Two Crafty Girls on a beach

We were fortunate to be able to take a trip to Cuba at the end of March! We probably haven't gone anywhere, just the two of us, since we were in Beijing in 2002. It was an awesome break from the never-ending snow in Alberta this past winter, and while we were there we kept our eyes open for what some "crafty girls" could craft.

Of course, you could start with fancy shapes out of towels and blankets. They're just like giant napkins, right? You don't even have to make anything since you've got the materials at home already! A bird and a flower on the bed, and then some characters to greet us at the buffet.

Then inside the buffet were some decorations placed around the food areas. So all you need is 45 pounds of soft butter and make it into whatever shape you want. Besides Grumpy Dwarf, Scrat, and the crest, we also saw Davy Jones (from Pirates of the Caribbean) and a big bull.

Or if you're feeling adventurous, why not carve some flowers into a melon? While we haven't tried this yet ourselves, apparently the trick is just to carve away everything that doesn't look like a flower. :)

And since we're talking about the food on the trip, how about special coffees and baked goods? There was a cappuccino bar at the resort, so it was easy to get those a couple times a day. Layering the coffee is about the differing densities of the liquids (these crafty girls are also proud nerdy girls), but no one wants to think too hard on that while on vacation, so the barista Karina made those coffees for us each morning. There were some delicious shortbread-type cookies that we ate several times a day, the fresh croissants, and some cinnamon-roll cookie that was a bit like biscotti and held up really well dunked in the coffee. Might actually have to figure that one out....

Or mimosas with baked goods? Probably the best part about all of this is that someone else is making all of it for you. And, they take away the dirty dishes when you're done!

Jewellery anyone? The flower and the green band are made of cow horn (and they smell like it when they get wet), and the other is some metal twists with a bead on it. The trouble with wanting to try and make these is that it's so much easier to bargain for them at 3 rings for 5 pesos in the market instead of trying to find the materials. The wire and bead are probably easy enough, but it might be harder to find an available cow horn.

Now, beach huts don't seem that hard. A main pole stuck in the sand, support ribs for the roof, covered in palm leaves. This one even has a shelf for your slushy drinks! We can't figure out why the people on Survivor generally seem to have a hard time with this....

But we'll totally admit that several rows of palapas seems rather ambitious. We'd just have to stay on the beach for several weeks, which I think we'd both be alright with.

*Sigh* Time to head home and back to reality. Tons of fun picking out the things we could make if we really tried. :)

The one thing that we (ok, really just Jess) actually did make for the trip were these headbands. Great help for stopping a sunburned forehead. Watch for the real post about how to make those soon!

P.S. Bonus points for anyone that can explain to us why Lisa is always on the right side of the picture, Jess on the left. Seriously, we don't know why we arrange ourselves this way.

Counteract smelly dishcloths

Now you can't tell me that this has never been an issue for you - a dishcloth that's smelling a little "off".

It seemed that all of my dishcloths had that smell, even when they were first pulled out of the drawer, so I thought I should try fixing that before I went and got new dishcloths. I've tried this vinegar and baking soda refresher for my bath towels, so figured I'd give it a try and see if it worked on the stronger smells of the dishcloths. Certainly cheap ingredients to be experimenting with even if it didn't work out.

I just grabbed by dutch-oven pot and put all the dishcloths in and filled it with water. Just be sure to leave some space for the boiling because it's going to get a little frothy. Then dump in a couple glugs of vinegar. Yep, that's an official measuring term from Mom. You know the sound it's going to make when you pour a liquid out of a big jug quickly, so a couple of those. If you really want me to guess, I'd say it would be about a half cup of vinegar.

Bring to a boil and let them bubble for about 10 minutes. I pushed them around every couple of minutes to make sure that they all had a chance in the vinegar bath. Remember, this is boiling vinegar so you might think it smells worse than the dishcloths and you're going to wonder if it's worth it. Don't worry, it is. :-)

Then I just dumped them out into the sink and let them drain.

The next step is to boil them with the baking soda, so I put a bit of water in the pot and sprinkled some baking soda in so that I could be sure it dissolved. Maybe a tablespoon or so. The cloths stay quite hot, so I used tongs to toss them all back into the pot and filled it up with water again. Boil for another 10 minutes or so. Some more bubbles!

Drain again and rinse. They do stay hot for a long time, so be careful. Then I put the cloths through a normal hot-water wash cycle in the washing machine. Seems to have fixed the problem! 

When I was researching this after I had gone through the process, one of the suggestions to avoiding smelly dishcloths is to just use a new one every time you want to wipe something up. Seems rather unrealistic to me, so I think I'll just spend the 30 minutes and a cost of about 20 cents for the vinegar and baking soda to do this again. 

WARNING: If you have a weak stomach, don't look at these next pictures. 

This is the colour of the water after boiling in the baking soda. What's most disturbing to me is that I had pulled most of these cloths "clean" from the drawer. Ya, not so clean I guess.....

~Lisa