Giving Thanks

From our family to yours, wishing you a wonderful day of gratitude and thanksgiving.

Look at this little 23 pounder just waiting to make the house smell amazing.

And then there's this little 42 pounder:

And his sidekick/cohort/groupie/impersonator:

Gobble gobble!

Lookie here!

I went and got myself a serger!

It's so awesome! Very very basic model but it got excellent reviews. Love. It.

Whipped up these little snack bags to test everything out. Tutorial here.

I went ahead and made them with two layers of fabric to give them a lining. Seriously - including cutting, sewing and pressing, it took about 20 minutes to make 6 of these puppies.

Best of all? They match the kiddos lunch sacks!

Okay, I'm off to see what else I can serge!

A change of pace

Or at least of material. These are some coasters that I like to whip up for the holidays.

What do you know! They're not made out of fabric! They are a heavy paperboard, just like the coasters you get at a bar or pub.

I do my jerry-rigged version of letterpress on them and I think they turn out pretty nicely. I love that little bird.

They are flat on the back and the image contains no ink or anything. It's just pressed into the thick heavy paper hard enough to make an impression.

They are a wonderful addition to a holiday (or anyday!) party and they also make a lovely hostess gift.

Oh, and these ones are available in the shop!

Wee little shop update

I've added a bunch more bookmarks to the shop.

As well as some other fun goodies, like these keychains:

And the infamous "Zippiphany" pouch:

I know I will be stuffing stockings with the likes of these this year:

Looking forward to tonight's PMQG meeting. And I just discovered that I've almost reached my "100th post" milestone. Hmmmm.... a little giveaway may be in order!

IKEA love

Okay, so I'm at IKEA returning a shelf and what catches my eye but these cuter than cute holiday cards! And a roll of gift wrap covered in these same gnomes! I'm not sure how it happened, but they jumped right into my cart and came home with me.

Super Snack Sacks!

A friend of mine, one of the mom's at Owen's preschool saw his lunch sack the other day and really REALLY wanted one. So, I kinda made a whole pile of them:

They all have a coordinating pocket on the back and some also have a pocket on the inside. These ones are all for sale in the shop. *** And don't forget that 100% of the proceeds benefit Camp JAM!***

I have found these little snack sacks to be a perfect size for carrying around everything from a granola bar and a juice box to a full-blown lunch and snacks for the kiddos. I even made one for myself because mommas need snacks too! The kids also have ones that they use for toting around a small sketch book and crayons (and all the other various things that preschoolers "need"). I'll probably whip up a few more this holiday season to use as gift bags.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Comfort food

It is nothing short of miraculous that a pile of simple tools and ingredients like these:

Can turn into something like this:

And don't forget the vanilla bean ice cream.

What are you baking these days?

Raw talent

My precious daughter discovered that she can do this with some large game pieces we have.

And of course, my not-to-be-outdone son had to get in on the act.

I would never have thought to try to do this. Just one more reason why kids are awesome.

Back to crafty posts soon. We were without access to my beloved internet for what seemed like an eternity. On the plus side, without the distractions of facebook, flickr, and all the online fabric stores I can't buy anything from (because of the whole fabric fast insanity - what was I thinking????) I found I had LOTS of time to, um, sew. Funny how that works.

Bee Block

Here is my October block for Bee Vintage:

My first ever wonky/liberated star. So much fun to make. I know I'll be doing more of these.

And I really REALLY love the different bright vintage sheets prints I used in this one. Another great thing about this block is that we were asked to use a white tone on tone print for the background and I found that piecing the vintage sheets with a cotton fabric made my machine much less likely to try to "eat" the sheets (pushing them down into the stitch plate on my machine). Nice little discovery!

Halloween was a hit!

Oh my goodness! Halloween was a blast!

This was the very first year we did real, door-to-door trick-or-treating.

The rain held off and both of the wee ones really got into the spirit of the evening.

Now if someone would just hide the rest of the peanut butter cups from me....