Reefs, Crafting, and Other Random Things

Hello everyone, and welcome to my craft room!!  Actually, it's a multipurpose room that also holds my desk, two fish tanks, craft supplies, plant stand, cat tree, and litter box cabinet! It's a pretty crowded room, but I make it work for my needs!  So this is really just one corner of the room where I keep most of my crafting supplies. As you can see on the table, I still have everything out for the bottle cap project I have been working on the past few weeks. I've run out of super glue and only have a few magnets left. I'll have to make a trip to the craft store soon!  The white cabinet is where I keep most of my supplies: fabric, thread, beads, paint, clay, knitting needles, and much, MUCH more! Once I'm done with the bottle cap magnets I will move on to the next project - I am thinking rock necklaces, as those are pretty easy to get done!  I also have a lot of ready-to-go projects (as I call them) taking up space on my sitting chair.  These are

In today's video, I go through the steps of how I made bottle cap magnets for our fridge. It took me a few tries, but I finally figured out a great way to create the magnets!   Materials: clean bottle caps, ceramic magnets, Mod Podge Dimensional Magic, cardboard, 1in circle punch, electrical tape, and super glue gel Hope you like how these came out as much as I do! Leave a comment below if you have any questions or ideas for my next project!  Video HERE 

My fiance has been collecting beer bottle caps for quite a while. His intention was always to use them for fridge magnets. I've finally helped him get started! I sorted out all the caps by type - he definitely has over 100 bottle caps. I cleaned a small batch of them and got to work.  We found 3/4 inch ceramic magnets at Hobby Lobby and decided to use those for the bottle caps.  Our first thought was to use hot glue to secure the magnets to the caps. Unfortunately, the glue did not stick well to the metal of the cap and on a lot of them, the magnet would fall out.   Our next attempt was to use super glue - and that worked MUCH better!  We encountered another problem once we tried to stick the magnets to the fridge. The bottle caps have a small plastic seal inside them - the perfect size for the magnets to sit down into. Unfortunately, this lead to areas where the bottle cap itself was touching, and therefore scraping, against the surface of the fridge. Not go

It's the First Day of Spring and I feel down. There's no real reason I should feel this way - it is actually a decent day outside. The recent snow has melted, flowers are starting to bloom, and the grass is getting greener everyday. I do think it might have to do with the monotony that's been my life the past few weeks. It's the same exact thing every day; wake up and go to work, come home and take care of the dogs, clean up around the house, maybe make dinner, go to bed and repeat. My wonderful fiancé has been working very long hours for the past 8 days - over 100 hours last week. He should have had a day off today, but he went in to be prepared for the next two weeks, which will be another period of late nights and weekend work. Not that it's his job or responsibility to entertain me, please don't misinterpret what I'm trying to say! As I sit here at my cushy desk job, I just wonder if there's more I should be, could be, doing. I went to college,

Tank Update: Nothing new, though I'm pretty sure the porcelain crab I had in the little tank is gone. I didn't see him hanging around during my last water change. I'm still really bad at feeding and testing - every week when I do a water change I tell myself, "This is the week I get back on track with regular feeding and water testing!!" Annnnnnd I don't do it. BUT, acros are coloring up nicely and my acan has a bunch of new heads soooo... Life Update: Wedding planning is going well, other than all the money we are spending (oh well). I'm ahead of the game and really don't find it to be difficult or stressful at all. We got confirmation of our honeymoon booked yesterday, so that's another thing off the list. We're going to Punta Cana in November, so we're definitely looking forward to that!! 

Another reefing post this week, thought this time it also involves crafting.  When I first ordered the lagoon tank, the fact that it didn't come with a lid wasn't an issue for me. I left that a problem for future me to worry about! Luckily, the old IM 40 lid fit side to side, and only had a couple inch gap front to back. For a few months, I used the old lid with the new tank and simply draped a towel over the back where the lid didn't quite cover. This worked out pretty well, wasn't terribly ugly, so it was ok for a few months... until I sold the old tank and had to give up the lid. I don't really like the IM lids, the mesh screen is full of imperfections and I feel like it blocks a lot of light. So the quickest solution to keep my fishes from jumping out was a cardboard lid. Definitely not the best long term, because no light could get into the tank, but I am paranoid of jumpers and I'm pretty cheap. I did take the cardboard off when I was home at ni