Snowed in and Sewing-How to Make Korkers- plus some coupon talk.

Not a very good picture but it's really hard to even get everybody to look at the same time! These were from one of our "snow days". We had blizzard conditions and no school for 4 days, I think it was 4 days but it seemed like 2 weeks lol. I was trying to sew with all the kids home and that doesn't work very well! We are really missing our Expedition this year! We are without any 4x4 at all.  The road had drifted completely shut on both ends by evening, ah country life in Iowa.

Yay, I finished the dresses in time for the work Christmas party. I had been planning them since summer but didn't start on them until a couple of weeks ago...I was going to try my own design and see if I could skip putting in 3 zippers. Well it worked out ok for Chloe's dress when I made the *yellow sample dress but unfortunately the "homemade" dressmaker's dummy I have doesn't have arms and I didn't take that into account when making that dress. What does that mean you ask? Well Chloe can wear the yellow dress because she is a little skinny mini, Piper or Ava cannot get their arms into it! the waist is too small so it would require a zipper to get it to fit them and that defeats the whole purpose of trying to make up my own pattern! Geesh! So the fabric sat and sat while I debated on what to do with it. I wasn't happy with the pattern I had and when I tried to buy one that I liked at 2 different stores they were both out of the one I wanted, so I took that as a sign that I wasn't supposed to make that one. So I ended up using a pattern I already had and just tweaking it a bit to my liking, I ended up putting in 3 zippers anyway ugh. I started cutting out the dresses on Monday for the party that was Saturday. I finished hemming them on Sat. morning and made some korkers that day too. I made little snowmen from polymer clay and made myself a little snowman pin so I could match. The gorgeous blue fabric was given to me through Freecycle. I used to be the moderator for our county but gave it up this past summer because I had too many irons in the fire. If I remember correctly the fabric was used for making bridesmaids dresses and there was quite a bit left over and I was the lucky duck who got it! By the way I know you've heard of Leigh Michaels and that's the pen name for the wonderful lady who gifted the fabric to me! Is that cool or what? Here is a link so you can check out some of her books, I really want to read her books on writing soon. http://home.mchsi.com/~leighmichaels/

Here are some tips on how to make your own korker bows.

To make the korker bows just wrap some ribbon around some dowels and secure with a clothespin. I used 1/4 inch ribbon and dowels on these. Cut them down to fit into your oven. Bake them on a cookie sheet at 250 degrees for about an hour or so. Take them out and let them cool before taking them off the dowel and they will be all curly when you are done. Cut them into strips about 4 inches long and just group them how you want as far as colors, I like to use 18 to 20 little strips for a full bow, you can use more or less as you wish. Just tie them together and glue onto an empty barrette of your choice. I bought the ribbon at Walmart and the barrettes in bulk from Ebay. The snowmen are made from Polymer clay, buy it when it's on sale for $1.00 per square otherwise you will be paying around $1.75 per square. I don't have a bunch of fancy tools for it either, I just use what I have around the house. The stores want you to buy a fancy little rolling pin and all these gadgets, whatever, I used an ink pin to roll out the blue clay for the scarves.

11:30pm Sunday: I just got back from a grocery trip, I saved over $60.00 all together tonight. Levi (14) went with me and was embarrassed about my big coupon binder! I started carrying it with me so I don't ever miss out on a good deal, if I see a product on clearance or a sale I didn't know about and I have the coupon in my binder where it's categorized and easy to find then I can just whip it out and use it. He threatened to take a picture of me and my binder and my fistful of coupons and send it to the "Hillbilly Corner" for the picture of the week in our local shopper. I pointed out that saving money isn't a Hillbilly thing to do, it's a smart thing to do. He responded with a comment about how every time I put an item in the cart I flipped through 50 coupons. Yea, well I used almost 50 coupons at Hy-Vee and my cart was so full they almost had to get a second cart for me for only $189.00 I have certainly done better but hey I saved a lot of money and I got everything on my list plus I got items that will qualify for another $20 back in mail in rebates. Most importantly I have enough things to put together for meals for a couple of weeks if not more and also snacks and even a lot of frozen foods that are easy to fix in a hurry! My favorites this trip were the Huggies for $4.99 from Walgreens (sale $8.99-$2 coupon and get a $2 Register Reward) and the 2 boxes of Special K/All Bran crackers for .22 cents each after $1.50 coupons. Here is a goofy picture of my receipt from Hy-Vee, it's almost 5 feet long!

*I can't find the picture of the yellow dress, I will look in the closet and try to get a good picture of it today if it's in there.