Valiant Return and More Sweater Recons!!

I've learned some things in the last two years:

1. You DO have to pre-wash dishes before you put them in the dishwasher.
2. If you spend 10 minutes wiping down your kitchen with a Clorox wipe every night, you don't have to spend an hour scrubbing the stove once a month.
3. Good things don't always happen to those who wait - usually you have to take ACTION.
4. We can actually do anything, and we are a hell of a lot stronger than we think we are.

I've experienced some major life changes recently, some of which I'll be exploring in this blog, and some of which I'm going to leave well enough alone. No point in dragging certain things up over and over again.

I don't know that I'll always have crafts to post, but I'll always have something to say, someone to praise, or someone else's project to drool over - I usually do. Time is short, and life is short, and this blog post is short, but we can make it all seem longer if we want to. We have our whole lives ahead of us, and our lives will last at least as long as we're alive.

Of course, it's a little harder to get excited about my whole life being in front of me when I figure how many times that means I have to clean my kitchen for 10 minutes a day. Hell, it's hard for me to get a shower every day (TMI?).

Here are some great projects I found that I love monstrously:

Posted a few months ago to Craftster.org by lidehtium, LOOK AT THIS COAT OMG:

It's made from M&@(*T%&@NG OLD SWEATERS!! I want to do this SO bad. I could do a bunch of these, I think, all different styles and colors and materials and each one would be amazing and unique. She describes it as one hell of a labor of love, but I am too inspired by the OMG PRETTY to not daydream real hard about this one. (By the way, check out her blog here: Tamed Raven - it is the epitome of simple gorgeousness.)

Here's another old, old post (from December of 2011!) from my new favorite blog, Lately Reconstructed:

You know what those are? Those are slippers. Made from sweatshirts. Simple, easy, and BRILLIANT, because honestly? I could definitely do with one less sweatshirt and one more pair of slippers. I imagine if you get a big enough sweatshirt, you could even just use the sleeves - then you have a whole torso part of a huge sweatshirt to mutilate play with.

Finally, from a site I literally had to jump on, copy the URL, and jump off again for fear of losing my ENTIRE DAY to this site's database of incredible clever amazingness, Cut Out and Keep:

OMG LIGHTNING SWEATERS!!!!! DO WAAANT!!

I can't even fathom this. I will make zillions of them. It's SO simple! Please click through and check out this tutorial, you will be amazed by how easy it is.

I think I post a lot of sweater recons here, which is kind of silly since I live in Texas and we just don't ever really need sweaters...although lately it's been just chilly enough that I could really use one of those lightning sweaters. My sewing machine may be seeing some action this weekend.

Anywho, here we are, back again, with more stuff and fun things to look forward to. Expect at least one of the above projects to pop up by my own hand in the future. I have high hopes and big dreams and stuff!! AMBITION: IT'S GOOD FOR YOUR CIRCULATION.