Recycled dusting mitt

ARE THESE COOL or WHAT?!?
I love them and am going to make some :). I think my kids will really want to dust with these - especially if it's made from one of their old shirts or something :)
They look super quick and easy to make - There is a great tutorial here:
http://wewilsons.blogspot.com/2009/03/spring-cleaning-dust-mitt-tutorial.html

Fabric Birthday Banner

I have finished one and a half birthday banners!!!! This is something I have wanted to make for years and recently my sister inspired me to JUST DO IT!! This first one I made is very girly and for my daughter . . . and I suppose I could hang it up on my birthday too. The second one I made is more gender neutral with blue, red, green and yellow print fabrics :) I will share pictures when I'm finished with it :).
This first one is a little bigger than I had expected. Each flag is 10" across the top and then the top to the bottom point is 13". You never know until you get all the flags together just how big it will be - I made the second one a tad bit smaller (7"X10").
The process was quite simple if you want to make one. I cut out 32 flags/triangles - 16 for the front and 16 for the back. They were 10" across the top and 13" deep. I appliqued letters onto the front using heat and bond and the directions are on the package or you can find wonderful tutorials online. Then I stitched the flags wrong sides together, pinked the edges with my pinking shears, made a button hole in each corner and tied the flags together with ribbon through the button holes. The two ends have longer strands of ribbon for hanging. There are SO MANY ways you could make these. This just happened to be the way that worked well for me :).

Persimmons

I had never heard of persimmons until I moved to California in 1999. Not until this year can I say that I actually like them. I tried them baked in a cookie once. Wasn't a fan. They were turned down at every chance after that. A friend of mine told me that they were delicious dried. She said they were like a peice of candy. That sparked my interest. I love dried fruit and I love candy. Last Thursday one of the Cello teachers gave me seven persimmons. (The variety not used for cooking) They were pretty good. So today I got around to drying some :). I won't lie. They don't taste like candy when dried. But they are pretty darn good. I'm glad I tried them again. Now I'm looking to ease the burden of an overloaded persimmon tree.
Here are my efforts:

Stacking Bowls

I swiped these from my Dad's house during a visit a while back. He had just finished a ceramic making frenzy and dared show me his wares. I took the liberty of staking my claim on a few - or rather a stack. They add a touch of decor yet are super functional.

If Disaster Strikes!

No one is safe from a natural disaster! In fact most of us live in an area that is prone to one type or another. ARE YOU PREPARED if a disaster were to strike?!?
A few years ago I assembled a basic 72 hour emergency preparedness kit. This kit holds the essentials that my family would need to survive for three days. If we had to evacuate our home quickly we would grab this and go. Inside are things such as a change of clothes, food, water and basic first aid supplies. Ideally you should take out your kit every six months or so and update the food and clothing sizes and anything else that needs to be swapped out.

Well this was the weekend I had set aside for this little project. We pulled out the dusty old duffle bags from the garage and pulled out all the old clothes and things that have been crammed in them for so long. I sorted everything out in piles of what still fits and what needs to be replaced, took out the old food (if you rotate this often enough you can eat it over the weekend and not have to throw it out for it going stale). Then I made lists of what food items need to be purchased, what items the kids needed and we went shopping for it all.
It takes a bit of work but when it's all finshed, packed up tight and put back in the garage in an "easy to grab" spot, IT FEELS SO GOOD!!! I always hope I'll never have to actually use the kit but it is security knowing it is there!


A few tips and things I learned this time around. Dry soups and dried fruit and jerky are much lighter than canned! We have been weighing our packs down with canned stuff - NO MORE!
We were given a large plastic garbage barrel on wheels from a family member and this makes a nice place to pack a lot of stuff. It will easily fit into the back of the van or if we had to walk with it somewhere (oh please I hope this never happens) we could wheel it.
Thrift stores are great places to find warm coats and things for the kids that hopefully they won't ever have to use. I don't like packing away their nice stuff.
I was thinking this weekend that while the whole topic of disaster and preparedness is on the brain it would be a good time to go over evacuation plans with the kids if ever there was a fire etc..
So I'm wondering. . . do you have a family plan in case of emergency? What do you have in place in case of emergency?