Mother Necessity

There is this really old School House Rock episode about inventions and inventors. The phrase they use over and over again is, " Mother Necessity, where would we be?"  Well necessity is the mother of all inventions and I had a need!  

MA and I will embark on a 12 hour odyssey to Oklahoma this week. She loves to watch her favorite tv shows on her iPod (my old iPhone) but she drops it easily. Obviously with me driving I can't retrieve it, so I needed a plan b.  

I have my nifty new ipad mini but no way to suspend it in the car. There are many options but they are all too expensive in my opinion. 

My original plan was to make an envelope type case out of fabric and clear vinyl and suspend it between the seats but that would require me having to go somewhere to buy the vinyl. 

Last night, I was telling one of my friends my predicament and she offered her headrest DVD player. She had recently gotten a new car with a built in DVD player and didnt need the old one anymore. Great problem solved! Except for the fact I have no children's DVDs. Yes, you read that correctly, I have a nearly 2 year old and no DVDs. We have always used Netflix or iTunes and never had a need to use anything but digital versions. 

Well using the headrest DVD would require the purchase of DVDs, once again requiring money and a trip out of town. 

This morning, she gave me the DVD player after church.  Once I got home and looked at their design, I had a plan. 

I bought MA a new pair of shoes that has a very sturdy box. With a few snips, I had a great, stable "body". 

Next, I dug through my box of fabric until I found one I liked. 

I cut off a huge chunk and ironed it, my mom would be so proud! 

I placed the body in the fabric and pinned around it to give me an idea of how much fabric I would need. The I cut around the pins and tried to remember to give myself enough extra for seam allowance (I did not) 

Now I needed to devise a way to put it around the headrest. The DVD player used webbing and clips but I didn't have an if that I could steal off something I already had (trust me I looked). I even considered tearing up a belt. Then I remembered my huge box of ribbon and I found some Velcro  I had left over from a project last summer. I picked pink and black to match my new organizer I am getting from 31. I have high hopes of corralling the kid stuff into one big bag :)

From there it was a lot of pinning (which I am terrible at) trying to get the ribbon and elastic in the right place.  As I was just making this up as I went, there was a bit of trial and error. Also I had an excellent helper trying to pin everything in sight 

Finally, I was ready to sew. I did the sides and top, then took the body out. I turned it right side out and checked that everything looked good so far. I did not leave enough to turn the bottom seam under and press it before sewing so it ended up a big ole raw edge mess, but I'm pretty sure MA won't complain. 

I took it out to the car and tried it on to pin where I needed to see the elastic, and came bank and finished up. 

To have just made it up as I went and only used what I had on hand, I think it turned out pretty stinking great. We are going to try it out tomorrow and she how MA likes it!  

Pretty Plate

So my craftiness merged with my need to downsize before the big move. I decided to find a use for the box of plastic beads. I have a big container with a lid that won't stay on very well. They promised to spill everywhere once I put them in a box.  I decided to melt them to see what would happen. 

I put a layer of them in a cake pan. I made sure to just have one layer with no beads stacked on top of one another. 

I didn't do anything to the pan, just put the beads in. 

I started with the oven at 250 but after an hour, the beads had just gotten brighter but not melted. I bumped it up to 350 for between 30-45 min. Still not melted. 400 was the magic number. They melted right up.  I have no clue how long I left them because honestly, I forgot about them. I would say at least an hour. 

Once I remembered them, I pulled them out and left it to cool on the stove of about 2 hours. 

Once it was completely cool, I flipped the pan over and it came out with a little wiggling of the pan. 

I would not put anything made from melted beads in the dishwasher or microwave but they would be fun to use for summer plates