Getting Motivated!

Lately I have been consumed with thinking of ways that I can generate money, so that come next February I don't have to leave our little man to go back to work full-time. Although it seems a while of now, we all know how fast it is going to come around.

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I have been thinking about opening up an Etsy store. I am pleased to announce that I am going to commence working on items to sell in the shop this coming weekend - yay!

I am aiming to start off incredibly small with approximately 5 items in the store and go from there. As if to spur me along, my horoscope from today said that I should channel my creative energy as there is money to be made from a hobby lol. I hope they are right!

When I say I need to think of ways that I can generate money, I am not only thinking of ways to get my hands on some cold, hard cash, but also of ways that I can either spend less money or obtain items of value so that I don't need to spend so much.

For a while now I have been a member of the Opinions Paid site, completing surveys in return for 'zoints' which can then be exchanged for vouchers in their shop. Although it takes a while to accumulate enough zoints for a voucher (you need roughly 2300 zoints), I have recently earned enough to obtain a $20 coles/myer voucher. It might not seem like much, but it is $20 of 'free' money and everyone loves 'free' money!

I am also planning on using my Simple Savings membership to look at ways to reduce our spending. This site is excellent as it brings together a community of like-minded individuals who share tips on ways in which money can be saved. We have already saved a bucket load of money by implementing some of the tips, but I think we could save even more!

Finally, I have been inspired by a recent post over at The Life and Times of an Ordinary Girl blog, to look at ways in which to generate income via my blog. While I was not overly keen to do this when I initially set up my blog, I am coming around a bit now - especially if it means I can stay home and spend more time with our son.

A new long-term project!

So what do you do when the project you've been working on for the past 8 months is finally finished? Well, you start something brand spanking new of course!

For a while now I have become increasingly frustrated at the price of fruit and vegetables. It really irks me that we, as consumers, seem to pay more and more for these products while the quality of them declines. I have been reading about the idea of self sufficiency for a while now, but lets face it - it takes dedication and determination to make a family fully self sufficient and I am not sure I have enough of either of those things at this point in time.

While self sufficiency seems out of my reach at the moment, it doesn't mean that I can't take small steps to work towards the goal. While I was holidaying in Murray Bridge over the Christmas period I read a book called 'Choosing Eden'. This book tells the story of a couple in their 50's who moved to outer New South Wales to begin a life of self sufficiency to ensure that their family would have a refuge in the event of a Peak Oil crisis.

I am not going to delve too much into Peak Oil here (because it's pretty scary stuff), but basically it is believed that at some point the World's oil resources will be depleted and as a result the 300,000 every day items that rely on oil to be produced, will either not be available or will cost too much for every day people to be able to afford, so life as we know it will change dramatically. I told you it was scary!

So, today our journey into small-scale self sufficiency begins with the setting up of a vegetable garden! Here is a picture of the plot I will be using to grow our vegetables - erk...it's horrible hey!

The soil around our house is TERRIBLE. In fact, you can't even call it 'soil' because it's not. It's clay. Copious amounts of clay. But that isn't going to deter me. See those two wooden boxes on the top level of the retaining wall? Well that's where we are going to do our vegetable planting.

The boxes were made by my dad out of reclaimed packing crates, so they were FREE (rather than the $60 each Bunnings were asking!). They are roughly 1 mtr in length and about 80 cms wide, which is just perfect for our family of two, soon to be three!

The next step in setting up the vegetable garden is to fill the crates with suitable material to grow the vegetables in and order the seeds. It took me quite a bit of reading to understand the best way to make a raised vegetable garden, so I am going to blog the process for you so that you too can join in the journey of small-scale self sufficiency! Stay tuned for more!

Project #12 - Nursery Curtains (Finished)

Have you SEEN the price of curtains these days? Simply put... the cost is absolutely LUDICROUS! I should have remembered this from the time I wanted to put roman blinds on three of our windows (all small) and it was going to cost around $450. Needless to say, I found a tutorial on the web and managed to make all three for under $50.

Anyway, a couple of weeks back I thought I should get onto making some curtains for the nursery (and probably the other two bedrooms too) so off I trundled to spotlight. I knew I wanted sail top curtains (the ones with the oversized eyelets) and I also knew that I wanted them to serve one main purpose - to block out some light.

I managed to find some that I liked for $99 that met both of the above criteria. To make things even more appealing I had a 'spend $100, save $40' voucher so I figured I might as well get them all and save a little bit of money too.

I picked up three packets (one for each room) and calculated that it would cost me around the $260 mark (and yes, I realise I could have asked two of my friends to go in with their voucher and buy a pack each to save more money).

Anyway, on my way to the register I was reading the package, when I realised that there was only ONE curtain in each pack! ONE curtain for $99 - RIDICULOUS! Not only that, but who in their right mind would only want to purchase half of a curtain set *sigh*.... back to the drawing board.

By then I had decided that $300 was the maximum I was willing to pay for all three sets of curtains and that I would keep my eyes open for curtains on sale. It didn't take long. In the very next Spotlight catalogue they had Magic Drape material reduced from $34.95 a metre to $24.95 a metre. I calculated that the 9 metres I needed would come to around the $225 mark, which was perfect! Sure, I had to make them myself but it was under half the price of the other curtains.

When I took the Magic Drape fabric to the counter the lady advised that there were a couple of dirty marks on the outside of the fabric which were likely caused during transportation, but that they should come out when rubbed over with a damp cloth. I had a look and sure enough it looked like they would come out easily, but why should I have to pay for the extra work that would take? I told her I would buy the fabric, but only if she could discount it further.

I was expecting her to discount the first metre (if anything at all), but she advised she would drop the price of the first 6 metres to $19.95 and then charge me the sale price of $24.95 for the remaining 3 metres. That resulted in the total cost being closer to $195 - a saving of $405 on what the other curtains would have cost me!

Anyway to cut a really long story short I sewed the nursery curtains this afternoon, ironed them and then hung them and this is how they turned out:

At the moment they are a little plain, but I am making a set of small bunting flags for this window too which I think will add a nice splash of colour to the window. We are also going to hang some sheer curtains as well to soften the light in the room. Hopefully it should be all done by the weekend!

Project #34 - Breast Pads (finished)

A couple of weeks ago I made some breast pads using a fat quarter I purchased at Spotlight and some bits of flanalette and micro fleece that I had lying around the house. The tutorial I used from the web was good, but I thought it could have been better so I decided to create my own!

You will need:

• Scraps of cotton material measuring at least 5 inches x 5 inches for the outer layer
  
• Scraps of absorbent materials (such as flanalette, micro fleece, old tshirts etc.) measuring at least 5 inches x 5 inches for the inner layer (the side that sits on the breast)
  
• Scraps of PUL material measuring at least 5 inches x 5 inches to sandwich between the inner and outer layer (this material is optional, but provides a waterproof layer which may be beneficial if you leak a lot)
  
• A piece of cardboard to make a template

Instructions:

1. To make the template you will need to find a circular object roughly 4 inches in diametre. Trace around the object onto the cardboard and cut it out. You will then need to cut a wedge out of the circle, which will essentially leave you with a 'pac-man' looking shape. I made my wedge angle approximately 35 degrees and this seemed to work well. Note: Unless you want to look like Madonna with pointy 'cone' boobs, you do NOT want your wedge points to meet in the centre of your circle. Instead, cut it slightly off centre as this will stop the pad from going into a point when you sew the wedge edges together later on. You should end up with a template that looks something like this:
   
   
2. Next you want to trace the template (ignoring the wedge) onto your material. To make a pair of breast pads, you will need two cotton pieces, four absorbent layers and two PUL layers (optional). The reason we are ignoring the wedge at this point, is that it makes it a little easier to sew if it is not precut:
   
   
3. Next, using only a single pin in the centre, secure the following together in the order stated: Layer 1 - One piece of the cotton material (this is the outer), Layer 2 - One piece of the (optional) PUL layer (place the shiny side towards Layers 3 and 4) and Layers 3 and 4 - Two pieces of your absorbent material. Using either a tight zig-zag stitch or the serger stitch on your sewing machine, sew around the outside of the circle (I am actually using my overlocker in the picture below as it was taken before I decided I like the finish my sewing machine provides more):
   
   
4. Next, place your template back over the sewn layers, mark where the wedge is to go and then cut it out:
   
   
5. Pin the two raw edges of your wedge together and using a wide but relatively tight zig zag stitch, sew together:
   
   
6. Trim off any excess from around the pad (being careful not to accidently snip the stitches) and cut off any loose threads. If you are using microfleece, you may noticed that the edges look a little bit rough around the outer of the circle. This roughness will disappear once you have washed the pads. Here is a picture of the finished pad. Repeat the process from step 3 onwards to make a pair:
   
   
7. Remember to use some creativity! Just because they are breast pads doesn't mean they have to be 'booooring'. Check out these ones I made below - just because I could! Do remember though that using bright materials may result in the pads showing through what you're wearing, so be careful.
   
   

Oooh fancy! lol.

If you have any questions regarding the tutorial please let me know!

Our Front Fence Building Continues!

On the weekend we started the building of the main part of our fence! This is quite a monumental achievement, which you would know if you read the previous post I wrote after we put the fence posts in.

The weather wasn't great on Saturday when we started, but the rain held off enough for us to get 6 of the 11 panels up. Matty's dad is going to come back this Saturday (weather permitting) to help put up the remaining 5 panels. Then it is simply a matter of cutting the excess off each post and doing a bit of touch up work with the stain, before oiling it.

Here is a picture of how the fence is looking at the moment:

Once the fence is up, we will then need to order in a truckload of pine bark, as the stuff that is there at the moment is looking a little worse for wear. I am also going to get a flashy address sign for the diagonal panel so that it is easy to see our house number and street.

We were going to do some more work on the fence yesterday, but we had to take a drive to Tatura (which is in the middle of nowhere) to pick up the chopper bike I got for Matty as a Christmas present:

I am fairly certain that if I hadn't put my foot down he would have slept out in the shed next to it last night. I guess I should just be thankful that he loves it so much!

Saving Challenge : Pram (Update #6) - Target Reached!

Today I made enough money for the pram through the selling of my PDA on ebay - Hooray!! To be honest, I actually ended up making quite a bit MORE than we actually needed:


I figure with the extra $100 or so I will also be able to buy a sheepskin liner too. We will be holding off buying the pram until after Christmas now, in case we are able to find it cheaper in the after Christmas sales.

One particularly good thing is that due to a combination of bad weather and having other things on, we didn't ever get around to having our garage sale. So now, when we do finally get around to having it, we will be able to put that money towards something else... like air conditioning. Oh sweet, sweet air conditioning.

Anyway, I just thought you would like to know that we finally made the target and so Darth will be cruising around in a super pimped-out pram once he or she arrives!

Project #34 - Breast Pads

A couple of weeks ago I found a cute fabric which was white with pale blue and pink stars on it. I thought it would be perfect for the outer of some breast pads since it won't show through my bra, but is still nice and feminine.

There are plenty of tutorials around on how to make breast pads, but the best one I found was on Easy to Entertain's web blog. I particularly liked this one as it has a slight contour which means that (in theory) it should sit on the breast better.

I struggled a bit with what materials to use for the absorbent layers as there seemed to be no hard and fast rule about what was the best. Some people used flannalette, others used old cut up t-shirts and some used worn out bunny rugs. After a while, I made the decision to use white flannalette and some microfleece that was left over from some other craft projects. So long as there is a couple of layers of absorbent material, I guess it doesn't really matter what you use.

Although I used a tutorial, when it came to sewing the pads together I tried a couple of different techniques to find one that suited best. I found that using the sewing machine (as opposed to the overlocker) to make the entire breast pad worked best. I put my machine on a wide, reasonably spaced, zig-zag stitch to sew up the bit to make the contour and then used the 'serger-like' stitch on my sewing machine to sew around the outside. Here is a picture of the finished breast pads:


I am calling these ones my 'round-the-house' breast pads as I plan to make some that have a PUL (waterproof) lining in them for going out. I must say that the pads are more comfortable than I was expecting. Matty and I were mucking around trying them on for size and I stuck one in my bra to show him how it worked. Later on, I spent 20 minutes looking for the missing breast pad before I realised I was still wearing it *sigh*. I guess that's a good thing though!

I estimate that they probably cost me under $2 to make the four sets and although the disposable ones aren't overly expensive, I do feel better knowing that I am being kinder to the environment.

What a find!

So those of you who know me well, know that I am trying to do my bit to save the environment. That means that as a household we are trying to use less paper and plastic products, recycle more and re-purpose items we own to avoid them going into landfill.

A while ago a friend suggested that I join our local Freecycles group as a way of getting rid of items that can't be re-purposed or sold. If you are unfamiliar with Freecycle, it is basically a network of like-minded people working together to give and receive things for free, in order to keep items out of landfill. There are active groups in most larger towns and you can find out if there is one near you by visiting the freecycles site. Once you join (for free) you can make posts for items that you want to get rid of, or items that you want to receive. People have given away horses (not that you would hope they would go into landfill!), jam jar lids, trees from their garden and all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

Yesterday on Freecycle there was a Peg Perego highchair on offer, so I sent an email to the lady to say that I was interested in taking it off her hands. As I was the first person to reply, she said it was mine!

We already have a highchair for use at our house, but I was looking for another one to store at the grandparent's house since we spend a lot of time there. As the highchair was free I had expected it would require some repairs, but I was pleasantly surprised. Here is a picture of it:



The only damage is to the seat cover near where the harness clips in, but it's barely visible:


So now I am feeling pretty happy that I not only saved us some more money (and the more we save the longer I can comfortably stay at home with our baby), but also rescued a perfectly functioning highchair from landfill!

Project #20 - Cot Valance (Update #1 - Finished)

If I ever, EVER, mention that I am attempting a project that requires gathering again remind me about this project, PLEASE! Between the cot valance and the maternity top, I have spent an estimated 10 hours with my quick-un-pick this week. In fact, I have spent so much time with it that I thought about giving it a name (isn't that sad).

I researched gathering techniques quite extensively before making a start on the cot valance and decided to go with a technique from an antiquated "Nursery Decor" book I picked up a few years back for $3.

Basically, the book advised that the easiest way to gather fabric was to take a piece of dental floss, set your machine to a wide zig-zag stitch and then zig-zag over the cord to trap it beneath the stitches (being careful not to pierce it). There is a tutorial on the Christine Sews website which shows how to gather fabric using this technique.

Once you have sewn the dental floss onto the fabric you wish to gather, you then pull the dental floss from both ends, pin the gathered material to the lining material at regular intervals, and join the two pieces together using a straight stitch. Sounds pretty easy hey? Well it wasn't.

The first problem I encountered was that the book stated to sew the dental floss 1 1/2 inches from the edge of the fabric. That possibly would have worked if your seam allowance was 1 1/4 inches, but I had allowed only for a 1/4 inch seam allowance. What this meant was, that when I sewed the fabrics together it didn't really look gathered - it look more 'tucked' (for want of a better word) as the fabric wasn't gathered enough where I was sewing. So I sewed around the valance pieces with dental floss again 1/2 an inch from the fabric edge. This worked a LOT better.

The second problem that I had was as a result of my own stupidity and the fact it was a 32 degree day. Not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES I sewed one end of the valance to the lining backwards! In the end I said a few choice words, cut the lining in half, turned it over and sewed the two pieces back together again. I figured no one would ever see that anyway since it sits between the cot base and the mattress (luckily I hadn't sewn on the sides yet!):


The third problem was a direct result of the first problem. I had sewn around the valance twice using the dental floss technique, so that meant I had two rows of stitches (a total of 26 metres) to unpick!

Anyway, I am pleased to report that I washed the valance this afternoon and it didn't fall apart! In fact, I am actually really pleased with how it turned out and glad that I didn't just throw in the towel and buy one:


All up this project cost me about $6, so let's say that is a minimum saving of $14! Maybe I will find another project that only requires a small amount of gathering so I can build up my skills in this area, as the technique actually looks quite effective when finished.

Here is a link to the other post on the cot valance:

• Project #20 - Cot Valance
  

Project #20 - Cot Valance

I have a lovely cot (actually a beautiful cot) set up for our baby, but there is a problem. With the mattress in the 'newborn' position you can see everything in the drawer underneath - yukky poo poo!


A cot valance would fix the problem and cover up the contents of the drawer, however I wanted a plain white one and could only find ones with animals or stripes retailing for over $60!

I managed to find a plain white one for sale online but it looked cheap and at $20 plus postage and handling, it was not a price I wanted to pay (especially since it was also second hand). So, of course, I had a great idea to make it myself - so that's exactly what I indend to do!

On the weekend I rumaged through my fabric stash and found a piece of medium-weight white material with a fine stripe through it - absolutely perfect for the drop of the valance. The problem came, though, looking for the material that would act as the lining (the bit that sits between the cot base and the mattress). There was nothing at all suitable in the fabric stash!

Off I went to Lincraft and had a look on the remnants table to see if there was something there. I was about to give up when I stumbled across a piece of terralene curtain material. A lot of the valances I had seen had used a similar mesh type fabric so that it was breathable, so I thought that this would suit perfectly.

Armed with the fabric, I am now ready to make a start on the valance. I am both excited and scared about tackling this project as it uses a new technique I have not attempted before - gathering! The last time I attempted to gather some fabric it was a disaster to say the very least. But these days I have more patience, so I am hoping that will be enough to get me through to the end of this project.

Here is a link to the other post on making the cot valance:

• Project #20 - Cot Valance (Update #1 - Finished)
  

Saving Challenge : Pram (Update #5)

Well after another unexpected windfall, our pram savings fund is almost to the required amount of $560!


Last night while we were out for dinner with my parents, my step-mum advised that she would like to donate $200 to the fund. My little peepers nearly fell out of my head!

With this generous donation we only have $42.99 left to raise. As it is going to be 33 degrees here this coming Saturday, I might hold off on the garage sale and instead list a couple of items on eBay to raise the remaining funds.

Wish me luck!

Project #31 - Maternity Top

Last weekend it was hot - stinking hot! Up until then I had found my maternity wardrobe to be lacking , but workable. In the heat however, I realised that I don't have enough skirts and I certainly don't have enough maternity tops or tshirts.

After having such success on the skirt refashion, I thought it was time for a new challenge - Sewing a maternity top using the shirring technique. Here is a picture of the top completed:


A while back I had attempted to shir a piece of material and failed miserably. After winding the shirring elastic onto the bobbin it would unravel when I put it into the machine, which meant that the elastic wasn't tight enough to shir. I tried 'googling' for solutions to this problem, but came up empty handed. It wasn't until I was talking to mum about it that we realised I had been using a generic bobbin and sure enough when I used a legitimate 'Singer' bobbin instead it seemed to work.

First I tried making a top using a tutorial which was quite clearly a dud. They insisted that you didn't need to tie the shirring elastic ends together to secure it and as a result, when I put the top on all of the shirring came undone *sigh*. This meant I spent 4.5 hours unpicking the millions of rows of shirring to start again.

I ended up using a great tutorial from Kuky Ideas and added a tie around the waist as I thought it would look cute (kind of like my baby bump was wrapped up like a parcel!).

All up the top took me around half an hour to make and only cost me about $6 to make. Given the same style of top retails for around $30 at Kmart, I'll have saved myself $24 - yay!. The top is super comfy and perfect to wear over jeans (when it's cooler) or over a skirt. Better yet, I should still be able to wear this top after the baby is born too. Here is a picture of me wearing the top:


The best part about this top, is that I should be able to wear it after the baby is born also!

Project #7 - Hooded Towels

A while back I decided that I wanted a hooded towel for our baby and was shocked to find that anything remotely cute would cost in excess of $35. I put the idea on the backburner for a while, until one day I was cleaning out the linen press and found two towels I thought would be suitable to re-engineer.

These towels were a wedding present and are of very good quality. One of the towels in the set, however, is white (the other is grey) so you can only use it once before it has to get washed. As a result, the towels don't get used too often.

First I cut the towels into 35 inch squares (right before Matty advised me that the grey towel is his favourite - whoops!) and then cut another piece for the hood. I chose these unisex fabrics to sew to the outside of the towel to 'funk' them up a little bit:


The hooded towel was easy enough to put together until I found a problem! When you hold the towel by the hood the weight of the towel pulls down and makes the bottom uneven. It looks shoddy:


But, I am not one to give up easily. After a bit of brainstorming I came up with a solution - to sew around some of the animals on the fabric as a way to secure the towel to the outter fabric. Problem solved:


I still need to make the grey towel into a hooded towel (with the cow print fabric), so will put together a tutorial on how to make these, as they are really easy and would be a super cute Christmas present. All up, these towels cost me about $18 to make - a minimum saving of $52 for the two!

Unfortunately it is still another 14 weeks until I have a baby to model it for you, but here is a picture of the hooded towel completed!


Click here to link to the tutorial

Our Front Fence is Being Built!

Something very exciting is happening at our house - our front fence is being built! While this might not seem like exciting stuff, it is a monumental event in our lives due to the amount of crap that we had to go through to get it to this stage.

The fence journey began in January of this year with submitting the permits to the local council. In true local council style, they kept sending the forms back saying that they were incomplete (despite us checking when we dropped them in that everything they needed was there).

Then the calls started where they would claim that we still owed them money and as such they could not issue the permits. After waiting on hold for 20 minutes each time, they would magically find that we had paid the money, apologise profusely and tell us the permits were on their way. By the time I got my fourth call from a council representative requesting money, I was losing my patience. None the less the permit was issued at the end of April.

By then it was too wet to even think about putting up the fence, so we had to wait patiently for the weather to improve. While the weather has been good for a couple of months now, dad had been waaaay to busy to come and help dig the fence posts with his fancy post hole digger.

Well yesterday the fence posts finally went in (they are a lot longer than the actual height of the fence so need to be sawed off, but that doesn't happen til later):


Luckily, I hadn't ordered any of the other materials for the fence as there was a slight hiccup with the plans. We had to alter the plans, which then changed the length of the wood that we required for the horizontal slats *phew*... that could have been a costly mistake if I had have ordered it all!

We decided we would build our fence ourselves to save ourselves a lot of money, so while I still think we are quite a way off having the fence up at least the foundations are there!

Project #24 - Maternity Skirt Refashion

Only after a couple of days of really hot weather, it became apparent that I am not going to have enough summer maternity clothes to get me through until February *sigh*. I had been looking around for some maternity skirts but was waiting for a sale as I refuse to pay $40 for a skirt I am only going to be wearing for a short time. A friend suggested I take a look at a blog she reads on Wardrobe Refashion.

Now, I am the first to admit that my sewing skills are definitely NOT in the 'advanced' or even the 'intermediate' category. They are probably somewhere in between the 'What is this sewing machine device you speak of?" category and the 'beginner' category, but I can sew straight lines which I guess is the important thing. And let's face it. No one ever learned a new skill by sitting around whinging about not being able to do it.

So on Saturday morning I got up early, went to the op shop and found myself a non-maternity skirt to 'refashion':


As the skirt was a size 18 and way, way, way too big, I started by unpicking the side seams so it could be taken in a couple of inches. After removing the zip, I unpicked the top band so that it could be replaced with a stretchy material, which is essentially what makes a skirt 'maternity wear'. I then cut off a couple of inches off both sides of the skirt (using a skirt that fits perfectly as a guide) and sewed it all back up.

As the tummy sits a bit lower during pregnancy, I cut a slightly rounded section out of the front of the skirt before attaching the stretchy top band. I was going to go to Lincraft and get some brown stretchy material to use for the band, but the main purposes of wardrobe refashion are to save money and to reduce the amount of landfill, so I decided to use a couple of scrap bits of black stretchy material I had left over from another project.

All up I think it took me around an hour to make, but I think I could do it quicker next time, now that I understand what is required. Here is a picture of the finished skirt:

All up I saved myself $33 - and learnt some very valuable skills in the process!

Saving Challenge : Pram (Update #4)

Our garage sale was scheduled for this weekend but since I have been sick all week *sigh*, it has been pushed back again (til the 14th of November).

Today though, something VERY exciting happened. We received an anonymous donation of $120 towards the pram fund:


Well maybe it wasn't 'anonymous', but it was definitely unexpected. My lovely mummy donated this substantial amount to the fund for fear that her grandchild would be without a fancy set of wheels.

This means that we are now well over half way there and only need a further $242.99! Go team us!

Saving Challenge : Pram (Update #3)

Another $16 raised successfully through eBay sales, which I am quite excited about. It pushes the savings total up to 35% of the amount that we need to buy the pram.


We were planning on holding the garage sale this weekend but due to a combination of bad weather and other events, we have had to reschedule temporarily so that Matty's dad can come up and finish off the wire around our deck instead.

I am a little torn with whether or not to list more stuff on ebay, given that there will be at least a minimum of 10 days until we can hold the garage sale. So long as we have the money raised by December I will be pretty happy and we look well on our way to getting there before then, so maybe I will hold off for now.

Here are the links to previous posts regarding the Saving Challenge for the pram:

• Saving Challenge : Pram (Update #2)
• Saving Challenge : Pram (Update #1)

Project #6 - Pebble Table Runner

A while back I decided that I wanted to buy a table runner for the pool table, as it has a nice wooden cover that sits over the top but it is a little bit dull. I found a spectacular looking table runner made out of pebbles at the local garden shop and was pleased to see that it had been marked as '50% off'! As I was admiring it, the sales lady approached and advised that it was on sale and had been reduced to only $150! I told her she was dreamin' and decided right then and there that I would just make one myself.

Here are the supplies I plan on using: gutter guard, a 10kg bag of pebbles (both from Bunnings), non-slip matting (from Clarke Rubber), felt (from my craft stash) and a glue gun (courtesy of mum). All up, I am estimating this will cost me between $20-$30 to make.

I am not really sure what I am doing, but my approach is going to be as follows (fingers crossed it works):

• Spray paint gutter guard black (it's currently brown).
  
• Glue gutter guard onto non-slip matting as I figure this will give the pebbles something to hold onto.
  
• Glue felt onto underside of non-slip matting (so that it can be pushed around the pool table easily if I need to move it).
• Hot glue gun pebbles onto gutter guard/non-slip matting.
  

Sound easy, hey!

I aimed to start this yesterday but didn't get very far as I was tired and grumpy! Matty kindly got a start on it for me and spray painted the gutter guard black and adhered it to my non slip matting. When I went out to the shed this morning, I found it squashed under numerous bits of wood and about 150kgs of weights... but boy was it straight and well adhered! Good job Matty!

Below is a sneak-peak of part of the table runner (currently unadhered):

I hope to start putting some of the pebbles on with glue tonight, but we will have to see how I go. These things take time and a lot of procrastination!

Here are the links to other posts on the pebble table runner:

• Project #6 - Pebble Table Runner (Update #2)
• Project #6 - Pebble Table Runner (Update #3)
• Project #6 - Pebble Table Runner (Update #4 - Finished)
  

Saving Challenge : Pram (Update #2)

A couple more items finished on eBay today and I am pleased to report that an additional $46.50 has been raised towards the Pram Savings Fund.

While I had hoped to be around 50% of the way through raising the funds by now, I must say that I am quite impressed that we have sold this much junk! Things that we didn't expect to sell have sold, and other things that we were expecting to sell have sold for more than we expected.

The next step is to organise a garage sale, which we are hoping to hold on the 24th of this month depending on the weather (which changes from minute to minute at the moment). In the mean time, I think I might relist some of the stuff on ebay and see if we can't squeeze some more funds from that. There are still a couple of auctions finishing tomorrow, but I'm not holding out much hope for those items selling.

Saving Challenge : Pram (Update #1)

Well yesterday I had a little bit of success on my ebay auctions. I managed to sell numerous pieces of fabric, some books, a plush talking Kenny doll and some Brita water cartridge filters that I bought by mistake a couple of years back. This has had a positive effect on the pram savings fund, but we still need more!

Unfortunately none of the 21 auctions ending on eBay this morning sold, so the next step in raising some funds is to organise a garage sale. I did take advantage of a 'no insertion fee' promotion that eBay had on to celebrate their 10th birthday so those auctions will be finishing later this week. Hopefully that yields some more sales!