Saving money by making stuff yourself is really trendy right now.  And I don’t hate it.  A lot of my life I have taken pride in myself when I didn’t do something just because it was trendy.  (Rainbow flip flops anyone? Or leggings.  Yikes.)  But now that DIY is trendy, I’m making myself right at home in the bandwagon.  I’ll just surround myself with cupcakes, bunting, yarn wreaths, and mason jars and call it a day.

I’ve been wanting to try out handmade laundry detergent for awhile.  (Handmade sounds so much better than homemade, right?)  But I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of recipes floating around Pinterest.  Then a lovely lady from my church who owns a shop in our town gave me some to try.  It smelled like heaven and worked great, so I resolved to finally make some myself.

After much searching, I settled on this recipe from How Does She.  It is good for regular machines and HE machines.  It includes Borax, baking soda, washing soda, Zote/Fels Naptha, and Oxiclean.  It also explains how to add those fabric softener crystals, but we chose not to do that.  And by we, I mean my mom and I.  It was a family effort.

My dad kind of got pulled into helping because he was just so talented at grating all that soap.  Seriously.  He could do two bars in the time I could do half of one.  It must be all the sanding he’s done over the years.  Ha!  So my mom just reminded him of how much she would be saving and that she would be washing his clothes, and he grated away.  Timothy took this nice iPhone pic of us and then resumed telling us about some new surgery he saw on YouTube.  Sadly, a true story.

The whole process was really easy.  We used that big tub to mix it all in and it worked like a charm.  My mom had a ton of jars from canning, and we just divided the mixture into those.  This particular recipe filled nine and a half of those giant mason jars.

I’ve already started using the detergent and I’m loving it.  It smells great, our clothes feel clean, and it looks so cute!  I’m loving how much money we’ll save also.  Since marrying a smelly man, I’ve had a LOT more laundry than I thought.  I mean seriously.  I’m kind of afraid of the amount of laundry I’ll have when we have children.

So this is one DIY that I’m so glad we did.  Have any of you made your own detergent?  Any different recipes that you use?  I’d love to hear!

~Whitney

Have you all seen the site Handmade Ryan Gosling?  A few bloggers are taking pictures of The Notebook star and are then adding pick up lines on them.  But not just normal are-your-feet-tired?-because-you’ve-been-running-through-my-mind-ALL-day kind of pick up lines … lines that appeal to crafters.

I’m not a Ryan Gosling fan (have you seen my handsome husband?!  Yowza.), but these just crack me up so much.

(all photos from Handmade Ryan Gosling)

I die.  These made my day.

~Whitney

I found tons of inspiration on Pinterest for felt ornaments.  I had planned on making version of all my pins, but one night I just started crafting and went a totally new direction.
These were inspired by this pin.  I cut out the smallest shape and then cut out the larger shapes to compliment it.  I borrowed my mom’s amazing embroidery floss collection and kind of winged it.  And, yeah.  I think I love embroidery!

I think I would like it even more if I tried it on regular material and with a pattern.  My stitches are a little crazy.  But I still like the way these turned out!  I made a few other ornaments that turned out quite a bit less than spectacular.

After playing around with my own creations, I turned to my favorite craft site, The Purl Bee, and used an amazing tutorial for “snow ball ornaments.”

These are my favorite ornaments ever!  They were a breeze to make and very repetitive and soothing to the mind.

The longest part of the process was cutting out all the circles and ironing them.  I cut all the circles and ironed them in one night and then took all the pieces on a road trip with me.  A few hours of sewing was all it took to make some cute ornaments!

The only thing I changed from the original tutorial was making a larger template for my circles.  I wanted these to really fill in the tree.  I took these pictures at night so the color is kind of wacky, but the black looking ornaments are really navy blue.

The next felt decoration I made was a tree topper.  I was going to make smaller ones to use as ornaments, but my poor fingers and brain couldn’t take it.  Again, I got the tutorial from The Purl Bee.  I had such high hopes for this guy.

Actually, he doesn’t look horrible in these pictures.  But in real life?  Timothy says it looks like a star made of bunny ears and I say that it looks like two dying starfish clinging together.

For one thing, it’s HUGE.  Like 18 inches across huge.  And my hand sewing lacks a little finesse … and talent.

The seams are really wavy and it just screams handmade, but not in a good way.  It’s proudly displayed on our tree, however.  I told Timothy that I didn’t care how much we laughed at it, the crazy thing took three whole nights to make.  We WERE going to use it and we WERE going to be happy about it.  Dying starfish or not.

So that almost sums up the ornament DIYs of the year.  I’ve got one other DIY up my sleeve!  And for a little hint, it was inspired by this ghetto fabulous pin.

~Whitney

As I wrote recently, last year I made all our ornaments with candy.  It was a lot of fun, but the decorations didn’t last.  This year, I wanted to get some decorations that I can use year after year.

With a small decorations budget, I knew DIY would be the best (and the most fun!) option.  I searched on the beloved Pinterest for some ideas, and fell in love with the idea of a felt Christmas!

Here are some of my favorite inspirations:

buy them here at etsy

buy them here at etsy

tutorial here at bhg

buy the kit here at purl bee

tutorial here at stumbles and stitches

Cute, right?  I bought the felt to make them (and several other decorations) for under $20 – sweetness!  I planned to make a whole bunch of ornaments inspired by these pictures, but I kind of veered off these ideas and did some of my own things.  That’s the whole point of DIY, right?  Making it your own.

So if you’d like, come back tomorrow to see some handmade ornaments inspired by these designs!  Or check out this post about a cute and simple felt garland.

What about you guys?  Anyone planning on doing some DIY decorations?  I’d love to hear your ideas!

~Whitney