All in a day with Annabelle

Just use your imagination.....

"What?"

Fun packages

I love getting packages. I mean, who doesn't, right? Especially when they're something you haven't even ordered yourself!

Last week a beautiful box of linen fabrics arrived. Jess had ordered them as potential for sewing projects, mainly to go with her fabrics. I've never sewn on linen before, although I've seen some really pretty bags using them, and I've thought I'd like to give them a try sometime... now I can! Aren't they lovely? They look even better in person.

It was really my lucky day. I hit the jackpot. TWICE! See the stickers?

That means I got an extra foot of fabric on one, and two feet on the other! Woohoo! If you've been following me for a while, you might remember that this is not the first time this has happened for me. I love Fabric.com!

Then on Monday, this arrived in the mail... Anna Graham's book, Handmade Style, again via Jess, but gifted by Anna herself. She even autographed it for me inside. Sweet, eh?

Anna writes the Noodlehead blog, as well as designs fabric, designs and writes patterns, and now has written a book full of patterns. She designed the Trail Tote that I made here. Maybe that clutch on the book cover would be a good project for some of that linen and some of Jess's Typography fabrics? Anna showed another clutch she made from her own Rain Walk fabric line in her blog post yesterday. So cute, so functional. And the pattern's in the book, along with 22 others. I see lots of fun sewing ahead! Guess I'd better finish the project I'm working on (the one I might not show you... haven't decided yet) before more fabric arrives!

Sewing with Courtney

A couple weeks ago when Courtney was here, she asked if we could do another project on my sewing machine. I said sure, so we googled "easy things for kids to sew" or something like that (she's a very good googler!). She found something cute that was made from felt, and I thought it would work well. Here are the colors she chose, plus a few little embellishments.

By the time we'd found the project and picked the felt, we didn't really have time to get working on it, then last week she wasn't here after school, so we finally got back to it yesterday. I forgot all about taking pictures (!) until it was all finished, but at least I remembered then. So here's her latest sewing project, a customized organizer. This is the inside:

She sewed it all herself except for the buttons, which I sewed on with the machine. Had we had more time, I'd have had her sew them on by hand. ;) Look at how nice and straight her stitching is! Awesome, huh? I'm so proud of her!!

Here's the outside front:

Oh, I also sewed on the velcro that it's fastened with, and the center of one of the flowers, just to show her how to do it. She did the other one.

Here's the back. She thought it was cool to make the 'X' to make sure the tab stayed securely on there. She did great with that, too.

So you can see the actual size (and see how grown up she's getting!), here she is:

True to form, we had to have one of these shots, too. ;-Þ

That was a fun little project, and very good practice for her. She was pretty excited to take it to school and show her friends today. Now we'll have to keep our eyes open for more ideas. If any of you see anything that might work, feel free to let me know!

Beautiful pests

My fawns have been back again. I can't resist taking photos of them. I hope you don't mind looking at them so often. 

There were two this time, and I've since seen three again (but didn't get photos). I don't remember for sure, but I think this may be the same one in all these photos. They're just a little bit hard to tell apart - ha. But if you look at that little bump behind its shoulder, it looks the same in every pic. Whatever... just enjoy the view! 

Sunday evening as I was out enjoying the last rays of sunshine (and taking sunset photos), I happened to notice this in the garden:

I'd forgotten how much deer love that sedum! All the spent flowers (seed pods?) were gone, plus most of the leaves. I sprayed it with Liquid Fence in the spring, and they hadn't bothered it all summer, so I kinda forgot about it. Oh well, they sorta did me a favor. Now I don't have so much to cut back. Apparently they don't care so much for California poppies or alyssum.

Sunrise to sunset

November has certainly started out beautifully! We're having warmer-than-normal temperatures (going to 68° today!) this week, and yesterday's sunrise and sunset were just glorious. Photos don't do them justice, but here's what I got.

This was yesterday's sunrise, shot with the iPad camera. I took it with the DSLR, too, but I didn't like how it turned out so I deleted it. The sunrise actually looked lots better than this, too, though.

Here's last night's sunset, again shot with the iPad. Not really accurate, but pretty.

I also took it again with the DSLR, zoomed in. Below is the untouched photo. Colors are way off - much too red.

This is the same photo, using "auto color" in Picasa. It's closer, but still not right.

I just find it interesting that cameras can perceive things so differently and still be so far from reality. What was it they used to say - "pictures never lie"? Ha - that sure isn't true today... not only in color perception but also due to Photoshop, etc. Well, I'm trying to keep my photos as close to the truth as possible.