A year of craftin'

We have been having a wonderful holiday season ... the kids got more presents than any house can hold though ... I cut back ... Grandma & Grandpa bought just as much as us & Santa combined though. LOL. So, while I am working on slowly re-organizing our house ... Happy New Year!!!

Here's my favorite thing from each month in 2008 ...

January (free-handed a high chair cover & sooooo many bibs!)

February (the first quilt along with Amanda Jean)

March (Mom & Daughter ruffle aprons)

April (a nursing cover gift for a friend)

May (digital recipe cards & box)

June (Savannah's name sign)

July (alphabet embroidery)

August (Mario cross stitch)

September & October I was too busy being sick & cutting for the craft fair to blog about anything evidently

November (exploding scrapbook box)

December (ice skate stockings)

In 9 days ...

What a busy & stressful & fun & tiring week! In the past 9 days I have:

• made 40+ gift bags (whole wheat pancakes in a baggie, yum! -here's a pic of the kids helping to stuff the bags I made-) & delivered them all too!
• mailed off 40 Christmas cards
• made 24 bags of magic reindeer food for the kids to drop off to their friends
• had nine families (for a total of 44 people!) over for a hot cocoa party ... so crowded you could barely move! IT. WAS. AWESOME!
• made 7 gift bags for church teachers & bosses (breakfast in a bag - pancakes, hot cocoa, syrup & hashbrowns)
• put the binding on FOUR christmas blankets (two nativity blankets for the kids, finally finished the Christmas tree blanket & a disappearring nine patch blanket for a family friend)
• made gift tags for the three kids ... they love seeing their faces on their gifts from Santa each year! (This is a picture of a gift from last year ...)
• attended the Las Vegas bowl with my husband (BYU vs. Arizona)
• AND ... finally finished the Christmas shopping and wrapped all the gifts. Tonight, the only plan is attempting to put up a swing set in the dark ... wish us luck!

Hope you all finished your to-do lists & have a very Merry Christmas!!! :)

Christmas Disappearring Nine Patch

Last Christmas I started (and didn't finish the quilting) on this blanket. I used this tutorial which I absolutely love! I was able to use almost only scraps on it and then I just bought a few random fat quarters to add a little more variety. It's totally scrappy & for some reason that really is my favorite kind of quilt. And I kept this green reindeer fabric as the center square thru the whole blanket. It's so nice to be getting all these blankets & projects out of the closet!!! It's going as a Christmas present to a very sweet family that we all absolutely love. In fact, I just quickly took the photos right after washing it on our way to rush over in the nick of time & deliver it. Nothing like waiting to the last SECOND. Final finished size though was a LOT smaller because of all the cutting & re-sewing, 45x59. Hope they enjoy it! :)

The next project that I've been eyeing is the star quilt along ... maybe I should get to work finishing that now??? Think I'm far enough behind the gang??? LOL.

Hunter's Nativity Blanket

**Sorry for the BAD pictures ... crappy lighting with all the winter storms.**
So another blanket that Mati did for me was Hunter's choice for his Christmas blanket. I let him pick out his colors and ALL he wanted was blue, I threw a sash of the golden angels fabric in with it, but otherwise, all him. I didn't have enough of any particular blue for the binding, so I alternated every 20 inches with the three blues I had, i really like the scrappiness of that! I couldn't convince him of even looking at the other stuff. She did shooting stars all along the large blue border,stars in the light yellow angel sash and then the first few lines of "Hark the herald angels sing" in the blue sash next to the panel. What amazes me about this quilt (besides the fact that it's now done, bound & on their bed ... before Christmas too!) is that the different colors REALLY make the panel look different. Savannah's blanket looks so much darker, while this blanket seems to scream out blue and softness to me. The kids love the blankets too ... which makes it perfect. I think now the piano lessons are paid thru the end of next month (maybe longer) ... thanks Mati! :)

Monkey n' Around

We are currently in the middle of a snow day here in Vegas! They cancelled school today because of it all. So exciting! It started yesterday at noon and we had almost 6 inches by 6 pm last night! I know this may not be huge news to most, but we have NEVER had snow like this in the 17 years I've been here ... and it's been over 40 years since they cancelled school because of the snow. The kids are in heaven.

Since it is the week before Christmas, I figured I should finish the FOUR blankets that need practically no work other than binding them ... so today's goal is Savannah's nativity blanket, tomorrow is Hunter's (I'll post pics of his tomorrow). But! I wanted to show pictures of a SIL's blanket that I made for their cute new baby and she just received in the mail (so now it's safe to show).

She just had an adorable baby boy. I wanted to make a special blanket for their baby, and was debating what to do until I saw pictures of the boys' rooms at their new home. Big, bright & bold stripes of color and then I knew that the monkey blanket would fit right in at their home. I did the stitch & flip for the edging on the blanket and then Mati stitched it for me. I tried taking photos but the lighting was horrible ... but you get the general idea. The entire blanket was the numbers 0-9. It was fantastic! :) But you know what's the best part??? Having another completed project out of my to-do list & closet! :)

The craft fair that was not ...

So I worked my butt off for that craft fair. I kid you not, that I have sore muscles from sewing this past week. My dear husband took Friday off & I sewed straight from 8 am Friday morning until 5:20 am on Saturday. I had doll blankets, the scrapbook ornaments, TONS of care bears, ice skate stockings, the works man! I did the fair with three other gals and I know I was not the only one exhausted as we arrived Saturday morning for set up. Ryan was pretty upset though when he found out how little I had been sleeping the nights leading up to it ... he pointed out that that was NOT safe with the pregnancy ... which didn't even occur to me (I know ... I'm so pregnancy paranoid why didn't it?!?!?).

The weather was slightly breezy but not bad and we set up. This is the biggest craft fair/show offered by the city of Henderson (a small town RIGHT next to Las Vegas) each year. They have a HUGE toy parade and so many family friendly things that it attracts thousands of visitors each year. So we felt good about the huge variety of stuff that we offered & I thought for sure that at least some of it would sell. I got there at 8 am, but by 10 am the wind had kicked up so bad, vendors were packing up to leave! I was having to HOLD DOWN the stuff that I had made. Ugh. We held in there for an hour until over half of the 65 vendors had packed up to leave and it was 11 am. Things were flying away, it was horrible.

We packed up & left. I felt horrible about it all, but at least I wasn't as bad off as some of the people packing up, they said this was their Christmas money for their family. And I immediately went home & slept for four hours that afternoon & got ten more hours of sleep last night. Now at least it feels like it's not as depressing ... and my house is already looking a lot cleaner. :)

SOOOOOOO ... I've listed them in my etsy shop. I priced them lower then I wanted at the craft fair ... but it's either pack them away until the fair next year (which we're still debating) or just sell them, call it good and clear up the space (which honestly sounds so much better!!!). So the full set is on sale much lower then I was asking and free shipping on the full set of ten as well. I only have ten full sets of care bears, and I listed some of them seperately & then two full sets and I can add a few more, but not many. Did I mention I NEVER want to make these again? They are cute, but SOOOO time consuming.

So snatch them up if you're interested. I put priority mail on everything & no additional fees on additional purchases so you can get as many as you want & I'll eat the additional shipping fees.

Christmas Pajamas

I'm sorry, I am still working on the tutorial. It's hard explaining (in a way you'll understand) a couple points ... but I at least had a finished project to share in the meantime! :)
For our trip to the Polar Express (which was absolutely amazing by the way!!!), I wanted to make pajamas for the kids. Last year I didn't realize how popular of an idea this was, and needless to say my then 4 yo was asking the WHOLE TIME why he didn't get to wear his pajamas like everyone else. So, I bought 8.5 yards of this cute flannel ... and figured it would be enough for the five of us (I have NEVER done a pattern or any of that type of sewing before). I got the fabric in October so that I would have PLENTY of time to figure it all out before the big day ... which means that I completely put it off until Saturday and then spent all day and all night working on them. I freaked out when the pattern for the adults called for almost 5 yards of fabric per adult, so I placed the pants VERY close together and ended up with just scraps & 12 inches of flannel spare. BIG THANKS to my husband! He was up stuffing the elastic in the waists at midnight. Such a great guy. I love the way that they turned out! :) It only took TEN bobbins of thread & 13 hours ... but the end result was so worth it! :) Now if I could have only interested the kids in smiling for one single photograph ... they were too busy having fun & wanting to see Santa to be bothered with that ...

Tutorial Tomorrow ...

So I made my first batch of pants & used my first ever pattern yesterday. It took me THIRTEEN hours to make five pants!!!!! I'm slow ... hopefully I'll get faster because that end result is awesome! I'm almost done with the tutorial on the scrapbook ornament, I just haven't had any time to edit photos and check my instructions, I just under-estimated the pants-time. So when we get back I'll finish it! :) Have a great weekend!!! :)

Giveaway Winner!

Okay, so I did that random generator thing-y and it came up with Maggie! I put a comment on your blog, so send me your address & which two you would like! :)

If anyone is interested, I'm going to list some of them on etsy after I get back from the Polar Express this weekend! Eek! I can hardly wait to see Santa! :)

I'll have the tutorial up later today, I'm still editing the pictures & checking my instructions ... thanks everybody who commented! :)

Thrifty Thursday

If you're looking for the giveaway, it's the post beneath this ...

So it's been a LONG time since I posted a Thrifty Thursday, mainly because ... well ... I haven't been shopping at all lately, just cutting out craft fair things. But! This needed to be shared. :) Back in June or July we went up to Salt Lake City for a wedding reception of my husband's friend. I was able to twist my husband's arm and he FINALLY agreed to let me go thrift shopping up there! I was soooo glad we did too! Last year I put garland around the front door and some plastic balls ... but I really felt like it needed more balls and better garland. Well, I didn't get the better garland (yet), but I did score these two HUGE bags of balls just like I had been collecting! Some of those balls were $3 on their own, but the two bags were only $2 on their own! LOVE IT! Now the garland looks so much better! :)

Care Bear Ornament Giveaway

Comments are now closed, thanks for looking! I will be posting some of these on etsy if you are interested in a few days ...

I found an "vintage" care bear ornament pattern and have been making them feverishly for a craft fair next weekend. It's been production style and some are in the middle of been sewn, so I thought I'd just show the un-sewn ones for now.

Anyways! I have eight of ten different kinds of care bears I've been working on to giveaway; Grumpy Bear, Birthday Bear, Wish Bear, Sleepy Bear, Good Luck Bear, Cheer Bear and Friend Bear. Each one has some level of hand embroidery and let me tell you all those tiny pieces of felt and then the ironing them on makes each bear a special hour plus project of love. LOL. I used eco felt which is made using 100% recycled plastic bottles and then heat n' bonded each individual piece on. They are about as long as my hand and I have pretty average girl-y hands at that. Tomorrow once the sun starts shining better I'll show you a sewn piece. They have stuffing & sewing all along the outside to give them a little soft plush feel. It's fabulous.They have been withstanding the love & kisses of my 3 year old daughter (she is getting a set for her tree ... soon), but really aren't made for play as much as tree decorations. I even just did this as an activity with some church girls and they suggested placing a key ring on them and having them on their backpacks. I just love the care bears and thought this was a definite unique item to offer up to someone!

And I'd like to give two of them away to someone. Just leave a comment here by tomorrow, December 4th, 12:00 PM (Midnight) EST and I'll post the winner on Friday morning. I'll ship them via priority mail, if you are in another country I'll pay $5 for shipping and if you'd like them I'd need you to cover the rest. Just tell me which care bear was your favorite ... then if you're picked (via random generator) you can pick two of the eight for yourself.

On Friday I will also be offering a fun little fold-out scrapbook ornament tutorial ... I make one of these every year for our tree and have taught others to make them. It's fun having a "journal" of pictures from each year for the kids to see. :)

**Can I add one more thing??? This is really intimidating to do this! Holy cow, what if NO ONE likes these things that I have spent the last two months working on???**