DIY Sims Plumbobs

    
     Well everyone, it's that time of year again.  Halloween is almost here!  Our last celebratory party holiday that acts as a kickoff for the holiday season.  Before you know it you'll be stuffing your face with Turkey and panicking about the fact that you have not bought a single gift for anyone on your list. Already I can feel the panic rising.  Ahh holidays.

    But before all of that happens my fellow procrastinators, we need to figure out what we're going to be for Halloween. 

    If you're like me then your costume is still in that vague planning stage.  This is the point where I start to freak out because all of those grand plans that I had for my Halloween costume start to become obsolete as time is the one thing I've run out of. 

    So here's an easy DIY costume for those lacking in time.  This costume is great because you can literally wear whatever you want with it.  Wear your work clothes, wear a bathing suit, wear a onesie, go naked (just make sure to pixelate your naughty bits!).  In the Sims universe it doesn't matter.

Tutorial Time:

Step 1

Gather your materials:

- Two 4" Styrofoam cones            - Green Paint                     - Large screw
- Toothpicks                                    - Headband                        - Sharp flat knife
- Modpodge                                     - 1 Spool of thin wire        - Black electrical tape

Step 2 

     Stick 3 toothpicks about halfway into the base of one of the cones.  Then dollop in some Modpodge evenly so that the base is coated in it.  Line the cones up and slowly push them together.  Make sure the toothpicks go into the other rather than just sinking farther into the original one.   The toothpicks will be the framework and the Modpodge will keep it all stuck together.  I was able to get mine to stick on the first try, but this may take some finagling to properly line it up.  

 



 












Step 3

  ***This part is pretty messy.  You may want to move to an area that will be easy to clean up.  Or put down some newspaper to do this over.

     For this step, you're going to begin shaving your foam into a diamond shape.  Use the knife to slice off sections at a time until you slowly start to form a hexagon shape.  I did one side first so that I could simply match my second cone to the first.  Don't get discouraged.  This will take some time. 

    Mine weren't completely symmetrical, but that's no reason to fret.   I just kept shaving until I was happy with the shape.

Step 4

    Now you're going to completely Modpodge over your creation.  Make sure you fill in all of the Styrofoam pores as much as possible as this will make the painting process much easier.  Styrofoam absorbs paint.  Let this dry for 24 hours.

Step 5

     Now you get to paint your creation!  I always go with Acrylic paint as it's the fastest drying with the most even results.  I chose a really bright poison green for mine and ended up having to do two coats.  The Modpodge did block most of the holes, but still that dang Styrofoam ended up sucking up a lot of my paint.

 ***This is also the point where I entered panic mode.  So unfortunately I don't have anymore progress pictures.  I started this project the night before we had a Halloween party and well, I finished with about 20 minutes to spare.

Step 6

   Once your Plumbob is fully dry you're going to need to attach it to your headband. I took my very large screw and stuck it as far as I could into the bottom of my Plumbob, this creates something sturdy for your wire to attach to. 

 Step 7

     Next I Pulled about a 2 foot length of wire from my spool.  I estimated the center and wrapped it around the screw head so that there was about 8" left on either side.  This I wrapped around the headband so that the Plumbob was sturdily attached to the headband.

(Final) Step 8

    Finally I wrapped black electrical tape around the wire and screw base to cover up the wire and hold everything in place.  I really just didn't want any stray wire poking me in the head. 

Finished Product

     I actually made two of these so that my boyfriend and I could do the cutesy couple thing.  I was really pleased with the results and loved that I could wear whatever I wanted with this. 

Ayy Just Put Some Windex on It!

     Hey guys! Alex here.   So the other day I went out to give my car a much overdue wash.  It had been an unacceptable amount of time since it had its last bath and well, it needed a lot of work. I made sure I had plenty of time to clean because honestly, once I start cleaning my car it takes about three hours. 

      Anyway once I had my car washed, waxed, Rain-X'd, Vacuumed, and had pretty much finished detailing it, I took a look at the floorboards.  They were in a pretty rough state.

      About 4 years ago, two weeks after I first bought the car I had a bunch of friends riding with me.   I was lax enough to allow them to bring food in with them and someone brought in a root-beer float.  As it's pretty easy to guess, they spilled the whole thing over my entire back seat's floor boards.  We soaked up as much as we could in the moment, but it left a huge stain in my car and I never really got around to truly cleaning it.

      Jump ahead to now and I'm looking at this huge ugly stain in my car and I decide to try to tackle it.  Looking through the house I couldn't find any carpet cleaner and really nothing else that made sense to clean carpet with.  So I called up Mom and asked her what she thought I should do.  Her response.  "Windex."  I kind of giggled and asked her "I'm sorry what?"  Once again "Windex."  I just kind of wait for a second before I asked her "Are you telling me to put some Windex on it?"

      My Big Fat Greek Wedding is one of our favorite movies and anyone that has seen that movie can understand where I found the funny.  After laughing at her earnest explanation that it's all she uses on her own carpet I decide to give it a try.  I mean what could it hurt?  Oh boy am I glad that I did.  The only way to adequately portray this is to show you the pictures.

So this is the stain on the actual floorboards.

  The stain was on both sides of my little hump and on both floor mats.  I sprayed it generously with Windex and let it sit for a couple of minutes.  After it had spent a little time soaking in I started to scrub it with a hard-bristled brush.

 

      Almost immediately the stain started to come up.  Eventually my arm got tired so I didn't get to scrub as much out of it as I would have liked.  But sweet lord did it look better after about a minute of scrubbing.  

   

       I laughed at Mom for suggesting it, but now I don't think I'll ever use anything else again.  The Windex did such a great job cleaning the floorboards.  I don't think there's anything else that I could get for so cheap to do that great of a job.  Thank you for the suggestion Mom! You were right as usual.  :)

I Love You Because...It's [was] Valentine's Day!

                                                             Valentine's Day Via Skype :)

Aunt Bonnie Joined this Time as Well!!

           After many independent crafting projects, we finally got everything in order to do our first Daisy Lady craft project.  As it was the week before Valentine's Day we thought that these I Love You Because... chalkboards would be the perfect starter.  I've been seeing pins for these boards for a while now and have been wanting one for myself.

           This project was honestly really easy and the perfect type of activity for us to get our feet wet with the idea of long distance group crafting.
    
           Although one piece of advice before you begin any project, make sure you go get buy all of your materials more than thirty minutes before you're supposed to start your project.  Whoops!  Well the life of a procrastinator is a ridiculous one.

Mom's Materials

 All that you need for this one is:
                    - A couple of blank chalkboards.*
                    - Paint or stick on letters
                    - Paintbrushes (If you choose to go the paint route)
                    - A frame of some sort for you to put your chalkboard in.  Or if you're lucky
                      enough find a chalkboard with a string in it already and there ya go!
                    - and Chalk!
                        *The chalkboards were one of the hardest things to find weirdly enough. 
                           I went to Michael's (*ahem* 30 minutes before the scheduled Skype
                           time) and they had nothing but weirdly shaped chalkboards in the kid's
                           section.  It took a lot of hunting to actually find anything close to what
                           I was looking for.  Although Mom and Aunt Bonnie did find theirs pretty
                           easily.
                     - Oh and beer! Or whatever your drink of choice may be. :)

Don't forget to drink :)

       For the procedure all we did was neatly write "I Love You Because..." in paint (or put on your stickers if you so desire) while leaving enough room at the bottom to add in whatever chalk inscription you would like to have on there.

       That's it! That's all there was too it and I couldn't be happier with how they turned out. Mom's came on a handy string, but for mine I bought a standing frame that the chalkboard fit in weirdly perfectly.

This is actualy the only picture I took of my board...Whoops!

       As for the actual Skype process, all I can say is it's a little too fuzzy to truly enjoy the whole thing and I'd much rather get together in person to do these things.  There was a lot of delay in the video streaming which honestly says more about our internet service than it does about Skype. 


       Our idea for this project came from a post on a blog called Heart 2 Home, although we found the idea on Pinterest. (Where most of our stuff has come from).

       Okay so it's done! I have uploaded this 6 months late, but I mean better late than never I suppose.  Next post to come will be a lot more prompt I promise!