation; that's not real life for anyone. No matter what your budget (well, there are exceptions out there but it's no one I know) or how unburdened your finances, you don't have the ability to just do everything at once. Things take time. Decorating and renovating and organizing and figuring out what works best in your home takes time. Lots of time, and some failed attempts. My parents spent like thirteen years getting their house to the place it is right now, for crying out loud, and that was with a lot of round-the-clock work that lasted for months and months at a time.

The huge, glaring, nasty heart issue that I had to come to terms with in the middle of this hissy fit is that my stupid pride has an issue with showing people our house right now. Not because it's not super cute and great and cool right now, but because I'm not done with a single room in the house and I feel the need to tell people that. Like, heaven forbid someone think my house is exactly the way I want it. When I say it out loud - and especially when I type it to the universe - it's ridiculous. First of all, no one expects you to have a perfect house, and certainly no one expects you to complete the perfect house in less than a year of living in it. Second of all, my house is awesome just the way it is right now. We've done a lot and added a lot to it in our time here, and it's great. It functions and it's beautiful and we love it, and yes, we have ideas to make it better over the next 2 to 5 to 10 years, but that should be exciting. During the last couple days, since the hissy fit and the corresponding revelations, I've been soaking in our house just the way it is and focusing on all the things I love so much about it right now. The plans we have are really exciting, and some of them will help our lives be a little more functional and practical, but our house right now is really exciting. Our house, just the way it is right now, was exactly what we wanted. And it's very us. Isn't that the point of a home, anyway?

With all of that laid as the foundation for this post, I wanted to share a couple things we tackled yesterday during our snow day to give some areas of our home a facelift in an extremely budget friendly way. And how did we do it?

We used what we already had.

This is hardly rocket science, and it's a concept I've preached before in my office space makeover, but I just can't stress enough how useful and surprising it can be to go shopping within your own house. Moving things around, digging through boxes of stuff you've had for years but thought you don't have a place for...if you're anything like us you'd be seriously shocked to discover the gems hiding within your own four walls. For freeee.

One of the things on my long list of things for the house was to figure out where to hang some cool maps of our county, and to create a gallery wall in our family room around the huge world map that's been there for most of our time in the house. I'd originally had a plan for the space around the map but have since given up on finding the exact pieces I was looking for, and decided that a collage would be better. That led to some brainstorming about what we had scattered around our house, which led to some digging through boxes and collecting frames from some bookshelves, which led to a big lay out on the floor. We had some frames that had a picture or piece of artwork that we wanted to leave just the way they are, and we had a handful of frames that we wanted to use but replace the pictures inside with some new ones. So all we had to do was go through Shutterfly and pick out the ones we wanted, the sizes we needed, and order! With a deal Shutterfly had going on right now, we paid $5.44 for three new prints, (one 4x6, one 5x7, and one 8x11), including shipping!

 Here you can see a little window into the frame selection process, where I went through the house and just laid as many as I could out on the floor facing the wall they would be hung on. Not many of the photos and art you see in those frames are what will stay there, but I'm saving the final product for when all the pictures (and JTs birthday present, which is going in one of the frames) arrives in the mail. 

We also hung the two maps of our county I mentioned, using frames and matte board we already had (see the two frames propped up against the entertainment center in the picture above). They are both similar wood frames and even though they're not the shade, they look good together. We decided to hang them on a wall that's been bugging me in our dining room because it looked so empty. 

One of the maps is of the Virginia/West Virginia line (which Berryville borders), so it includes the town of Berryville as well as much of the mountains and valley in surrounding areas and West Virginia. The other map is slightly more artistic looking, and is of only Clarke County. I really love both of them and I really love them on that wall. They fill the space really well. 

We hung a very special clock in our entryway, as well, which you can see peeking through the archway in the picture above. We've been talking for a long time about how one of the little walls in that space needs a mirror (the wall facing the front door) and that the other wall needs a clock. I know that between our cell phones and the microwave, we don't really need a clock anywhere in our house, but it just seems like something a house needs. I've been keeping my eyes peeled, but whenever I saw one I liked I was alone and I knew the hubs would want to weigh in on a decision like that. So when we were visiting his parents in Colorado back in November and his mom said that she has a clock he made in high school...obviously we snatched it. And even though it probably needs a friend or two to help fill that wall someday, we decided to put him dead center until we find something to pair with it. 

 

One other thing I decided in a flurry of productivity to do yesterday was change out bedspread. I've got some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket and I just can't decide how to spend it (on the house? on some new clothes? on a tattoo?) and one of the things I've been searching websites for is a new bedspread for our room. I get really bedspread ADD for some reason, and I've just been wanting a change pretty bad. While I was playing with picture frames and layouts, it occurred to me that the guest room bed has a dark blue comforter hiding inside the duvet. It would match our room pretty well. So for one last shopping trip within our own home, I pulled the comforter out of the duvet in the guest room, put it on our bed, and filled the guest room duvet with an extra down comforter we'd had stuffed in a closet. 

Please ignore my bad iPhone picture, and the dog crate in the background (who's ready for a cast to be off?!). It's plain and it's nothing fancy or crazy, but it was free. Guys...free is important. I might argue, that depending on your financial situation, free is the most important.

Here's the bottom line: we all have dreams to make our house prettier or trendier or more functional, and those days will come. It's not a rush. Nothing is a rush, and it's dumb to press ahead with all your plans thinking they're urgent when you're really just putting yourself in a financial place you can't afford to be. Some of the plans we have for our house are going to be super expensive and won't happen for years, when we know we can. And that's what makes a day of little updates and tweaks that all cost (basically) nothing so much better. Because those free changes can still make a huge impact on your house, and that's a big deal!

(This last one is for me, because I have to continue to tell myself this): no one is going into your house and saying "geez, what a dump. She really needs a couple more baskets and throw pillows and then it would look great." No one is saying that about your house, and no one is saying it about mine. So stop putting that burden of having to please other people on yourself when it doesn't exist to begin with. And besides, your house is for you and the people you share it with, not anyone else. If someone does walk into your house and say those things, they don't have to live there anyway.