Everyday Crafty Goodness

I’ve been more mindful about eating breakfast and bringing my lunch to work for the past month and I did really well.  The benefits of course are saving money, saving time, eating healthier, and not using disposable containers and utensils from the cafeteria.  Shoot, I even lost a few pounds just by eating my homemade meals!  Hmmm, could it be because I stopped eating all those sausage egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches from the cafeteria?

Besides baking a whole bunch of breakfast muffins, I also eat what’s pictured above.  It’s just a mixture of fast-cooking oatmeal and raisin bran and some other cereal that had dried blueberries.  The ratio is about half oatmeal and half cereal but you can do whatever you like.  I threw the ingredients in a plastic container with a splash of cinnamon and shook it until it’s mixed.  I don’t need to put any sugar in that because the raisins do a good job of sweetening up the oatmeal and the cereal adds a nutty flavor.  All I have to do is put some of that oatmeal mixture in a mug and add some hot water.  After a few minutes I thin it down with soymilk and I can practically drink it out of my mug.  It is very filling and much better than those pre-packaged oatmeals that are chuck full of sugar and god knows what else.  It really doesn’t get any easier than this.  I think walnuts and flax seeds would make good additions … ooh and chocolate chips!

I’m doing the Show and Sale at the studio next week.  I’ve done about a dozen of them over the years.  I started making soap dishes to go along with my soaps a few years ago and they sell like hot cakes (yay!!).  The soap dishes are being fired today but here are my soaps waiting to be wrapped and labeled.  These are cold processed soaps made with all natural ingredients and essential oils. 

Holy crap, was it cold this morning!  It was down in the teens overnight and windchill was down to 1 degree this morning as I was walking Molly.  I NEED to cover my face when it’s this windy and cold outside.  Ski masks will not do … they’re too bank robbery.  I need to come up with a good looking scarf-hat-face protection thing for the real cold days.  This pattern from Knitty is pretty fun but I might scare the kids waiting for their school bus in the morning.  I’m thinking more along the lines of a kitty ninja look. Oooh, I love a good crafty problem to solve.

It snowed last night and this morning everything turned into slush.

My pant legs are wet and they probably won’t dry until the end of the day.

Most people on my street don’t shovel their sidewalks.  I’m tempted to spray paint obscenities on their slushy sidewalks so at least they would try to shovel them out of sight.  There are no entrepreneurial kids going door to door and shoveling people’s sidewalks for a few bucks.  Don’t kids need money to buy Wii or pay back their parents  for texting these days?  I mind as well be the neighborhood sidewalk shoveler this winter and make some money for my alternative income fund.  What’s the going rate nowadays? 

Ugh, and I think my boots are leaking … sigh…