How to Get Crayon out of a Full Load of Clothes...

 Yup, this happened yesterday...

 

I heard, *thupumk, thumpumk* coming from a load of mostly t-shirts and thought... there is nothing in there that should be making that sound!

I opened the dryer door and found all of this...  As it was, we were playing with Mr. A on Sunday and would stick a green crayon in his church pants while he wasn't looking and then he would look for it, then would get all excited when he found it!  I guess we didn't get out the last time...

And I know what you're thinking, *thupumk, thupumk* doesn't come from a crayon... nope, but it doesn't.  That sound came from a now crayon covered rock from Mr. C's pants, all the way from Utah!

 Yup, they got all the way through the wash and about half-way through the dryer cycle.  On a HUGE load of shirts! AAAAHHHHH!!!!

The culprits...

So I did what any self respecting Mommy would do and took a picture.  Then cried, just a little, and then naturally, took to the internet!

There are lots of suggestions online to get crayon out of clothes, but most of them involved ingredients I didn't have or ingredients I didn't want to worry about getting out later (aka. WD-40, It may get the crayon out, but it stinks and I really didn't want to have to get WD-40 out of the clothes later)

The simplest and easiest I found involved just three things that everyone has!

Laundry soap (normal amount)
2-3 Tablespoons Dish soap
1/2 c. Vinegar

Yup, that it!

 First, fill up your washer with the hotest water yur clothes can handle!  Since we live in AZ and the water out of the tap can burn you (yes, I know you can turn down the temp on the water heater, and honestly ours is already really low, but it's Arizona!)  If you need to, boil water on the stove in your biggest pots and pour it in, the hotter the better!

Then put a couple of tablespoons of dish soap (Blue Dawn probably is best, it's the miracle soap, right?!  But I only had yellow Ajax brand, it still worked fine!)  and half a cup of vinegar (don't worry the smell is not a problem!) and your regular amount of laundry soap.

Fill up the washer and then I make sure everything is submerged in the water (I used a wooden spoon) then pause the cycle so it can soak 15-30 min.

When it's done check each item over for crayon, if it passes toss it in the to-dry pile, if not, repeat!

Now, let that sit for a minute while we talk about the dryer...

When I discovered the Crayon, I had a giant load of sheets in the washer... Trying to catch of up from nearly 2 months of crazyness!

so now I have a load of wet things and a green dryer... ARGH!

Back to the good 'ol Internet!  This time I opted for WD-40!  Did you know that WD-40 was originally designed as a cleaner?  Well it works!

I know it's hard to see, but there is a definite green tint to the entire inside of the dryer...

Cue the WD-40, a green scrubby, a cute hubby, and lots of elbow grease!

Whew!  Green Gone!

 Basically he just sprayed the WD-40 then scrubbed, sprayed, scrubbed, and occasionally wipped the excess (and the green) off with an old sock-rag.

When he was all done we wipped it down with soapy water, then plain water to help get the WD-40 out of the dryer.

This is the same shirt beore and after the soak/wash.  This particular shirt and about 4 of the 45 (Told you it was a huge load) shirts that had crayon on them still have some green, the rest came completely clean!  I kept pulling them out and being stunned it worked so well!

It seems that there is a correlation between fiber type and how well it came out.  The more stretchy the material the harder time it had.

Whew!  So glad that's done with!  now to catch up on the drying of two large loads since the dryer is now white again!  Good luck!  I hope you have as much luck as me if you ever encounter this problem!

I'm Back!!!

Wowsa! Our Summer has been some seriously CrAzY busy!  We spent 5 weeks out of town while my husband was gone for 3 weeks doing an out-of-state class for school!  While we were there my brother came home from his 2 year mission for our church, another brother came back from his out-of-state summer internship, not to mention lots of catching up with family and friends!  Oh yeah, and the day after we got back in town we had a couple of our nieces over for a few days until the rest of their family got into town... for our third wedding this summer!  Of course I did the flowers for this wedding too!

So moral of the story, I have done lots of great projects that you will see very soon!  I haven't forgotten about you!

Wedding Flowers - Pink and Beautiful!

Wahoo!!!!  I feel like doing a little dance!  I've done four weddings (flowers) to date and this one was by the far the BIGGEST I've done yet!  There was the standard brides bouquet, bridesmaid bouquets, boutonnieres, and corsages, but there were also twenty centerpieces, a garland for the head table, and a couple random flowers here and there!  More than I've done before for sure!  So let me show you what I did!

Head table!  We ended up with oodles & oodles of greenery, especially lemon leaf, so we decided to make a garland out of lemon leaf for the head table (tutorial to come!)

A few roses and babies breath to tie it all together!

Full head table!

These centerpieces are gorgeous and so simple!  The bowl is a fishbowl spray painted gold with five hydrangeas bundled together and a couple of lemon lemon leaves! (Tutorial HERE!)

The hardest part, but probably the most beautiful were these centerpieces!

They are full of hydrangeas, roses, carnations, babies breath, lemon leaf, Israeli ruscus, and probably something I'm forgetting!

Each vases is 24inches tall.  I put clear rocks in the bottom of each and then filled them with water to balance out the centerpieces!

Each centerpiece is glued (hot glue) to the top to help it not be so tippy!  And guess what???!  Not a single vase tipped over all night!  Wahoo!!! That was my biggest fear!  I stressed and had nightmares about that for weeks!

and of course the bridal bouquet and bridesmaids bouquets.  The bridal bouquet was hydrangeas, peonies, roses, babies breath, lemon leaf and ruscus!  The bridesmaids were just hydrangeas and roses.

There were also boutonnieres and corsages out of spray roses and lemon leaf, but I can't find my pictures of these right now.

I will do some tutorials on most of these later, but right now I just want to enjoy how awesome they turned out!  

Congrats K & T!!!!

Summer of Weddings!

This summer is CRAZY busy!  My most current project is for a wedding coming up for my husband's cousin, and I'm doing her flowers!  Here's a quick sneak-peak of the flowers, with more to come when they're all done!  I'm so nervous and so excited!!!

Yup, that's a LOT of flowers!  There are 12 buckets and three totes!  Yikes!  Can't wait to see how it all comes together!

While you're gone - Home-time Clock

My husband is going to be gone for several weeks this summer to take a class for his PhD in physics (yup, he's my smarty-pants!).  He will be staying in a teeny-tiny room with blah cinderblock walls.  As such I wanted to send him a few surprises to brighten up his stay!

He will only get a suitcase, as he is flying, so anything I send must be small and light.

Since he will be in  a different time-zone I thought it would be cool to have a clock that can remind him what time it is for us so he can know the best times to Skype in and say good-night (or good morning, no 4am wake-up calls please)

So here's what I did,

I bought this $3 clock at walmart

Using a little tape as leverage/to get a grip on the clear cover, I pulled off the clear face cover.

Then I pulled gently pulled the hands off the clock and laid them out in order.  I did NOT want to forget the order they should go back on in!

Then I pulled the face off the plastic casing and was pleased to find it was just a plastic sheet.  I laid it over a picture of out family and traced it.  Don't forget the center dot!

I cut it out and punched the center hole.  Well, technically I ended up having to use an exacto knife to cut it, but you get the picture.

When selecting your picture and figuring out the placement, keep in mind that the hands will completely cover one point in the middle so print it super small (ideally probably around wallet size, I had to go with a 4x6 that I zoomed out as much as possible to make us as small as possible) and consider something a little off centered or at least without something in the middle.

Then I used the old clock face to write the four main numbers on the plastic casing.  I wrote them backwards on the inside with a fine tip permanent marker.  I did this so they would appear forwards from the outside and also so the numbers wouldn't rub off.  you could do all twelve or none at all, I just felt like the usability of the clock for us would be increased if it had some numbers. 

Then, put the new face (your picture) back in.  I used a titch of glue stick to help the picture stay put.  Then put the hands back in, following the order you took them out.  Finally put the clear cover back on and voila!  All done!

Now this clock can be used for our purpose of keeping our home time while away, or just as a personalized clock for just about anywhere!  At home, the office, school, on a trip, dorm room, you name it!  Show me your creations!

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Downeast Shirt Hack

I love this shirt form Downeast Basics!

You can find it HERE

eek!  or not, I guess that was the spring collection and it's gone...

Anyway, I loved it, but couldn't bring myself to buy it!  So being who I am, I decided to try my best to make my own!

I started with an old, boring, navy blue t-shirt

And a small, navy blue and white floral print from the fabric store

I traced (like, laid the fabric on top of the shirt and marked with a pencil) the front and back, added 2 inches up from the line I drew and cut two of each!

I also cut some strips for the side detail.

Then I cut off the original neckline and opened the shoulder seems (trimmed off the seam allowance)

Then just pin and sew!

Then match the second of each piece and sew and serge along the not-shirt-side.

Originally my corners were square, then I decided to round them instead, more like the original!

Mr. A snagged my phone and took some artistic pics while I was sewing!

Say 'Cheese!' Mom!

Serge and trim corners and such!

The next part I mega fudged, but it worked!  Just pin it like you want it to look and fiddle around with the layers until it looks right!

Stitch and serge everything off!

Next, I snipped the side-seam and did essentially the same thing.  Just sewed on one strip to each side.

Sew, serge, then attach another strip, right-sides together.

Then, same thing, just pin everything in place where you want it and stitch across the top of the strips and serge!

Then I hand-stitched everything down so it doesn't dry funny or stick out without my knowledge!

Lastly, add some buttons (and button holes if wanted/needed/if you can) (my button-holer was not happy when I did this!).  I simply pinned everything where I wanted it and then sewed the buttons on to hold everything down.  Ideally you would do button holes to give you enough neck to get in and out of the shirt (the flower-fabric doesn't stretch) but my hole was big enough and I couldn't get my machine to do button holes that day.

Show me your creations!  What's your favorite clothing hack or upcycle??