Make Personalized Garden Stepping Stones

On Miss M’s first Christmas, she made everyone in the family a personalized concrete garden stepping stone with her handprints in them. Wasn’t she a talented baby?

It says May All of Your Weeds be Wildflowers

 because I had a wildflower garden at my old house.

I never knew how easy it was to make a concert garden marker until Husband and I got a stepping stone kit as a gift from the people who played our characters’ servants when we retired from performing at The Ohio Renaissance Festival.

You can buy a kit or make our own. My stepping stone kit was a bag of concrete mix, a pan/form, and sometimes stamps or a stick to use to write a message in your stepping stone. Some kits inclue the stones and glass or you can buy brightly colored bits of glass or marbles at a craft store like baby Miss M did because she was a talented infant artist AND a bargain shopper.

My stepping stone kit didn't come with glass or colored stone bits. I scavenged around ther house for things to embed in my stepping stone and raided the recycling bin for glass bottles to smash for colored glass bits.

Heresford is the name of characters Husband

 and I played during our last years at ORF.

A few tips:

• You don’t have to buy a stepping stone kit. You can use any flat pan for your mold although I think the plastic pan that came in my kit made it easier to remove the dry stone from the pan and reuse it if I ever want to make more stepping stones. I've seen just the plastic stepping stone mold for sale at craft stores.

• If you plan to make more than one stepping stone, it is cheaper to buy a small package of quick setting concrete at the home improvement store than buying special stepping stone mix at the craft store. Why? Because the special stepping stone mix at the craft store is really just a more expensive bag of quick setting concrete.

• The concrete stamps are a nice thing to have if your writing neatly with stick skills are poor like mine. I think my stamping in a straight line skills could use some work too.

• To smash my glass bottles I put them in a bucket and draped a rag over the top of the bottles in the bucket. I dropped a hammer into the bucket on my patio so I wouldn’t have glass shards flying all over the house.

• You need to let the stone dry and cure for several weeks undisturbed. I made my stone on the table in my craft room and left it there untouched until the concrete cured several weeks later.

I use both stones as garden art. Howevert I could make a bunch and use them for a walkway if I had room in my yard.

Personalized stepping stones make great gifts!

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I Greened My SunScreen

I gave up trying to get sun tan years ago because my pale faced Scandinavian skin makes me burn like a vampire in the sun.

Really.

I got a sunburn by sitting too close to a sunny window at work once, OK?

My New Year’s Resolution for 2010 is to green my health and beauty aids so I switched to a zinc-based sunscreen.

I bought Alba Botanica. Alba scores a 2-3 on the Skin Deep Database for safety. There are other sunscreens that score better for safety but they are much more expensive and most are only available on line. I go through so much sunscreen I wanted to find something I can buy locally when I run out. Price is also important because I buy a lot of sunscreen during the summer.

So far, I like the protection Alba offers. My only negative is that it’s thicker than my old chemical based sunscreen and takes a bit more time and effort to rub it in completely so my skin does not look whiter and more ghostlike than it already is.

The big test was when I marched in a parade. I slathered on one coat of Alba sunscreen and let it dry. I hoped it would protect me because I knew I wouldn’t have time to reapply sunscreen throughout the day. Even if I could, the last thing I needed was to make my hands slippery with sunscreen because I was twirling a flag in the parade.

After a full day in the sun, I came home hot and tired. To my delight I didn't find a sunburn on my face, arms, or legs. Yay! I jumped in shower. For some reason my head hurt when I shampooed my hair.

Because…..

I got a sunburn on the part in my hair!

Sunburn on my head.

I never though of putting sunscreen there!

Yes, I got a sunburn on my scalp.

File this one under “these things only happen to me.”

Next time I am wearing a hat.

Do you have a strange sunburn stories or am I the only one?

Reminder: Help me Win my Dream Job!

I've been selected as a finalist for the Salada Green Tea Spokesperson contest. Your vote will help Salada pick the winner. Please vote for me Lisa Nelsen-Woods and help me win my dream job promoting green living and healthy eating on a budget. You may vote once a day, every day from now until the contest ends on August 1st.

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Disclosure: I bought the sunscreen with my own money. Alba did not pay me to say nice things about their product nor are they responsible for my sunburned head because I'm an idiot. This post includes an affliate link. If you choose to purchase an item I will recieve a small commission at no extra cost to you. This will help me with my goal of making Condo Blues a self hosted blog.

Make a Cornhole Game

Cornhole  is a game that’s similar to horseshoes but uses beanbags. It’s very popular at tailgates and picnics in Ohio and Indiana. I’m not sure why. It’s kitschy rednecky cool in that Jeff Foxworthy You Might Be a Redneck If… sort of way. Maybe because conhole is a game you can easily play and not spill the drink or drop the cheeseburger you’re holding in your other hand?

I built this all by myself!

You can easily make a cornhole game or buy one premade. The store bought boards are called something insipid like Bean Bag Toss Game or Baggo. However part of the whole Cornhole thing is to make the boards or to buy homemade boards from someone else.

I made a set for Mother and Father in-law for our big Family Reunion Weekend because because Father in-law loves nothing more than a reason to get his family together. Cornhole is a game kids and adults can play with each other a little more safely than say, horseshoes.

I also wanted to build the boards because Father in-law gets a kick that I'm the only one in the family that likes DIY as much as he does. He calls me his ToolBelt Diva. *blush*

Making a Cornhole game is simple construction and is a good beginner woodworking project. It’s also a good project if you’re someone like me who’s last project of building something from scratch was 7th grade wood shop.

I used the plans for regulation boards I found on Cornhole Game Players and sewed relegation size and weight bean bags with fabric from my fabric stash I filled them with dried pinto beans instead of the traditional dried feed corn which is still allowed. Oh yes, apparently there is a whole Official Cornhole Association and Tournaments and whatnot. If any of the kids get hooked on Cornhole want to be professional Cornhole players they are good to go courtesy of Aunt Lisa.

Here are a  few tips and helpful hints if you make a Cornhole game.

1. Use two layers of fabric for your beanbags as the directions recommend because they will take a pounding! Instead of using muslin for the liner, I used fabric from an old heavy cotton curtain panel. Make sure that you use the same weight of fabric for all of your beanbags.

I made a paper template to ensure that all of my beanbags are the same size.

2. I don’t have a table saw (pity I know.) However I was able to have the wood cut for me for free when I bought it at Lowes. I think Home Depot also cuts wood if you buy it there. I don’t know if or what they charge for this service.

3. I used stainless steel screws for this project. I did this so the screws wouldn’t rust in case the boards were accidentally left outside in the rain (even though I know this will never happen. I know everyone will treat them like gold instead of treating them like a toy that you throw things at.)

4. Hold the long screws into place using needle nose pliers while you are drilling them into the pilot holes in your boards to ensure you screw them straight down into the boards.

You can use this technique for nails too.

Guess how I know?

I didn't use pilers as a guide and accidently screwed a screw in at an angle.

This screw wouldn’t back out because it uses a star shaped head (a special bit that came with the screws.) I fixed it by cutting the end of the screw off with a Dremel and filling the hole with a dab of wood putty. Which my in-laws didn’t find out about my blunder until I blabbed about it on the Internet. Let’s hear it for full disclosure! (Do I have to disclose that FTC? Because I think I just did.)

5. Older kids may be able to help you with parts of this project but please take all safety precautions for yourself and your kids. If you’re not comfortable doing something please seek out advice from an expert or get a pro because it’s easy to have an accident and get hurt.

I’m showing you this photo again for sympathy.

In fact, I was being Miss Safety First and still accidentally countersunk my thumb when Mommy’s Little Helper (my drill) slipped off a screw head and into my thumb. Fortunately it bled worse than it actually was but it’s a good reminder about safety.

It’s also a good thing to hold over my in-laws heads. I bled for you – be grateful! Even if the construction is a little off :)

6. I recommend using the belt sander the plans call for to sand the edges of the board. I tried using my palm sander and it was slow going. I gave up, bought a belt sander, and sweet baby Jane! It did the job in a short amount of time.

Sweet Baby Jane? Sounds like a good name for my new belt sander.

Hey, they name boats. Why not tools?

7. The plans had very complicated directions what to use and not use to draw and cut the hole in the boards. I grabbed a 6-inch plastic lid from the kitchen and traced around it with a pencil – problem solved.

A regulation cornhole is 6 inches wide.

8. The plans also had a very complicated directions on how make make the rounded legs. Instead I traced around a small paint can and cut along the line with a jigsaw. Why do guys have to make everything sound so complicated in the workshop?

It’s not brain surgery dude.

9. I painted the boards with outdoor paint I had leftover from my porch chair revamp. I built the boards and legs first. Then I painted them and let them dry before I bolted the legs to the boards, which made life a lot easier.

I  took the game to my in-laws farm and it was big hit with everyone in attendance. I’m sure we’ll get a lot of use out of it for years to come.

Hey FTC: The stores and brands I mentioned in this post didn’t pay me to mention them because they don’t even know I exist at the corporate level (tragic, considering my local stores know me very well. I spend lots of my money there.) I bought everything with my own money with the exception of the Dremel and the Mouse because I got those as Christmas gifts. Exactly how do it report that?




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Using Recycled Toiled Paper Take One

July’s One Small Green Change is one place I thought I’d never go – switching to a toilet paper made from recycled fiber. Now before you get all grossed out let me clarify a common misconception about recycled toilet paper. They make recycled toilet paper from the type of paper and fiber you normally put into your household recycling bin. They do not make it from used toilet paper because:

1. Ugh! Gross!
2. Think about it, how would they reclaim the paper once you’ve flushed it and it broke down in your city’s sewer system?
3. Ugh! Gross!

Moving on.

Why buy toilet paper with recycled content? According to Time magazine, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) “estimates that if every household in the U.S. replaced just one 500-sheet roll of virgin-fiber TP a year with a roll made from 100% recycled paper, nearly 425,000 trees would be saved annually.”

That’s a lot of trees!