Happy New Year & Jessica's Poncho!

Happy New Year to you! I hope you had a pleasant New Year's Eve, whatever you chose to do. Our evening was quiet as I'm not a huge fan of going out and partying it up. We were all in bed and asleep well before the new year arrived. I actually had a sort of tough mommy moment yesterday when I had to tell Amy that she wouldn't be participating in the Brownie sleepover that was scheduled to take place last night. I quite honestly had a negative gut reaction to this activity when I first heard of it. It's not that I don't think Amy could have handled it, but I really felt she was too young for this type of activity, especially amongst girls she doesn't know too well. I remember sleepovers with close friends growing up, but I'm sure I was older than 7 when I participated. Thankfully, she seemed to take the news in stride and didn't throw a fit. I made her her favorite dinner as sort of a treat. She didn't even bring it up after we talked about it and I am/was relieved about that.

2008 ended with me working on more yarn projects. Big surprise, given my recent obsession with yarn, huh? I think looking at all the different yarns available is akin to being drawn to different pattern paper! I showed you the other day the beginnings of Jessica's poncho. I was able to finish it yesterday and she's quite happy with it. I really appreciated her patience in waiting for Mommy to make it and wanted to get it done as quickly as I could. I love the color combo.

I'm now working on another hooded poncho for Amy. I must be a glutton for punishment! No, not really. I just was so NOT happy with that project (even though you all were so encouraging of my efforts) that I knew I'd try to make it again. Amy mentioning quite a few times that it was falling apart (*blush*) added fuel to my desire to try again. I'm making very good progress on it and have already discovered a couple of things I did wrong the first time. Namely, I got larger needles to get closer to the gauge required for the project (sometimes the gauge is so important to a project, while other times not so much. It's a pain sometimes to stitch up a piece for the sake of checking the gauge-correct #of stitches per inch-in this case, it was important!). The needles I used the last time were too small. And I'm actually doing the stripes, which is helping to keep me on track. There was one part of the pattern that stumped me a little the first time and while I thought I figured it out, I now realize I was wrong, wrong, wrong! I've definitely figured it out now and am happily working toward the completion of the body. You can be sure I'll share when I'm finished.

I've decided not to make any hard-core resolutions for the new year. I never follow through and then feel bad about it. My goal will be to continue to strive toward bettering myself be it through knowledge, fitness, creativity or what have you as cliche as that might sound. As much as I love blogging (both sharing on my blog and reading others' blogs) I have found that it is quite enabling. I'm such a sucker for cute projects. Given the state of the economy (and my wallet) I am going to have to strive NOT to buy up supplies, just because I think a project is cute or whatever. I am going to make a conscious effort to use more of what I already have on hand rather than buy new stuff. (oh my gosh...that might mean I have to be creative all on my own-YIKES) Of course, there will be times when I may use up a coupon for a good deal, but my decisions will be much more thoughtful and will consider more the versatility of the product I'm looking at before buying. That being said...I just got a new flyer from Archiver's with two 30% off coupons...sigh...I have seen a stamp set for Valentine's that I like there...it's SO hard to resist. I'll look at it again and think long and hard, I promise.

I'm not sure if I'll make it into my corner today. Although, it is nice and neat and needs a good messing up. We'll see how the day plays out, I guess.

Thanks ever so much for stopping by. Happy New Year and let's look forward to another year of Creative Bliss!

Hugs,

Jeanne

Quilling on Cards

Happy Sunday to you! I hope you have had a nice weekend, winding down from the holiday hustle and bustle.

I had to clean up my corner today before I could do any new creating! Yikes, it's amazing how much stuff can be piled onto a table. LOL

I picked up a book today, with a 50% off coupon, called 50 Nifty Quilled Cards by Alli Bartkowski. I have been interested in quilling (or paper rolling) for some time, had the tool, but for some reason or other my previous attempts didn't come out too well. I tried again today. Here are the results....

I also stopped at Archiver's on my way home from Joann's and picked up some shimmery blue cardstock. I had a coupon for 5 free sheets and I guess now you can pick out any paper and just pay the difference of what they allot for the free cardstock.

I think they are pretty straightforward cards, used the Snowflake folder in the Cuttlebug, used a Martha Stewart snowflake punch and some bling. I had another 50% off coupon and picked up some inexpensive cardstock, that didn't have a white core, at Michaels. I got a variety pack. The quilling paper they sell in a tube is $6.99 for just a few colors (granted you get a total of 250 strips of 5 colors in each tube), but with the coupon I got 70 sheets of all the colors I'd want for $6.50 (with the coupon), a better deal I think. I just have to cut the paper into 1/8th inch strips, which isn't a big deal.

This is all I got done today. I guess you could say I'm "easing" back into creating cards. LOL

With that, I'll close for now. I hope you have a great start to your week and you are happy, healthy and creative as 2008 winds down.

Hugs,
Jeanne

Whirlwind of Activity...

Happy Saturday afternoon to you! One might think that life would slow down a bit after Christmas. And for us it usually does, but this year has been a flurry of fun activities. On Christmas Day Steve's buddy, Dave called and invited Steve and I out for an evening of fun and friendship. Dave had procured tickets to go see Jeff Dunham. If you don't recognize the name, rest assured, neither did I.

This guy is a comedian and ventriloquist. And, apparently, a pretty popular one at that. We went to the 10:30pm show and it was a very full house. Steve pulled up this You Tube video for me to see and then I went ooooohhhhhh, I know who he is! If you don't check out the video (which is fine) this guy does a bit with a character known as Walter, an old curmudgeon. He also does a bit with Achmed the Dead Terrorist (a skeleton puppet), Peanut (some purple looking puppet with a yellow tuft of hair and you could see his belly button) and Joe, a drunk hick. Very, very funny show. The guy is amazing. We also got to walk downtown and see the horse drawn carriages and the holiday lights beforehand. A very nice, albeit late, night for those of us who normally are in bed by 10pm! LOL

Then, this morning, the girls were invited to a birthday party for a good friend of Jessica's from preschool. The party was at a local bowling alley! I'd never been into this particular one before (it's just a couple of years old) and was quite impressed with the setup. Very state of the art, clean and roomy, as opposed to the small, crowded alleys I've been to in years past. Steve went along because I think he wanted to watch the girls bowl. I took my camera along and here are just a couple of shots that didn't come out blurry. Amy scored a 102 and Jessica, a 63...not bad for girls who have very little to no bowling experience...of course the bumpers helped.

Jessica had a hard time with even the lightest ball, being the peanut she is. I'd never seen the contraption you see in her picture before. She started having a really good time once she used that thing! Amy got a few pointers from another girl who is on a league and I think her form was pretty decent! She even bowled a strike and a couple of spares. A gal who made balloon animals showed up mid-way through the party (she was a friend of the birthday girl's mom) and all the kids got whatever animals they wanted. All in all it was definitely a fun party.

Now we are home for a quiet afternoon. I just wanted to share a couple of more things and then I'll sign off.

I received a very neat gift that just makes me smile when I look at her from my buddy Erin. It's a beaded Crazy Lady and it even has my initial attached. Thanks so much, Erin! I love it!

And finally...Jessica has been so patient waiting for her crocheted poncho. I spent a good couple of hours yesterday searching for super bulky yarn, as required for the pattern Jessica picked out. I was surprised at how little super bulky yarn is available. So, I ended up buying some of the same type of yarn I've been using for neckwarmers and am making it work. Here's the progress I've made so far (and I love how well the colors work together). You can even see the large hook required for this pattern, which is called a ripple stripe. The first stripe is done and I'm working on the second. The orange looking yarn will be the bottom stripe. Jessica picked the color order she wanted for the stripes.

 

And a final jabber subject. I haven't mentioned it much recently, but we still have a mouse roaming around. I've got 7 or so traps out and even rebait them, but this critter keeps avoiding them. I've discovered he is taking food from the dog's bowl and going into the bottom drawer on my stove to eat. Yes...it's lovely to open the drawer and see evidence he's been there amongst pots and pans. I clean out the drawer and he comes back. Well, yesterday evening, as I was pulling out pots for making dinner I saw he'd been in there once again. I made a comment to Steve and he looked behind the stove and saw the mouse. He pulled out the stove and it went running off toward the fridge and microwave stand. That led to Steve cleaning out all the accumulated dirt and debris behind these two pieces as I was trying to get dinner together. As he pulled out things that had fallen behind the tall microwave stand, out shoots the mouse (apparently...I was busy with dinner prep). Steve said it bumped into my foot (ewwwwww) and even the dog's leg and the darn dog didn't even react! (he was watching me however, hoping for a dropped piece of food, so I guess he was distracted). Steve said he ran toward our dishwasher and it looked like it jumped into an opening in the dishwasher, but he didn't go INTO the dishwasher. Don't know where he ended up. Drat!~foiled again~by a mouse. I have to remember to put up the dog food bowl at night.

Now that I've probably bored you to tears, I'm going to close and veg for a bit.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!

Jeanne

Merry Christmas!

I truly hope your holiday was as magical as ours.

Amy wrote another letter to Santa, asking for bunny slippers, and left it by the fireplace. And do you know, Santa wrote back on fancy paper? I have proof! Click on any photo to enlarge it...

And...just in case you are interested...Steve took the girls out for a bit yesterday. They each had $5 to spend from their stash. And they EACH came home with slippers! (not bunny slippers, but still!) They were so proud of them and planned together to wear them when they came out to open presents (in addition to their jammies...you know what I meant).

My camera was having a very difficult time focusing but here's what Amy did when she opened her bunny slippers...

Excuse the runny nose on this shot...she's got a cold, but won't admit to it...

She was SOOOOO excited and immediately started hopping. As she saw them she is the one who said...The elves must have knitted these JUST FOR ME! (how awesome is that?<-----that's me not her saying awesome-I just loved that she KNEW the elves worked on them.)

 

So well worth it!

The magic is alive and doing well in our house.

Merry Christmas!

Hugs,

Jeanne

A Couple MORE Critters...

I think it is safe to say I am "hooked" on making these little guys. LOL Here are the latest two (made last night and this morning), given to a couple of great kids, Aaron and Julia.

Aaron got the lion (isn't that mane the cutest?) and my girls insisted Julia would love a hot pink kitty (they were absolutely right). I tried a new pattern for the kitty and made a few modifications from the pattern, like using safety eyes instead of felt, adding the mouth and making the collar a little wider than just a chain stitch. Becky, the mother of these great kids makes us yummy sticky buns every year. She also made this lovely ornament:

I tried to get a picture of it on the tree, but the camera wouldn't focus for some reason. The colors are three of CTMH's  new colors, Creme Brulee, Tulip and Juniper. She used the stamp set Victorian Snowflake.  Thanks, Becky! I love it!

I've not done any serious baking for the family yet (hopefully some will get done today), but the girls and I worked on decorating gingerbread houses and making Puppy Chow yesterday. I've never made the Chow before, but it's super easy and oh so yummy! I saw the idea on a blog somewhere, but I know the recipe has been around for ages, I had just never tried it. Here's Amy shaking the powdered sugar onto the coated cereal.

Puppy Chow

1/4 cup butter
1 cup chocolate chips (or whatever kind you want to use...I made a batch with Butterscotch chips and one with semi-sweet)
3/4 cup peanut butter
8 cups Crispex or Rice Chex (rice type cereal)
2 cups powdered sugar

Melt the butter, chips and peanut butter in the microwave. Mix. Pour over the cereal. Stir to coat the cereal. Put coated cereal into a large bag with the 2 cups of powdered sugar and shake, shake, shake, to coat. 

That's it! Enjoy!

The girls are just starting on their houses in this photo....they'd work for a bit, get tired of it, play something else, come back to it for a bit and so on. I'll take a picture of the finished ones and share a bit later.

One last photo before I sign off and start wrapping presents (yes, I KNOW....Last Minute Lucy, remember?). The Bunny Slippers are DONE!!!!

Yes, as of about 5:30-5:45ish am. I worked on the other one last night, but it just wasn't coming out right and I had to pull it apart. I went to bed and got a good night's sleep and this morning it went together so smoothly! Yea!!!!

I hope you have a wonderful holiday with your family and friends. Thanks so much for the encouraging comments and for plain and simply reading my ramblings!

Big Hugs!!

Jeanne

Bunnies, Bunnies, Bunnies!

Happy Tuesday morning to you! I have some bunnies to show you today, as if the title of my post didn't alert you to that.

First off, here are a couple of bunnies I made for the girls this past weekend. They are little like the kitty I showed you last week, about 4 inches tall. They come complete with hats!

The girls are quite happy with them. They have also gone through my book and picked out various other critters for me to make for them, so don't be surprised to see these little guys continue to show up!

This letter to Santa appeared late last week (the class has been working on friendly letters):

Well, Santa's little helper got busy trying to find some bunny slippers. This is NOT the time of year to be finding them. If she had asked the Easter Bunny, I'm sure there would have been a plethora to choose from. Had she asked for Cars slippers (oh why can't she be fixated on those this year?), success would have been so very simple. But alas, a pair of bunny slippers is what she appears to really want.

So, I give you the first of two slippers made by momma elf.

Momma Elf can only work on these when the girls aren't around. Momma Elf was worried that she wouldn't finish in time, so she she was supremely relieved when the girls headed next door to play with the neighbor boy for a couple of hours. She got one slipper base finished while they were out. But Momma Elf was still worried, because in addition to making these, she still had presents to wrap. So, Momma Elf snuck off to Archiver's last night to get an extra hour or so in of crocheting until the girls went to bed. Then Momma Elf came home and got to work finishing up the bunny's face for one slipper. She woke up early this morning to get the one finished and thinks it is seriously cute! She is confident now that she can finish up the other slipper tonight (and if she's lucky, the girls will go to the neighbor's house again for a bit). Momma Elf's only concern is that these are not what Amy had in mind. But hopefully, if they are not, she can be told that Santa's elves had to make a very special pair just for her since bunny slippers are the Easter Bunny's specialty, right? Momma Elf sure hopes that these will suffice.

Momma Elf will close for now, so this can get posted before Amy wakes up. Thank goodness she doesn't read my blog! But I couldn't wait to share this because I'm tickled pink that I have been able to muster up something. I used a basic slipper base and finagled the head based on what I've been making recently.

I hope the magic of the season is alive and well for you!

Hugs,
Jeanne

Busy, Busy, Busy-Gifts and Gift Card Holders

I don't think the recipients of these read my blog regularly and if they do, act surprised when you get these! LOL

First up is a note card holder set, the template for which I got at Papertrey Ink. Lauren Meader is a phenomenal creator of all things good and she has started designing and selling templates at PTI. When you purchase the template, you also receive a pdf booklet with ideas on how to use it. Very cool. She also showcases amazing projects (different than what's in the pdf). This is one talented and creative woman! Anyway, I chose to use the All Boxed Up template (not sure if the link will work-if not, go to PapertreyInk and click on templates) to create this gift set:

I chose to make note cards, rather than full out cards. It's a quarter of an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of cardstock and will fit in a standard invitation envelope. The paper I used is DCWV, solid is from the Summer cardstock stack and the print is from a newly released pack called Sweet. I used a Martha Stewart border punch. It's more simple than I would normally do, but being on a time crunch, I had to go easy, no stamping. I think it came out very pretty, though. The ribbon is a wide grosgrain I picked up at the dollar store, of all places. I wanted to make a second set, but simply ran out of time.

I had some gift cards to send, and I like to dress them up and here's what I did:

This is the same design as I did previously. I just used different colors. Holiday Red (CTMH) and white and grey. The pattern paper is from Martha Stewart, as is the punch. I found some snowflake embellishments at Walmart and thought it, along with a bit of bling in the form of a rhinestone added a nice touch.

 

I saw this next idea at Archiver's and thought it would be fun to recreate. Unfortunately, the store was out of stock on the stamp set, but I made do with what I already owned. LOL Like that was a big stretch. LOL They used a die to cut out the pattern, but who needs a die when the dimensions are so straight-forward? I just traced the sample onto paper and took it from there.

These are pretty simple, overall, but I liked the presentation. The dp is Basic Grey's Wassail line and the cardstock I picked up for free with a coupon from the store. The ribbon, which is difficult to see (sorry) was ONLY 29 cents a yard!

Unfortunately, they were also out of the epoxy brads in the Wassail line (the brad you see on the front of the card holder). But I like my version just fine. Hobby Lobby's Spare Parts Embellishment line goes on sale for 50% off regularly. The last time it did, I picked up these brads where you could add letter stickers to create words. I picked up a pack for the brads, not the letters. I snipped off the prongs, added a pop dot to attach it to the front. A 1/2 inch circle punch is the perfect size to fit on the top of the brad. Very cool! One of the appealing parts of this to me, other than the overall cute design, was the tag on the inside. The stamp set had Just For You lined up in a circle and a snowflake in the center. But the store didn't have anymore of the stamp set. (boo-hoo) But I have a Just Rite Stamper set (or two-who's counting) and I created the Just For You myself. I added a punched circle instead of a snowflakw to coordinate. The border punch I used is Fiskar's Threading Water.

Man, it doesn't look like too much right now, does it? But it took me most of the day to get these done!

Breakfast time! Gotta go for now! If I forgot something, just ask and I'll come back and answer...

Thanks for visiting!

Jeanne