Are You Ready For Some Footballs.....

Ok, first of all, I want to let everyone know that I am sorry I have not blogged in a while. I have been very busy with school and have been trying very hard to keep my GPA up so crafts have been put on hold.

Now you may think that I am going to talk about the sport of football, but this post has nothing to do with that(sorry, if you clicked on this to read a post about football). In fact, this post has more to do with plastic shopping bags than anything.

I know that many of us have started using re-usable shopping bags, but I also know there are still some out there that are not or some that still wind up using plastic bags due to not having enough re-usable bags. My husband and I had quite a few of these bags sitting around the kitchen and they were taking up way too much space. I friend sent me the idea of making the bags into footballs for easy storage so I thought I would share the pictures and steps with all of you!

Plastic Shopping Bag Footballs

1. First start out by laying the bag out as flat as you can. I found it easiest if you straighten the bottom out and then worry about flattening out the bag.

 



2. Fold the bag in half and then half again as shown in the pictures above. Remember to flatten the bag out as you go because any air in the bag at this step will just become an annoyance.

 



3. Fold in the left side corner and continue to fold the plastic bag like you would fold a paper football. You will end up with an opening at the top of the triangle with an inch or so of the handle still left untouched.

4. Fold the handles in so that they will fit into the opening at the top of the triangle. I fold my handles down into thirds and then fold in the corner(you will want to fold this corner on the same side as the slant of the triangle.) Then fold the handles into the opening and Ta-Dah you have a football!

This picture right here has 30 plastic bags folded up into the footballs. And to let you know how big that is compared to a normal shopping bag, I placed all these in a shopping bag for storage and still have more than half of the bag left!

Now that the bags don't take up space, they are not only easier to store, but are also a ton easier to throw in your bag for an extra trash bag in the car or anything like that. Also, it would make taking these bags back to the store to recycle a million times easier!

Yummy Banana Nut Muffins....

So last week, my husband came home and asked if I could make some muffins for some co-workers. Of course, me being so nice, I said I would and wound up making 3 dozen Banana Nut Muffins. Don't worry, though, I actually love to make these(just hate to clean up afterwards). So I thought I would share the recipe with all you and you can try them out for yourselves!





Don't those look yummy?



Yummy Banana Nut Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 beaten egg
• 1/2 milk
• 1/4 cup cooking oil
• 2 over-ripe bananas mashed
• 1/2 chopped nuts (I like walnuts for this recipe!)

Directions:

1. Line twelve muffin cups with paper bake cups. You can also grease the pan if you prefer, but I found that using the paper bake cups keep the banana nice and moist and keeps the muffins from completely drying out.
2. Mash the 2 over-ripe bananas in a bowl and set aside. The reason you will want to use the over-ripe bananas is that they tend to mash better and also tend to have more flavor than bananas that you just picked up at the store today.
3. In a medium bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in center of flour mixture.
4. Add beaten egg, mashed bananas and cooking oil to the flour mixture. Stir the batter until it has a few lumps left, but everything is mixed together.
5. Add the walnuts. I like to take the chopped walnuts that I buy and run them crunch them up with my fingers(which of course I wash right before this) so that there are not huge chunks of nuts in some and no nuts in other muffins.
6. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each two-thirds full (if you have extra batter, spoon it in, don't waste. Just make sure all the muffins are even if that bothers you when they aren't). Bake in a 400 degree oven for 18-20 minutes or until golden and a wooden tooth-pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool muffins outside of the muffin pan for about 5 minutes.
7. These are best served warm so get them to your family! They are good for a couple of days though, so don't worry! If you want to make them in advance, go right ahead!

Hope you all enjoy these as much as my husband's co-workers did!

No Sew, No Problem.....

So after a great friend had passed on this pattern for a no-sew fleece hat, I knew I had to try it out. I know that I will not have any use for this here in Bahrain, but thought it would be a good time to practice while I have some extra fleece laying around. So here is the finished product and the steps that went into making it:



Here is the finished product...A cute little pom-pom fleece hat!



Materials Needed:

• Fleece
• Good Scissors

How to Make the Hat:

1. Cut a piece of fleece that measures roughly 14 inches(or longer if you wish)high with a length that equals the circumference of the recipient's head plus 2 inches for the fringe and another 1-2 inches for comfort factor. The knots will make this a little more snug after they are all tied so you want to make sure you have quite a bit of extra room.
2. I used a rotary cutter and mat for my project, but you could definitely do this next step with just scissors. I layed the fleece fabric flat on the mat and used a straight edge(in the form of a rotary cutter ruler) to measure the strip cuts(which are 3 inches deep)every 3/4 of an inch. You can definitely eyeball these cuts, but make sure that your cuts are the same size on both sides of the fabric as they will not line up correctly if they are off.
3. Bring the two sides together with the outside of the fabric on the outside(or on the inside if you would rather the ties go inside the hat instead of out) and tie the strips(that you cut in step 2)to eachother.
4. Fold the bottom of the hat up twice to make the brim of the hat. Note: I had a little problem with mine staying up all the way so you might want to use a safety pin to hold these folds in place while you are finishing up the hat.
5. Decide on the height you would like the hat to be and gather the fabric tightly using a ribbon(or a hairtie if you would like to keep the fabric al bunched up while you finish the hat all up). I found it was best to put the hat on at this step and look in a mirror to see where the hat actually hit my head correctly so that I would not have a huge amount of pom-pom on top and no ties showing.
6. Undo any of the knots that fall above this bunched line. I kept the one directly above the bunching there just to help mark the spot. You will want to cut all the extra fringe off of the ties that you untied at this point as you do not want some extremely extra long pom-pom strips.
7. Make vertical cuts in the bunched fabric at the top of the hat. These do not have to be even at all, just eyeball it. These cuts will create the pom-pom effect that you can see in the above picture.Trim any of these that may be too long, again, just because you don't want any abnormally long strips hanging out.
8. And voila, you are done. You may want to tie a bow out of ribbon or an extra thing piece of fleece where you bunched the fabric just to finish it off.

Below you will see the pictures I took of some of the steps as I was making this hat last night.....

This is the cutting stage of Step 2!

This is the end of Step 2! See how all the strips are cut?

This is after the tying of the knots...

And this is after using a hairtie to bunch the fabric at the top!


Of course, if you want to see the finished product again, all you have to do is scroll to the top of this post and look at the main picture right there! I hope that this post will inspire some of you to make your own version of this hat!