Happy New Year to all my faithful readers and new ones alike! I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and have a Blessed 2013!!!

I decided to get a pesky little project that was bugging me out of the way today. Most of you who are 45 and older will understand this.

It’s bad enough that I need reading glasses now, but do I also have to suffer that hideous brown polyester case too! Honestly, this is the ugliest glasses case I’ve ever seen (or felt)! Well after looking at this atrocity for several months I decided to do something about it. Now you who know me know that I am too cheap creative to just go out and buy a new case. No, I decided to take all of five minutes to make one. This is all I used.

I used a square of old quilted fabric (with roses, of course), vintage pink and white rick rack and pink seam binding. I was throwing caution to the wind when I actually decided I would decorate the new case. Could I do this all within my attention span of  five minutes?

Yes and no. It took me about five minutes to thread my stupid sewing machine even with my glasses on! After that frustrating exercise it did only take me five minutes to sew on the rick racks, sew the top of the case down (including seam binding so the glasses don’t get stuck every time I try to pull them out), and sewing up the side and bottom seams. Ta Da. What else can I beautify in five minutes?

This is my money “envelope”. I use the envelope system for budgeting and find this handy little coupon book to be perfect for dividing my $$$.

I cut up some rosy (surprise!) printed cardboard that was the packaging for some scented shelf paper to line the front and back. I also used it for the divider tabs, but as I had to write on the front of the tabs the roses only show from the back. Oh well, I know they’re there (smile). I also did this in five minutes.

I got this watering can at a thrift shop. It was okay and had some nice patina in places but I thought I could make it better. I used rub-on letters, my big muscles, some spicy language and five minutes to get the rub-ons to actually rub-on. As you can see, only parts of each letter cooperated. It’s good that I like the less than perfect look of the letters because there was no way I was going to invest another five minute chunk of my life into this project.

Your challenge in this new year is to look around and see what you can beautify, recycle, up-cycle, re-purpose or create in just five minutes!!!