Crafty Tuesday

Man, we are in full-on creative Christmas mode over here…yet, I don’t have anything concrete to show you today.

Em and I are trying out a new pattern for a VERY fun kid present. I just cut all of the fabric out and have promised Em that she can help me sew it up tomorrow afternoon. We are doing a trial run since we need a birthday present for Addie’s little friend this weekend. But if it turns out, you had better believe every kid on my list will be getting one of these. I promise details and photos next week!

I also finished our Christmas card today, it is going to be printed tomorrow and hopefully sent out by the end of the week, so maybe, possibly, I can show that next week, too!

Let’s see, also working on calendars. Nope, can’t show those either.

We spent the weekend decorating and ushering in Christmas around here. We still have plenty to do, but it has been pretty fun – the girls are so giddy about every aspect of Christmas, which makes it all even more exciting. I didn’t take a single photo this weekend of our decorating mayhem. Huh. That is quite unusual for me. We did our “formal” tree in the dining room, but we are going to do our really fun tree (the real tree) in our living room this weekend. That will be photo-worthy since it has all of the good ornaments. So, yeah. Photos next week?

How about instead…another outtake of the infamous Christmas card shoot?

Jump!

Technically…a horrible shot. We were trying to “jump.” But I can’t help but smile when I see those cute faces. Sweetness.

Does anyone have some craftiness they are able to show today?

Crafty Tuesday (Weekend!)

Thanks to our Crafty Weekend, I finally have stuff to show you today!

So, I met up with Kim and a friend in Chicago and we loaded up headed for Lake Geneva. Here’s a peek at our supplies for the weekend…

car

Yep. Filled up the entire cargo section of the van.

And this was the scene for most of the weekend…

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Hard at work.

The bulk of my work was finishing a Christmas present, a scrapbook for somebody. And I know she reads this, so I don’t want to show the actual project. But here is a peek – proof if you will – that I did 20+ layouts and just about finished the book up on Saturday…

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And I also scrapped my favorite recent photos of the girls so that I could fill these shadowboxes for their rooms. (That I have had for many of months.)

This one is Gracie’s…

Gracie_new page

And it now lives on top of her bookshelf…

Gracie_on the bookshelf

And the layout for Addikins….

Addie_totally cute

Which now lives above her little reading chair in her room…

New frame

So I felt it was a very successful weekend. Plus, on the plane ride I was able to get two books read, my calendars started, and a little bit of work done. Nice big chunks of time to focus up. It was really nice.

And J. did marvelously as a single Daddy. I got a call on the way to the airport on Thursday from the sitter that Emma had contracted the stomach flu courtesy of Addie, no doubt. And Addie still wasn’t feeling quite herself, so J. had two sick little girlies to contend with for part of the weekend. But they also managed to fit in a movie, bagel Saturday, Em’s last soccer game, a couple of trips to the toy store to make Christmas lists, and plenty ‘o spoiling. Yeah, I think they all had a good time.

How about you? Did you get some time this past week to indulge in a little bit of craftiness? Do share.

So very UN-Crafty Tuesday…

Ah…hi? Wow, so here it is Tuesday again. And, um…honestly? I have been running around in preparation for my upcoming (hopefully!) very crafty weekend and completely forgot to even post last night.

I did, however, manage to clean up the house so it is at least respectably cluttered; finished and sent off final versions of three projects and the first version for review of the “big one.” The huge project that nearly put me over the edge, but is going to be so appreciated next month when I want to shop for Christmas! And, also, did a little grocery shop so my babies will have something to eat when I am gone this weekend.

Did I mention I will be gone? All. Weekend. With no children? Just some friends. Some scrapbooking. And more than likely…snow? Yeah, we are meeting in Chicago, so I can’t vouch that the weather is going to be great, but the un-Mommy time? That, I can promise will be great!

So send J. some good thoughts on doing the “single parent” thing all weekend. I know they will all have a fantastic time and I’m anxious to get back and find out that it all went so smoothly…I should do it more often!

Hee. Well, “anxious” might not be the right word, but you know what I mean.

Please tell me somebody out there has some crafty stuff to show and inspire us all into getting our holiday crafts done. Ok….ok! Started.

Crafty Tuesday ~ Halloween Edition

Here we go…all of the Halloween photos have been downloaded. And I am going to do costumes, pumpkins, and Halloween all-in-one today. Then tomorrow…on to the next season!

We didn’t get a chance to do our pumpkins until Friday afternoon. Nothing like cutting it close. Em was pretty excited about “gutting” them this year. Addie wanted nothing to do with them.

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Em also drew her face on the pumpkin and Daddy cut it out exactly the way she drew it. Hers is the 2nd one from the right. Addie wanted a heart nose (like hers!), so that one is hers. The surprised pumpkin was mine and Daddy got all artsy with the black cat on his!

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Then…FINALLY it was time to don the costumes on and get to trick-o-treatin’! We started pretty early, so we got to be home for the bulk of the kids. We just went around the block which is still more candy than they can (or will!) eat until well after Christmas.

There was one house, I guess the guy works on special-effects in the movies and his house is always terribly scary. When we walk past it to go to Ad’s school, Em always calls it the “haunted house” but it is also the home of one incredibly friendly little kitty who runs up to the girls to get love whenever he is out. It’s a tough dilemma…gory body parts….or cute cat? Most of the time the cute cat wins out. But on Halloween night they had the fog, the scary music, nothing but candlelight – the whole works. Em refused to go up to the door. Even with promises that we would go along.

Addie, on the other hand, had figured out that you had to make it to the door to get the goods! She marched up there (making sure I was at her side, of course) and the guy who lived there kept telling her that she was so brave so she should get extra. I think he put five handfuls of little candy bars in her bag.

Of course, when we were walking home from church on Sunday (and various other times over the past few days) she reminds us all, “I was so very brave at the haunted house, wasn’t I? Emma didn’t want to go up there, but I did and got LOTS of candy!” Stinker.

So, the girls liked getting the candy, but REALLY liked getting to hand it out, as you may have seen in my BSM yesterday. The loved to see the costumes and some of Em’s friends from school came to the door, too. That was really fun.

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And now for the costumes. I loved how Addie’s turned out. It looked really cute on her. She loved the wrist loop that allowed her to hold her tail and walk at the same time. But she ADORES the seashell “puwrse.” She used it as her candy bag. I should have shot better closeup photos so you could see the sequins, or “sparkles” as she calls them, on her top and on the seashell.

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I’m glad we just borrowed the Ariel wig from a friend, she had it on for maybe 10 seconds. Then it was tossed aside and I couldn’t get her to put it on for anything. So Ariel was blonde in our house for Halloween.

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I liked Em’s costume and everybody knew that she was Alice in Wonderland right away, but apparently I think my girl is about 2 sizes larger than she really is. The dress was pretty big, but the apron sort of “held” it on. Addie’s was a little big, too – but I was (in my infinite wisdom) really just making sure they could use them for dress-up for the next year. Yeah, that’s it!

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She had to carry that metal bucket as her candy collector. I think if we had been out for longer than once around the block it would have been too heavy, but she even offered to carry Addie’s bag at one point, so she did alright.

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(See how big the sleeves are on her little weenie arms?)

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Once we got all of the material and supplies, and got it all cut out – the sewing went fairly easy. Although slippery satin is definitely not my first choice for fabric, I might be talked into doing costumes again next year. We’ll see. Although if you ask them, they just want to be Alice and Ariel again next year. So maybe the costumes will still fit??

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Crafty Tuesday

If Tim Gunn* were here and took a wee peek at my Halloween costumes he would place his chin in his hand, purse his lips and shake his head while saying, “This worries me…”

Quite frankly, the costumes – or rather the pieces of costumes spread from my dining room to my living room and back again – “worrries” me as well. And I have two days…TWO DAYS! How in the world did that happen?

Gah…so no photos this week. I’m off to find me a seamripper and to “make it work.”

*Tim Gunn is the mentor on Project Runway – the television delight that Wendy and Jeff turned me on to – for those of you not “in the know.”

Crafty (Bake-y) Tuesday

Well, hello there! Let me just dust the flour off of my hands and come out of the kitchen for a bit. It seems that I have been a baking fool lately. Last week I “volunteered” to bake for Ad’s school. Since we had a soccer game on Saturday morning, I was feeling a little guilty that we couldn’t help at the Pumpkin Patch. So instead, we baked. A lot.

Seven batches of pumpkin scones and a few loafs of pumpkin choco-chip bread later…I was relieved to deposit the goods and be done.

Well, until the end of this week at least. Apparently at some point I signed up to bake for Emma and her school carnival this weekend.

Here are the pretty scones waiting to be sold…

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And here is the recipe card that we attached to the bottom.

Supposedly it is the Starbucks pumpkin scone recipe. I don’t think they taste exactly the same, and I couldn’t get the frosting as thick, but they are pretty yummy.

Now, I have a request for all of you.

I have been making muffins for the girls for breakfast. Neither of them really like to eat in the morning, but I have found that they will eat a muffin or two. I’ve been making banana muffins and pumpkin muffins and today I tried blueberry. What I really want is a sneaky recipe that they’ll eat that is good for them as well. I use whole wheat flour and organic sugar – but they still are not super healthy.

So if you have some healthy muffin-type recipes, send them over. If I make them and they pass the test around here – I’ll send some pumpkin scones your way!

Crafty Tuesday

I owe so much of my “craftiness” to my mom. I think I inherited some of her artistic genes and the rest I absorbed through osmosis by just growing up around her. Although the cake decorating does still allude me. I must have been doing too much of the tasting of the frosting – and not enough observing because I still cannot manage to decorate a decent cake.

But flowers, and putting together bouquets – that I do have “down.”  My mom and I did the flowers for my wedding, my sister’s wedding, my brother’s wedding…and a whole bunch of other ones. Plus, I love flowers, and a chance to play with them? Yeah, that is really fun for me. When I used to work in San Francisco we used to visit the flower mart every few weeks and I’ve always loved having fresh flowers in the house.

Last week I got to visit the LA flower mart. Holy flowers, Batman! It was overwhelming, to say the least. But we found a lot of roses for cheap and put together some simple, elegant bouquets for Debby and the girls and boutineers for the guys. (This is the last of the wedding photos, I promise!)

debby's bouquet

For Debby’s bouquet we just used 2 dozen cream colored roses and wrapped them up with ribbon. The roses were (are!) stunning with just a touch of pink to them. They still look amazing on my dining room table!

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And for the guys and the girl’s bouquets we used yellow roses with a little bit of baby’s breath. Did I mention that I really loved doing the flowers? Hmmm…maybe if this gig I have going on doesn’t work out, I could adopt wedding florist as a new career.

flower girl bouquets

And for my next crafty endeavor…I will be attempting to make the girls’ Halloween costumes. We visited the fabric store today and it was so fun to watch Em and Ad – they were like kids in a candy store. Of course they picked out the most expensive, silkiest, glittery-est fabric for their costumes. Between the time I will be spending making these costumes, and the extravagant wishes of my “Project Runway wannabe” girls, these are going to be some seriously expensive costumes. So help me, they had just better turn out.

costumes!

Anyone else have some craftiness to share today?

Un-Crafty Tuesdays

I have to postpone CT this week and next. I just don’t have time to craft anything or post it in the next few weeks. (My mother-in-law will be here this weekend and next, so I don’t forsee any time to craft then either!)

But I know that Stacy has some goodies today, so go check ’em out. And as always, if you have something to share, let us know!

Crafty Tuesday

Prepare for the whining and excuses to begin. Starting….

Now.

I can’t believe I am going to even post this photo and call it my Crafty thing for the week. And not only do I deem it “not very crafty,” it is a horrible photo as well. But it is all I have time or energy for right now. So you get what you get.

While we were at Em’s soccer game on Saturday, the other team had really cute little matching ponytail holder thingys, made with ribbons of their team colors and also some cool ribbons with little soccer balls on it. When we were shaking hands with them, I slyly checked out how they were put together (it wasn’t too hard to be sneaky, most of them were 3 1/2 feet tall, so I just looked like I was leering at the top of their heads, that is not too creepy, right?).

So Em and I went to the fabric store and got pink, black, white ribbon – but they were out of the soccer ball ribbon. Apparently there are some die-hard, crafty, soccer moms out there who thought about all of this BEFORE the season started. So I’m still searching for soccer ribbon, but Em and I attempted to make a trial one tonight.

Really should have had Em model it for the photos because it really does look cute when it is on. Only need to make 5 more before Saturday.

While we were at the fabric store the girls picked out their Halloween costumes, too. Well, the patterns for them, hopefully, God willing, we will be able to feature an Alice in Wonderland and an Ariel costume here on Crafty Tuesday some time in the next month!

I’m afraid the material around these parts is going to be very, very light again this week. I’ll try to throw up a few photos to tie you all over. It isn’t for lack of blog material, oh there is PLENTY of that around here, but I have a few big projects going on, a babysitter who is out of the country (yes, she is home trying to get a visa to get back here!), and some other big stuff going on that I just can’t get into right now. But I will be back, don’t give up on me just yet!

Maybe someone else has some true craftiness to share with all of us today?

Crafty Tuesday

So I cheated a little bit when I told you that I promised to show something last week if you popped over to Kimmer’s to wish her a Happy Birthday…I actually already had two birthday cards on “standby” and ready for this week. So I knew I could make that promise in good faith. I think that they should have arrived to their destinations by now – so here are a few more birthday cards…yep, same envelopes that I’ve been stuck on for months now.

First one for Kimmer – I found this cool stamp that I didn’t even know I had. (Um, a bit too much craft stuff, perhaps?) The photo is a little blurry but it reads “Of all the gifts life could send – the best is knowing you’re my friend!”  (Do you like the purple/red combo, Kimmer? Hee.)

And the second one for my brother (Happy Birthday, Ken!) whose birthday was over the weekend as well. Used the oldie-but-goodie “Happy Bird-day” stamps for it. I totally love the birds.

Apparently a lot of you were more than happy to let my baking be classified as “crafty.”
Whew! Thank goodness – because we seem to be doing a lot more baking than scrapping around here lately. And thanks for the walnuts in the freezer tip…I keep my choco chips in there, when I can keep them in the house, I will definitely remember to do that with my walnuts as soon as I restock them as well.

So what’s cooking or crafting at your house this week?