This Stop Willoughby

If you're looking for a personalized gift that's fast, easy and inexpensive (as well as fun to create), I've gotcha covered. Magazine covered, ya know?  Instructions for this project aren't really necessary, but here are some tips. You can do this with any  software that will allow you to add text to photo (I used Photoshop). You can Google "free online photo editor:" if you need to find one, there are lots of them out there. If you're a Canva user, they have a magazine cover template you can use. Really, though, you don't need a template, just a photo you want to use and fonts you like. One quick note, real magazines measure 8 1/2 inches x 11 inches, which is not a standard picture frame size. So if you plan to frame your final product, you might want to make your cover 8 x 10. To start creating Choose a photo from your picture files or save and download from recipient's social media (only do this with a close friend or family member) Open or drag...

This is a fun, simple project you can create using supplies you likely already have (and if you don't have them, you can get everything you need inexpensively). The advent period begins on December first, so I'm a little late posting this since we're already several days into December. But unless you're an absolute purist, you can skip ahead to whatever day you get your calendar created. We'll be creating our "calendar" by making 25 tiny gift bags and labeling them with numbers, counting down from 25 to 1. You can make them with any paper you like. Christmas wrapping paper is perfect (save your scraps if you've already started wrapping gifts because you'll be using small pieces), but you can also do this with plain printer paper if it's what you have on hand. I've also used brown paper bags cut into pieces. You'll also need tape or glue and scissors. Anything else you need to complete the bags is going to be based on how you want to clo...

Earlier this summer, Mr. W and I used some wood leftover from another project to make some planting boxes.  I didn't like the way the bare wood looked, so for the first box, I brushed on some light walnut stain.  It's not bad, but it's not the look I was hoping for.  I wanted something that had the appearance of age.  Like it had been sitting around a potting shed for the last 50 years. This is my salad box stained with light walnut.  Those are little lettuce seedlings.   I played around with some other colors of stain we had in the garage.  I made swatches on a piece of scrap wood, but none of them were giving me the aged look, so I searched the internet for some ideas. Lots of websites had recipes for mixing different colors of stain to achieve an old, weathered look, but I didn't want to buy multiple cans of stain for just a few small projects.  The technique that appealed most to me was using vinegar.  It's super simple and you...