christmas baubles

Christmas Baubles

What do you all think? 

I may be getting the hang of it.

felted wool potholders

I love felted wool projects. I hit the jack pot on wool sweaters last year. Re-purposing something that is no longer being used for its original purpose makes me happy. I make them by just loosely designing a flower and roughly sewing with a colorful zig zag stitch. That's what makes them so special and unique. I just love these, do you? The stripe is the back side of this piece. I made a ton of them for my kitchen and for a friend. It's such a great addition to my kitchen decor.

Love the wool, love the colors, love the texture, love the look......

LOVE! 

homemade summer fun...

Here, Damsel and I made these jewelry necklaces ourselves..mine has matching earrings. This was way more fun than I ever would have thought. A friend, Maryann, enjoys this hobby regularly and brought her kits over to my house for lunch and this fun..loved it! Do you like them?

USA Girl Camp! We love our local extension service around here. If you have one, run don't walk and get to some of there really cool classes at great prices!
Damsel and some friends went to this day camp revolving around American Girl Dolls, the girls brought their dolls and did crafts and cooked and learned all about a different doll's time period. It was so cute. Here is a sampling of what they made.

Here, girly decided to dress her corn husk doll! Very creative.

Here is a homemade bag and hat my bought from a friend of hers that makes these. Someday I will attempt a bag similar to this, but alas, my sewing machine is dead...:( Good bye my faithful old Singer...we shall miss you...

I am still here...crafty things happening.

I would have been here sooner but our monitor broke!! Can you believe it? I am so dependent on my computer these days.

I have been feeling creative and very crochetish lately. I started making these fun crocheted snowflakes. Aren't they cute?

It is very relaxing as I am just very stressed this fall. I think I have post traumatic nerve exposure. This is a term I made up, where it feels a little like my nerves are on my skin and quite heightened. Sometimes I just worry about something I said or I can't sleep well. Don't worry, I am trusting the Lord. Trying to fully give it over to Him. I can't explain it and I have no real excuse. I am just so happy to be here, home with my family and for Braveheart to be feeling more normal these days.

Our library had a gourd painting day and so we went and spent the morning painting these. What fun! It felt good to create with paint and not have the mess at home right now.

I have more fun things to show you but I have to wait as some are gifts.

We are nearly ready for Christmas. Tomorrow we take B for his next monthly IV chemo. Please pray for us as we drive.

fall party creations

Scouts had a pack meeting and we had to come up with a quick treat so we tried to use what we had around the house and we made a small little batch of frosting and used our licorice and chocolate chips to make a monster snack...it was pretty tasty too.

This next snack won the prize at the meeting and T got to be the one to eat the creature! Yuck.

Damsel made this at a friends party. Cute.

keep'er altering

The girls met this morning for their keeper's of the faith meeting.

Today's project: altered books

what does this entail?

old books with painted pages
lots of fun pretties
glue sticks and glue guns
treasured girly items






Good job girls!

crafting fabric cards

I can't help it, I am on a creative binge right now. Do you ever just want to read books and crafts, sew/ create?? Ugh. Do I have to stop to feed my family dinner? It's ok to just throw something at them and hope they catch, is it not? :) Just kidding, I feed them well still. I am using up whatever I have here in case you didn't hear that Glenn is laid off. I am looking forward to the challenge. Joy cannot be stolen from me.
I am so enjoying not doing any teaching....we are still reading and choring and such, but I have FREEEED my my mind from that right now and just healing my feet up. This is my 'vacation', my 'therapy'.
Anyway, here is a picture of my fabric card I made for my neice. It was very fun and satisfying. I will show you some other things soon. Damsel will be making one for a friend too.
I don't know why this is coming in sideways but you get the idea.

wordless wednesday

to mom, i love you, from A

sewing gift

Look what my sweet friend pattycakes made me! Isn't she a blessing?? She is quite the artist. Check out her other fun crafties.

Isn't this an adorable little mini pin cushion? Now I have a little sewing kit for my chair side table to repair all those little mishaps!

Thanks Pattycakes, love ya!

art hanging around

Do you remember when damsel made those lovely fashion dolls? Well, we decorated some clothes pins and she hung them on her light line in her room. The lights are quite lovely to look at in the evening. Here's a peek.

fashion designing dresses

We read the sweetest book last month, damsel and I. THE HUNDRED DRESSES. It ended with a hundred fashion designs plastered all over the walls and a lovely character message. We got a great crafty idea from a fellow blogger. This was right up her alley as she spent quite some time diligently designing away. It was girl heaven in this room.

This one is my creation.
Working diligently.

Notice those cute little toes on the left of the photo!!

Hawaiian style.

Getting married!

Notice the bride's 'wat up'?

mission: organizing basement

Well, we have the beginnings of a sewing/ craft room that I had dreamed of when we first moved here. Alas, it isn't fancy or done to say the least and I am not investing any money at this time, but I am trying to be creative with what we have. I want to create a place that will provide all sorts of treasures right at our fingertips! I am so excited!

It was soooo fun to be going through my fabric strips, quilt squares and pretty buttons. Look at this pretty box I found at the thrift store. I couldn't resist buying it to place some little things in. This area needs brightening up badly.

# 7 is doll house heaven

Welcome to our girly, girl project! Our very own year of the doll house. I found the most wonderful and inspiring little doll house blog. If you would have asked me before if I would like to do this I would have cringed and thought it sounded horrid, but once I saw how creative and thrifty you can be in the process, I was sold. I showed my darling damsel girl and she was sold beyond words. Who would have thought she would be so hyped up for it? This will be perfect for us now that we have finished the most intense part of her brother's chemotherapy, as I knew that we would need to spend some special time together. I (we) are so excited to begin her 7th year and beyond building fun memories together and bonding our relationship even stronger. We invite you to enjoy our adventure and hope you will join in with your daughter. We have some friends already joining in. It's so much fun! In just the first process we were already engaging in the most wonderful conversations. If you want to spend some real time with your daughter and grab/ keep her heart then this is for you.

(Pro 4:21) Let them not depart from thine eyes; Keep them in the midst of thy heart.

Now if you have boys, don't be afraid, get a shelf or a box and create a boys room or a hunting ground or something cool like that. You can accomplish nearly the same thing or whatever dreams he has.

One of the fun challenges of this project will be in being thrifty and creative in developing it into it's doll house grandness. As you can see we had to do some prep/painting type work but it wasn't that hard, still fun.

We started with an old shelf we found at GW a few months ago. I had been using for shoe storage. It is old but sturdy. You can use any kind of shelf really.

Damsel girl was very diligent with her prepping of the home for paint.

The excitement is building!

Here's two dolls that we discovered we already had that she bought last year. They are very happy to be moving in and start decorating.

Here is the finished product. The kitchen has been painted blue, one room has been wall papered (got that at gw real cheap) and we already had a very cute chair for one of the girls to sit on.

We'll let you know more next time on the doll house adventures!