thrifty thursday

I have such a backlog of thrifting to post, but I have to skip over it all to show you what I found last week.

Wooden spools - a few hundred of them.

I've been picking them up for a few years now finding just a few here and there. I'd collected several dozen before happening on this find. The shop manager and I struck a deal for the whole bin.

What, you may ask, am I going to do with them?

Up til now, the ones I had just made me happy sitting in a glass jar, but this bounty has to be put to use.

I'd love to attach them as pulls on a piece of furniture in the craft room or make pegs like these.

I spotted a shelf like this at the flea market years ago and am still kicking myself for not buying it.

Wouldn't this be the sweetest valentine or thank you note?

I have some dollhouse furniture ideas as well, though they aren't fully formed in my head yet.

There were plenty of other toy ideas out there that didn't particularly appeal to me - maybe my kids are too old for many of them.

Some, like the ones below, are quite small. The ones on edge are the diameter of a penny. Perhaps charms on a necklace?

I was a little surprised that I didn't find hundreds of ideas for them when I googled wooden spool crafts. Anything come to mind for you?

ellie's bulletin board

I hope I'm not the only mother who's kid has to hound her for 2 months to follow through on a promise. Ellie saved up her allowance and gift money to buy her own bulletin board. I got her all excited with the idea of gluing buttons out of her collection onto tacks like I did for her brother's bulletin board a few years ago. We picked out the buttons, discussed how to hang the board and then... nothing. Everytime she asked to move on the project I was in the middle of something. The answer was always "later".

Later finally got here. I can check this one off the to do list of house projects.

This picture was taken right after I put it up and arranged it all so she'd be surprised when she got home from school. She has since "fixed" the display. Tomorrow - pictures of her new obsession that this board now houses - door signage.

merry christmas

from our

to yours

love,

and their mom.

(Thanks to Carol for the garland, grandma and Ellie for the gingerbread house, and Jan for the darling gingerbread people.)

new craft alert

I promised myself I wouldn't buy yarns because I've banned myself from taking up knitting or crochet. I didn't make any promises about wool that hadn't been spun into a yarn.

I've had roving and hand felting needles for a bit. I've checked out project books from the library and still not given it a go. Last weekend I picked up a kit at the shop and that did the trick. Woolpets did a great job with the instructions and it helped so much that we had actual samples in the shop of how the finished project should look and feel.

There's enough wool and other supplies in the kit to make at least one more hedgehog and probably a baby sized one too.

The kids can't touch this one either. Not til I'm done cooing over her.

ellie's invitations

Ellie decided that she wanted a "Spooky Halloween Birthday Party" this year even if it meant waiting a month after her actual birthday to have it.

Invitations were sent out.

The paper is brown kraft stuff that I bought at Paper Source in Chicago years ago. The stamps I used were sent to me by Carol and are from the Martha Stewart line at Michael's. The paper is held together by a spider ring and the candy was from Target.

Both were popped into a small (size 1) bag that had been stamped and was sewn shut with a zig zag stitch at it's widest and longest setting. (Yes, this meant hand delivery.) The bags are from a restaurant supply store. You'll want to pick something you'll use a lot because they're sold in packs of 250 or 500. I've had them so long now I can't remember how many I started with.

I sewed favor bags that'll do double duty as trick-or-treat bags on the big day. Ellie wrote out her friends' names after I stamped the tags. (The cat stamp is an old one from Stampin' Up.)

Inside we put a pencil, notepad and pencil topper stamp. The kids each got a mini pumpkin when they were out after playing hot pumpkin (same as hot potato, but with mini gourds). The skeleton was a chenille stem craft we all did at the beginning of the party while waiting for everyone to arrive. Flashlights were the prize at the end of a scavenger hunt. She's eaten the candy she got as prizes for other games.

Tomorrow, pictures of some of the games.

happy birthday blackbird

We were all lucky enough to celebrate blackbird's birthday during our visit.

I went with a rather obvious connection: bird - eggs. A bunch of these were posted in the spring. However, those didn't get their own container. The carton was more fun to do than the eggs. Probably because it's a lot harder to come up with 12 different ways to decorate the eggs than I thought it would be.

I settled on using trims for 7 of them (including the one bb dubbed "the pilgrim egg" - can you spot it?). The other 5 each have a bird illustration representing a bloghere '08 attendee. There's the obvious for blackbird, a nightingale for Poppy, a chickadee for Susie, a ruffled grouse for Jen, and a loon for me. Fitting.

home again

Where to even begin? I've sat and stared at this screen for over half an hour and can't figure out what I want to say. I think some of it is complete exhaustion and some is almost disbelief that I was gone for 5 days in the company of 4 wonderful friends.

So tonight, I'll just say thanks - to the girls and to the bird family.

Last week, when I didn't have time to post, I wasn't just packing and cleaning. I was finishing up this.

An apron for my dear hostess. I'll post a tutorial soon on how I did the embroidery on the front. It reverses to some pieced strips of fabric that remind me very much of its new owner. Mr. Bird got an apron of his own. A replica of one I made for Chris since they're the same height. However, I just tried to link to it and realized I never posted that one nor did I take a picture of the one I just made. Oops.

The youngest bird got a little something for allowing his room to be turned into a girls' dorm.

-Wind up sushi with some felt grass. The container held my lunch a few days prior. (The sushi toys were bought at Wal-Mart.)

A little scrapbook paper tied it all together.

The rubber stamp image says it all.

pom pom maker

Some people buy tee shirts on vacation. Some buy postcards. I bought this:

Sadly, this was my first attempt. Pathetic looking.

Round 2 worked a little better, but it was still hard to tie the center tightly. It's also still not as full as I would want.

The center of this flower is attempt number three. For this one I actually separated the 4ply wool before winding it on the pom pom maker. Can you say tedious? (This is what I'll resort to after hour 12 or so of driving to keep myself occupied.) It did turn out looking closer to a store bought pom pom, but I doubt I'll have the patience to do it again. I think the key is winding as much yarn as you need, and then adding even more. Otherwise they look pretty anemic.

I need to add a few felt leaves to this and it'll have a home on one of Ellie's jackets.

*I've seen these makers in larger sizes at Hobby Lobby since I've been home.

french knitter

This is what got me into knitting on vacation. It's a french knitter(size small). I bought this book for Ellie and was intrigued by some of the projects. An entire section is devoted to projects made with french knitters.

While this isn't knitting at its finest, I can totally see the meditative draw of doing it now. Leftover skeins of tapestry wool went into the road trip craft bag. I ran each color through the knitter until there wasn't any left. (Note: 18 inches of tapestry wool = about 1 inch of knitted tube) The book called for specific sizes on some and for those I stopped at the required length. These are still waiting to be turned into something.

These, however, just need some pins on the back and they'll look cute on Ellie's backpack. I think they'll spiff it up nicely for first grade.

(More notes: 5 petaled black eyed susan was 20 inches to start. The pink flower was about 17 inches. Sew pink heart to felt background - maybe two layers with pinked edges?)

I'm also wondering if I couldn't make even smaller tubes using crochet thread and a homemade knitter from an old thread spool with nails on one end. They might make cute necklaces or bracelets.

let the countdown begin

Susie volunteered me to come up with an apropriate way to mark time until our Bloghere '08 conference at blackbird's home.

Remember making paper chains to mark the days til Santa came? Same idea.

The ladies got an envelope in the mail this week with 40 strips of paper cut from an old encyclopedia volume. Each had a number from 1 to 40 stamped on it. The assembly is up to them. Susie and I think this activity might be a good kindergarten post-test for her littlest one. I'm not holding my breath that Poppy will glue them all together. Use them as bookmarks, maybe, but gluing or taping them, no.

And for MsCellania, this is a little peek at my sewing area. I decided to hang the chain in my favorite part of the house. Tomorrow I get to tear off the first link.

decoupage jones

I have a LONG list of projects I want to sew. Plenty that needs to be done soon if we're to get use out of them this summer. What I should be doing and what I want to be doing are two very different things right now.

I blame it on those decoupage eggs from Easter. It wasn't the first time I decoupaged.

This thrifted bin was covered with some scrapbooking paper a couple years ago. This was before I thought to do things like take "before" pictures, but trust me, it used to be ugly. Currently, it's holding coloring books for the girls.

Then I got a little bolder and actually used a vintage book with a completely broken binding(I still can't bring myself to cut up a perfectly good vintage book) to cover the top of this box. It's shaped to look like a book though I've yet to do anything with the spine. If I were braver, I'd keep crayons in it, but I picture the girls coloring on the box with them.

Now I have this baby I thrifted a few months ago just calling to me. I've seen so many cute decoupaged suitcases out there in craftblogland. It'd be perfect for Ellie's doll clothes. I'm picturing ribbon glued around the edges where the strips of red are right now. I even have some vintage images of dark haired little girls. I should be working on those other projects though...

This photo is also a before picture of what may be my biggest summer project - a new lawn instead of the weed farm we have growing in the backyard. We have one estimate in and another due soon. I need to keep telling myself how nice it will look in a few months and remembering how awful it is to keep pulling all the creeping charlie out of the mulched beds all summer long.

our zoo

Angie wrote about a stuffed animal organizer on Parent Dish months ago and it got me thinking. Containing all of our stuffed animals and puppets is a bit of a challenge around here. Here's my (cheapo) version of the product mentioned and how I made it.

You'll need:

parts from a plastic shelving unit

8 yds of 1/4 in. elastic

yarn needle

drill

measuring tape

scissors

marking pencil

I began with some leftover pieces from a storage unit I bought at Target. (Why do I have leftover pieces? Because I wanted more shelves on shorter units that the kids could actually reach, which meant I didn't use the top shelves of two units along with 8 of the posts - I only needed four for this project.)

Next, I marked where I wanted to drill the holes for the elastic. Mine are about 4 inches apart. I had to be sure I drilled the holes far enough in from the edge that they missed all the extra plastic ridges on the sides. They're about 1 cm in from the edge on this unit.

Thread one end of the 1/4 elastic through a yarn needle. and start threading it through the holes. I began the threading through the bottom shelf so the knot would be hidden underneath the unit. The ending knot will be on the bottom if you've drilled an even number of holes. Weave it up and down through the holes until you get to the end of one side. Knot several times so it doesn't slip back through the hole (or tie the end to a washer). Then start pulling the elastic tight (I found the tighter the better) working back to the hole you started at. Cut off the extra elastic and knot that end. Do the same on all the other sides. On this unit there are 6 elastic "bars" on the long sides and 2 on the short sides. The whole unit used an 8 yard hank of elastic. For now, that size elastic is working fine. However, if it seems to loosen too much and I'm unable to tighten it with a new knot, I may drill bigger holes and use 1/2" elastic to see if that works any better.

The finished project filled with all of our puppets, a few stray animals and a couple of dolls. We even have room for growth. Not that I'm giving permission to any aunts or uncles to send more stuffed animals...
Coming soon - an easy to sew puppet theater.

decoupage eggs

Inspireco has a wonderful tutorial on making these paper covered eggs.

Instead of old books, I tore up bits up old pattern instruction sheets. (I tried the pattern tissue too, but it looked awful over brightly colored plastic eggs - even yellow.) A few have some vintage millinery flowers.

I dipped into the vintage button stash for others.

They look darling in the china cabinet. I'd love to make more to have a whole bowl of these for next year. So far, I have eight.

gung hay fat choy

Happy New Year!

We'll be celebrating as a family this Sunday at the Chinatown parade, but we got an early start this year at Nate's shower. These were the favors for his Lunar New Year themed welcome home.

Small brown bags from a restaraunt supply store were filled with some Asian goodies - Korean tea, Chinese rice candy, Japanese gummy candy and cookies. The closure is out of my scrapbooking stash with "fu"(happiness) stamped on it. The paper twine is from IKEA.

christmas past

The craft world is going nuts with advent calendars this year. While I'm tempted by them all, I can't improve on this one for sentimental reasons.

My grandmother made one just like this for my sisters and me in the early 70's. When my mother started cleaning stuff out of her house there were a few things all three of us were willing to fight to the death over. This was one of those things. Unfortunately, I didn't draw the right straw when it was decided that was the only fair way to divvie up the good stuff. Cindy won and I figured that was the end of that. The following year she handed both Heather and I oddly shaped packages on Christmas day. Inside were two calendars identical to the original. She'd spent the previous year recreating them for us.

Down to every detail.

Each ornament had been recreated - including my favorites -

the pinecone

the drum

and the dove.

Peace.