I’m re-decorating my bedroom and hung some new curtains. But looking at the price of curtain rods - I just don’t get it when you can by a pipe and paint it! Here is my solution to curtain rods in my room at a fraction of the cost of “real” curtain rods.
You can find some pretty interesting curtain rods at hardware stores, department stores and specialty stores. But if you don’t require super interesting and super fancy curtain rods, consider purchasing a metal pipe from your local hardware store. You can leave it as is or paint it – I suggest Krylon spray paint.
Here are some curtain rods at a local hardware store for $16 – $24. You can pay $50 and up at department stores.
And here is some half inch by 10′ conduit for $2.17 each at a hardware store (1 inch w
as $4 each). I bought the half inch as I didn’t have a very wide window to cover. Purchase wider ones for wider openings. (Well actually I didn’t buy it, I found two leaning in the corner of my garage and used them. Don’t know where they came from. But I shot these photos at the store to show you what they looked like and where to get them)
Here are some nice finials for $12per package at the hardware store. The same goes for finials – there is another way!
I spray painted the pipe a black satin finish. Put the curtains on and hung the rods on small hooks at each end.
They needed a finial and I found the perfect ones when I was decorating my Christmas tree! Lightweight Styrofoam balls! My new decor has silver and black and these balls were perfect.
I pulled the hanger out of the foam and cut the hole out a little more. I filled it with 
glue and stuck it onto the end of the pipe. Now this glittery look actually went with my new look. But there are a multitude of things you could use for the end of your curtain rods. Get some Styrofoam balls at the craft store and paint them a solid matching color. Try a tennis ball in a kids sports themed room. Be conservative or get crazy.
Next time: Salvaged rusty outdoor iron tables for use as bedside tables.
December 18th – National Regift Day
(Observed the Thursday before Christmas) In the tradition of Recycle-Reduce-Reuse – think about Regift!
In honor of holiday office parties and the “unique” gifts exchanged at them, the creators of Regiftable.com have declared the Thursday before Christmas to be National Regifting Day.
This is right up the Tukal Hut alley – this site offers suggestions like skipping the “gift exchange” type parties and throw a “re-gift” exchange party. We all receive things or have things that weren’t quite right for us. Why clutter your house and keep it, regift it!
Studies show that regifting is gaining popularity. Though you have to be careful – make sure the re-giftee doesn’t re-gift to your original re-gifter. (I saw a post with this scenario described!)
When I was in Junior High, we read JR Tolkiens book “The Hobbit.” I learned then that Hobbits had a tradition of giving “manthems.” Manthems were items they owned that they didn’t need or want and they would regift them – that gift is called a manthem. And they are absolutely given because the gifter knows the recipient will love the item. This is very important – don’t regift just to get rid of something! Since then I have been comfortable with regifting if I had something I thought someone else would love to have.
View the excellent Regift Guidelines here on the Regiftable site. This site also has some fun regifting stories others have posted. Visit eHow.com for some other regifting tips.
The Real Deal is a group that makes hats, totes, purses bags and backpacks from recycled tarps of Brazilian cargo trucks in an effort to cut down on the wasting of resources. Cool idea, nice backpack too!
Kids love drawstring bags – I make them for my nephews – they hold their Gameboys, marbles, crayons and other treasures in them. They are always nice for traveling to hold your jewelry or toiletries. I just made several of them for Christmas gifts. Quick and easy – the sky is the limit on your creativity – fabrics, cord, added accessories….
How to “upscale” an inexpensive stocking stuffer
I found these $8 silver plated ornaments at Hobby Lobby for half off ($4 each). The box they were in had the price printed right on it and I tried to use an Exacto blade to slice neatly around the price – but it looked tacky.
The ornaments were pretty but the packaging brought the perceived value down – right down to the $4 I paid for them.
Especially when you opened them up and had to deal with the plastic, twist-ties and cardboard after ripping the box trying to get them open. So to turn them in to an elegant, keepsake ornament – I made pretty drawstring bags for each of them.
For fabric I checked out my favorite local charity resale shop. This is where I donate stuff and also always find something great for an awesome price. I often look for linens and clothing made of natural fabric to use for “repurposing.” I found a very nice 100% wool red skirt for $3. Perfect!
Step 1: Turn inside out and cut off the waist band and cut or undo one vertical seam to open the skirt into one flat piece of fabric. This one had a lining and I removed that too. Save any good buttons for another
project!
I thought about using the lining in the bags, but this was hemmed with a nice bias tape so I decided to not line it and just use the hem as the top of my bag.
Step 2: Cut a piece of heavy paper into the size you want – here I have it large enough for the ornament to fit. I won’t be using any huge seam allowances – wool won’t fray and is a heavy fabric. (and it won’t get a lot of wear and tear of course)
Line the card up with the hem and trace around the card with a marker or chalk until you make all the squares you need. (2 squares per bag)I needed 4 bags so I needed 8 squares – I had enough hem line to make enough for 5 bags – yea, one for me!
Step 3: Take 2 squares and place them right sides facing each other.
The bias tape will be on the inside of the bag - It wasn’t all perfect enough to be on the outside – but it could have been and also because this wool looks the same on both sides.
Step 4: Start your straight stitch between the top of the hem and bias tape. (I should mention, if you don’t have a pre-hemmed piece of fabric, cut longer squares, fold and sew to create a hole for the drawstrings to pull through.)
You can see by the detail photo, my seam allowance is small and I am using the outside of the presser foot for a guide.
Sew around the bag – you can make perfect square corners or rounded, which ever you prefer.
Step 5: Trim up any threads and uneven edges, clip the bottom corners and turn the bag inside out – using your fingers or a chopstick to get the corners popped out nice.
Step 6: Pick your drawstrings and thread through bag. Drawstring bags will work with only one string treaded through, but it is much nicer to take the extra effort to make a double drawstring bag.
Cut 2 for each bag, whatever length you want. Here, they are cut almost double the width of my bag.
Thread each ribbon through opposite sides.
(The bag should be turned inside out now, but I still have them right sides together just for ease of seeing how the ribbon is threaded through.) If you make a lot of bags or things that need elastic to thread through – this flexible plastic “needle” is a nifty tool. Or else attach a large safety pin to the end of the ribbon and push the pin through the holes to thread the ribbon through.
Step 7: Tie knots at the end of the ribbon and you’re done.
I think I more than tripled the value of the gift – long walk, part of gift! Now they have something to store the ornaments in where they won’t get scratched.
What are you going to put in your drawstring bags?
Have fun,
love,
Jules
When I get the creative urge, I will attempt some handmade gifts. I made tiny little books for every family member one year, with a story of how one of our family traditions began. The tradition is eating toasted Panettone Christmas morning with hot cocoa and opening our stocking stuffers.
Panettone is that Italian “cake” that you see during the holiday, often in a shiny red box (that’s the one we like, by Perugina).
I wrote the story, typed it out and printed it out and constructed a little book and glued on a shiny red cover. I looped a little gold string through it and tied it to a box of Panettone for everyone (by then we were all living apart).
I’ll add a “how-to” on little books soon. Now I’m a little better at it than I was those many years ago. But another good idea would be to type your story in Word or whatever program you use. Type it in a column that is only 3″ or so wide – make the font small enough to fit in that column so that it fits the length of a regular size sheet of paper you can print out.
Trim, roll and tie with a ribbon. What a nice surprise for a gift or to tie to a gift!
• If you aren’t a writer, just pretend you are writing a letter and write your thoughts about your happiest holiday memory.
• Or fill it with funny memories of “Do you remember when….!”
• Let everyone know why you love them.
• Give them your favorite recipes.
The thing about these is that you can make one or a dozen different ones. Have fun with it!
Here is my story of how our favorite tradition began:
(written through my dads eyes…)
______________________
Our Story of the Panettone
by Julie Howell
ONCE UPON A TIME, in a land far away, I was a young man with the world on a string, money in my pocket, a wife and three beautiful children. Our first Christmas living in Africa was sure to be a new experience. We wouldn’t have our friends and relatives or old comfortable traditions.We settled for a silver foil Christmas tree with a floodlight that projected red, yellow, blue, green, red, yellow, blue, green. Complete with sound effects … errrr … errrr … errrr … errrr. I promised myself I would toss that silver tree whenever we returned to the states.
On Christmas morning, we were interrupted by a knock at the door. Gabriel Pollera, an Italian contractor that worked for me, strode in.
“I have for you a special cake!” he beamed, holding a shiny red box in the air. “This Italian cake is only made at Christmas time. Is wonderful toasted for breakfast or for a desert!” he explained.
He told us how it was his family’s tradition every year. It made them feel connected to home and family, though they were far away. With a final “Buno Natale,” he was gone.
Cake for breakfast? Hidden in a shiny red box, topped with a red ribbon handle and the word Panettone beautifully printed on the outside, we found the strangest looking cake. More like a giant muffin with paper wrapped around the edges. Where do you start? How do you slice it? We finally just sliced from the top down through the paper and toasted it in the oven. Then we all enjoyed it around the breakfast table with our hot cocoa and stocking stuffer’s.
What a delightful taste! More like bread than cake. Pale yellow in color, light and airy with a bit of raisins and candied oranges and lemons. With a luscious aroma it’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before. What a wonderful surprise it was.
The next Christmas, while still overseas, we bought our own shiny red box and saved it for Christmas morning. Oh, the anticipation of waiting for it to toast and spread it liberally with butter! Somehow it happened that we couldn’t open our stocking stuffer’s without our cocoa and cake. Oh, how the taste brought back memories. We remembered how funny the silver tree was at first. Now it almost seemed normal. Almost. I am still going to toss it, I reminded myself.
It’s now many years later. The kids have lives of their own. Not one year has gone by that one of us hasn’t shown up Christmas morning with that familiar shiny red box. We still wait for it to be toasted before opening stocking stuffer’s. Sometimes I laugh at how the kids insisted on having their silver foil tree up after we moved back to the states. To them, that was their tradition. Oh, we haven’t always been able to spend the holidays together. But knowing that we are all toasting the Panettone and drinking hot cocoa, brings up together in some strange way.
Hidden in the recesses of my memories, rests a time when we were without our family and traditions. We leaned on a borrowed tradition and it became our own. Toast the Panettone this Christmas morning . . . and we’ll all be together.
