I'm an engineer with an irresistable drive to be crafty... knitting, sewing, papercraft, photography, jewelry-making, you name it, I've probably tried it! - Email Me -
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sunday Already?
Where did this weekend go??
We made progress on the floor. (Well, the boys did, I cheered them on.)
I made another batch of the caramel shortbread - I put a batch in the Relay for Life auction at work and the lady called to remind me I owed her!
Is it bad to go to my book club meeting when I haven't finished the book? Turns out in this case it was a good thing, since now I'm motivated to finish - seems like there's a lot of interesting events I haven't gotten to yet!
And among other chores and errands I got the nook ready to go - hopefully paint will go up tomorrow, thanks to no tech night!
Thanks to Beki for the headsup, there's a new paysite in town! If you sign up for Revolution Money Exchange (RME) before the end of the day today, May 15, you'll get $25 free deposited into your account. RME is like Paypal, but with no fees. Once you have an account you can spend your money online, or transfer it into your checking account. Here is a list of some retailers accepting it.
If you click the button above, I'll get $10 deposited into my account, too! What are you waiting for??
Cleaning up last weekend I found my shoe tags from a few past races - it's a little tag you put on your shoe that records your time when you cross the start line, and then at a few split points and the finish. "Memorial" shoe tags are a new thing, and I kept mine (because I keep everything), but you can't reuse them in other races. So what are you supposed to do with them??
My solution - magnets!
Isn't that an adorable birth announcement? Having crafty friends makes for good mail...
A little E6000, a super strong magnet, a "useless" race trinket... leads to a ridiculously happy runner!
Last night I was back from my run, doing some laundry. Peter had worked late, and when he got home, he stuck his head in the door and said I'd better come outside. In his arms was an adorable black kitten. This kitten was up under the car and had apparently been up there the whole 40 minute commute home. He was miraculously unharmed, and judging by the (literally) nonstop purring, very grateful to be rescued.
He is incredibly friendly, starving for affection, and quite playful. Which means if we don't find a good home for him soon, we will have three cats. I really don't want three cats... I call him Boo (black, Halloween, get it?) and Peter calls him Hitch (for hitchhiker).
Although it is fun to have a sweet kitty in the house, caring for him, keeping him separated from our other animals who are not so thrilled he's here, and finding him a home, are just more things going on at a time when I'm struggling to handle what was already on my plate. So if I'm a little quiet for a while still, that's my excuse. I promise I will be back, I have a million ideas brewing and sharing them here is always something I look forward to. Back soon!
I really love how there are so many people sharing cool things they find online. I get an email regularly from Photojojo with cool photography gadgets, and I really love this latest toy from Animoto.
You just upload your pictures, from a photo site (like flickr) or your computer, and pick your music, and it makes a video for you. No more slideshows! 30 second clips are free, or you can get unlimited for a few bucks. Just thought I'd pass it on to anyone else looking for a neat alternative way to share pictures!
At my mom's house the other day she pulled out this box.
First, it's labeled in my dad's handwriting, which automatically makes it a treasure. I never realized how precious some things would become. Of course, what's inside is pretty great, too:
It's totally full of antique lace and trims. I started to spread it all out for a photo, but there is just too much!
I have been told to actually put this to use so it doesn't waste away in a box, and I do have a couple ideas for it, but it's going to be so hard to cut it up!! Probably my favorite item in the whole amazing collection is this vintage onyx trim:
As much as I really want to re-purpose it into jewelry, it's going to take a very special idea to convince me to break those threads.
What a treasure! I need to make at least something from it right away - my mom's birthday is coming up in October, after all!
It's so nice to have a weekend at home. We started off the day with an early soccer game - I can say with authority that the humidity is back here in Houston. Also, I can demonstrate the downside of playing co-ed soccer - having boys kick you in the shins!
Or, why I don't wear skirts during soccer season...
I barely got home and showered when my best friend from high school stopped by for lunch. I don't keep in touch with too many people from high school, but no matter how long we go without talking, Lauren and I always fall back into one of those easy, forever friendships.
I baked a batch of cookies while we chatted so I could send some home to her family. This is my current favorite cookie recipe, here at Julie's.
Now, when I can tear myself away from the computer (pictures to edit! blogs to check! emails to write!) I'm going to sit myself down at my sewing machine and finally finish that baby quilt.
I think some hand-binding with a good movie is my plan for tonight...
Now that my sewing board is on the wall, I'm going to try to keep my sewing space neat. Here is how it looks right now:
Do you think I can keep it that nice once I get to work on a project? Not likely! At least it will be easier to pick up as I get things in my room sorted out.
I also hung a few things up that have been sitting in a pile waiting for frames. They still don't have frames, but I think having them up at all is better than wasting away in a pile!
A couple bright flower cards, a painting by little dear that really needs a frame soon, and four of my favorite cards by port2port.
At least looking from this angle my room is looking better!
Hi everyone. I'm back in the US! Woo! I had a wonderful trip to Singapore, and I got a few really neat pictures. I would have taken more if it weren't for the torrential rain the last two days of the trip.
I have several things waiting to post, but I'm dealing with some nasty jet lag, sore legs from the half marathon I ran 18 hours after returning to the country, and some awful family news. Please bear with me if I'm MIA a few more days!
I've been hearing all over blogland that people haven't been able to find the Tord Boontje stuff at Target, that it's all sold out. So imagine my surprise when I stopped by to fill some prescriptions (turns out the doctor thinks I'm sick, too!) I saw a whole endcap full of the stuff. Garlands, paper plates, cups, napkins, food packaging... A huge selection! I limited myself to these:
Awesome laser cut garlands.
I'm afraid to open them! I'm planning on sending off one set as a thank you, but I can't make myself pick which to give away... I love them both!
A couple weeks ago my sister handed me a navy blue shirt to turn into a Rice shirt for an upcoming football game. This led to some glitter experimentation, and when I felt it would work, I set out to make a Rice shirt. Well...
The brush slipped, and while the nice thing about fabric paint is that it doesn't wash out, the crummy part about fabric paint is that it doesn't wash out. Luckily I have a very understanding sister, and she even suggested the fix:
Voila! The spot is... well... harder to see! It turned out that we got free tickets to the same football game, so I whipped up my own shirt - without the footballs (and no "oops" spot) so we wouldn't completely match!
I did end up finding glitter everywhere when I wore it, so that part of my freezer paper stencil obsession may have to fall by the wayside!
Well, I've been quite silent lately. It's not that I haven't been crafting... Work has been busy, and I just have been too tired to make that step from crafting to posting. In fact, I made my mother-in-law a necklace to hold her glasses (very cool, with a ring to put her glasses through) and didn't even take a picture! I did take a picture of the card I made for her...
I truly only made this card because everything was so easy to get out and put away again. More praises for my craft room!
Another neat thing... I'm a little late posting this, but I was featured on a cool blog, ThisNext. Thanks for the mention!
I finally tried playing with shrinky dinks. There have been some amazing shrink plastic pins here and here and so many more that I can't find right now. Since I've never played with free-form shrink plastic, I decided to try something a little larger just to play. Here are my shapes before decorating:
The package said I could use acrylic paint, which I had already, so I painted them up:
They didn't shrink so well. They're mostly all curled, and despite leaving them in the oven like the directions said, they never flattened out on their own.
The flower is especially bad.
And as Peter pointed out, paint doesn't shrink, so some of them ended up with interesting effects:
But a couple of them did turn out neat, if slightly curly:
All of these only used one of the many sheets that came in the pack, so I get to try again. I think next time I'll use colored pencils instead of paint!!
I am so late onto this bandwagon, but I finally made some marble magnets! There was a neat ad for scrapbook paper in one of my magazines, and I liked the samples but needed an idea for them... ta da, magnets!
I'm not sure I used the right kind of glue, or if they'll last, but it was fun and cheap, so I don't care!
Believe it or not, we had a white Christmas here in Houston! It is so hard to imagine. It didn't actually snow on Christmas day, but it snowed a lot Christmas Eve, and it was all still on the ground when we woke up Christmas morning. It was probably a once in a lifetime experience, and it cheered up Peter since he was wishing we had gone to San Antonio with the rest of his family... So here are some pictures I took:
Here is how our backyard looked. It was fun to get the dog to run around in the snow (he didn't really know what to make of it). Baxter wouldn't walk on the patio because the melted snow from earlier had frozen and he didn't like the ice on his paws.
This picture totally doesn't capture our bushes, but I had to try - the Christmas lights were shining through the snow on the leaves, and it was really beautiful.
Peter's car had been sitting out all night, so it gives a good idea of how much snow was sticking.
Finally, I took a picture of our house Christmas morning. I will never forget this Christmas! A white Christmas in Houston... I still can't believe it.
I made this fall decoration a week or two ago. I got the idea from a book I checked out from the library - crafts for under $10. The price was about right - I got enough pumpkins for this and another one for $3, the terra cotta pot was only $1, the leaves are from a garland (enough for more) for $3, and the raffia was $1 or so for enough for more than one topiary... So I think this came out pretty cheap! It doesn't look as good as I wanted, but it's cute, and sits on our kitchen counter. Maybe I'll try another one and it will look better!
