Day to Day

Fa la la la felt {book}

My mother-in-law gave me a copy of Fa La La La Felt: 45 Handmade Holiday Decorations a couple of weeks ago and I thought I'd share a few of my favourite projects from the book with you.  It's a seriously yummy book, filled to the brim with cute projects.  What I like most about it, is that the projects are straight forward and fairly easy to create.  

I fell in love with the Christmas trees on the front cover, but my mother-in-law whispered for me not to make those, so I'm guessing we might be getting one or two for Christmas - squeal!!  I'm also super fond of these sweet ornaments above and think they'd be lovely stitched onto a little canvas or embroidery hoop.

There are 45 projects all up and Bella has a few of them bookmarked to make friends etc.. for Christmas.  These owls are one of her bookmarked projects - cute hey :)

Apologies for the blurry pics too, I was taking these just before dark and didn't check them on my laptop until it was too late to take more.  Those birdies would be gorgeous filled with lavender to hang in the wardrobe, don't you think?

And the darling gingerman and his sweet sugar friend. I want to make a set of these!

These are another favourite of mine too!  I really need to start making some of these soon, before December arrives on my door and I run out of time.

Oh, here's my princess pile of mattresses.  All twelve are now sewn up, corners cut and turned right side out.  As I type I'm working my way through all the hand stitching to close off the seams.  Hooray!

Current project

I'm working on a birthday present for my little niece Bonnie.  She's going to be four this birthday and I really wanted to make her something nice.  After Bella sewed her Twinkles softie out of our 'more softies' book the other day, it gave me a chance to revisit the book and get all excited about sewing some softies again.

So, I thought a 'Princess and the Pea' themed birthday present would be sweet for a turning four year old.  I'm going to buy a copy of the princess book (in the top photo) and make the set shown above.

I spent an hour or more cutting everything out and settling on fabric.  It's a mix of denim, florals and gingham/spotty prints. I just need to find some spare hours to start sewing it all up now.

After that I need to start thinking about something to make Miss Bonnie and her brother for Christmas.  Any ideas?

Etsy finds.

Cute Etsy finds that I'm loving at the moment:

The sweetest felted slippers ever. Link HERE.  There are lots of other amazing designs too! One day I'd love a pair of these.

Amazing knitted canvas.  Link HERE.

Upcycled sleepy owl.  Link HERE.

Personalised bookplates.  Link HERE.

Very cute print.  Link HERE.

Sweet vintage flair women's shoe pattern.  Link HERE.

I love this bear! Link HERE.

Darling Belle & Boo 'to do' book.  Link HERE.

Cottees competition

Just popping in quickly to say that the Cottees cordial competition (to win $1000.00) post will be back up very soon! Nuffnang are waiting on the terms and conditions to be approved, so I had to pop the post back in draft mode for now.  If you've already left an entry, then it will magically reappear when the post goes back.

Thankyou :)

Outside crafting

We sunned ourselves on the back deck today, it was lovely.  Rich was dirt bike riding and James was at a friend's house, so it was just the girls.  Between the two of us we coloured in, talked on Skype, crocheted, ate cookies, built a space ship in the backyard and caught up on some blog reading.

 

After a bit of sewing up today, Bella's blanket is about 90% finished, which I'm feeling pretty excited about.  I've finally joined four blocks together and the final two blocks are well under way.  I just need to pick up a few more balls of wool this week and hopefully I'll be able to at least finish the fifth block.

Spring craft camp

Every few months I go away for a night or two with some very sweet crafty friends of mine.  We'll usually all scrapbook together or sometimes we'll do other craft.  This time I took along Bella's crochet blanket to do and squeezed in about 7-8 hours of pure crocheting on Friday night and about the same today.  I made really big progress and feel like the finishing line is ever so close now.

The photos above are before shots, I'll share the after pics soon.  

These photos above are of Helen's (you know, my super clever crochet friend) new granny stripe blanket that she's working on. Squeal.  It's so, so good.   

Then, Cathy's divine knitted bag that she's working on.  I'm stealing this when it's finished, well, I'll try too.  Cathy is one of my other super talented friends.  When we don't know how to do something (craft wise) we always ask Cathy.  Seriously, she knows every technique known to mankind, across the entire crafting field.  I am not exaggerating either.  

Cathy's scrapbooking.

Random snapshots from the weekend :)  There's also the gorgeous super scrapbooker Nicole, but she couldn't be there this time.  If you're reading, we missed you Nic and we're hoping that your trip went well.  Sometimes there are other lovely girls that come to craft camp too, but mostly it's just us four. We have the best time and I always come home feeling inspired and refreshed, but also super tired because we stay up far too late!

HP Photosmart Wireless e-All-in-One giveaway!

{Sponsored by Nuffnang}

 

  

I have something really special for you today, a chance to win a HP Photosmart Wireless e-All-in-One Printer!  Pretty cool, hey.  

 

 

As many of my readers would know, every summer we like to head off camping for quite a few days.  We really look forward to these trips and enjoy spending time together, toasting marshmellows, sitting around the fire and sometimes even crafting.  One of my little luxuries when we go away is to take as many photos as possible, sometimes with my camera and other times with my phone. 

 

As soon as we arrive home and manage to get unpacked I am usually busting to make my way to the local printer to get our camping photos printed.  Then, back home again to scrapbook them.  I have pages upon pages of scrapbooked camp photos!  There is something really nice about scrapbooking our camping adventures while the trip is still fresh in my head.

 

What I totally love about the HP Photosmart Wireless e-All-in-one printer is that I’d no longer need to come home, unpack, do twenty million loads of washing and then head out to print my photos.  As soon as I take a photo I could magically send it the printer (which is located at home) and the minute we arrive home from camping I could retrieve the photos from my printer and start scrapbooking.  I’m thinking that would kind of alleviate me of cleaning up and unpacking duties too, right??  It’s a really cool concept and such a nice luxury to be able to print before I even walked through the door.

 

For your chance to win a HP Photosmart Wireless e-All-in-One Printer all you need to do is answer the following question:

 

“How would you most like to use the HP e-Printer and why?”

 

Pop your answer below in the comments section for your chance to win.  There are 9 blogs participating in this competition and one lucky winner will be selected. 

 

Entries close at 5pm on October 22nd 2010.

The terms and conditions for the competition can be read HERE.

Further information for the competition can be read HERE.

 

Happy printer dreaming and good luck :)  I’d love for one of my readers to be the lucky winner.

 

**Entries for this competition are now closed**

 

 

The Emily Tunic

After I posted the other night about purchasing the Peasant Top/Dress pattern to sew for Bella, I got carried away with pattern buying and ended up getting the Sis Boom Emily Tunic as well.  Last night I sewed up the Emily Tunic and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  Bella has been asking for some loose tops as her two favourite ones are starting to get a little small on her, so I knew this would be perfect.

I'm quite impressed with the Sis Boom patterns, they have loads of photo step by step instructions and the age range of sizes included in the one pattern is amazing (6 months - 12 years). I just purchased the pattern, waited for 5 or so minutes until it hit my inbox, then printed out the pieces that I needed to make the tunic, taping them all together.  It was quite painless.  

I left off the ruffle frill though (on the sleeves) and turned it into a short sleeved tunic instead. Bella really loves it and says it's very comfortable to wear. I'm going to make her a couple more in different colours, the next one is cut out and ready to sew.  I just wish I had of got onto this whole 'make children's clothes' thing sooner, it would have been really nice to whip up a few outfits for James before the fourteen year old "no thanks Mum, I don't want you to make me anything" line hit.  Oh, he does want knitted socks but I'm incapable of figuring out circular needles yet.  Maybe next year.

Final day of crafting

Today was the final day of school holidays here.  We did some tiling, pizza oven building, had a surprise visit from Beth and Malcolm, cooked pancakes for breakfast and made some more apple fruit leather.  This afternoon Bella decided to sew herself a softie. I enlarged the pattern for her and she spent the next hour and a half pinning, cutting, stitching, finger knitting legs/arms and stuffing until her softie was finished. 

   

I think this is the very first time that she has completed a sewing project entirely by herself. I mean she found all of her own supplies, set up a craft area, packed everything away, knotted, threaded and pinned the entire project without asking for a smidgen of help.  Sometimes she struggles with threading the needle every time by herself or knotting off the thread, but not today.

 

This little softie now has her own bed, mattress and four freshly created felt vests to wear too. 

 

Well done Bella, I'm really proud of you for creating this little critter all by yourself. 

Hello Saturday

Today:

 

I made a lemon meringue pie. I had to make the lemon filling twice because I wasn't concentrating properly the first time and added egg whites instead of egg yolks.  I also cheated and used some pre bought pastry that was in the freezer.  Big mistake! It was super yummy, but the pastry really let it down.  I used THIS recipe. So good.

 

There was a whole heap of farm play going in the lounge room today.  

Plus a mega day of crafting - cardboard car and trailer, cardboard petrol station, cardboard house and also a cardboard cash machine.  An entire roll of sticky tape was used in the process.

I also made the best ever sun-dried tomatoes.  I did a batch the other day in the dehydrator but they were totally tasteless.  I then came across THIS recipe for marinated sun-dried tomatoes and left them over night in the fridge to marinate away.  This morning I popped them in the dehydrator and semi dried them.  The flavour is amazing, really amazing.  The other thing I dried today was beef jerky, which didn't appeal to me at all but it was devoured super fast by the rest of the family and they've requested that I make an even bigger batch next time.  I love my dehydrator.

And here's a random photo of my sweet boy who's now over an inch taller than me.  How did that happen?

Since this post is becoming a little bit random, I also just ordered this pattern after seeing Kate's yummy chicken fabric version of the dress HERE. I'm really looking forward to sewing up a couple for Bella this summer.

I hope your weekend is a lovely one!