Olive and Archie

Katie recently told me about the weewonderfuls blog.  I just read her doll story and now I want to make those little dolls for Caleb and Alice SO badly.  You’ve gotta read the story of Olive and Archie.  I really want to make Archie, Olive, and their kitty, but most of all I want to make the dolls so I can make them backpacks and sleeping bags!  I mean, I just love that little acorn backpack that Olive is wearing.  Maybe I’ll make these for Caleb and Alice for Christmas this coming year.  Though who knows if Caleb will still be into dolls at that point.  Maybe I’ll get less ambitious and make these instead. (which I found from a link on whip up.)

wall hanging

While the kids colored on paper from Aunt Liz, I finished my wall hanging project today.  I found this cheapo artist canvas at wally and hot-glued the fabric to it.  I’m happy with the way it turned out.

     

The kids enjoyed coloring too.  Caleb loves to lay down on the paper and have me trace him.  Then of course he wanted me to trace his animals.  I think we traced lion, giraffe, baby dog, big dog, and he asked for Alice (not that she’s one of his animals) but we didn’t do her. 

     

 In other non-crafty news, Caleb and Alice are really starting to play together a lot more.  Caleb is finally figuring out how to play with her and make her laugh, its fun to watch.  And amazing how much more I can get done, and I’m only talking about 5-10 minute spurts for now.  I’m sure they will be good buddies before too long.

     

Early Birthday Present

I’m turning 30 in February!  We’re going away for our 30th birthdays to Savannah (Bob turned 30 in December).  I can’t wait.  We also wanted to do a more memorable gift this year marking 30.  So I got Bob a mandolin (much to his surprise) and he wanted to get me a sewing machine.  At first I wasn’t sure I needed one.  But there have been many times I’ve been frustrated with my machine and its age.  So I went shopping with the kids a week or so ago and decided on this one. 

 I was going to settle for a cheaper and less fancy one (the DC 3050 by Janome).  But I talked with a friend of mine who is an avid sewer and she talked about buying a really good one 15-20 years ago and how much she still loves it. (by the way, that cheaper one is still a really nice machine!)  It made me realize that this is a good investment.  I’ll never buy another machine, so getting the one I really like is a good idea.  So using money we inherited from my Nana’s passing we bought it this past friday.  (Nana was very crafty and sewed a lot herself, so its a great way to remember her!)  I’m so pumped about it.  I took sewing classes all four years of highschool and learned a lot.  I really enjoy sewing and have missed doing it the last several years.  The only recent thing I’ve sewn is curtains (for the most part) and curtains get OLD.  They aren’t all that fun to do. 

 

This machine has a bunch of fancy stitches on it.  I took time this weekend to sew a sample of each one of them so I can see what each one looks like.  I’m going to find some frames for them and hang them on the wall in my sewing room.  I also got two patterns and some fabric to make a little summer outfit and dress for Alice.  I can’t wait to make her something.  I’ll have to post more pictures of the samples when I find frames and hang them up.

        

              

Sewing/Craft Room

    Our new house has a great laundry room.  The house used to have an apartment on the back, so actually my laundry room is the old kitchen from that apartment.  Well when I saw ALL that storage with the cabinets and room for a small table for my sewing machine, I knew this room was my dream come true.  I always wanted a sewing room to keep all of my fabric/sewing stuff, and not to mention all of my other craft junk.  (I finally did throw away a huge bag of paper (to make paper) before we moved.  Bob’s been trying to get me to throw that thing away for years!)  But I have filled up those cabinets with all kinds of stuff and its great.  (we painted the cabinets a while ago)

So I want to show you how amazingly hideous the walls were (I need to comment that our friends we bought the house from felt the same way about this room), and what they look like now.  A couple of months ago we primed it but just got around to painting it last night.  I love it!  Its this great gold color, can’t remember the paint swatch name at the moment.  I can’t wait to get some shelves, pictures, etc on the walls.  And maybe we can find a cool rug for the floor at ikea.  I love decorating and putting rooms together.  But this room is even more fun because its ALL MINE!  Its at the very back of the house, so I have plans to just spend time back there by myself away from it all.  The morning sun comes in through the windows and its so peaceful.  I don’t care that I have to share my craft space with the laundry room, I’ll take it!

Before, can you say purple tie dye?!:

   

In Process, primed, cabinets painted and junked: 

 

Gold, Gold, Gold!:

       

Curtain Sneak Preview, with Caleb inspecting the gold in the morning sun :

       

 I’m sure I’ll be posting more as I decorate and make this room into a fun place to create in.

Seasons Quiet Book

Five or six years ago my friend Jennifer made a quiet book for her daughter.  At the time we hung out all of the time and she was my craft inspiration.  We learned to knit together and now she’s a knitting fiend.  I dropped knitting because my body couldn’t keep up.  I made a quiet book for my niece back then and pretty much copied Jennifer’s layout. 

Two Christmases ago I determined to make one for Caleb.  I got almost all the way done, and then had Alice December 1st.  So I didn’t finish it and it sat for a year.  I just gave it to Caleb this past Christmas.  He and Alice both love it.  He can’t quite do the buttons on his own.  But he enjoys it.  Alice just loves sticking out her chubby little finger to feel all of the buttons and ooh and ahh over them.  She’s so cute. 

Here’s pictures of Caleb’s quiet book.  You can see we are already missing a boot in the winter scene.  But it’ll be easy to just cut out another one.  I’d put up pictures of Casey’s (my niece) book but the files are no longer connected to our hard drive.  Plus Caleb’s is very similar to hers.  Though I got a bit more creative with his, not much though. 

              

         

 Jennifer originally got this idea from the craft queen herself.  Though Jennifer decided it would be much better to sew the pages together instead of glue them.  I agree.

Freezer Paper Stencils

I meet regulary with a group of women and a couple of months ago Amber taught us how to make freezer paper stencils.  I’d seen others do them, but hadn’t tried them myself.  It was a lot of fun.  Here’s my first one.  Though I really regret doing it on a onesie, since Caleb doesn’t really wear onesies except to bed under pjs.  Oh well, I didn’t want to mess up a good shirt.  Caleb was absolutely thrilled to pose for this picture, as you can see. 

  

Then I made my sister’s twins sweatshirts for Christmas.  Julian and Chase are the same age as Caleb so I decided to make all three of them matching sweatshirts.  It was fun, tho this picture makes it look like they resent wearing matching shirts a bit!

 Caleb is really into dogs so he just loves his dog pjs.  I thought it would be fun to try making a bag with that dog on it for a Christmas present.  It was just a plain canvas bag that I had around the house.  I wish that I would have washed it before I painted on it, oh well, I’ll do that next time.

     

*I should have added some instructions before I guess.  There are instructions on the craftster blog.  There is also a link to more detailed instructions from there. 

New Craft Blog Attempt

I enjoy reading blogs occasionally, but failed to regularly update my old blog.  Bob keeps up with his blog so well so I didn’t feel the need to keep up with mine.  Everyone most likely already knows way too much about us from his blog. 

I’ve been wanting to do creative things again.  For so long I haven’t knit,  sewn, made cards, or paper or candles.  All of these things I used to do, before I had kids.  Well I’m finding that I want to pick stuff back up and want to keep track of what I make and how I make it, really just for my own purposes.  I was going to just do a journal of sorts, but wanted to include pictures.  So here I am.

 There are a lot of “cool” craft blogs out there.  This is not one of them, nor do I hope to be that.  Maybe this can be a place where a few of my friends can share craft ideas and I can share mine.  So we’ll see how this goes. 

 I think I’ll start out by posting some recent projects I’ve done.  But that will have to wait till my next post because Alice is crying for me.