Aaaaaand again...

I made more stuff. Annnnd I may need a Pinterest intervention.

You can follow me on Pinterest and see what keeps my attention to the exclusion of all else, simply by clicking the 'Follow me on Pinterest' button at the top right of this blog. Do it. I should probably link back to the original posts, but I just can't make myself do it right now, but Pitnerest will do it for me, and you may find some other stuff you like.

Someone at the bridal shower I attended even made a Pinterest comment when my gift was opened. The covered cake pan the bride registered for was filled with crocheted dishcloths and a variety of potholders I made.

(Sometimes Blogger is so frustrating. Like today when this photo is obviously supposed to be turned the other way. Gah! No matter what I do, it's wrong. Maybe someone from the Google corp. will see my complaint and want to give me a huge gift card to make up for the inconvenience?!? It could happen.)

Cute, bright materials, all backed with repurposed jean material. Jean is so durable, these should wash up really well. And the jean parts should interfere with the grooms masculine preference...'

 Cupcake potholder.

Japanese style potholders, minimalistic, nothing extra to get in the way...

In lieu of a bow, I added this little guy to the outside of the package. I like these kind of little primitive crafts, good for not much at all, other than getting a smile! I liked him so much, I started on a few more.

These are sitting in the basket of socks & underwear I should have been sorting & folding instead of crocheting. Maybe the socks will get done tonight. Or, if I leave them long enough, the family will have dug through the basket, picking their own stuff out... and then I could crochet more...

How I Might be Growing Up, and Some Gifts I Made

The Chenille quilt I made this fall has found a new home. It is living with a cute little snuggler named Henry. He also received these letters I found a pattern for online (I can't find the original link - sorry!!)

I used scraps from the chenille quilt and a couple other coordinating fabrics, cut the edges to rag and washed them up. They are pretty cute. Next, I sewed them on a wide ribbon, vertically, to hang on a door or wall. So cute. Unfortunately, I did this last step in a hurry the morning of the shower, which I was hosting. Here's a blurry shot of the result:

Do you see what I didn't? ?   ?      ?     Yeah, it says 'Herny', which is CLOSE to Henry, but not close enough. I had this hanging as a decoration to go home with the mom, and finally someone was nice enough to point out my spelling error. Bah. It was a good laugh, and now it's been fixed and is ready to go in the mail back to Henry. Embarrassing, but we had a good laugh.

Henry also got a couple rattles that I made. The first one, I saw Stephanie, a friend, post on her blog 'built to last' a while ago (check her blog out - you'll like it!), and then when I saw one on Pinterest it reminded me how much I liked them. I totally free-handed mine and let's just call them an interpretation of the cute ones I've seen. Or maybe 'artictic'? He has a little bell in his nose so he makes a small noise, not too obnoxious.

Then I crocheted a wormmy kind of stacking-ring-ish rattle. (I may have called his back end slightly phallic shaped in the past. Don't judge, I just kind of made up the pattern as I looked at a picture.) This one has a cat toy in his head (a bell in a plastic ball) so he rattles a little louder. The rings come off and the yarn is all 100% cotton as are the tshirt strips I stuffed him with so he can be thrown right in the wash. The rings should be good sizes for baby hands.

Also, some fun paint chip garland was made. This was fun decoration, and almost free - just the cost of some thread, and time. Grace even helped punch these out, and I think the garland will live in her room now that the shower is over. I ended up with almost 15 feet of garland. We sprinkled some extra pieces on the bar where the shower treats were, very festive!

The baby shower concluded a couple weeks of lots of company. We had some good friends over a few times over the Christmas holiday, hosted a game night for our small group, and then the baby shower. My husband likes to have people over. I don't, not as much anyway. But I noticed something in myself as we were having company. I was enjoying it. I was relaxed and having fun. I wasn't worried about getting on to the next thing. It was even OK when I didn't get to play a single game with our small group and refereed kids instead so other parents could have fun.

I'm also in an accountability group with a couple other great ladies to encourage each other in the area of health. We would all like to lose weight, but want to not do a fad diet. We all feel like there is a spiritual component to this fight, so we are fighting. And most of all, we are praying for each other and trying to allow God to speak into this area of our lives. We're reading a book about this together, using the 'my fitness pal' app on our phones, and meeting weekly. I've lost 9 pounds so far (2 or three weeks? Three maybe.) by cutting out some extra eating and just being aware of how many calories are in the regular food I eat. I still need to add in exercise, throw out the McD's Mocha Frappe that I love, and commit to better meal planning, but it's a good start.

But the thing I'm noticing is that I feel better about myself. Typical of my experience of God, I'm asking Him to do one thing, and He's doing that and other stuff at the same time. He seems to be speaking to my identity, telling me I'm OK, and making me comfortable in my own skin. I think that's why I liked having people over and didn't have to worry overly much about the house being perfect. I think I could relax and have fun because God made me OK with myself. Crazy. Great. I jokingly told my husband that I am 41 and it feels like I'm just growing up in this area. I want to get healthy, but I can't wait to see what else God will do through my willingness to let Him in. Stay tuned!

Memory Quilt 2

The quilt is really done, and gone. See my previous post to see where the pattern came from, but here's a little more information on how I did the photos.

I stole them. Well, I stole some of them from facebook. Yes, again this year, I was a super-stalker and snagged photos from relatives fb photo albums to complete my Christmas project. (Warning, if you do this, the photos will not be high enough quality to enlarge them. Facebook compresses photos to save memory so enlarging the photos will make them grainy. If you plan to make them the same size or smaller, they are fine for most purposes.) I also scoured my photo albums to find photos.

[Want to save photos from someone else's facebook album? Right click on the photo, choose 'Save As', name the photo and save it to your computer (I usually make a folder on my desktop for easy access). The photo is now 'yours', but beware of really stealing an image to re-use, I'm sure someone could get sued for something like that in today's sue-happy society!]

After I found the photos I wanted to use, I spent a good amount of time on Picnik (which you should be using for easy free photo editing!) cropping photos, fixing colors and exposure, and softening the edges of all the photos. I wanted them to fit into the quilt window and not have a distinct edge for uniformity. Some photos were so old I couldn't fix all the yellowing without messing up the overall color, but that's part of the charm, I think. Like this gem from Gramdpa & Gramma's wedding 54 years ago, that's my mom in the middle:

Then I threw them in a Word document, four photos to a page, and printed them on our HP inkjet printer at home, in mirror image. This is the product I used:

I was really pleased with this product! Previously, I've had iron on sheets that immediately peal at the edges or don't seem to really bond well to the material. Not so with this, this was great! The transfer papers almost melted right into the material and the photos were very clear with no bleeding. I will use this product again for sure.

I was really excited to give this gift. (It really is better to give than to receive! What? Cheesy? True.)

I love how Grace was almost as excited as I was to see Grampa receive his gift. You can see her in a couple photos above, just unable to stay back. =0) There may have been a few tears and a nose blown.

 Everyone stopped to check out the quilt on the pool table, finding pictures of themselves and absent family members.

DONE!

Memory Quilt

Grampa is not online so I can post his Christmas gift and not have to worry that the surprise will be ruined.

I first saw this pattern at A Passionate Quilter and loved it, 1) because it's a great way to use up scraps, 2) it uses repurposed jeans, which I love extra much, and 3) because I thought I could make it into the memory quilt I've been thinking about making for a couple years now. My gram passed away a couple months ago and doing this family quilt for grampa with lots of pictures, including gram (she's in the red, second square from the bottom on the right), and finding a great pattern made this a good time to try. Check out A Passionate Quilter for her pattern, the only change I made was to make bigger circles. The biggest circle I could find that I didn't mind drawing with permanent marker all around the edge was a foil pie tin, 9.5" diameter. That required geometry to figure out that a 6 3/8 " square would be the correct size for the insert. 

Anyway... I'm struck by how often I hate a project by the time it's almost done, especially a big project. I think that just helps push you through the end of the project. I'm so done with this project. I'd change a few things about this quilt. I'd make it a square smaller on each side. I wanted it to be a lap quilt (and thanks to my poor geography skills) and this quilt is a little big for a lap quilt but not big enough for a twin bed. I love the denim, but I think next time I would use flannel. With all the quilting on this quilt, it actually made the quilt stiffer rather than more flexible and I wanted a cozy snuggle up quilt. And the denim was heavy to sew. The quilt was put together in four pieces so I only had to quilt the middle line right through the middle. Thank God I actually read the directions because it would have sucked to quilt the whole thing when it was together. SUCKED. 

I originally thought I would rag the edges like the pattern linked above, but saw this other quilt at Juicy Bits where she left the edges raw and I though that might be best to not distract from the photos. And who wants to do that much cutting? Then I added another line of quilting so it was probably just as much work either way. It looks like I gave a bit more allowance than she did and I hope the edges hold up OK. I know this won't be getting washed a ton so I hope it's good.

My son says that this is definitely the gift that will make grampa cry this year. Not my goal, but I do hope he likes it!

Here's one of the sections before I joined them. And here's what the back looks like.

 

I really do like how the quilting looks.

Sunny

When I was little we had a pastor who had a daughter named Sunny. I don't' even know if that was her real name or if it was a nickname. But I loved it. I still kind of love it. And more and more, I want to be Sunny.

Not that exact person, just the personality that should go with that name, ifyaknowwhatImean.

Lately I'm not sunny. I'm busy. Tired. Old. Fat. Unmotivated. Uncaring. You get it, I'm just not sunny.

But I'm trying to figure out how to get there from here.

Birthday, Redesigned

I recently had a birthday.

I don't like birthdays. Not because I don't like getting older, though. OK, I don't like getting older, but that's not the reason. It just seems like a big deal over nothing. It's not like I did something to earn a day just for me. Woohoo, you were born, way to go, you outgrew the womb! We don't usually have celebrations over stuff like, "Congratulations, you managed to eat your way to a bigger size! Happy XXL, big guy!" Now I'm just being silly. Yes, birthdays are a great opportunity to tell people how special they are. And I appreciate being appreciated, I guess I just don't know how to graciously accept it. But that's not the post I'm writing right now.

I'm not really a big gift person, either. I like really practical gifts. I still miss the underwear my gram would buy for me, every year. If it's something I needed and didn't have to buy for myself, you've blessed me, indeed! I frequently ruminate on the fabulous giftedness of the foldable, electric griddle (great product!), at least every time we make french toast or crepes. That's the kind of gifts I like. (I feel like need to let you know that my husband gives me great gifts, too. He watches what I like and then he blesses me with something I'd never buy myself, and tells me to just let him do something nice for me, so I do.)

And then I saw a link on Pinterest linking to Robyn's 38th birthday post (@ Mix Mingle Glow) where she decided to do 38 Random Acts of Kindness (RAOKs) on her birthday. She planned ahead and made a plan, proactively thinking about others. And then she invited her family and friends to participate, and the response was huge! Check out that post and see if you aren't motivated, too.

My church has a motto, and it's my church because I believe it: Love God. Love People. Period. It sounds a lot like a RAOK to me! So that's what I want. I'm putting in my order for my 42nd birthday right now: in 345 days I am having a birthday filled with loving on other people, and I'll invite everyone (you, if you are reading this) to participate with me. I'm going to spend this year thinking about ways to bless people, and practicing them. Won't you please join me?

Prophetic Arts & Crafts

I saw these beauties pinned on a website I'm not going to keep harping about (See my last two posts!), and followed them to the original post. I love them. Again, something I don't need, but compelled to make one. So Grace and I each made one.

These were fun. We drew the pattern, Grace traced her own and cut the pieces out. She added wings to hers. They are supposed to be rustic so it didn't matter that the eyes weren't exactly even, or the wings weren't perfectly cut out - the best kind of project to do with kids! And it's good for Grace to loosen up and not have something she made be too perfect.

I did all the sewing, she did all the stuffing.

She's happy with the results. I had to get up at 2:30am to go get the owl she'd kicked out of bed!

And she had to take a picture with both animals we've made together now. Evidently, when you are a two dimensional, stuffed, handmade creature, you are automatically friends with any other two dimensional, stuffed, handmade creature you meet. Good to know.

Here's mine, I love this bright, cheery seersucker fabric. I made it with a friend in mind, she wouldn't get out of my head all week. I wish I had fuzzy material for the back, but I'm pretty into using what I have or repurposing other stuff, so this guy was backed with jeans.

And there was a little message free motion quilted onto the back:

Whoooooo is loved?

Annie is!

I felt corny with this (corny) pun, but again, couldn't get it out of my head so I went with it. And the recipient assured me that that is exactly what God has been speaking into her heart over the last few days. She also said that it's like "prophetic arts and crafts!" 

I loved that! I walked into church carrying this little stuffed guy, and felt kind of silly, but pretty sure I was supposed to bring it, and it seems like that was right on. Sweet! Maybe this is why I get hooked on making something. right. now. And love giving stuff away. Maybe it's prophetic arts and crafts? Maybe.