Bazaar preview

Last year was my first experience selling at holiday bazaars. I did two, and loved them so much! I think because it's like playing store. Half the fun is setting up my table display, making it all pretty and organized. I was hooked. So I've officially signed up for one this year, and tomorrow I'm mailing my registration for another. 

The first one of the year is this coming weekend! And it's two days long! I love that idea. Same amount of work setting up, but two days worth of sales! Here are the details:

St. Paul of Damascus Lutheran Church

24510 SE Hwy. 212

Boring, OR 97089

Friday Nov. 4th 1pm-8pm

Saturday Nov. 5th 9am-4pm

Here's a link to the flier with more information.

So, naturally, I've been getting very crafty. I'll be bringing lots of new things to see how they sell! My absolute favorite things to make so far are wreaths!

I've always loved wreaths for all seasons. Especially unique ones. I have a fall one hanging on my door, a feather one in my living room, and usually we have several displayed around Christmas time- my favorite is a lavender beaded one. I know it doesn't sound Christmas-y, but it works with our decor! 

These twig wreaths are embellished with a variety of leaves, glittered pinecones, satin flowers, feathers, beads, buttons and tulle. 

These were such a refreshing creative outlet for me! Something different than my usual sewing. I've been having a blast with my glue gun.

This is a shabby chic fabric scrap wreath! Embellished with a bow and flower. 

I've seen tulle wreaths on pinterest lately and fallen in love with them. I just so happened to have a fair amount of peacock colored tulle lying around... thanks to my halloween bunco costume...

And you all know I love repurposing! So here is my first peacock tulle wreath. 

I just love it. I think a peacock Christmas would be fabulous.

While I was having fun making satin flowers I decided to make some hair clips. Here they are, clipped to my fall garland. So fun and glam!

Of course I'll also have my usual items: reusable snack bags, stuffed owls, tons of coffee cozies... and most likely ducks and beavers embellished onesies, super cute ironing board covers, embellished wipes cases, pretty sleep masks, maybe even a diaper cake or two! I just love making them. 

A great friend will be joining me and bringing her gorgeous knitted hats, baby headbands, and possibly little girls peasant blouses! 

Should be lots of fun. Come stop by if you're local! I'd love visitors! 

Amy Butler Cosmo bag

This book was one of my favorite Christmas gifts this year:

Amy Butler's Style Stitches- an entire book of bags, totes, purses, clutches... with patterns and easy instructions for each one! I so want to make them all. I love making bags.

Here is my first project from the book:

The Cosmo bag!

Isn't it gorgeous??!

I used all Amy Butler fabrics because it just seemed appropriate. Also I love them. 

This bag used a fair amount of home deco weight fabrics plus tons of interfacing (6 1/4 yds!) so it wasn't terribly cheap to make. But I love it. And it was so.much.fun!

It has pretty little pleats on the front and back, and a button closure.

Outer side pockets...

lined in the cute accent fabric. 

And the huge inside, complete with four enormous pockets!

Here is the back, pleated to match the front. 

I made this bag hoping to use it as a large purse/diaper bag but didn't realize just how big it would be!

 Here it is next to my existing Oioi diaper bag, which is a pretty big bag already. It's really more of an overnight bag or big shopping bag. But I am using it anyway because I love it! 

And of course, I had to make a matching gathered clutch with the leftover fabric. These are so fun to make. 

It makes the perfect little wallet for my cards and (rare) cash, plus room for a lipgloss!

I think I'll try these next. A whole set of little zippered bags- 6 different sizes! I could find so many uses for them... :)

I need a bigger kitchen

Oh yeah, baby. It's mine. The KitchenAid stand mixer. 

I've wanted one of these forever. Isn't it gorgeous? I broke it in right away. Making a cake. A boxed cake. It was all I could come up with on short notice and of course I had to play with it. But I think I'll crumble that cake right up and whip up some cake pops. 

Part of my motivation to bake a cake immediately was so I could decorate it...

...using this!!

It's my new Cricut Cake! Thanks to my super rad hubby. 

If you don't know what a Cricut is, you are missing out. Seriously. One of my favorite toys ever.

Hubs bought me my first Cricut, four years ago... it's the original one, for cutting paper. Basically a digital die cutting machine. But the possibilities are endless! There are zillions of 'cartridges' you can buy, each with zillions of images or fonts that you can cut. In any size. So awesome. I've gotten a crazy amount of use out of that thing. 

So, Cricut has now created the Cake, which cuts fondant or gum paste. Using the same cartridges as the original Cricut! So I can interchange them all! Plus this baby came with a way cool cartridge of it's own called Cake Basics, filled with cool designs!

Now, I have zero experience with fondant. Or gum paste. Or cake decorating, really. I throw sprinkles on my cake pops and that's about as creative as I've gotten. I've always left the cakes to the pros. But now! I wanna play with this baby! But I seem to have no fondant lying around. 

Who can help me? I don't really want to buy the premade stuff. I found a couple fondant recipes... Marshmallow fondant intrigues me... Any advice or tips? Any recipes you can share? I think I'd like to take a cake decorating class, but only modern cakes. I don't really want to make icing roses. Has anyone local taken a cool class?

I can't wait to open this can of worms and get to decorating! But then who will eat the cakes? Not I. Then I wouldn't be able to fit into my new yoga pants. 

Wait, yoga pants are stretchy. That's the appeal.

Bring on the recipes please!

Catching up

Wow.

I really didn't intend to take a month-long break from blogging! Is Christmastime crazy or what?

We tried to keep Christmas simple this year... Cut back a bit, keep it low stress, enjoy some unrushed family time. Somehow the simple never really happens though.

I did have a lot of fun sewing up a few gifts, however! I made a (Portland) Trail Blazers themed quilt for my brother, who's a huge fan.

I found the idea for this quilt design from a link on the make happy facebook page. You can find a free pattern pdf over at Made By Rae.

Beckham had to check it out, see if Uncle would like it.

I cut up a Blazer jersey for some of the accent pieces. Hubby's idea. Love it.

This is an insulated lunch bag I made for my mom. Forgot to take a pic before I gave it to her, but this is one she sent me of it in use!

And a cute little messenger bag for my sweet little cousin. For this one I used a free tutorial from mmmcrafts, click here.

Cute lining fabric! This was really fun to make!

This is Ty's new art apron:

I am loving this Dr. Seuss fabric. I made lots of different sized pockets for different little crafty things.

A couple girlfriends asked if I could make some doll carriers for their daughters, so here is what I came up for them. This was a challenge! But I enjoyed it!

Finally got to try my hand at some little rag quilts!

All these projects kept me busy! Plus I made a sort of crazy, last-minute decision to do a couple holiday bazaars this season. Literally had 3 weeks to prepare. But after one I was hooked! Did another one a couple weeks later. Stuff sold! This was very exciting and humbling for me! And something way cool happened at the second bazaar.... The owner of a local coffee shop stopped by my booth and asked if I would like to sell my coffee cozies in her shop!

This is one of the Christmas ones I made.

Fuzzy zebra...

...and of course, Oregon Ducks!

I brought 15 in to her the first day, and by the following day all but 4 had sold! So I brought 12 more, which sold in a day or two. All of a sudden I could barely keep up with demand! All my spare time was spent sewing these silly things! I knew the Christmas rush was a lot of it, and luckily sales have slowed a bit now that it's over. But I have another shop in town interested in selling them now (thanks Becky!), so I'm really excited about the potential. 

So that's what I've been up to! I've missed you all, and hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I know we did. Very busy but super fun. I'm looking forward to the new year ahead and all the promise it holds. 

Check back soon, I want to show you some of my cool new Christmas toys!

Homemade advent calendar

I recently posted some advent calendar ideas, since I'm tired of the store bought cardboard ones. Sure wish I'd gotten around to this sooner! I found some amazing ones! But I wanted mine to start today, December 1st, so I was a bit rushed. Here is what I came up with:

I loosely followed this tutorial at The Purl Bee.

The tutorial called for the entire calendar to be made of felt... but since I was so last minute and was out of all my fun felt colors I decided to use mostly fleece. Had tons of that.

Would've been easier with felt, I think. The fleece kept slipping while I sewed it. Still turned out cute and functional! Don't look too closely at my attempts at embroidery. I think I need one of those markers that writes on fabric so I wouldn't have to freehand my numbers. Would have been nice to have something to trace over with the embroidery thread. 

I filled each pocket with a small treat, but also wanted this calendar to focus more on celebrating the season and Jesus' birth... so I used some ideas from this list, and added a few of our own.  I made a simple tag for each day, with a Christmas-themed activity on it. Then added a smaller, decorative tag to hang outside each pocket. This way we can sort of see our progress through the month!

Here is the calendar stuffed with treats and the activity tags. 

Today, before we pulled the goodies out...

And our first activity. We read 'Little Lamb's Christmas'. 

Here is my list of activities, if you need some ideas. 

Read a Christmas book

Paint a picture

Play a board game; read Luke 2:11

Visit Santa and mail letter to the North Pole

Go to Great Wolf Lodge (a very exciting surprise for Ty- we booked this months ago)

Pray for the needy; read John 15:17

Make a plan to help someone less fortunate (hoping to get Ty involved by asking for ideas)

Watch a Christmas movie

Make cocoa; read Luke 2:14

Make a birthday card for Jesus; read 1 John 4:11

Make a gingerbread house

Do a Christmas craft

Sing Christmas carols; read Matthew 1:21

Ty's Christmas program (at his preschool)

Ty's school Christmas party: read John 15:13

Go for a drive and look at Christmas lights

Open special gift from mom and dad (Christmas jammies for each boy)

Silly Christmas party (a tradition in my family)

Go to Zoolights; read Psalm 18:1

Make Christmas cookies; read Matthew 2:10

Make cake pops (Ty thought Santa might love some with his cookies :))

Bring gifts to the neighbors; read Psalm 96:1

Read the Christmas story

Take a Christmas bubble bath (this may be a sort of 'disco bath'); read John 3:16

Happy December! 

Advent calendars

I love the advent calendar tradition. Such a fun way to countdown to Christmas with the kids. Well, with Ty... Beckham has no idea.

I've always wanted one of the gorgeous wooden ones with doors, but I don't want to pay for one. And there are never any left during the half-price after Christmas sales, it seems. So we usually end up buying one of those dorky cardboard ones with the chocolates inside, which Ty loves... but I really wanted to get more creative this year.

I did a little search and here are some ideas I found:

Wow. This just completely amazes me. So beyond anything I could come up with. And you'd really have to start much earlier than now! Wish I wasn't so last minute working on this...

Love this one! This might be my winner! Not too overwhelming for me to start at this point... and super cute! Click here for a full, easy tutorial over at The Purl Bee.

What a super unique idea. I love the little paper tags that you hang each day so you can easily see how many days are left. This one also has an easy to follow tutorial, click here.

Look at these fab little bird pockets! I love how she hung them from branches... Click here for the pattern at Skip to my Lou.

Wow, this overwhelmed me until I read her tutorial. It's made of matchboxes! Actually looks really easy. And she plans to fill the drawers with fun Christmas activities printed on paper slips. I love that idea; a great alternative to candy!

Here is an awesome, thoughtful list of daily Christmas activities you could use in your calendar. I think I may use some of these ideas and incorporate some of our own to personalize whichever calendar I decide to make. Along with some chocolate of course. I found this list over at We are THAT family... Great blog! She also has a tutorial for a tree calendar you could make to use with your activities.

This gives me tons of ideas and a good start! Will you be making (or have you already made) an advent calendar? I'd love more ideas! Do share!

And make your detergent!!! Two more days to enter!

Homemade boy gift- car/play mat

I had so much fun sewing little girlie gifts for miss Ruby, my sweet new niece. Ty loved seeing each thing I made, he's a very sentimental little guy. He kept asking if I was going to make something for him. This got me pondering Christmas ideas for my boys. I love the idea of making them things, from the heart, just for them. But boys are hard!

I did manage to come up with a few ideas for them, however, and as I make them I will share them. 

Here is my first creation, for little Beckham:

It's a car mat! For him to drive little matchbox cars on. He loves cars right now, so hopefully this will grow with him and the boys can play with it together. 

I sewed felt pieces to fleece, but I imagine this would be very easy to make without sewing as well... maybe with fabric glue or that iron-on bond stuff?

I've been experimenting with embroidery a bit... It's pretty shaky still but a lot of fun, and I wanted his mat to be personalized. Unfortunately the blue is hard to read on that light color. Didn't think of that. 

Some of the "rocks" and "shrubs" aren't sewn down all the way so I could use them as peek-a-boo flaps, which Beckham loves. Here is my attempt at an embroidered bee. For my 'little B'. 

And an owl, of course. Since I'm obsessed. 

A silly bird wading in the stream.

I added these fish to the "pond", then realized they look just like goldfish crackers and he's probably going to try to eat them. 

I also added some stitching to the "water" to look like waves and currents. Just some texture to make it more interesting to him. And fun for me. 

Along one side, I sewed the fleece up and added stitched lines to create car pockets. Or "garages". :)

Plus one bigger pocket with velcro. Not sure why. I just thought he could stash little things in there. 

I backed it with this blue fabric so it looks neat when rolled up. Then added straps so I can tie it and stick it in the diaper bag. Or the car. 

A handy little travel toy. Can't wait to give it to him on Christmas!

Don't forget to make some laundry detergent and enter my giveaway!! You have four more days!