Blankets: Helping those in need

One of the really great things about being crafty is making items that will help someone else in a time of need. I want to share one of those projects with you.

My cousin Brittany works for the Rape Crisis Center of Central New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM.  Their mission is:

"To provide support and advocacy to Survivors of sexual assault and abuse within the greater Albuquerque area, and to serve as a community resource on issues regarding prevention and awareness of sexual violence."

Full size adult blankets if fun colors and a
smaller Batman one in case a child is in need.

One of the ways Brittany and the other staff help  these individuals is by providing what seem like small necessities in life to the rest of us but actually mean the world to the survivors. They keep on hand soaps, shampoos, and other toiletries so the survivors can shower following their exam. Think about all those travel size ones you pick up at hotels and never use, they can use them!  What we've been working on though, aside from looking through travel bags for those shampoo bottles, is making no-sew fleece blankets.  The blankets serve both as a security item when everything else feels taken away, and as something positive to take home. Many of the survivors are low-income or even homeless, so a single warm blanket may be all they have to help them feel safe and at home once their interview/exam are over.

They are double layered to provide as
much warmth and comfort as possible.

We have made a few so far and have more fleece to make more, but I'm asking our readers for help. If you are crafty will you take the challenge to make a few blankets? If crafts aren't your thing will you take the challenge to supply us with the fleece to make them?  Shampoo, soap, blankets...they seem like simple things but when your world is turned upside down and you're left with nothing, they are everything you have left to cling to.

(Making the blankets is easy, I followed this blogger's post.)




If you are interested in making blankets yourself, donating unused toiletries, or sending me fleece feel free to email satterthings@gmail.com and I'll send you the appropriate info.  Let's help make the world a better place one blanket at a time.

-Julie

Whoops, been a while - we got a second dog!

Whoops it's been a while since we last posted! I promise a crafting post is coming very soon, I have one in mind I just need to upload the pictures to go with it.

One of the reasons we haven't updated in a little while is we rescued a second dog back at the beginning of September!

Meet Luke!

Luke joined our family on September 11th.  He is a 2.5+ year old Foxhound rescued by Angels of Assisi. Prior to his rescue, Luke was at the pound for a months, and a stray before then. When you meet him you would have never guessed he probably lived for a while on his own or may have not had a real home for a long time.  He is incredibly sweet and loves to cuddle (even though he's rather large).  We're still trying to get his weight back up but his fur is getting soft again and he looks so much healthier.

Maddy and Luke play like brother and sister - you probably wouldn't guess at first they aren't related! We love both of our hound dogs and even though they can collectively take over the whole couch leaving Will or I (mostly Will) sitting on the floor, we wouldn't have it any other way.

Just taking a nap on the couch.

Like I said I promise a crafty post is coming soon but just wanted to give you all a quick update! Oh and Maddy is almost TWO (her birthday is November 28, 2011).

-Julie

Decorations - Hokie Style

Anyone who knows us knows we love Virginia Tech, after all that's where we met! Now we don't have any VT colored cars or walls painted maroon & orange, but we definitely don't hide our Hokie pride. We have VT decals/magnets on our cars, a Hokie Bird door mat, and just a "few" maroon & orange shirts.

When we first started decorating our home, finding places for our indoor VT decorations was a top priority! I started first by figuring out where to hang a few of the larger pieces: poster size print of the Marching Virginians making the VT on the field at Lane Stadium (I'm on the right 40!), and two wall hangings.

Then as we got settled in I started to add smaller pieces and make a few of my own.  I love the way maroon & orange look with our brick home and black accents, they are perfect!  One of the newest things I've made is a mesh ribbon wreath. I had never heard of mesh ribbon until about a year ago and wasn't quite sure how people used it, but thanks to Pinterest I quickly learned how and of course maroon & orange were my first color choices. I took a few progress photos of the wreath to share:

Two rolls of mesh ribbon, and one wire wreath form (not my favorite version of it, need to find a blank one next time).

After making loops and attaching them with the "garland" this was the final product.

I then topped it off with a maroon painted S and white bow.

So the goal had been to put the mesh wreath on the front door for football season, but it doesn't fit between the door and screen door...whoops.  So I moved a different wreath (a purchased) one to the front that did fit.

Let's Go Hokies!

Here are the last few VT touches to the front yard:

Another use for the mesh ribbon - accent to our brand new HOKIES flag!

VT Gnome is ready for Gameday!

There will definitely be more VT accents added to the home, no worries there.  Another project involving maroon & orange will mostly likely be very soon and I'll make sure to blog about it as well.

It's almost time to start jumping...LET'S GO HOKIES!

Behind the Scenes: Delabeling the Bottles

I mentioned in my first post that, when it comes to making things, I enjoy working with things that aren't what people normally think of when they hear the term "crafts." I don't work with paper, or knitting needles, or beads. I prefer things like wood, nails, glass, twine, and resin. One of my favorite things to do lately is to upcycle empty glass bottles.

So far, my projects with bottles have involved wrapping the bottles in jute twine and adding some sort of accent. You can see examples of both the twine-flower and the stencil-flower versions of my bottles in our Etsy store.

One of the necessary evils in working with empty wine and beer bottles is that I have to remove the labels. Until now, that has meant soaking the bottles in warm, soapy water and going at it with a razor blade. (Side note: This makes Julie very nervous. And considering the number of times I've injured myself doing it, it should.) Fortunately, I came across this blog post from Healthy, Wealthy & DIYs and it made a world of difference.

Before. Apparently we like Barefoot. And Starbucks.

After. More info about what worked and what didn't below

It was SO much easier than just warm, soapy water! All I needed was a rough washcloth and the adhesive came right off. The other trick that I picked up on was filling the bottles with hot water before soaking them. From what I can tell, it helped break down the adhesive more and kept the bottles underwater better (duh, Archimedes).

And now the awards:

Easiest Label to Remove: Sequin Moscato (polka dots). One of the labels actually fell off on it's own in the water. I'm excited that I didn't have to scrub that one — I have plans for those polka-dots.

Hardest Label to Remove: Barefoot Pinot Noir (far left, pale green). I scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed. There's still adhesive all over the front and back. It's clean enough to wrap in twine, though!

Dishonorable Mention: Starbucks Frappuccino bottles. Turns out plastic labels protect the adhesive really well.

The best part of it all? I have sixteen more bottles ready for upcycling, and no bandages on my hands! Whoo hoo!

Decorating Our Home

One of the really neat things about moving (and I've done a lot of that in my life!) is getting to decorate a place to reflect you and your family.  Growing up that meant for me getting to set up my room a different way after each move or buying new sheets to match my new room.  But as an adult and purchasing your first home that means getting to decide how EVERY room in the house is set-up and even getting to pick paint colors!

When we decided on which house we wanted to buy we immediately started to think about if & when we wanted to paint, what colors we wanted to use, what furniture we needed, and where stuff was going to go.  Because we were leaving a 900 square-foot apartment we knew we weren't going to have all the furniture necessary to begin to fill our new home, so we made specific rooms priorities over others.  The first one on the list - master bedroom. 

*Master Bedroom
We love our bedroom furniture, its all from the same line of furniture from Ikea (if you've never been to an Ikea go to one ASAP, they are awesome!) and it's this beautiful shade of reddish brown. All of the bedding we already had was shades of browns and cremes with hints of light blue.  Since this room was priority #1 we picked out paint colors before we moved in and Will set to work painting as soon as we had keys.  Three of the walls are "Moroccan Moonlight" and the fourth is "Puppy Paws".  After we got the furniture moved in we started to brainstorm what we wanted to put on our freshly painted walls.  I love spending time on Pinterest and one of my favorite categories is Home Decor. I found on there a few different pins about picture collages and those sparked the idea of doing a picture collage above our headboard of our engagement and wedding photos.

It was hard to pick just these 11 pictures!

Our photographer William Mahone did such a beautiful job with the pictures and the colors were perfect for our bedroom.  All of the frames came from Ollie's and are mismatched on purpose. So far that's the extent of the decorating, we're in the hunt for artwork for the largest wall to add some more pops of color to the room.

*Living Room

Top: Wedding day items and sits above the TV
Middle and Bottom: Favorite photos and personal mementos

The next room we were excited to get decorated was the living room.  The biggest thing we wanted to add to the room were floating shelves to help not only display our photos and other items but to also help breakup some of the large white space of the walls.  We didn't decide to paint this room because were weren't sure what colors we wanted yet - we are now already thinking of doing just one wall a color but haven't picked the color.  We got three floating shelves from Ikea (again love that store! wish it were closer...) and after much frustration trying to find studs in the walls hung two behind the couch and one above the TV. The two behind the couch frame in my favorite part of the living room! Ever since I saw this picture from our wedding I knew I wanted it blown up and put on a canvas for above the couch.  It's absolutely stunning! Take a look:

Easily one of my favorite photos from the wedding! Thanks Bill!

The rest of the living room is a work in progress - we have few VT items hung up, some more pictures, and eventually really neat green curtains will frame in Maddy's window.

We've started work on a few other rooms in the house - Master Bathroom has a neat new shower curtain and has a future DIY makeover that I'm sure will get it's own post, the Guest Bathroom will be neutrals, the Office right now is pretty standard until we decide on a new desk, the Guest Bedroom is the next project that I'll let Will share with you all (lots of Pinterest ideas and DIY coming soon!!), and the basement needs some organizing and eventually will house the Craft Room!!  The last room in the house is the Kitchen.  We didn't have to do much here because it's already bigger than our old one and mostly white.  We have put up a few pictures and purchased a wine rack for our apparently growing collection.  The neatest thing we have done is take the chalkboard from our anniversary photo and mounted it to the refrigerator to be our weekly menu and reminder board:

Look even blogging made the To Do list!

We update the board each Sunday with the meals for the week which has turned into a nice habit and helps to keep impulse buying at the grocery store to a minimum when you've got a plan. 

We aren't done decorating the house yet but that's the fun thing about decorating, it takes a while and it's what you want it to be!  Most of the ideas we have planned or have done come from Pinterest - this has allowed us to do a lot on our own instead of just buying something and hanging it on the wall. We've noticed our home matches Maddy really well, which doesn't surprise me because we love her and she's apart of our family too so it's only natural that our color palette has migrated that way as well: white mixed with browns and blacks, and the occasional splash of color.

Thanks for letting me share a little peek into our home decor, I'll share more as we tackle new projects.

-Julie

Crocheted Cancer Awareness Ribbons

I started participating in Relay For Life in 2007-2008 as a freshmen at Virginia Tech and even though I always personally raise funds online and by mailing letters, I never really got into the whole on-site fundraiser portion of the event. As a staff partner with the American Cancer Society I tell teams all the time about how important on-site fundraisers are, but I hadn't really planned one for this year because I'd been busy.

Look at all the colors!

That was, until my Mom found a pattern for crocheted awareness ribbons, and we decided to put together a really neat on-site fundaiser.  We had (and still have!) lots of yarn left over from other projects, and we knew that they would be something quick and fun to make.  I set to work making lots of purple (the official color of Relay For Life and all cancers) and anything else I could find.  We made sure ot cover as many of the cancers as we could -- colon, lung, lymphoma, childhood, breast, cervical, uterine, brain, pancreatic, leukemia, kidney, prostate, liver, sarcoma, and bone.  Each ribbon also has a safety pin with it so it can be worn in support of the fight against cancer.


As I worked on them each ribbon not only represented the fight against the cancer it represents but also everyone I know who has fought cancer -- especially the colors white, pink, peach, and yellow. 

My Grandpa Rex (left and bottom) passed away in January 2001 from lung cancer, and my Grandma Mary (right and top) passed away in November 2009 from a multi-year battle with breast and uterine cancers.

Our dog Gracie passed away earlier this year after a long battle with several medical issues including a tumor.

We still have lots of these crocheted cancer awareness ribbons left and they are now for sale in our SatterThings shop on Etsy.  Proceeds of the sales will be donated to the American Cancer Society to help fun research and patient programs that fight cancer every day.  One day I'll only have to make these to honor survivors, and one day I won't have to make them at all anymore.

If you want more information about the American Cancer Society or how you can help finish the fight please feel free to visit cancer.org, call 1-800-ACS-2345 (1-800-227-2345) or email me at SatterThings@gmail.com and I can help you out.

Thanks for stopping by!
-Julie

New House!

Just a quick post but its full of exciting news - We officially bought our first house last week! Yup that's right we are homeowners!

So that means that this week is full of packing, moving, cleaning, painting, organizing, and who knows what else. It also unfortunately means not a whole lot of time to craft :( BUT that's okay because the new house has so much MORE space, we have a room just for crafting!! As we get settled in and start to get that room & the house set up we will share progress here so you can be apart of the experience as well.

We have lots of craft and decorating projects in mind for the new place, they'll just take some time. :)

Oh and intermixed with buying the house and moving, we celebrated our First Wedding Anniversary! Our friend Denise was kind enough to take some pictures for us to help document the new house (like the one above) and our anniversary: 

Thanks for stopping by and be on the look out for new posts coming soon! 

-Julie

Blankets: Star

I first learned how to crochet in 6th grade and it was a horrible failure. The students at my middle school were required to take a life skills class and one of our projects was Project Linus where you make handmade blankets for kids in the hospital. As a class we made a couple of quilts (with help from moms of course) and a few of us made our own blankets. My Mom tried to teach me to crochet but when I was done with my "blanket" it needed some major adjusting on her part. So after that attempt I didn't try anymore for many, many, many years.

Right before college I taught myself to knit and it went a lot better! I made mostly scarves for about 2 years before trying my first blanket. After dropped stitches and learning to use circular needles I finally made a presentable blanket! I worked just with knitting needles for another year or two and then decided it was time to try crocheting again. In teaching myself, I learned how to not lose or gain stitches on the ends (my problem when I was 12) and the difference between single, double, and triple crochet. As soon as I finished my first blanket I had to make more and I wanted to try new designs, I even spent one night learning from YouTube how to make a basic granny square (which I quickly adapted into baby blankets - 5 in total).

A friend of mine found out I was making these giant granny square baby blankets, and sent me a pattern for a star blanket. It wasn't easy at first - lots of new terms - but once I got the first 5 or so rows done I couldn't stop. I have now made 3 (2 pictured below)! The pattern is super easy and makes the CUTEST baby blanket. Check 'em out:

Solid Yellow

Grey & Green/Yellow 

Wouldn't this look cute in a baby's room?

These two will be eventually posted to our Etsy store, there are currently 4 other blankets posted that are just as cute. Now that I have finished my third one (sorry no pictures yet) I need to figure out what my next crocheting project is going to be, in the mean time I'm working on some new wreaths - more info to come soon!

Thanks for stopping by - Julie

String Art: Crates and Nails

Sometimes, when people find out that Julie and I have started crafting, they assume that Julie does most of the projects that find their way to Facebook and Etsy. Not so! We each have our own projects — she likes to work with ribbon, wreath forms, yarn, and crochet needles, and I work with the more manly things, you know, nails, twine, wood, wine and beer bottles, and things that generally require sanding and/or hammers.

If you've had the chance to take a look at our Etsy store, you'll see some of the string art projects I've made so far. The one I want to share with you here today is my absolute favorite one to date.

My friend Zac has found the name "Satterwhite" amusing since we met in the summer of 2009. In fact, it was his fascination with putting "Satter-" in front of everything (Julie is my Satterwife, Maddy is our Satterpup, and so on) that gave rise to "SatterThings." So, when Zac and his wife Kaley got married back in May, I thought it would be perfect for us to share a SatterThing with them for their big day!

This project started with an old orchard crate from Black Dog Salvage that was quickly disassembled in the middle of our living room floor. After some sanding, a dark stain, and some dark tacks, I had something I could work on. About 350 nails later, I started stringing! I just happened to have a variegated yarn that matched the pastels that Zac and Kaley used at their wedding. Hopefully, this piece will be a nice addition to their new Sweeney household!

 

I'm planning on making one similar to this one with either "Satterwhite" or "J&W" for our house next! If you'd like something similar, just send us an email at SatterThings@gmail.com and we'll talk!

Welcome to our blog!

We'd like to welcome you to our brand new blog!

We decided to start this blog as a way to share photos and more information about products, as well the behind the scenes of the projects. And who knows what else!

We hope you follow are blog and share it with friends/family to help us grow. And if you like what you see make sure to visit our Etsy store: etsy.com/shop/SatterThings

While you wait for more posts here's a picture of our cute pup - Maddy!

Stop back soon for pictures and posts about all the great products we're working on!

-Julie & Will