Baby blanket is finally done!

I finally finished the baby blanket I'd spent the last month or more crocheting for my friend Sara's baby shower! The shower was yesterday at 2pm, and I was just pulling it out of the dryer at 1:45! But hey, it was finished and I am so incredibly proud of myself! I have started many, many crochet projects but never actually finished one! So, for your viewing pleasure, here are a few pictures of the blanket. It is a soft baby yellow and very soft yarn!

This first picture shows how I wrapped it all up for her. I folded it, tied with a silky pink ribbon and placed a hand-made card inside the ribbon. Of course, I still have that terrible habit of making cute on-the-fly cards and sealing them up before I remember I should take a picture of them! The tiny little striped tag opens up to say "I am machine washable! Wash me in warm water and add fabric softener if you'd like. I can even go in the dryer! Just keep the heat nice and low, I only take about 20 minutes to dry completely. :) " I think a lot of people expect a handmade item to be too fragile to wash, but not this one! I washed and dried it myself just to be sure, and it held up beautifully.

Just to show a little detail on the rippled design. It has a divine texture!

This blanket ended up about 52 inches long! I wanted to keep it for myself!

Plenty more crochet projects to come in the future, but to avoid arthritis in my 22-year-old wrists, I am turning my attention to an important sewing project and more wood painting later this week. Keep checking back for new updates, which I had better remember to post!

Learning to paint

As you can see from pictures in past posts, my craft room is mostly white, the hardwood floors and sewing table are a darker wood stain, and I use hot pink, black and Tiffany blue as accents. So what would you do with a $5 corner shelf and two $1 unfinished divided shelves (these are small and are meant to hang on a wall) like these? They definitely don't match the decor but for $7, I have to use them! Well keep your socks on, they are currently in the process of an overhaul. I can't wait to show you what I've done with them!

Hooray for Friday!

It's Friday! Last day to run errands and get MY stuff accomplished without the "help" of my husband! I know we're about due for some pictures here, I promise they're coming tomorrow. Here's what I'm up to today, I need to finish a couple of items before the hubs gets home from work, or he'll try to lend a "helping" hand and just end up doing it himself. It's not going to happen this time though! I really do want to do these, all by myself!

Alright, so remember the white filing cabinet I adhered hot pink and black papers to? So I guess my room is white, hot pink and black now! That $5 corner shelf I got has been sanded down and I'm on coat 2 of 4 of white paint. After that I'm stenciling a pretty flower design in -yep- hot pink and black. I also had some unfinished, divided wood shelves I was laying flat in my dresser drawer and using for jewelry. Well I de-cluttered and got rid of a lot of ugly, cheap-o jewelry, so I painted those shelves white last night as well. I have big plans for them, but I can't tell you what they are...it's a surprise! Hopefully I can get them finished and post pics tomorrow!

I'm also about 1/3 done crocheting my friend's baby blanket. I only have 5 real days left to work on it before the shower, because I start school on Tuesday. It's pretty cool that I set up my school schedule this fall so all my classes are earlier in the day, and only on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, meaning we could leave town on a Thursday night and take a long weekend through Monday night, anytime we want! :P I know, I'm a pretty lucky chick.

Oh ya, and I have that gift scrapbook album I was making for someone who is very special to me. Just in case, I can't tell you about it till it has made it into the recipient's hands. We've all become such online stalkers these days, you never know who could read your blog at any moment!

Wow, after typing all that out I just grabbed my "fall project list" notebook, and I've barely skimmed the surface! So much to do, and so VERY LITTLE TIME!!!!

It's time

It's time to "forget [my]self, and go to work." Too many hours spent lounging in front of the television (only acceptable if there's a crochet project in my hands), too much money spent out of sheer boredom, the list could go on and on, but I don't have time to come up with more! The point is, enough time has been wasted, and it ends now. Time to go to work, being an influence for good.

Blogging to pass the time...

I got a ton of great storage (mostly wood 3-tier shelf-type stuff) for my craft room yesterday at a yard sale. Now it's all sitting, back to back, in the center of my room with heaps of yarn, paper and fabric in bags and laid out all over the floor. I can't even get into my own hobby room! (Much less walk around in it!)

So I'm sitting on the chaise, hoping to put the mess that cannot be avoided out of my mind. My fave blog at the moment is Craftaholics Anonymous. I mean this girl is just fabulous! But in my attempt to procrastinate, I found myself reading an article titled "you know you're a craftaholic when..." and I just HAD to share a few that seemed to apply readily to me!

1. Whenever you go shopping you end up buying nothing because you think you can make everything yourself!

2. You pass the craft store and have to tell yourself out loud: No. Groceries first!

3. Your guests have to sleep on the couch because you have a craft room instead of a guest room.

4. You would rather spend the day at a craft store than at the mall.

5. Your walk in closet has more craft supplies than clothes.

6. Your husband asks you if he still needs to save the empty paper towel rolls and then, eventually does it without asking.

7. You collect things your friends throw away. Recycling!

8. To take #7 further, I posted a list by two friends' kitchen garbage of things they are NOT ALLOWED to throw away, gave them each a plastic tub in which to collect these items, and I pick them up. They think I'm crazy but they always have fun making the crafts with me later!!

9. When you own at least 20 types of glue.

10. You blow the budget on fabric because there was a good sale.

11. Your husband drives 20 miles an hour over the speed limit on trash days, in fear you might find something in other's trash you want to "alter."

12. You hardly ever buy new clothes because it cuts into your crafting money.

I will admit I do all the financial stuff in our household, and my hubby really doesn't have much to do with it, other than telling me if he wants a little extra budgeted for something he wants this month. So I'm the one who sits down with the bills and calculator and makes the budget for the month....on my computer. Which he doesn't use. So he never actually SEES the budget.....I honestly can't tell you what he must think, because he has nooooo idea how much I spend on crafty things! I won't say numbers, but let's just say our monthly "crafting/hobbies" category on the budget usually outweighs the water, gas, electricity, cable, internet, cell phones and medical bills, all rolled into one "bills" category. YIKES! Well, he doesn't have to know. I usually get food on the table no matter what....unless Hobby Lobby has paper and ribbon half-off. What's a good side dish for paper a la king?? Grosgrain ribbon perhaps? LOL

and sew it begins...

I have slowly begun tackling the pile of air force uniform pants on the floor next to my sewing desk. Boy are they tough! First of all, the thread used in the pants from the factory is IMPOSSIBLE to find a match for - I went to both Hobby Lobby and Wal-Mart and couldn't find a thread that comes anywhere close to the original stuff. So I erred on the side of too dark and got a nice manatee grey. Spooled it up, threaded everything, put a new (tougher) needle in, pinned the first pair of pants together and...... stared at the machine and the pants for a good 30 minutes without even moving! I just realized, I don't know how to sew! :O Well, I finally sucked it up and wedged the pants over the NOT-free-arm of the machine, put a couple stitches in by hand, backstitched a few times, and just went for it. The result? Not a terrible job, till I realized I had stitched both back pockets to the backside of the pants! So I had to spend a good hour slowly ripping out the double seam (which is, by the way, entirely visible to the naked eye, so no room for mistakes! AHH!).

I finally finished the first pair of pants, 5 more to go. I lost interest and moved on to working on crocheting a baby blanket for my friend who is 6 months pregnant (she's having a girl). Can I finish it in just 3 more months?? Maybe if I don't let the ADHD get the best of me...oh wait, I was in the process of making a senior memories scrapbook for my little sister and designing my Christmas cards, and I need to take some of the length off two of my "prairie" skirts, and organize my craft room, and......sheesh. I should probably get off the computer and get to work.

Picture Time

Alright, so I finally dug the camera out of the piles of junk in my hobby room this morning to take a couple pictures. I'm so insanely proud of my $35 Brother sewing machine! And my hubby is proud of the job I did on the white filing cabinet - every time he's come into the craft room this week, he tells me how great it looks! Aww, thanks babe!

I now have a pile of 5 or 6 ABU air force uniform pants from my husband and his friends. Each pair seems to have the "reinforced backside" flapping freely in the wind, as well as broken belt loops, pockets that are falling out, missing buttons etc. Guess that'll keep me busy for a while!

I had to take my 6' white craft table (which was my scrapping space) out Saturday afternoon to use as a buffet for our friend's birthday barbecue - which was held in our garage and driveway, since we don't have a back patio! It was a lot of fun, but I just finished cleaning all the mustard and bbq sauce off it, and now comes the task of returning it to the place it was originally. In order to get the table out, I had to remove everything that was on top of it. Well, now all those tools and supplies are in little piles all over the crafty room floor! It's going to take HOURS to reorganize everything just so, since I don't even have any pictures of the new table set-up!

Ah, it's so great to be a full-time "homemaker"!! Before, I probably would have locked the hobby room door from the inside and just never stepped back into it because with work and everything, I would never have found time to accomplish all the stuff I'm getting into now, and keep it all clean at the same time! :D

Making the old new

WOW I STINK at keeping up with my blog! Life has been so crazy lately I haven't had two seconds to myself to be inspired it seems! However, inspiration has finally come in the form of "reuse and recycle." My sweet hubby actually LOVES to go to the farmer's market, flea market, antique shops and yard sales with me - can you believe that?? So we got up at the crack of dawn Saturday morning (no easy feat!) and hit up around 10-12 yard sales! My new treasures:

-Dresser with matching mirror: now I really only wanted the mirror. It's HUGE! And we all know how expensive a brand new, large wall mirror is! Even on sale the ones at the home decor store are over $120. I asked if I could take just the mirror and offered $10 (a large sum at a yard sale, right?) for it. Well the guy's wife said "how COULD you? They go together, we're selling them together!" Alright, but the dresser was $50. I looked at the guy, one eyebrow raised and said "is it really $50?" He peeled the sticker off and said "it's however much you want it to be." I told him we'd take the set for $20 and he gladly accepted. I gave the dresser (which isn't much to look at, but large and fully functional) to our friends, who just moved from dorm rooms into a large house together, as a house-warming present. And yes, I'm still planning on hanging the mirror on my wall, after some sanding and such!

-4 drawer filing cabinet: this I got at a different yard sale for $5!! It's a nice, clean white and in overall fantastic condition...except for a large scrape down the right side. I brought it home and it just so happens that the damaged side can be up against the wall so you can't even see it, and it fits PERFECTLY next to my scrap desk! Now I finally have somewhere to not only keep our household filing system, but I have a way to organize all the pretty paper scraps from projects past that I just can't bear to throw away. My plan for it? (Of course I have a plan!!) I'm going to my LSS today for Mod-Podge and a brayer. I've already removed the sleek brushed nickel knobs, and picked out pretty pink and black coordinating papers and trimmed them to size. I'm going to cover the inside of the front of each drawer with a pretty paper, then reattach the knobs over the top. YES pictures will be posted when I am finished!

-2 chipboard children's books: I plan on turning them horizontal and covering with paper for mini-albums as gifts. 2 books for $0.50.

-Napa Valley cassette tape holder: This one I actually got free - she had said $0.50, but then didn't want the coins after all! It is ALMOST the perfect size for my stamping ink pads...my husband just needs to remove a couple pieces so it will fit the larger pads. It even has holes in the back already so it'll be a quick hang job!

-Sewing machine: Last but not least - in fact, the most important I think! - is my new sewing machine! It's a Brother, and actually really nice! Seems to be fully functional, except for the fact that it's missing the Brother-specific bobbins (because they just HAD to make theirs different and therefore more expensive) and the presser foot. It's okay though, because I have coupons for Hobby Lobby! I downloaded the user manual for it online, printed it and put it in a binder under my sewing desk. My first project? Fixing my poor hubby's uniform pants for work! He's a crew chief, and definitely wears right through the "reinforced" backside and knees constantly! Up until now it's meant a new pair of $50 uniform bottoms every other month, but now I can patch the holes, reattach belt loops, re-stitch pockets, and basically save us a ton of money!

BEST PART??? The sewing machine cost.....(drumroll)......$35.

I can't wait till the Saturday after next when we can do it all again! I just have to get all my current projects done first! :P