DIY foam stamps

My daughter has discovered just how much fun stamping is. And I have discovered just how expensive those cute stamps are. One of my posts that has gotten the most comments was about making stamps out of old flip flops, but that’s a bit labor-intensive. …

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Homemade gifts: rolls, hairbands, bags

So I’m back in Boston and my hometown of Plymouth right now, loving how nicely things work, how civil people are, what varied food there is, how I don’t have to try to get everything done before 1 pm when stores normally close in Naples. …

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And from undies to…

God knows what in the world I was thinking when I bought these pairs of underwear a couple of years ago. Apparently I was under the delusion that my behind had miraculously gone back to what it had been maybe when I was 18, a …

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Free Pattern! Sew girl underwear from a t shirt

Free pattern and tutorial for sewing girl's underwear from a T-shirt! www.cucicucicoo.com

  **Update October 15, 2016** Given the popularity of this tutorial, I digitized this pattern and made a few simple changes to the post. I’ve seen a lot of blogs and websites write recently about making underwear out of old t-shirts. I thought it was …

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Potty seat bag

My daughter has just started using the potty regularly, a huge relief because we’ll be taking a trip abroad this summer for more than 6 weeks and I really wasn’t too thrilled at the prospect of bringing our cloth diapers with us and having to …

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Appliques

I had some things I wanted to spice up a tiny bit so I decided to add some patches. Here we have a nice Hello Kitty (my daughter’s most recent passion) and a dinosaur. Nothing special. Then I saw this post on how to make …

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What to do with broken flip flops? DIY stamps!

I HATE it when my flip flops break. Especially when they break while you’re walking on the boiling hot sand of a beach in the summer. And that’s what happened with these ones. The hole for one of the straps ripped open and I couldn’t …

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Three variations of pesto

For me the summer is pesto time. I recent saw a facebook friend’s status about sundried tomato pesto and obviously I had to ask her how she made it. She told me to toss basil, pine nuts, sundried tomatoes, olive oil and salt in the …

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Homemade mint syrup

So I’ve already written about the wonderful elderflower syrup I made a few weeks back, which you dilute for a lovely summer drink. And I thought, there MUST be some way to make homemade mint syrup, like the ones you find in every Italian supermarket …

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Bike helmet padding fix

Yes, a bike one. In Italy nobody uses one. Go figure, nobody even wears a helmet on scooters. But I don’t care one bit and I go out and about my town with my daughter in her bike seat behind me, both of us with …

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RIP puntino :(

Yesterday was a tough day, the due date of the baby that I lost in October at 9 weeks. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bother you all with tales of the despair that a woman who miscarries feels nor how insensitive some people can …

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It’s spring! Elderflower syrup drink

Oh how I love spring! The sun, the heat (without that horrid summer stickiness), everyone’s happy, all the kids can play outside! And it’s the end of the year for all the kids and teachers (like me) out there! I haven’t have much time to …

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Make your own potholders – Tutorial

This week it was pretty much impossible for me to do anything fun or blog thanks to the flu and lots of work. This morning, though, I brought my daughter to school and I got off to “work.” Our potholders were in pretty pitiful shape, …

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“I can’t stop eating meat!”

I’ve recently heard a few people say this, that they’d like to stop eating so much meat, but don’t know how to get by without it. How would they get their protein?! And meat is so fast to get ready! Once I saw one of …

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Kitties on potties: CitiKitty review

Today we finally started organizing our “box,” our storage area on the ground floor of our building, where we’d dumped so much stuff that we couldn’t even walk in it anymore. And we found lots of fun stuff we’d forgotten about. Such as the tray …

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Limoncello liquor and lemon ginger marmalade

The other day my in-laws came home with a big bag full of these huge lemons, freshly picked from some friend’s garden. And obviously they offered me as many as I wanted. So what do you do with kilos of lemons? Why, make limoncello, of …

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Vanilla ice cream and extract

Mmmm, vanilla! It’s funny that a lot of people have no idea what a vanilla bean even is (including yours truly, I admit, up until not too long ago), forget about how to use it. Then a dear friend of ours from Bologna who loves …

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Eco-washing: a review of Ecoballs and Magnoball

Let’s talk about washing detergent. I’m always excited to find any sort of ecological alternative. I use hardly any disposable products and our cabinets and drawers are full of lovely washable cloth stuff: napkins, hankies, menstrual pads, diapers, wipes, shopping bags, etc. No matter how …

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All about washable and reusable cloth menstrual pads

Find all the sewing patterns for Cucicucicoo products in the Cucicucicoo Patterns shop! When I talk to people about my cloth pads, they’re generally shocked. Pads…that you wash?! Of course! Disposable pads are a pretty recent invention. In the past women have always used different …

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All about washable and reusable wet bags

What is a wet bag? A wet bag is a washable waterproof pouch in which you can put wet or dirty clothes or objects, such as diapers, wipes, and menstrual pads, but also dirty clothes, bathing suits, and travel toiletries. It works just like a …

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