Decorated Tea Towels

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I needed new tea towels for the kitchen.  Do you realize it is EXTREMELY difficult to find plain old cotton dishtowels nowadays? 

 

Most of the ones I found were thick terrycloth fabric which are absorbent but I find that they leave lots of fuzz on the dishes when I dry them.  Yep, I hand dry dishes ..... no dishwasher here folks.  Had one once, will never have another one.

 

 

 So in my hunt for tea towels that were absorbent, didn't leave a ton of fuzz on the dishes when I dried them and were pretty and old fashioned, I decided to make my own!  Decorate my own that is.

 

 

Hunting in the kitchen section of our only large department store in town ..... I won't name the store ..... many people hate it, I found some plain white flour sacks.  Yippee!  Just what I needed and they were cheap too!  $1.97 for two.

 

 

Having a few ideas in my head, I logged onto Pinterest to look at photos of what I wanted.  Now I would love to have a weeks worth of pretty embroidered tea towels but that just isn't going to happen anytime soon and I needed them NOW.

 

 

So this is what I did.  After giving the tea towels a quick iron ..... no, I normally don't iron my tea towels but I had to this one time so I could continue with the decorating ..... I applied two strips of painting tape.  The space between was approximately one inch.

 

                 

 

 Finding some country red fabric paint in my craft supply stash, I dry brushed the paint in-between the strips of tape.  Now I dry brushed the paint on as I wanted the paint to be uneven....faded in spots....as if they were old tea towels, to give them the grain sack look.

 

           

               

 

After letting the paint dry overnight, I carefully removed the tape and viola!  I have new, "old" grain sack looking tea towels.  Just perfect.  Oh the possibilities of colors I could do and so quickly too!  I now have a weeks worth of decorated tea towels that only took me about an hour!

 

 

 

Have a wonderful day and remember to give your loved ones a hug!

 





Thrifty Thursday

Pin It Time again for Thrifty Thursday!

These are just perfect for my rooster and chicken collection!

Wire chicken basket to hold fresh eggs ....

and little vintage rooster egg cups!

Cost of these great finds .... basket $2.99 and the egg cups .... $4.00 for the set of six! 

Remember to give your loved ones a hug!

Simple Pleasures

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There are many pleasures in life. Some of them cost alot of money....like vacations, cars, expensive restaurants. Others are what I call simple pleasures....baking...

using fresh ingredients.......

and vintage mixing bowls......

to make yummy banana muffins......

Then there is....

produce from the garden.....

drying clothes in the breeze.....

taking a break to knit something fun.....

and enjoying the last days of summer.....

by watching the sunset.

Those are my simple pleasures.

Sauerkraut!

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I decided that I wanted to try and make my own homemade sauerkraut...another way to be self-sufficient. Bob and Pasie love the stuff, I can take it or leave it and Luke hates it but I though what better way to have sauerkraut than homemade. Forget the store bought stuff...we never know what is going in those cans that we buy at Walmart. At least ours would be without any preservatives or chemicals.


Organic cabbage was on sale this week at Super One for .44 cents a pound so I thought it was a great time to try making it myself.

Pasie had an old crock in storage so I cleaned it up and got it ready to fill with cabbage! I love crockery like this that have a long history to them. Isn't it pretty?
I asked a friend of mine from Frugal Village ... a site that I love and her recipe was as follows...

- chop the cabbage
- add 1 tbsp of salt to each pound ( I had a 4 pound cabbage)
- put in crock in layers....cabbage, salt, cabbage, salt .... a little of each at a time
- push down with a heavy object.... I used an empty glass jar...until all cabbage is pushed firmly to the bottom of the crock....so there is no air between the cabbage pieces
- fill a plastic bag with water and place on top of cabbage...the bag of water will press down on the cabbage which will not allow any air to seep in-between the cabbage
- each day press down on the cabbage... do this for 21 days, then cold pack in quart jars for 30 minutes

Sounded simple enough ...right? Well, I chopped the cabbage and used a vintage chopper that we had from Bob's Aunt Monica. She passed away a few years back and we were the heirs to her estate and needless to say there were things of hers that I had never seen before! She was a German war bride and saved everything!

I chopped, added salt, pressed down, chopped, added salt, pressed down in the crock . I then placed the bag of water on top and that was it! Not difficult at all and it must be starting to ferment because my kitchen is already stinky! Tomorrow and each day for the next 21 days, I will remove the bag, press down on the cabbage with my glass jar and replace the bag of water.


Hopefully we will have delicious homemade sauerkraut for hunting season this year!