Sewing Machine Frenzy!!

So I finally worked out my camera issues. Here's the pencil case:

Now, I admit that the photography is not the best. And that I should have made sure you could see the bow when I took the rolled-up picture. But isn't it cute!? I'm so proud of myself!

And then, because I was so excited about the color combo (I bought both of those fabrics on my JoAnn binge, BTW), I made a cute hair clip following this tutorial! I made the flower and then sewed it onto a clippy. I wear it all the time... which I'm beginning to suspect Hotty thinks is a little silly.

I feel so crafty and domestic!


AND I linked to a party on Fireflies and Jellybeans!

Current To-Make list

1. Coupon holder
2. Sewing Machine Cover
3. T-shirt duvet cover
4. Button Ring
5. Wooden Keychain(s?)
6. Framed Proclamation to the World (akin to this)

Man, I've got a lot to do!

Wishlist

I covet this:

Someday soon, I look forward to either owning it, or checking it out from the library. It'll be great. I've seen it on a lot of blogs lately, and it was featured in a giveaway just a couple days ago, on a blog I only discovered today(sad!). One day, friends.

In other news, I promise pictures of my pencil-case really are coming. I have taken the pictures, and I was going to put them up today. The only problem is that my Mac at work isn't friends with my four-and-a-half-year-old (read: technologically obsolete) Sony digital camera. Go figure.

How excited? TOO excited!!

Hi guys!! So Christmas was pretty fantastic (can anyone say, "iPod touch"?!) and among all the excellent things I got, Hotty's parents gave me a sewing machine!! Oh em gee, guys!

I went to JoAnn a couple days after Christmas and raided the remnant fabric shelves. I bought a lot of stuff, and at the end of it I was surprised to realize I'd only spent $30! Nice. :)

I picked some colors out and made a fabulous craft. I haven't taken any pictures of it, although it's on my to-do list. But it's super-cute, I promise! I made a pencil case to put in my scripture bag, so I can keep track of my colored pencils at church. It's related to this and this, and pictures are coming! Stay tuned! :)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat!

So! In the interest of doing something fun, slightly crafty, reasonably cheap, and rather cute by way of generic-type, "Hey! You're friends with me, so here's a little something to show you I care" gifts, I had an idea. Some would call it brilliant, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Those awesome layered brownie-mix-in-a-jar things have always called to me, so this year I decided to try it!

I took the recipe from allrecipes.com and tweaked it a little bit.

1 1/4 c. flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

2/3 c. brown sugar

2/3 c. white sugar

2/3 c. cocoa powder

chopped pecans

From here it should be fairly self-explanatory. You mix together the first three ingredients, then put them in a one-quart mason jar. Then layer each new ingredient on top, so it's all pretty in the jar, and fill it to the top with the pecans (or whatever you want to use, really. I imagine chocolate chips would work, or walnuts or whatever else sounds good to you). Then attach a tag that includes the instructions for baking. Mine says, "Instructions: 1) Add 2/3 cup vegetable oil, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 3 eggs. 2)Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 minutes in a lightly greased 9x9 pan." Or it will when I print them out. We were going to include something along the lines of, "if you need more instructions than that, you're too dumb to be our friend," but we have friends who are nicer than we are and we worried that would hurt their feelings.

Now, I have to warn you, if you try this recipe, I haven't actually made it yet. It'll be a grand adventure, finding out if it's any good or not. But doesn't the jar look so pretty??

Further Domesticity

My house is not the aspect of my life in which I take the most pride, just now. It needs to be organized, dusted, swept, mopped, vacuumed, scrubbed, AND decorated. I'm thinking of taking a detour home from work today by way of IKEA (from which I conveniently work right across the street) and dropping some of my paycheck there. We'll see how that goes.

Let's talk about bedrooms. I'm trying to think of ways to make mine more pleasant, because even though Hotty's argument that it's too small to do anything in there but sleep is certainly cogent, I still want it to look nice. Looking at IKEA's Bedrooms Inspiration page on the website, the two items I like the most are the wall shelves and the wall-mounted reading lights.





Don't they look useful? I have a corner in my room where nothing currently resides, but where things like my journal and my scriptures could go, if there were shelves on which to put them. And I've always liked reading in bed, as a nice pre-sleeping ritual. It would be nice to have a light right there so I could again. It's such a relief to be in a house where I can actually put holes in the walls; not having to think of a way to do this sans holes makes my life so much easier.

My other ambition is to paint the room. Hotty's parents remodeled their house last summer, and they still have a lot of paint left from the process. They used some awesome colors, which I would love to have in my own house. I just need to find out from the landlord if we can; no permission = sad me.

Mostly, what I need is to clean it first. That's what I want to do when I go home today; I need to pull out odious things like the mop and the vacuum. Hopefully the ambition and drive I feel right now, at 11 am, can carry through to when I get home. Wish me luck!

Domesticity

It's been a while since my last update. I'm bad at blogging, I suppose.

The other day I made some rice bags. I had three things that lent themselves to the project: an unmatched sock, a shirt with only one sleeve, and a couple sewing kits. So I guess it's pretty obvious what happened. I cut the extra sleeve off my t-shirt (the other one got donated to the cleaning rag cause a number of months ago), sewed up one end, filled it with rice, and sewed up the other end. The sock got filled and sewed, as well. They live in the freezer right now, for cold-compress purposes. The great thing about using rice instead of ice is twofold. I don't need to use a towel between the bag and my skin, like I would with a plastic bag of ice, because the bag is made of fabric. And if I need to apply heat, I can throw it in the microwave. Hooray!

We're moving soon. We have an apartment all picked out and ready to be lived in, and we're moving up to it by the end of the month. Right now this translates into trying to tidy our place right now and get rid of as much junk as possible. I know we could do a massive bout of streamlining; it's gathering the energy and stamina to do it that's hard. The other project currently going on is packing. This is my least favorite part of the moving process, but right now it's ok because I have so much time. I feel very lesiurely about it all, although that might change next week. Hotty is really good at packing, though, for which I am OH SO GRATEFUL. I'm A OK with carrying boxes and with unpacking them, and if he can help with the packing process, it will all be just fine.
The boxes aren't even going to be the hard part, though. What's going to be a real beast will be the furniture, including the bed, desk, and (ugh) the piano. Yes, I have a piano. A real, upright, 500-pound piano (I'm actually not sure how heavy it is; the only precision I have is 'very'). I think we might rent a U-Haul for the furniture. :/

Some time in the future comes the decorating of the apartment, which I have to admit to being completely clueless about.