Jessica Martin

I just started needle felting and made a few Xmas ornaments as gifts and for us. The bright colors really lend themselves to these sorts of decorations and it’ll be fun to fill out the tree with something handmade. The technique is really easy, highly recommend for anyone who wants a simple craft to try. The snowflake was made using a cookie cutter — just put the wool inside it and felted it there.

Has anyone made band boxes before? I'm wondering what sort of weight of paper works best, any tips. We have a few we've bought from historic museums over the years but I'd love to make these are reusable gift boxes for Christmas, etc.

Here's what they look like. I tried to find a kit since that's often a good way to try out a new craft, but I couldn't find much out there.

We recently came up with this solution to help wean us of our automatic drip maker, and it's working well so I thought I'd share.
The requirements were:
1) No plastic touching coffee/water
2) Not a super slow process or something that requires a lot of babysitting (we have a toddler, mornings are crazy)
3) Ability to use our own filters, ideally

I have a french press I used to use in my former office life, but I prefer the taste of filtered coffee and there are some health benefits to filtering coffee that are important to me. We also have a chemex which we've used in the past, but I dislike having to buy proprietary filters, and the process is really, really slow.

So we combined the two!

We boiler water in a tea kettle (we have a stove with a fast burner, so this is fairly quick). We pour grounds into the french press (which is a la cafatiere, and doesn't have plastic pieces inside like the bodums do). We slightly depress the filter on the french press to push the grounds into the water and let it steep for four minutes, then push it all the way down and pour the french press'd coffee into the Chemex to filter it further. This goes fast because you're not dealing with the grounds here.

One trick we needed was in order to use regular filters here, we had to buy this gadget to hold the filter in place: https://www.naturitas.us/p/home/home-and-kitchen/kitchen-utensils-and-appliances/support-for-coffee-filter-pour-over-l-1-unit-trendglas. I also found I preferred the taste of using two filters, and having both provides insurance against the filter ripping from the weight of having more water sit on the filter.

It tastes really great and it's a pretty fast process with minimal tending.

Thank you especially Shawn for that description, that's exactly the sort of rule of thumb I was looking for.
While I very much agree with the common advice of if it tastes good, looks right, etc for adults, I was looking for something that would work as guidance for my young daughter. This is a kid who will eat raw lemon if given the opportunity, so saying to only eat something if it tastes right isn't really practical. What I settled on as a rule of thumb is not eating any of these things directly from the bush or talking about doing that, at least while she's this young. I gave her a few raspberries that I collected separately, inside on a plate (one of our understandings about whether something is food is if it's presented this way from a parent). It was fun. When she's older it'll be fun to collect these together.

Thanks all!

That was my hunch too, but I'm hoping there's a simple rule of thumb because that's useful for my toddler (e.g., she knows "not safe to play with" for mushrooms and "not good to eat" for the honeysuckle berries. But this is a bit different, because it's something we could eat if I say it's okay, but it would be helpful if I could say something like, the berry has to have lumps on it like this, and it needs to have 3-5 leaves, etc. I'm not sure how bulletproof that is though. I've heard so in the northeast but I wanted to be a bit more secure before I repeat that for her ears. (Because toddlers remember everything!)

These grow around the lake where my cabin is. I’m sure I used to eat them as a kid but I wanted to pick some for my toddler and it gave me pause - is there a good rule of thumb for safe to eat berries? These smell raspberry like and there’s another darker variety that grow alongside, also aggregated (segmented?).

Anne -- I wonder if I could affix the sails to fence/T-posts? As opposed to the house, where with the wind I'd be worried they could rip the siding. It's an interesting idea -- thanks.

I'm trying to solve for the following on our new property.

The house is in a large field with 0 shade. We're planning on moving small trees around from other parts of the property later this fall, but I'd also like to create a shady area near the house on a relatively quick timeline so I have a place to play with my daughter when the sun is high in the sky. Right now we have some nice wooded areas but they're a bit far from the house, so might not be as practical for sitting outside for short stretches of time.

The area is very, very windy so I don't think a shade sail attached to the house is a great idea, though I had considered it.

I'm almost thinking of a natural courtyard, with bushes or small tree in a circle or square arrangement, with grass inside. Ideally something very fast growing so we'd have a little area next season. I'm not as familiar with landscape architecture side of things, has anyone done something similar? I also considered a pergola with vines but we have a lot of deferred projects in the woodworking side of things and kind of want to avoid that for now.

Would love to know what worked for others. Field is south facing so the day sun is very very long lasting.

Following up on this - I didn't know mineral oil is used in the vast majority of jute fabrics (it's needed to make the jute pliable). There are some companies doing vegetable oil now, mostly for food storage. But most of the fabrics out there aren't, unless otherwise stated. Just wanted to add this in case this was news to anyone else. Sisal is the same way. Kind of a bummer for a natural rug material (We have a large jute rug I will probably pitch, not a big mineral oil fan).

Good amount of flannel sheets and things like that on poshmark, so I'll probably go down that road. Thanks for the idea.