My new toy

So my husband loves me.  He really loves me.  And he lets me get basically whatever I want (within reason).  And I told him I would sell my cricut and everything that goes with it if I could buy a Silhouette.  I waited for a coupon code (they are all over the place on a ton of blogs I read) and I bought it!  The angels sang the day I came home and found it on my doorstep.

Of course, I went online as soon as I got it all set up on my laptop and bought a ton of images that I loved.  But my first project was for my son's baseball team.  I decided to make labels for the buckets that are lined up on the back of the dugout that hold the kids gloves and helmets while they are playing games.  Their team is the Hurricanes so I found the logo online and went to work.

There was a little bit of a learning curve, good thing I have lots of ink and paper.

Of course, I couldn't make my first project just a cut project, no, I've got to make things a little difficult and make it a print AND cut.

I finally figured out what I was doing wrong (it had to do with the registration marks) and tada!!

And having to do the same thing 10 times definitely helped me remember the steps.

I'm really excited about making some cute onesies for my niece, I might need to go online and buy some fabric interfacing while it's on sale!

I'm linking up at Serenity Now for Amanda's

Thanks for checking me out!

Work In Progress Wednesday

Yes, I know it's not Wednesday.  I'm a day late (and a dollar short, story of my life).

But here is what I'm working on now...

Corner to Corner throw




a little close up of the stitch pattern.

It is all double crochets, super easy.  This is my go to, easy peasy, no thinking/no counting favorite blanket pattern.

And this is what I finished yesterday (actually ON Wednesday).


It's the Berry Delight pattern from Ambassador Crochet.  I think I did something wrong because the pattern doesn't lay like it does in her picture, so I'm going to try it again.  But I just had to take a picture of my first wearable crochet pattern that actually fits a human head.  :)

I'm linking up to W.I.P. Wednesday over on Ambassador Crochet.

Letters to Santa frames

I found this fabulous idea over here on Char's blog. (Love her!)

Started with a couple of these...1/2 price at Hobby Lobby of course

Why exactly does this need to be attached to the frame?  oh, sorry, easily distracted...

A little help from my trusty Cricut...(I hope she hasn't heard me talking about trading her in for a Silhouette!)

Wha-laa!

The boys are going to leave these on the table by Santa's cookies with a little note to him.  Something we do every year.  Santa leaves a note for us too, cause he's a sweetie like that.

Facebook fan page

I've set up a page on Facebook to sell my cards and crafts.  I don't know what the hell I'm doing (on Facebook that is) because I can't figure any of it out.  And it's connected to my personal page with confuses me on a whole other level.  I'm trying to add a "Like" box to my blog here and of course Facebook picks the one night I'm actually trying to do something on there to suck, hard.  I thought the direct link to my page was www.facebook.com/naomisnest but for some reason that is saying page not found.  If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on what I'm doing wrong I'm all ears.  Please.  PLEASE! 

Ugh.

And if that's not frustrating enough, I can't pass Level 5-21 on Angry Birds to save my life.

Update:  I learned that you have to have 25 fans before you can pick your username.  Why couldn't FB have just told me that when I was trying to set it up?!? 

From girly to boyish?

I need some help.  My Mom is giving us this old furniture because Logan needs some furniture in his room.  It looks pretty feminine and obviously it's going to be used in a boy's room.  Any ideas for ways to man up this furniture?  I was thinking of maybe cutting the spools off the bed frame...but the dressers I'm at a total loss.  I'm not even sure we will use the vanity looking one, but we could use that tall dresser. 

Oh, and his bedding is blue, black and lime green stripes/solids. (think Ben 10)

Or should I just put it all on Craigslist and start looking for something more boyish?

Tonight

Tonight I am packing my craft bags and heading to my Mom's house for some much needed girl time and crafty goodness.  I have an large extra bedroom in my house that is my craft room.  I have a ton of stuff that I barely find time to mess with most of the time.  I have packed up the necessities (really, I had to condense it to 4 bags) and I'm hoping to get some stuff made to send with a friend when she does a craft show in November.
 
my bags

And I just finished these coasters, so next week I'm hoping to put up some more posts of some things I got finished at this party.  Be on the lookout!

My first t-shirt refashion

So I’m volunteering at the Pasadena Strawberry Festival this weekend. I was one of the last bunch to get our volunteer shirts so this is what I got.



That’s a really really big XL if you are wondering.

So I felt the need to do a little alterations. You should know that sewing has never been my favorite “crafty” thing to do. I feel the same way about sewing as I do about manual transmission cars. I know enough to keep myself out of a ditch…but it’s not my preferred mode of crafting/driving.

So I checked out some refashioning blogs yesterday to kind of get some ideas and here is what I did.

First, I found a shirt that fits me well. I used this as my pattern.


Sorry for the bad pictures, I started this at about 10:30 last night, I know, crazy...and they were taken by my husband.
Then I just started cutting…(BTW, I did this on a practice shirt first...learned A LOT of what NOT to do  that way)


I cut the sleeves off just on the inside of the seam…and I cut about an inch outside the yellow shirt to leave a little room for the seams.

And I cut the sleeves like this…


I also had to cut the sleeves along the seam and resew them smaller.

Onto the sewing…



All I had was black and white and other various color threads, none that were red so I just used black. I used a zig zag stitch so it would still stretch a little (learned that from a blog).

Once I got the sides and arms sewn back on the shirt was still long enough to be a dress (although a really skanky one)…I didn’t want to cut the bottom and mess with the hem…I was trying to K.I.S.S. (remember that from school?!). So I used a basting stitch on the sides and then pulled them some so they would gather and then sewed back over the gathered section to hold it. It’s a little wonky on one side still but really, I’m probably never gonna wear this shirt again.

It was fun trying something new though, I’ve always wanted to refashion a shirt into something cooler. Here’s the finished product.

Attacked by the Glue Gun Monster

Last night was a craft extravaganza at my house.  I was working on some Valentine decorations for the house.  Logan was working on his valentine box for school.  And Jack just had to make a valentine box too just like Bubba.

Everything went downhill when I was attacked by the dreaded Glue Gun Monster.  I was wrapping fabric around a heart shaped wreath form and that fabric got a hold of a hunk of hot glue and wrapped itself around my hand.  I did the "I'm burning my flesh off" dance over to the sink and put it under some water.

Man that sucker hurt for the longest time, and I think I have a pretty high pain tolerance.  I sprayed some Dermoplast on there and took some Advil and went to bed to sleep off the pain.  Today I'm rewarded with big nasty blister on the side of my middle finger.  The crazy part is that I'm still itching to finish that project but I'm a little gun shy(pun intended).  So we'll see if Mike can pull it off for me tonight...with my excellent tutalage of course.

Crafts and LOST

If you are living under a rock (or aren't a LOSTie, how could you?!) and didn't know, last night was the premier episode of the last season of LOST.  I must admit I didn't get into the whole crazy LOST thing until a few seasons in.  But once I did, I went back and watched them all...and was even more confused.  It's that show that you watch and at the end of the hour you have maybe 2 answers to the 100's of questions you had before the show...and then 100 more questions about what when on in that hour!  But I'm hooked and I love it. 

Thanks to the miracle of DVR, I started watching last night about 30  minutes into the first hour (which was a recap of the past 5 seasons).  So I didn't catch up to live TV until the last 5 minutes or so...it was awesome. 

Have I mentioned that I love my DVR?

Anyway, to make myself feel better about neglecting my family and locking myself into the bedroom for 2 hours before the kids went to bed, I decided to work on a project that I've had sitting around stewing for a while.

My parents are remodeling/redecorating their house.  Score for me, because we are getting all the stuff they aren't using anymore.  Much to my husband's dismay when we leave their house with a car load full of "junk" every weekend.  :)

Mom gave me these lamps from their bedroom.



The base is really pretty, it's a kind of yellow/amberish color...and the shade, well, not really my our style at all.  So this is what they turned into.



That's burlap folks.  I've been hoarding all the burlap I can find lately because of all the projects I find online.  So I finally whipped some out along with my trusty glue gun.  I still need to put some trim on the inside of the shade to cover up the edges of the burlap but I couldn't wait to put something on here...since I've neglected the blog for so long lately.

I'm on a house kick lately.  It's about time I got my butt in gear again! 

More projects to come soon!

Who loves ya?

I found this totally AWESOME idea for handmade Valentine cards while I was blog surfing the other day. (hello google reader, how did I ever live without you?)

So this is what I spent part of last night doing...





Want a closer look?





These were super easy and not too time consuming...the part that took the longest was sending the pics to a local photo lab, driving out of my way to pick them up, them not being there because I apparently forgot to press send.  Then driving home, resending them, and sending Mike to pick them up an hour later.  :)

I found the idea here, which came from here originally.  Thanks for the ideas ladies!  You are now a fixture in my google reader.

It's time for a change

I changed up my blog name and my layout and background. I'm still working on it. I figure I will just start posting my pictures smaller (it's still cutting off the right side) and that will fix that. I mainly wanted to get my full name off my address and get things a little more cohesive.

I am going to "attempt" to get started making cards for sale. A lot of people at work are asking me about it, I've just got to make sure I keep it away from work so I don't get in trouble around here.

I set up an etsy shop a long time ago, basically when I started looking on etsy...but I've never put anything in it. So I'm going to see about getting that started up too.

So stay tuned!

Monogrammed tote bag purse

I'm linking up to Infarrantly Creative's Pennywise party. I've never done this before so hopefully I'm doing it right!

I've got a ton of nieces and nephews! Unfortunately, I don't see a whole lot of them very often. Mostly just once or twice a year at family get togethers. I've got four girls all around the ages of 5-8. This is what I came up with as a gift for them. They are filled with little tubes of glitter, bath soap, lip gloss and makeup for all the girls.



I used the little quilting blocks of material. (Fat Quarters I think they are called) They were 79 cents each on Black Friday! I used one pattern for the outside and a coordinating pattern on the inside. So they are technically reversible, but the letters are only on the outside. The pattern I found one day while surfing and when I got ready to make them couldn't find the same one again so I just went by memory. They are basically just little tote bag/purses. The letters are felt and are glued on with fabric glue. Ribbon as handles. :)

So each one costs me less than $3, using some ribbon I already had. That's not counting the inside stuff but all that was from the dollar stores.

I can't wait to see their faces. I think they will really like them!

Now to just figure something out for the boys!

Fall decorating

So I finally got some of my fall decor out and set up. I found this idea on another blog, of course I read so many of them that I can't remember where I saw it. But here's my version...



and here's a pic of my collection of pumpkins...it keeps growing as I find more unique ones everyday.

Fall wreath

So I got another project (almost) off my to do list.

In the midst of all my decor/craft blog reading, I stumbled upon a bunch of fall wreaths and decided our new house needed a fall wreath. So I went to my home away from home (Hobby Lobby) and picked up these things...



And this is how it turned out...







I haven't decided which end is up so I was trying to get some different shots of it.

I hot glued everything to the wreath. I think I'll use some ribbon to hang it on the door. I bought the raffia and wire and I didn't even end up using them.

wreath = $2 (orig $3.99, 1/2 off)
flowers = $10 (orig $19.99, 1/2 off)
yellow babys breath thingys = $3.50 (orig $6.99, 1/2 off)

I looked at some wreaths at HL while I was getting all this and they were priced at $50-$70!

One down, 867 to go...

So that piece of furniture I found on craigslist yesterday was already sold. Bummer.

Anywho...here is one of the fall projects I've been working on.

Faux Mercury Glass Pumpkins



I got the idea/inspiration from this blog...

http://thediyshowoff.blogspot.com/2009/09/week-1-diy-show-off-fall-festival.html

I think they turned out pretty awesome. Now I just need somewhere to put them.

Hopefully we can get some landscaping/clean up done in the front yard this weekend so I can show off another project!