Quickest project ever

Well, it was an interesting morning here. Our power would go out for 2 seconds, then I'd reset the clocks, then it would go out again. Numerous times. Then it started staying out longer, the last time being over an hour. But after that it stayed on, so I guess they got it fixed... whatever "it" was. It was a widespread outage which included our local town, too. I was feeling a bit discombobulated, not to mention being a bit behind on my computer time. I did get my exercise in, but it was too dark (very gloomy outside) to even read a book on my NordicTrack. Hurray for my iPad, though, because I'd earlier downloaded a few free books, so I was able to read a short story which happened to be the perfect length (and a kind of funny read, too). And as I stepped off the NT, the power came back on to stay, so I was able to shower (exercising without a fan can get pretty sweaty!) and get about my regular day.

All that aside.... I tried a new sewing tutorial yesterday (which can be found here). Courtney had brought one of her birthday gifts along... yeah, FINALLY... for me to play with with her. It was a huge jar of craft supplies (fun! more on that later). Among many other things, it contained a little cellophane packet of markers. But once you tore the cellophane to get them out, it was no good to hold them anymore, so there was nothing in which to keep them all together.

Grandma to the rescue! I'd seen that little tutorial awhile back (thanks, Jess!) and always intended to make a little pencil case from it. Lucky for me, Jess's Outside Oslo fabrics also come in laminates (can be seen and purchased here), and she'd brought me some sample scraps. Little scraps. VERY little scraps. It took the biggest pieces to make this! (Now what am I gonna do with all those other LITTLE pieces? Any suggestions?) It was the first time I'd ever sewn laminated fabric. All I can say is that for this little project, it was a breeze! For a bigger, more complicated item, it remains to be seen. Maybe I can persuade Jess to send me some bigger pieces?!

Anyway, here's the little pencil case I made:

And the back side:

It was super easy. It must've taken me all of 15 minutes to make it. Kinda hard to tell, though, because Courtney was working on a project at the same time and needed some help, so my project was interrupted a lot. LOL

Conclusion: It was fun, and Courtney loved it a lot. Happy ending.

Color!

I have lovely decorations in my sewing room right now. My amaryllis plants are blooming again. The reason they're in my sewing room is because they'd get destroyed by Josie (one of my cats, in case any new readers are wondering) in the living room. At least I'm sewing more lately, so I get to see them every day.

The pinkish one has another bloom that you can see behind the others. And the reddish-orange one will have more soon.

I have one more amaryllis, but it's a bit slower than the others this year, so it's still in the window soaking up sunshine.

You can see there was still ice on the trees when I took that pic yesterday morning, but 40° took care of that  very nicely. I'm looking forward to 50+° later today!

Little Things to Sew - Drawstring Bag

The scheduled project from the Little Things to Sew book for February was a set of little "Play Town" houses. I decided not to make them, because I doubted Courtney would play with them that much, and mainly I don't think I have enough appropriate fabrics to make them from, not to mention not having a local source for nice foam to stuff them with. But after seeing the cool houses that Jessica, the group host (not my daughter) made, I almost wish I had given them a try anyway. Go look at the fun houses she made here! Aren't they adorable? They're also smaller than I thought... I think about 3 inches square on the bottoms. 

So for a quick, easy project (which I needed, since... umm... I didn't actually start until the last day of February), I made this little drawstring bag instead:

It was, indeed, very easy to make. I used up some more of the Jessica Jones canvas I have on hand. The top and bottom are also canvas, which turned out to not be a very good choice for the bag, at least not for the drawstring casing. It's kinda stiff, plus the "string" doesn't slide very well through it. But once you get it shut, you're not likely to lose whatever's inside, because it's rather hard to open! ;)

Update: After some use, the "string" does slide just fine! So I would definitely go with canvas again, just because it makes a sturdier bag.

It's a small bag... only about 11" square. I'm not sure what it'll get used for... maybe I'll let Courtney decide. Here's a possibility:

I'm not the only one who chose not to make the little houses. There are some other really cute projects that you can see in A Little Gray's link-up.

Also linking up to Amylouwho's Sew & Tell:

More "glass" trees

Our ice is making slow progress at melting. (The predicted 50+° by Tuesday should make short work of it, though!) With some blue sky and sunshine this morning, I just couldn't resist taking some more pictures. I put most of them into a collage so you only have to click on it to enlarge them all at once, rather than doing each pic separately. Be sure to click on the little magnifying glass (if you get that), too, and scroll! Enjoy!

Here's what the ground looks like below the trees - like shattered glass!

Don't these look dangerous?!

Spot it!

What is it about being five? Before Courtney's birthday, she ALWAYS brought some of her own toys along to play with when she came to Grandma's on Tuesdays. It wasn't that I didn't have things here for her to do. I think she just liked to bring things!

Well, since her birthday party, despite her promises to bring something "next time", she has not brought ONE THING along for Grandma to play with (that teeny light-up tennie she brought this week didn't count)! Boo hoo... I wanted to play with her new Legos or dig into that huge jar of craft supplies! ;) I don't get it. 

Anyway, I occasionally pick up something new that I think she'll like, just so I have something "for a rainy day". (I didn't mean that literally, but it actually did rain all day Tuesday!) So this week I got out a new game I'd heard about on a blog somewhere.

It's a bunch of cards in a neat little tin. And although it's recommended for ages 7 to adult, I thought she might be pretty good at it anyway, as it's a matching game, and she's very good at playing the memory game.

So here's our dealer, shuffling the cards:

All shuffled and dealt... one card per person... remaining cards face up:

Then we turn over our cards and the first person to spy one of the figures on her own card that matches one on the pile, gets the top card on the pile. And on it goes... the person with the most cards wins.

Sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? It's not as easy as it sounds!! There is one match per every pair of cards. The matching figures are the same color but can be different sizes. Look at this pair and see how long it takes you to find the match!

This was one of the more obvious ones. Or at least it seems so once you've found it. Sometimes it's a figure-by-figure process of elimination! Courtney loved the game and did well, although she wasn't very fast, and sometimes she needed a hint (for above I'd say "think green"). I'm sure with practice she'll get lots better and will beat Grandma in no time. ;)

There are several other games you can play with these cards, but they're more complicated, and so far I haven't even bothered to read the directions. Maybe someday we grownups can play them.

On a different subject, I just had to show you another shot of one of our icy trees this morning, with the sun shining on it. There was some melting yesterday, but there's still a lot of ice out there. The camera didn't quite do the sparkles justice (and it didn't help that I took it through a plasticked window), but click on the photo to enlarge it and I think you'll find it pretty, anyway.