Tomorrow starts the beginning of a two week adventure of traveling up to northern Mozambique with my husband. I am a little nervous as the comforts of home will be very far away and this body of mine is a very delicate eco-system. I need my sleep, food(including veggies) and dessert to make for a good day. As you move outside of the city of Maputo you go into the bush where, most people say, “the real Mozambique exists”, where you have to wear skirts, no sleeveless shirts, a lot of times no electricity at nights and where the heat and humidity is way beyond anything most people have ever experienced before.

My posts wont be so frequent in the next two weeks, but I will try to put some photos up of the happenings while traveling through Mozambique.

I love how simple this was. I just cut the shape of Africa out of a map and put that onto some cardstock for the background and stuck it in an old frame. If you want you can add some black paint to the edges with a sponge like I did to add some depth.

Easy!

Give it a try with your state, the USA or another country you have fondness for.

Have a lovely weekend!

Yep I made these, not perfectly square by any means but I love the colors and pattern from the capalana that I used.

These were really easy, just two square pieces of fabric sewed right sides together and then turned right side out and sewed around the edge with a simple stitch. You could use a zig zag stitch and that would look nice, but I prefer the simple.

I have made another 10 Africa shaped Ornaments. I added some bead-bling to some of them and moved the heart to the side over where Mozambique is on the continent. I really like how these ones turned out.

I still have a lot more to make but I’m on my way.

Am I crazy? Yeah I’m probably a little more than crazy. I collect things that I know should be recycled, it bothers me to see them get thrown away. So of course my kitchen is getting filled up with recyclables, in my cupboards, in my pantry, its overflowing, so I have to find ways to use them.

While watching a music video the other day I saw a wind chime made from tin cans. So I tried this idea, painted the cans, put some holes in the cans with hammer and nail and hung them up with scrap material and finally, using a bottle cap for the inside chime, I was done. Its all very simple and I rather like it, although I did get a laugh, but I’m not bothered. Now I can look for ways to improve this.

I tried but I do not like what I came up with. I have some pretty neat old brooches but they didn’t go with the material I have. And this material is very stiff so it didn’t ruffle nicely.

Thanks to some Jack who left a comment in March I will never forget how to spell Brooch! A Thousand Thanks Jack, Thopter or whoever you are!

Well here is my attempt:

I will probably end up taking this apart and waiting to try again when I find some material that is more brooch worthy.

I’m thinking of making a bunch of these for Christmas -

What do you think? And what about the heart, yes or no?

I live in a land where chemicals are used for everything, it literally makes me sick sometimes if I let myself think about it. But today I realized that even though I might not be able to change this countries way of doing things, there is something I can do with what I use in my own house. I was running out of cleaning supplies and honestly I didn’t want to buy anymore, the amount a bottle of floor cleaner costs is outrageous, so I started looking up recipes for cleaners and found that vinegar can be an amazing all-purpose cleaner. I am so excited to try this.

Here are two website that I found that were great help to me; love to know and the new homemaker.

One recipe for soft scrub that I found and works wonders is:

1/4 cup baking soda

1 tablespoon dish soap

and enough vinegar to make a past(about an 1/8 cup)

I will always have to buy dish soap and bleach to clean my dishes and produce but getting rid of some of the big polluter is a step in the right direction.

Bilene is a city a few hours from Maputo and its built on this inlet, which looks more like a lake and it is so beautiful.

Want to see what I did last weekend?

Before

After

Warning: Don’t paint indoors, the fumes can cause major burning in your throat. For some reason it seems I always learn the hard way.