Level Up Your Sewing with a Serger

Level Up Your Sewing with a Serger

Lydia Young
Home

If you’re sewing your own clothes, curtains, or even doing regular mending (am I the only one constantly repairing the center seam on shorts?), it’s time to add a serger machine to your craft room. If you’re not familiar with sergers, they essentially replicate a commercial style stitch that uses 3 or 4 threads simultaneously instead of 2. The downside is that you need 4 of each color thread you plan to use to really be effective with it but the advantages far outweigh that inconvenience since everything you sew is going to be faster, stronger, and cleaner with a serger.

Landscaping Project EP5: Teardown

Landscaping Project EP5: Teardown

Kevyn Young
Home

In late April of 2018 we started the full process of renovating our yard. We had already spent plenty of time planning and brainstorming what we wanted over the winter, and now that the ground was no longer frozen, it was time to get dirty!

Scrap Wood Project: Cat Scratcher

Scrap Wood Project: Cat Scratcher

Lydia Young
Home

Happy quarantine! We’re trying to respect all the stay at home guidelines while staying busy and creative. I decided that I wanted to make SOMETHING out of the scrap wood we have in our garage. We got a stack of free wood from a NextDoor neighbor a couple years ago but have been so focused on yard projects that we haven’t used much of it. I didn’t have anything specific in mind but I’ve been curating a Pinterest board with woodworking projects I want to try so I looked through that for inspiration and then started designing!

Landscaping Project EP4: Designing and Planning (Phase 1, Part 3)

Landscaping Project EP4: Designing and Planning (Phase 1, Part 3)

Kevyn Young
Home

Designing landscaping cannot be done completely without considering plants to some degree. In fact, if you don’t keep plants in mind, you’ll end up with a beautiful hardscape that does not flow with the added plantings. For us, this meant that we had to make sure that our featured plants, or areas with plants, had to be included. This meant that we needed to choose some statement plants that would really help capture the modern, oasis feel that we were trying to achieve.

Landscaping Project EP3: Designing and Planning (Phase 1, Part 2)

Landscaping Project EP3: Designing and Planning (Phase 1, Part 2)

Kevyn Young
Home

Our general style choice is modern, and our yard is no exception. However, a good design still takes into account the local materials and the existing design queues, so we wanted to make it fit with the house, while improving it at the same time. Flagstone is quite common in Colorado as a material, so for the front yard we decided to keep and use as much flagstone as made sense. It also looked good with the brick, so why not re-use an expensive material?

Project Mithlond EP1: Jeep ZJ Door Wiring Harness Part 1

Project Mithlond EP1: Jeep ZJ Door Wiring Harness Part 1

Kevyn Young
Jeep

I’ve had my Jeep ZJ for a decade, and over time a few things have failed relating to the wiring. For the most part, this was limited to the passenger power lock and the rear driver power window malfunctioning, but those were manageable or easy to ignore. After the glass broke on the rear driver door, I thought it was a good opportunity to debug some of my existing wiring problems.

Landscaping Project EP2: Designing and Planning (Phase 1, Part 1)

Landscaping Project EP2: Designing and Planning (Phase 1, Part 1)

Kevyn Young
Home

I don’t think we started our yard overhaul with big ambitions. We wanted something that we would enjoy - which basically meant a place to hangout that has plants. Lots of plants. The realities we faced with the existing yard and the issues we needed to address did dictate our scope though - at the very least we needed to fix the issues we had with the siding not being visible in places and the drainage in the backyard being problematic. Also, it turns out we like nice things. So, in typical fashion for us, we decided let’s go big, or go home? Wait a second…

Pothos Plant - How/Why/Where to Grow

Pothos Plant - How/Why/Where to Grow

Lydia Young
Home, Plants

Today I'm introducing you to one of my favorite houseplants - the pothos! I guarantee you've seen it somewhere even if you didn't know the name. It's one of the most hardy, versatile plants you can grow and thrives in a variety of light conditions which makes it easy to grow.

Landscaping Project EP1: Before - Nothing to Brag About

Landscaping Project EP1: Before - Nothing to Brag About

Kevyn Young
Home

We bought our house in early Spring so pretty much nothing was growing yet. Even by the end of that first summer, not much was growing still, and there was no real reason to be out there. We obviously had work to do! Here is a tour of our yard, from front to back, before we did anything (aside from a little lawn rehab the previous summer).

Garage update: Insulation and plywood

Garage update: Insulation and plywood

Lydia Young
Home

Our garage has essentially been a storage unit since we started our landscaping project. It was pretty basic. No insulation or finished walls. Random boards and nails on the studs for hanging tools. It was cold, messy, and the one light bulb didn’t do much for the garage as a project/work space.