Mug set

I made the mug mat for this set quite some time ago. It's part of a craft pay-it-forward that I decided to participate in at the beginning of the year. But after I got the mat finished I didn't know what else to make to go with it.

Why it took me so long to think of making a cozy with more fabric from that collection, I may never know. I guess things just come to me sloooowwwwly sometimes. lol I mean, it's not like I haven't read a lot of blogs with lots of people making these. It just didn't click for me.

But once it did finally click, it only took about 30 minutes to knock this one out.

 I love this button. It's from a tin of really old buttons from an estate sale that a friend of mine bought for me.

I didn't have any coordinating elastic so I dug around a little. I had these little strips that I had cut from an old pair of my girls' tights (I use them to twist their hair up to curl it) and decided it would be perfect. It's got plenty of stretch but is nice and soft too.

Here's the mat, again.

 And the set together.

I'm putting it in the mail today. I hope she likes it!!

Jewelry Making

Abigail spent a majority of her time this weekend making pendants and earrings.

She had requested that I buy her some clay (which I did) and she got to work as soon as I got home with it.

Here are just a FEW of the many things she made.

Dreamsicle

 from the side

 Fortune Cookies

 Hot Dog

 Chocolate pie earrings

 Cake pendant with slices earrings

and these truffle pendant and earrings were my favorite.

 

I'm just blown away by her ability to see something and be able to reproduce it. Or, more impressively, to be able to visualize what she wants and then make it. I don't generally have that ability. I need a lot of helps along the way. lol She totally gets this talent from my Dad. Wish it hadn't skipped right over me. lol

Tried something new

Last week at We Love French Knots she had a guest post from Wendi Gratz at Shiny Happy World. Well, Wendi had included a coupon to get one of her patterns for free for a limited time. It was adorable and I thought it a perfect fit for one of my ongoing projects.

A little background. My girls' bathroom is painted in an awfully bright pink. Right now it has a lot of butterflies around but I've decided to re-do it. I'm doing things slowly as my budget allows. I decided to go with a retro theme. I'm using the 50's Barbie silhouette. You know, the one with her hair in a ponytail. And the stylized black cat silhouette from the same time period. I bought new throw rugs when they were on sale awhile back along with a few other things. (Ah, the lengths that I will go to just so I don't have to repaint. lol)

I guess now the colors will be the same bright pink but with black and white accents this time around.

So, here's that pattern that I stitched up (in a single afternoon, mind you!)

It's actually stitched on white but it glared too much in my picture with enough light on it to make it look white.

The pattern is called Betty's Beehive. Isn't it just adorable?!

The something new that I tried is the coloring. I had never done it before. My colors are much more intense than I had planned. I had read that you should color it darker than what you want the finished product to be, because a lot of the color will come out when you use the iron to set it. Well, almost none of my color came out. lol I don't know if it was because I was using twist up crayons instead of traditional crayons. But, regardless, I'm thrilled with how it came out.

Now I'm just trying to decide how to finish it off - like frame it, add a fabric border and hang it as is, etc. The girls love it too and can't wait to have their bathroom re-styled.

Birthday Gifts

My birthday was weekend before last. It was a 'take it easy' kind of day. That's what I asked for. lol With everything else that goes on and needs to be taken care of, those kinds of days don't come around often enough.

Anyway, two of the girls made gifts for me.

Kirsten drew this Snoopy for me because she knows how much I love Snoopy.

 Isn't it cute?

Abigail made this little t.v. for me.

Get it? Since my initials are T.V. that's why it says I 'heart' T.V.  And that cute little girl is her.

ABC's

It's not that I haven't been doing anything, I just haven't been finishing anything. lol


That's what happens when you work on something bigger.


At the moment, I'm busy learning my ABC's....

I'm loving these blocks!!

Last minute gifts

Two of my girls are cheerleaders for the school year that's just around the corner. If I make it through the whole year without doing harm to their cheer coach it will likely be a miracle. I've already been somewhere past livid with her and the year hasn't even started. Lord help me!


No, really, I mean that. I'm going to need help.


Okay, back to the point of this post. When I picked the girls up from practice yesterday afternoon they informed me that they needed gifts for their 'big sisters' for today.

Seriously? (Don't get me started again!)


Now, you need to know that I live kind of out of town of a small town. The next town is about 25 miles away. My gift choices here in town are the dollar store, the grocery store, hardware store, or feed store. Not many options right here for gifts a teenage girl might want. I didn't have the time, energy, or gas money to head all the way back into the bigger town again. The cheer coach's suggestion is always candy, but Addison's big sister is seriously ill and can't have the sugar right now so that wasn't even an option.


The girls threw out a lot of different ideas so we settled on these.

For Abigail's big sis I made a bracelet and a pouch to put it in.

 I had a Diet Rite can for this bracelet. Fortunately I already had the bracelet part made. I had another project in mind for it that didn't work out the way I had hoped so it was a quick project for this. All I had to do was make the charms and put them on there.

Then I made her this little pouch to put it in.

The picture does not do this fabric justice. It is a whole lot brighter than this. Think 70's psychedelic. Abigail picked it out of a bunch of scraps I had.


Addison decided to go with a pillow made from a tie dye t-shirt that I had in with my stash.

I thought the pillow was too plain when I got it finished so I cut two little scraps of fabric. On the top piece I put her name with a paint marker then used black thread to stitch it to the other piece. I sewed them onto the pillow with my stitch hidden under the the top piece and left the raw edges out. Addison put a little bottle of hand sanitizer from Bath & Body Works in a carrier and tied it around the pillow. Lizzie can't be around germs any more than absolutely necessary so Addison thought that good smelling sanitizer was called for.

I finished the two projects somewhere around midnight. I left the dishes in the sink so that these could get done. Wonder if anyone else did those for me today!

I hope the girls liked their gifts.

Insanity Update

We've been doing the Insanity workouts now for 5 weeks.

I have to say that I'm a little disappointed.

I've only lost a couple of pounds. I know that's better than gaining so I do try to look at the bright side there.

I do feel better after the workouts are over (read I don't feel like I'm going to pass out and die anymore) but this week we move up to a harder level.

Dax has done some research and found that for people who didn't have a lot of weight to lose (we're both hoping for around 10 pounds) that they didn't notice a difference until they got to this second level.

I hope that's true because this has been an awful lot of hard work for pants to just be tighter across my butt!!

Fortunately, we aren't doing measurements today because Dax is out of town. It's a good thing because my birthday was Saturday and it was our no diet day. We had Mexican food, cookies, and ice cream!! I don't want to know what kind of damage that might have done. But, we only have 2 no diet days a month. It's really the only thing that keeps me doing this. If I thought I would never get to have foods that I love again, I wouldn't be able to do this long term.

Wish me luck on the new workouts coming up. Dax gets back tomorrow night. Depending on the time we'll either start these on Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm a little scared because the first part is hard enough!

Another one done

I finished my 9th block in the Annie BOM from Daisy Cottage Quilting.

I couldn't get a good picture to save my life. Maybe I'll try again and replace this one.

It doesn't show up very well, but I used french knots to make the cuffs on her dress all nice and fluffy. :0)

I've got three more to go and I'll be done with this. I can't wait to get them all together!!