Two placemats turn nicely into a hanging organizer

Enjoying the crafty ideas I've seen in crafting blogs for using placemats - or better said - for upcyling placemats.  I finished up this one in a jiffy, an organizer, using two placemats, sewing up the channels and well, I sewed it directly onto a plastic hanger.  Quick as that, I have a pretty little fabric bathroom organizer, or a cosmetic organizer or perhaps a child's room organizer.

I hope to make more of these.  A variation I did make, again using placemat, was to fold it in half along the long side and sew up four channels, making a roll up organizer which I am using in my purse. 

What is Bay Center Association?

We do have in our little community what is called Bay Center Association.  It is a service-oriented group comprised of willing volunteers from among the community of Bay Center.  Residents of Bay Center are automatically members of the Association.  The Association goes back to the early origins of the formation of Bay Center. 

I’ve seen documents in the Association records that show the sense of community in advocating that males in the community donate one day a month towards helping with the heavy work in making improvements within the community.   I’ve seen an old photo at the Dock of The Bay which shows what looks like a community dinner with long tables set up for a shared meal. 

Since we moved here to Bay Center, in Nov 2002, my husband agreed to hold the office of President, when a neighbor was telling us as newcomers about the Association and the timing was such that it was time for a new slate of officers.  We were too new to the community then to know much of anything about how the community works together.  Both of us were employed at the time and I helped him where I could and we rather bumbled our way through that first year of holding office.   At that time it was called Bay Center Improvement Association.

By March 2003, our country had invaded Iraq, and two from our immediate family who were active military deployed to Iraq; my son-in-law and my nephew.  I left my employment to be more available to my daughter and  her three children  (my grandchildren) while her husband was deployed.  Spending intense years in activism from 2003 through 2008 as a military family speaking out against the Iraq war, I did not get much involved in local region community, nor in my immediate community of Bay Center.  (Not wanting this to be a blog post about Iraq war, you can see more about my activities if you are interested at my blog; Dying to Preserve the Lies).

With the winter windstorm (hurricane) in Dec 2007, my attention quickly was turned to the immediacy of living in our small community within this sparsely populated county.  I began attending the different meetings of the different groups that are at work in our unincorporated village to get a stronger sense of how we interact as a community, especially in times of severe weather crisis situations and other crisis situations.  I did attend some of the Bay Center Association meetings and like many groups or organizations, the heavy lifting is handled by the few who do volunteer for as long as they are willling to lift or until they say no more.  Then the hunt is on for who else would be a willing volunteer. 

And that is how I came to agree to take on the function of president for the Bay Center Association for this next year (May 2009 – April 2010). I agreed when two other new to the Association meeting attendees agreed to take on some of the other offices, which gives the Association a slate of ‘new’ and probably green officers.  So it should be interesting to see what develops over the next months, and if nothing else, it will make for some material for blog posts here. 

First thing I do is create a website for Bay Center Association… check it out!  Content will likely be developed from the monthly meetings.

Chinook Tribal Office Has Moved to Bay Center – Welcome!

excerpts from article in Chinook Observer

BAY CENTER - The Chinook Indian Tribe has moved its office from the Sea Resources building in Chinook to Bay Center.

Tribal Chairman Ray Gardner said the move had been in the works for quite some time. "When you look back historically, it made sense to move to Bay Center because 90 percent of our staff live there and there's a very large volunteer group there."

The opportunity to move the tribe's headquarters north came last year when tribal member Zoe LeCompte donated her grandfather's home to the group. The house, at the entrance to Bush Park, had been empty for years and was in danger of being demolished. It has been rehabilitated with the help of Naselle Youth Camp crews and tribal members.

Now, after five months of work, Office Manager Jennifer Lagergren and office staff Beverly Buckner and her daughter Audrey Anderson are moved in and handling tribal business at their new digs.

The tribal office hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The new phone number is 360-875-6670.

An impromptu chair cover with matching covered pillow

Helpful hints from bloggers prompts me to try new ideas. This is a recycle, refashion idea. Using a pillow case that I picked up at thrift store, it becomes a chair cover with enough left over to cover a small pillow.

Soft chenille makes warm crocheted scarf and hat set

Among my completed crochet projects, here is a long scarf and matching hat that I crocheted from the chenille yarn. I was showing my basket full of finished crochet projects and my mother was taken with this set. I rather had it in mind to gift it to her when I made it, so I'm pleased she was happy with it.

Placemat to Purse; made for a nice gift to daughter

Didn't do so great in keeping up with adding my completed projects to this blog. So a bit of catch up if I may. In fascination with working placements and napkins into purses or totes, I made this one for one of my daughters. Intended it for her birthday in February, and the trip she was taking to Hawaii to reunite with her husband returning hone from his second Iraq deployment.

I had some nice gray linen placemats with matching napkins, and following many photos on the blogs, I made this purse.











  

Link of the day: vegetarian opportunity

Kathy Freston at Huffington Post

Excerpt:

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

● 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;

● 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;

● 70 million gallons of gas--enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;

● 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;

● 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

● Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;

● 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;

● 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;

● Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

My favorite statistic is this: According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads. See how easy it is to make an impact?