Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A New Freezer!

OK it has nothing to do with crafting but it is a big step towards eating better and saving money. I've been following the program at SparkPeople.com and have already lost 20 pounds. My problem is that even the so called diet foods are still loaded with a lot of sodium and other yucky stuff.

So I decided to cook from scratch in large batches to save time and energy. I very quickly filled up the freezer on the top of my fridge. I went shopping for a freezer that would be big enough for my needs but use the least amount of energy and not cost too much.

I'm planning my first "oven full" of cooking. It's going to depend on available items and what's on sale. I'm also planning to use up the extra room in the oven while the turkey is cooking to make some things to also freeze.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Cleaning Out the Craft Room

I wish I had taken before pictures but I'm not even done and it still looks pretty bad. LOL I spent all of Tuesday sorting out all the stuff I had. I found a ton of things I was going to make pillow covers out of and I guess I need to start cutting them out and sewing them together for my Deb Upcycles shop. I also found a lot of fabric and lace that I'm already listing on Deb's Crafts.

I have three bags of fabric scraps and other items to go to The Upcycle Exchange here in St Louis and another couple bags that need to go to Leftovers, which is a 30 minute drive but I try to get there on a regular basis. As well as all that, I have a bagful of stuff to go to the thrift shop across the street. I don't like to see anything go to waste.

I still have an outrageous amount of patterns that I need to list on Deb's Patterns but I am slowly whittling away the pile.

Busy, busy week.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Patterns, Patterns Everywhere

I made the plunge and decided to open up a new Etsy shop just for patterns. I had so many on the Debs Crafts site that they overwhelmed everything else and I wasn't able to sort them into sections. My new shop is called Debs Patterns (what else?) and I'm in the long slow process of transferring all the patterns from one shop to the other. On top of that I have bags full of patterns waiting to be listed!


I already have about 200 patterns there and have many, many more to list. I've enlisted the aid of my college kid to type up the descriptions. This really saves time as I'm a rather slow typist, at least compared to him. Kids these days grew up with computers and his fingers just fly across the keyboard.  (yes, he has cut his hair since that pic was taken)



On top of all that I need to start working on my Deb Upcycles shop, too. I have stuff to list and half made items. I'm hoping for some great sales for the gift bags but I need to get them finished and listed. Got to start getting ready for Christmas shopping.