I started saving bacon fat so that once I get enough I can use it for cooking. Lil thought I was making a candle the first time I poured some into a jar and ever since has been hounding me to make one. Today was the day.

The steps to make a bacon fat candle are quite simple, find yourself a jar, wick, and bacon fat, pour melted bacon fat into the jar while holding the wick still, hold the wick in place so that when the bacon fat cools it is positioned in the middle of the jar.

You will need:
E6000 Adhesive
Decorative hearts - Dollar Tree is where I found mine.
Glass jar (Yankee Candle jars work well. I save these once the candle is gone, wash them out, and then use them for things like this.)

This is simple to do, but an adult should apply the adhesive to the jar and if a child is placing the hearts make sure that little fingers do not get covered in E6000. We did about a half of the jar at a time; I would apply a row of adhesive, my seven-year-old would place the hearts, and then we would move on to the next row. I let the jar rest on its side for about thirty minutes and then we worked on the second part of the jar; once it was covered with the hearts I let it cure for at least another hour until we set it upright. 

As you can see from the photos below our candle holder puts off a nice glow when it is lit up. This is a super simple project you can do with your children and can be done with any type of clear decorations. 

Once the Christmas decorations come down I feel like my house loses something. The cheer and warmth that emanate from the tree, the lights, and the garland seems to disappear once they have been packed away for the season, so I decided (for the first time) to decorate for Valentine's Day and warm the place up again. 

I went to the Dollar Tree and bought these sparkly hearts on sticks to decorate my winter wreath (above), since the sticks were meant to be used in a floral display I just broke them in half and easily stuck them into the wreath. I also hit up Amazon for couple of items, the Love pennant and the hearts on a string (below). I did have to string the hearts onto the cord, but it did not take much time and for the 

The hearts in the above photo are glittery, foam hearts that I bought at Dollar Tree, I punched a hole on each side and then used a long piece of ribbon to string them. My seven year old put this together for me and enjoyed putting them in a pattern.

The above pennant banner is my favorite, I cannot take the credit and if you are interested in using this in your home you can print it HERE. I would not recommend letting a little kid string these on the ribbon because you need to obviously move the pennants quite a bit.

Instead of hanging a wreath on each of the doors we cut out hearts from red card stock, punched two holes in each, and strung them on a red ribbon. The garland hung nicely from each door and I think it makes things just a little more welcoming and warm. 

All of the little crafts that we did are easy for little kids to do with some help. Stringing the hearts on ribbon is a good fine motor skill for them, just make sure to help when the hearts need to be moved on the ribbon. I had to move them slowly so that they would not tear.

Above are all of the materials that I purchased at Dollar Tree, I spent just over $10 on the items we needed. You will also need a hot glue gun.

Posted in the above photos are the steps to making the Santa hat. The first step is cutting the triangle with a rounded bottom edge out of felt. You will then put a line of hot glue on one of the side edges and fold the other over so that it is shaped like a cone, hold until cooled. You can keep it like this for an elf hat or fold it over like I did, just put a dot of hot glue midway on the seam of the hat and fold over, hold until the glue has cooled.

Put a dot of hot glue on the top of the hat and add a white pom pom, pull a bit of the beard ‘fluff’ and attach the the bottom of the hat with hot glue, just be careful on this part if your child is helping since the fluff will seep through the glue if you are not careful and burn a little finger. You can then put a circle of hot glue on the top of the ornament, over the spot where the hanger goes and attach the hat. Make a slit in the hat by the hanger and you can easily put an ornament hanger on. Add black foam eyes with a dot of hot glue, we used a hole puncher to cut them out, or you can have the kids draw them on.

I completely forgot to take photos of the unicorns while we were making them, but I will explain the steps and using the photos of the completed ornament you should be able to easily duplicate.

I cut the yarn into one inch pieces and cut triangles out of the foam for the horn and the ears. Make the triangle for the horn wide enough at the bottom that it will wrap a bit around the hanger.

Using the hot glue gun, put some on one side of the hanger and place your horn triangle on top, hold it in place until the glue cools. For the ears you will put a dot of hot glue and set each ear on the dot, hold in place until it cools.

I suggest that an adult put the mane on the ornament since the hot glue may seep through the yarn. Make a line of hot glue and lay the yarn on top, allow to cool.

My seven-year-old placed the final touches on each unicorn using glitter glue for the eyes and nose. I am pretty sure she would have coated the entire ornament in glitter glue if I had allowed her to, the girl loves glitter.

We live in an old farmhouse, and while it is unique it is also often frustrating. The woodwork in our living room is a beautiful, dark wood, but there are a few areas where this milky coloring has overtaken the dark wood. You can see what I’m talking about in the first photo above. I noticed that after I dusted the milky color was gone, but it would reappear within a few minutes. This had to be because the wood was drying out so I set off to find a solution. Initially I was going to buy some specialized furniture/wood oil, but then I thought I would make my own, and finally I took the lazy approach and tried straight coconut oil. Wow, what a difference! I rubbed it in with a cloth and wiped away any extra and was left with a lovely dark finish.

I could have taken my Dad’s advice and stripped/refinished all of our moulding, but who has time for that...or the money to pay someone?! My coconut oil was a quick fix and a new way to use the oil since there is now evidence that it is not as good for us as we once thought (another post for another time). I will stick with my safflower and olive oils for cooking and use the coconut oil for my skin and woodwork.

Peppa, our Blue Heeler, sleeps in the kitchen and with the gate closed she could be contained, but she figured out that she could jump over the gate and would then make herself comfortable on the couch. While it was still warm out we kept her on the back porch, she has a nice little bed back there and the cats to keep her company, but with the weather getting cold we needed to be able to keep her in the house. 

I had purchased a barn door track at the beginning of the summer and figured we could hang an old door from our house with the hardware. However, I knew that this was something I would not be able to do without my husband's assistance. I knew that we would need spacers (our trim on the existing door is obviously not flush with the wall) and I knew that my level of frustration would most likely be high with this project. 

Last weekend I was finally able to convince Shannon to put the door up for me, and let me tell you how happy I am with how it turned out. It is not perfect, I mean we do live in an old farmhouse where nothing is level, but it works so well with the space. It has kept Peppa in the kitchen these past couple of nights and it keeps the heat from the wood burner from the kitchen when we are not in there. 

My seven-year-old daughter was set on being Elsa for Halloween, she has the dress in her dress up bin and we were set, until October 29th. I was told yesterday that she wanted to be a unicorn, duh, that is what she has wanted to be all along. I disagree, but since I kind of wanted to make a Halloween costume anyway I got to work.

I was was able to complete the mane, tail, and horn in less than an hour and only needed some multicolored yarn, a file folder, craft glue, glitter, tissue paper or streamers, craft foam, a needle and thread, and a hooded sweatshirt. Since I didn’t want to have to go to the store for any of those items I used Lily’s Olaf pull over and raided my crochet supplies for the yarn.

1. Wrap the yarn loosely around your hand about 20 times and secure tightly in the middle with another piece. Cut the loop on the part opposite where you tied it together. You will need about 20 of these for your mane.
2. Wrap the yarn loosely around your elbow and hand about 50 times for the tail. Tie it securely in the middle just like you did with the pieces for the mane and cut it in the middle.
3. Open the file folder and cut about four inches off an end and then roll it up so that it resembles a horn. Tape the cone you have made so that it will not unroll. At the base of the horn make a few cuts so that you have tabs you can use to sew it onto the hood.
4. Brush glue all over the outside of the cone and cover with small pieces of colored tissue paper, or use streamers like I did. Brush another coat of glue over the tissue paper and sprinkle with glitter. Set aside to dry.
5. While the horn is drying use your needle and thread to attach the mane to the hooded sweatshirt. You only need one or two stitches for each bunch of yarn. I spaced them about 2” apart and kept 3 to use after I sewed the horn to the hood.
6. Place the horn on the top of the hood about 3-4” back from the front. It should fit nicely between two of the bunches you sewed on earlier.
7. Once you have attached the horn use the 3 extra bunches of yarn to cover the edges of the horn.
​8. Cut ears out of craft foam, a larger size for the outside portion of the ear and a smaller size for the inside. I did not sew these into the hood until I had He hood on my daughter, but it took just a couple of stitches and then the ears were good to go.

There you have it, a unicorn costume you can make in less than an hour. I should have taken more pictures, but since I did this during my pre time at school I needed to make sure I got it all done in 45 minutes.

Lily plans on wearing this with a white tutu, black legging, and of course her Chucks. I will update with a picture of the complete ensemble tomorrow when we go trick or treating.

Growing up, my Dad was a teacher and always had assignments to grade in the evenings and over the weekends, so of course he had a desk. Dad's desk was not a traditional one, it was an old Hoosier Cabinet that came with the house, it was painted yellow, and not the prettiest, but it was always something I loved. The cabinet was one of the only places to store pots and pans in the kitchen, but after my Dad added some actual built in cabinets, the Hoosier Cabinet became his desk. 

Dad would sit down at his desk in the basement to grade math assignments, pay bills, or write notes. I love this cabinet because for such a long time it was an integral part to my Dad's day. After we grew up and moved out of the house my Dad upgraded his desk and moved up to the bedroom that was mine when I was in college. The Hoosier Cabinet was moved into storage and was not seen until I asked about it a couple of years ago. Dad brought the cabinet out on their last trip to us in the spring, I started removing the lovely yellow paint at that time and finally finished over my Fall Break. 

I ended up sanding and painting the bottom of the cabinet of the doors because once I got down to the wood I did not feel that it would have a good look with just a stain. I used a gloss white paint and had three coats of paint to get the coverage I wanted. I did leave a small 2x4" area on one of the doors with the yellow paint. This section has some phone numbers and lock combinations that my Dad inscribed so that they were readily available. I just wanted to keep a tiny part of the old cabinet so that it would always have a connection with my Dad.

While I was working on the top of the cabinet, I noticed this nice green layer of paint (it was one of the first  colors on the cabinet) and decided to leave some of the green and refinish with tung oil instead of stripping completely and staining. I like that there is a reminder of what the cabinet once was and I love the contrast with the white doors. 

The tambour door was something I thought I was going to have to replace. I did not think that the existing paint would come off easily and I just figured I would have to bite the bullet and buy a new one. However, since these are a bit pricey I attempted to restore the existing one. Much to my surprise the paint came off easily leaving the door in great condition. I needed to fix the webbing on the back of the door and instead of ordering it I cut strips of fabric and adhered them to the back of the door with wood glue. With a painted layer of glue on the bottom, the fabric laid on top of the glue, and a final coat of glue on top of the fabric my solution worked incredibly well. Of course it would be best to order the actual twill tape and glue that is specific for this type of repair, but I am impatient and cheap. 

I did need to replace the wood on the top and the back of the cabinet, but that was easily done with a trip to Home Depot (Thank you, Shannon.) and a few cuts with the circular saw. 

I am incredibly pleased with the outcome of this project, it turned out better than I imagined it would. I sent my Dad photos of the entire process and of course, the final project. Dad was impressed with the end result, but he does not understand why I kept that small block of yellow. However, that is not for him to understand, it is just a small way for me to always have my Dad close.