Archive for the ‘gifts’ Category
Recently I won a little giveaway over at jennyflower, and it arrived yesterday. Look at all those goodies. I knew about the book and the card, isn’t it gorgeous? I will have lots of fun going through the book and trying my hand at ribbon embroidery, and look at the extras.
My two girls love the hair pretties. The babe grabbed them all in her chubby little hands and started patting her head (what she does when she wants something in her hair). They are all hand crocheted or stitched and they are gorgeous, what a lovely little surprise. Also the fact that the book was wrapped in fabric was so exciting to me. Now I have some pretty new fabrics to work with and I think I know just what they will end up as.
Thanks Jennyflower, it was such a treat. If you aren’t familiar with Jennyflower,you should definitely pop on over, she is such a sweet gal and does beautiful work.
On a side note, my brother leaves today, we had a really nice time with him, and will miss him. The rest of our week should be fairly normal and back to our routine, though I’m hoping for some better weather as it would be really nice to have the kids play outside some. The problem with winter here is that it gets really windy. The cold wouldn’t be so bad by itself, but the wind can be brutal. Most of the time it is too much for the kids to go out, or dry clothes on the line, they just get whipped off, so I am really looking forward to warmer, less windy days.
I am making good progress on my crochet project and hope to have it finished next week. Also, I am trying to decide on what our one small change for March will be. Oh, and we have to take our eldest to the dentist again as he needs another repair on his braces (second one in one week), which is a bit of a pain as it is so far away. So maybe it won’t be such a normal week after all.
books, gifts, sewing • Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 • 5 Comments »
Much of this past weekend was enjoying a wedding and all that it involved. My brother flew into town and we are very much enjoying his company as well. I was thrilled to be asked to do the flowers for the wedding so I thought I would share some pictures of them with you all.
All four of my kiddos were in the wedding, and the girls each carried one of these. The brides bouquet above went perfectly with her gorgeous bronze dress. It’s been a while since I’ve done flowers for any type of event, but it was a lot of fun. All of the flowers were faux, as they were done in advance, but nowadays there are such pretty, convincing faux flowers that it was near impossible to tell.
We had a great weekend, hope you all did too.
family, gifts • Monday, February 22nd, 2010 • 15 Comments »
I must admit, we aren’t huge Valentine’s Day celebrators around here, and I have been feeling very uninspired by all things red and hearty lately. Until this morning that is. I couldn’t sleep this morning and it was pretty early, and it hit me. Who doesn’t use bookmarks? I wanted to do some sort of project that wouldn’t be tied to one day in February, but could be enjoyed all year round.
I think I may have found my crafty calling. This was the first time I ever did any machine embroidery and I just adore it. A couple of weeks ago, I had an amazon gift card burning a hold in my pocket, and I finally decided to get Free and Easy Stitch Style. I really love the look of machine embroidered items and thought I would jump in with both feet. I’m so glad I did. Here is an excellent tutorial by my friend Marmalade Rose to help you learn the basics.
These were such fun, and after I got the hang of the embroidering, they were very quick. One of the best things about machine embroidery is that it doesn’t matter if your lines are a bit wobbly, they look perfect however they turn out. I made some heart bookmarks, but I also made some flowers. I am more of a flower gal than a heart one, which kind are you?
Oh, and here is a tutorial for the bookmarks, I’d love to see any if you make some up.
books, gifts, green, sewing • Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 • 10 Comments »
A couple of weeks ago, Hubby and I went on a date sans kids (thanks mom!) Though it may not sound extremely romantic, we went to Barnes and Noble and just read quietly for an hour. It was so nice to flip through magazines without having to keep one eye on the kids.
I was flipping through the US Country Living and saw an article about using sweaters to cover items in your home. I loved the vases, but their instructions were vague at best and involved a lot of cutting and hot glue. Sounded kind of messy to me.
I wasn’t really keen on the idea of them being glued together as cleaning the cover and vase if necessary, wouldn’t be very easy. I also wanted to be able to swap out covers to coordinate with whatever was in them, or wherever they were in the house.I knew I could figure out a better way, so I gathered some thrifted sweaters and some empty bottles, and away I went. I am really pleased with how they turned out. I think it’s a really nice way to add some colour and texture to an arrangement.
They are so easy to make, and very quick as well. It’s fun to use different textured and patterned sweaters to create some different looks. Here is a tutorial in case you want to make some of your own.
Hope you guys have a great weekend.
gifts, green, home, sewing, thrift store finds • Saturday, February 6th, 2010 • 14 Comments »
This month I made a renewed commitment to using cloth bags for shopping. The only problem is that in the grocery store, there are those awful little produce bags. I think I must be the only person who stands there trying to open them, they just never want to work like they should. Then there’s the whole thing with throwing a bunch more little plastic bags in the trash as soon as we get home.
Even when we use cloth bags to bag up all of the groceries, these produce bags have been a problem. Since I am not using any plastic bags anymore, I needed to come up with a solution, and quick. Now, I do not live near a fabric store, and my choices are very limited. I wasn’t coming across anything at the thrift store that would work, and it finally dawned on me that I could use cheesecloth. It’s sturdy, and yet somewhat sheer. Something about the lighting in this pictures makes it seem as though you can’t really see what’s in the bag, but you can in person.
I made these simple drawstring produce bags and I am thrilled with how they turned out. They were extremely easy to sew together, and they are going to be a huge help when it comes to lugging produce back from the store. If you can sew a straight line, you can make these bags, and here’s my tutorial to help you out. Hope you guys enjoy!
gifts, green, sewing • Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 • 16 Comments »
Normally when I start working on a project, I know where it is going. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do when I started embroidering this fabric. It sat around for a while while I tried to figure out what it was going to be. Then I decided that hey, a girl can never have too many zippered pouches, right?
I use them for lots of things. They are perfect for throwing a chapstick and a couple of dollars in. I used to use one with the babe, for carrying a couple of pacifiers. They’re good to hold coupons, or use for a makeup bag. I even have a bigger one that contains an entire clean outfit for the babe in the diaper bag. They are so versatile, you can make them in any size and I find myself using them all of the time.
Our thrift store sells bags of 3-5 vintage and new zippers for a quarter, so between that and the scraps of fabric to make the bags, they cost pennies. They make fantastic gifts, especially if you make two or three in graduated sizes.
Do you use zippered pouches? What do you put in them?
gifts, green, home, sewing, thrift store finds • Monday, January 25th, 2010 • 14 Comments »
For the most part, I consider our family pretty green. We try to eat organic as much as the budget allows. We use cloth diapers, cloth napkins, and hankies. When the weather allows, I dry our clothes outside on a line. We keep the thermostat low and just add a sweater or an extra pair of socks. We shop for most of our clothes at the thrift store and donate the things that we don’t use anymore. When we are in need of something I try to find it used before resorting to buying it new.
Like anything, there are always ways that we could improve. I recently joined up for the One Small Change challenge. Each month from now till April we will be picking one area to focus on becoming greener.
The summer before I got pregnant with the babe, I made a bunch of cloth shopping bags and we were really good at using them all the time. I even made the kids their own kid size cloth bags. They loved carrying their own load of groceries, and they always got lots of comments.
Since then, I have been getting lax and though I still do use them it is not every single time we shop for something. So, January is our month to make sure that we do not use any plastic bags at all. I have my stash all ready to go and so far, so good. The hard part for me is to remember them. We have them in the van, but with getting four kids out of the car, watching them in the parking lot and just generally making sure they don’t get run over, sometimes I forget.
They say it takes a month to develop a habit, so here we go. I was so good before I got pregnant, but lots of things changed very quickly and now I want to get back into the habit. I would highly encourage you to join the challenge and make one small change that can make a world of difference.
Hope you all had a good weekend. We’re still not sure about the van, but it is looking like it is a much more minor problem, so fingers crossed.
gifts, green, thrift store finds • Monday, January 18th, 2010 • 12 Comments »
I just love this beautiful old postcard, I found it at an antique store for 50 cents. I just love that the flowers on the front are slightly raised and and textured. It’s beautiful, and so well preserved since it was written in 1908, which means it is over 100 years old.
Learn your lessons well, is all it says. A great message, and what we are striving for at the moment. Sometimes it’s a little tricky to focus everybody in the right direction when there is a babe who is getting into everything ( it seems to take so much energy and focus away). Despite this, I am glad for her curiosity and we will continue to learn out lessons well.
Hope you all have a great start to the week. What is your favourite subject now that we aren’t formally in school? Mine is definitely history. I’m not quite so sure how all of my teachers made it seem so boring.
gifts, homeschooling, thrift store finds • Monday, January 11th, 2010 • 10 Comments »
There are some days where it seems that all I do is make sure the kids are fed, and some learning is accomplished. Where I spend my time breaking up fights and calming frustrated little ones, while balancing a fussy toddler on my hip and trying to get some laundry done.
Yesterday was the complete opposite. I was able to bake three loaves of bread, make two quarts of yogurt, wash diapers and gets lots of schooling done. I felt very domestic indeed. We read about St. Alban and Hadrian’s Wall (I just love being able to tell the kids that I have been to some of these places, they get so excited). The children went outside to play, and despite being bundled up like eskimos, they came back in rosy cheeked after only twenty minutes.
We had lots of snuggles and were even able get some extra reading done before supper. We are reading The Wishing Chair Collection by Enid Blyton. I loved these books as a child and now my kids do too. They are magical tales that are calmer than a lot of fairy tales, which is really good for my kiddos that have less of a tolerance for scary.
Overall it was about as close to domestic bliss as we get around here. Definitely a very good day, especially when all the children were snug in their beds by seven o’clock.
Check out this beauty of a rolling pin. It was another gift from Christmas, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. It was handmade in Breckenridge, Co. and I’m so glad it found it’s new home with me. Now I really need to bake a pie and try it out.
What is your favourite domestic chore? Is it baking, folding laundry, or doing a big spring clean?
family, food, gifts, home, homeschooling • Thursday, January 7th, 2010 • 14 Comments »
This was one of my Christmas gifts, isn’t it great? It’s huge, and I mean huge. The diameter is 12 inches and it’s about 6 1/2 inches deep. I have been using it constantly since I got it. It is perfect for mixing up a cake and because it’s so big, even the most exuberant of mixing by the kiddos doesn’t splash outside of it.
Yesterday I used it to serve up mashed potatoes and they were dwarfed by the size of the bowl. I love it, it has become my new best friend. It has so much more character than a plain glass bowl, don’t you think?
What are your favourite kitchen items?
food, gifts, home • Monday, January 4th, 2010 • 16 Comments »
