This is how my day started today:
Be sure to click to enlarge it, then scroll to get the full effect!
Hope your day has started beautifully, too, and continues even more so. And that you're making progress on all the Christmas preparations. I am, slowly but surely. Well, very slowly, it feels like, but I guess that's better than no progress at all!
This colorful turkey was designed by Courtney at preschool. It even has eyelashes! :)
Hope you all have a lovely holiday weekend!
... I get a package in the mail and it's too big to fit in the mailbox so our carrier brings it right to my door! We have a fairly long driveway, so anytime I don't have to walk down to get the mail, it's a treat (but especially on nasty weather days).
Today was one of those days. However, it turned out to be an extra-big treat! Look what she brought me! FIVE packages! So fun! And colorful! With a little bit of delish thrown in!
Want a closer look? Check out these zippers! Such pretty colors! Nicely tied with ribbons, and I even got a cute little zipper pull (the little green thingy) for free!
Then there was this lovely fabric. NOT Jessica Jones fabric! :) It's for something for me. Eventually.
And some Wildflowers. Yes, Jess's fabric. For something coming up soon.
Here's some bag hardware. Any clues what these might be intended for?
What's that you're saying? It looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me? You're exactly right! I am going to be very busy in the next few weeks. So if you don't see much of me here, you'll know why. I'll show you what I can when it's completed, though.
Just a note on the zippers. Some are for specific upcoming projects, but most are not. I figured as long as I was ordering a few, I might as well get some for my stash. They'll come in handy sometime, and they're unbelievably cheaper than buying from my meager source here in town.
And the last package... some Twinings tea! Caffeine to keep me awake for all the sewing! ;)
That's it, folks. Well, not ALL of it. There's fabric, etc., that I had before that I haven't shown you. And some that'll arrive with Miss C tomorrow. But I'd better go and get working on.... SOMETHING!! I love this quote: "You can't do everything at once. But you CAN do something at once!" How true!! I don't know who said it, but it does help me get going when I'm feeling overwhelmed.
And it did. Here's what it looks like outside this morning:
At least it's November and not October. And it wasn't deep.
I won't go so far as to say that it's pretty, though.
It's definitely COLD! It was 6° when I got up! After getting to over 50° on Friday. The good news is, the white stuff won't last long, because it's supposed to get to over 50° again on Thanksgiving Day. I can live with that!
Snuggles and Dots seem to have found a nice little (yes, very little) ledge to soak up some sun above the white stuff.
Apparently there wasn't enough room for Cuddles. Can you see her? She's that black lump just to the left of the base of that left post. Poor kitty... brrrr!
I know. I should be doing other things. A bzillion other things.
But the sunset was so pretty again last night, and I just wanted to experiment with making a panorama of it. I didn't waste much time. I quick snapped 5 pics, trying to get them at the same level and right next to each other. No editing... I just stuck them together. I think it turned out pretty good!
Click the picture to enlarge it. Be sure to click the magnifier to see it full size, then depending on the size of your monitor, you'll probably have to scroll sideways to see it all.
Whaddya think???
No, I'm not backing up my computer data, although I probably should do that again soon. Actually, lots of it is done automatically every day to a second hard drive, so I'm not too concerned. (I just hope I never lose both drives at once!)
I'm backing up a week in my photos... to last week Tuesday. I just had to show you my little cooking helper. We had carrots (well, only one... it was a biggie) for dinner, and Courtney did the scrubbing. She's such a good helper!
Methinks I should make another apron so she has one to wear here, too. But it'll have to wait a bit. I suddenly have a whole bunch of sewing projects lined up! I'll be very busy for the next few weeks... probably through Christmas, actually... so don't be surprised if you don't see as many blog posts for awhile. I'll show you what I can when I can, though, so don't go too far away! :)
Yep, I made another bag. I just can't seem to get enough of being a bag lady! This is a Bucket Bag, another Keyka Lou pattern. They're just such nice patterns to sew. Every step is so carefully explained, with helpful little tips along the way. They make sewing bags a breeze!
(Update: For a little more indepth pattern review, see what I had to say about it on Jess's blog.)
I really like this bag! I think it has such a nice shape. Of course the fabric is Jess's, from her Outside Oslo collection. It's called Skiff, from the Dawn colorway. Since I'm a lover of blue, it's one of my favorites!
The detail on the button doesn't show up much, but it's perfect for the bag, with scallops around the edges. (If you click the pic to enlarge it a bit, you can see it better.) I had to import it from Chicago. ;) Boy, are buttons expensive nowadays! I also added a magnetic snap, which the pattern didn't call for. I think most bags need a closure of some kind.
My little model is here this morning, and she was glad to do a job for me to show you size perspective.
Goodness, that look on her face above makes me think of pics of my older sister when she was little! I never noticed the resemblance before.
She thought maybe this was a good (and funny) way to hang the bag:
She also said the designs look like trimmed fingernail bits! LOL! She's right! Jess, that's what you should've named it. Surely they cut their fingernails in Olso!
I noticed when I looked up the above link for the patterns, that many of them are on sale! They're not expensive patterns to begin with, but they've just gotten cheaper! They're so cute that I want to make them ALL!
Linking up with the amylouwho sew & tell.
I thought the cloud design was really interesting last evening. I've never noticed so many clouds in such straight lines before. Kinda weird.
As I was preparing this post, I was wishing I could put the three photos together into one panoramic view. Google to the rescue! A quick search found me a free "starter" program that would do just that! So I downloaded it and gave it a try. Here is the resulting picture. Click on it to enlarge it.
Better planned out photography would've produced a better result, I'm sure, but I wasn't thinking of this when I took the pics. I'll have to do some more experimenting later. Maybe I can show you our whole farm in one view, huh? Ha!
The moon was so pretty last night! Unfortunately, I didn't have time to get the tripod out, so I snapped a few pics hoping I could hold still enough. This is the best shot I got, but it's not so great. The moon really was round, but I guess this is a good example of what the slightest movement can do to distort. Ha!
And no, don't bother to click it to enlarge. It doesn't get much bigger than this. It looks worse bigger. :)
No, I'm not going to show you my tooth today. I haven't received my gold crown yet... a couple more weeks to wait. But I'm not going to show it to you, anyway. (Yeah, I heard you say "whew!")
Courtney made a crown at daycare on Monday, with the help of an aide. Interestingly, the aide gave her the title of "king". ;) Courtney did the decorating. Here it is, with a couple extra embellishments from her stash here, modeled by one of her "daycare kids":
Being in the mood for crowns, she decided to make another one, all by herself. She drew it and asked me to cut it out for her, which I did, but didn't quite follow her lines all the way down. ;) Here it is on the same model:
And here it is on her own head, just for a little size perspective ;) :
Well, crown-making was so fun, she made another one! She did it all this time, except she asked me to add the numbers at the top. She cut it and fit it herself, and even added the baby's name on it... Ava, which happens to also be the name of one of her little daycare friends, and she knows how to spell it herself.
She asked me what color crowns were supposed to be, and I said they're usually gold. So she asked me if she mixed yellow and red together if that would make gold! I said that would work (as close as she could get with markers), so here's the final crown:
We do have fun on Tuesdays!
.... came to my house yesterday!
Pretty cool, huh? Mommy's been trying out fun hairdos for Courtney that she finds at Girly Do Hairstyles. And I just discovered a TON of hairstyle photos on the Girly Do Facebook page! Wow! Amazing and FUN!
Mommy also told me yesterday that Courtney has a haircut appointment this Friday. I wonder how short they'll go. Expect new photos next week!
Oh, and did you notice the tape, scissors and sewing basket on the table? Courtney was very busy making some quite creative things yesterday. Come back later this week to find out what she made!
Here are the options for my next sewing project(s). Both the print fabrics are from the Dawn colorway of Jess's Outside Oslo collection: Sticks on the left, and Skiff on the right.
Just out of curiosity, which combo do you prefer, the left pair or the right pair?
Remember all the bias tape I made for Courtney's apron? This is how I did it.
Since I don't have a bias tape maker, I used the old stick-a-pin-in-your-ironing-board-cover trick and pulled my bias strips through, ironing as I went. It was slow going, but worked okay. (And just a little hindsight hint: if you try this, leave just a little gap between the edges where they come together at the center fold... it works better when you fold it in half again later.)
However, I've since come across this post where CarlaC made a bias tape maker out of cardstock, and she shares a free PDF you can download for making your own ½" bias tape. She also has since come up with a 1" PDF pattern. Hurray!!
What do you get when you wash a strawberry shortcake? (Especially one with pink hair.)
Answer: You get pink bath water, of course!
Bye-bye pink hair!
Since Courtney didn't want candy for Halloween... and since she'd loved the other clutch I'd made... I thought that'd be the perfect non-candy "treat". Here's a closer look at it:
I used the same Jessica Jones fabrics as in her backpack, only I reversed them for the lining/main fabrics.
You can see from the last photo on my previous post the actual size.
The pink part is a pocket on a pocket, but it's hard to tell that because the fabric matches up so well. But I swear, LiEr, it was totally accidental!!!
I decided to make it even more fun by putting a little more "treat" inside. I found this cute tiny notebook and pen set in our local dollar store. The notebooks even have colored paper.
Perfect fit!
She absolutely loved it! She thanked me many times yesterday for making it for her, and she drew lots of tiny things in the notebooks. Success for sure! (Except maybe I should've stocked up on notebooks. Even though she's pretty conservative, they may fill up kinda fast.)
Look who showed up at our house last night! She already had a pot full of candy.
Smiles were kinda hard to come by at first. She'd had a long day and was sooo tired! Look at those eyes!
Nice pose... smile... blurry picture. Way to go, Grandma.
She'd informed me a couple weeks ago that she really didn't want candy for Halloween. She had enough already from parades, etc. :) So she didn't get any candy from us. I sent her on a little treasure hunt, and this is what she found:
She was very happy with the treasure she found! More details on that (and what's inside) later this week... maybe tomorrow.
