A Craft Saturday

 I did one craft and one "craft" today. First of all, I needed some hearts for a project. I had a bunch of cardboard ones, and needed to paint them. Finally, this week, I realized, I could spray paint them! The whole time I thought I had to hand paint them. They ended up looking great. 

And then, I put together a lego wreath! It took forever, and I was happy when it was all finished. 

Junior League Night

My cousin gave me a holler last week and invited me to a craft night at her Junior League. As was explained to me, Junior League is basically an association of women who meet up and do volunteer work, their work sounds amazing, I am actually trying to decide if I should join up! But last night they were doing a craft night of sorts, and since I love crafts, my cousin knew I would love it and she was right! There were 5 different stations they had set up, and you could choose three. We first chose the station that was making cards/tags, and I of course made some cards : 

They were really easy to make, so that was nice. Next, onto the wrapping station! 

They taught us how to wrap the best way, how to add stuff onto the packages to make them look nice, and then they gave us a bag of such things, a sprig of holly and some ribbon and bells. Finally, we chose the charcuterie station, the one I was looking forward to the most! 

We were told how to make a good looking board, what cheeses do what, what meats add what flavor, and what sides to add on. Did I snack the entire time she was talking? You betcha. 

This was the entire table of stuffs: 

This was her charcuterie board, very nice looking. 

 She also taught us about wine! Of course this meant nothing to me, and I abstained from all the wine tasting, but I did smell them all and they all smelled like gross alcohol, I just can't get behind the smell or taste of alcohol!

It was such a fun night, I loved it! I'm really hoping to put my charcuterie knowledge to the test and make my own board. 

Christmas is a Time for Crafts

I know it's only November, but I'm getting started on Christmas already!
The reason being, I've decided to do mostly homemade gifts this year. I'm pretty excited! Homemade gifts make me nervous because of all that can go wrong, or maybe what I think is cute is not, but hopefully I'm picking the right gifts for the right people this year.
So, I've been working on my gifts for a few weeks already, and I love what's happening. I'm not going to post anything on here that I'm working on or finished, just in case things get spoiled.
But after Christmas, I will post everything and share any tips on what I did!
I just love Christmas, I love finding the perfect gift to give people.

Christmas Craft

Now that Christmas has come and gone, I can blog about a Christmas craft that I did. It was a gift from a friend, and I really enjoyed making it. It didn't even take that long - I had set aside an entire day, and with my sisters help, it only ended up taking a few hours, so that was nice. 

They're tiny 3 inch blocks, that I then decorated for each month in the year. I was thinking it would make a cute thing to put on a work desk or something, for a decoration without being overwhelming. I almost want these for myself, even though I don't know where I would put them haha. 

Christmas Craft

I have a friend with whom I exchange homemade gifts every year. It always stresses me out to think of it, but then I always get a good idea. For example, last year I made her a homemade candles. This year, I chose something quite different. I thought it would be a fun idea if I made her small blocks for her desk at work, to portray all the months of the year. I went and picked out all of my stuff at Wood Connections, and then my sister and I set out to make them today. I had set aside the entire day to do it, but it took waaaaay less time than that. It only took us a couple of hours, I was surprised. But I think they turned out great! 

Christmas is a time for crafts

So now that Christmas is over and I've given out my gifts, I am finally going to post the stuff I homemade this year and was so proud of.

 A lovely button photo of Belle

 The neighbor gift of champions, mints that look like a snowman.

 I learned how to make homemade candles this year! I chose the scent of lilac, yum.

I made this for my SIL, her name starts with an A and this is all just pics of us.

I think they all turned out pretty good and I can't wait to come up with new ideas next year!

Color Me Mine

This afternoon, Horace went with his friends hiking, so Lady Margo and I had the afternoon to ourselves. After playing at the playground for a while, we went to Color Me Mine, in Provo. For those who haven't been there (It was my first time) you choose something that you want to paint, paint it, leave it for them to put in their kiln, and then return to pick up your wares. Lady Margo was an old pro at this, luckily she led the way. We selected our items, and then got hard at work.

We worked hard all afternoon, and at the end, took a picture of our amazing projects.

We left them to be cooked, and then I picked them up a few days later. Mine turned out pretty good!

I didn't snag a pic of Lady Margo's, but still, good. We had so much fun, and I would definitely do this again.

A Lollipop Bouquet

I made my very first (and hopefully not last!) lollipop bouquet. It’s the birthday of one of the gals I visit teach, and I thought long and hard about what to give that was fun and yet not too weird to give. Finally, I settled on this, and after a late-night trip to Walmart (I had the idea at 10:00 Saturday night, and her birthday was today, of course) I got all I needed, and hurried and made it, and I think it turned out pretty dang cute!

Basically, you take a terra-cotta pot, throw a Styrofoam ball in there, and jab lollipops in there until you can’t see the ball anymore. Tie a ribbon around it, and ta-daaa! Finished! I think it ended up awesome, and I’m glad I thought of it in time!

Be Mine!

We had craft club tonight, finally getting around to doing a Valentine/February craft, since we’ve been lacking one. After the final decision was made, we got together for decorating, pizza, and fun. It took a few hours to complete, but in addition to doing the adorable craft, I got some cooking recipes off of a cooking show we happened to be watching at the same time. Can’t wait to try them! But now, the thing you’ve all been waiting for:

Ta-daaaa! Lovely, eh?

A Crafty Week

This week, I’ve done a few crafts. There were a couple of cards I made, for the swapping of cards:

I thought they turned out pretty cute. And then today, I was at Hobby Lobby to find something else to put on my table. On the coffee table in my living room, I used to have a vase full of stones and then it had some inspirational words on there. I blogged about it when I first made it, but that was 2 years ago, and I’m too lazy to go find it. Then, a month or so ago, I put (in the same vase) a bunch of gray and yellow Sixlets candy, and some yellow pinwheels, for a baby shower, and then I ended up leaving them up for a while. But then, people kept eating the candy out of it, so I had to change it. So, off to the HobLob for me. After walking around a long time, I finally decided on some flowers. I picked out the ones I liked best, came home, and arranged them. I placed them on the table, and this is what they look like:

And now, my crafting is complete. I don’t have to make cards for a while, and the things in my house should be fine – for now.

Card Times

It is card times again, my friends. This time, we were asked to make a Thank You card, and a Halloween/Fall card. I chose some good ones, I think, and away we go!

Here is my Thank You card, I thought it was pretty good, I followed our template on this one:

Its straight-forward, easy. The next card is my Fall card, and when I first found the card that I wanted to do, I was psyched. I thought it was cute, I really liked how it looked, then I got started on it. I failed to realize, in my card-haze, that the cute leaves on it meant I had to cut out individual leaves. 50 leaves, to be exact.

I’m so dumb. It took a few hours, but when I was finally finished, I was so jazzed with myself. The finished product:

And there they are. Card Swap is the day after I get back from Germany, so I had to finish them this weekend, and I’m glad I did!

Card Boxes–Birthday and Otherwise

Today, I had a bit of time on my hands. I was going to work on my card swap cards, and then I found out that actually, I didn’t have to right stuff needed to make my cards, so no dice there. I instead, decided to make some more card boxes, because I have many cards just hanging around, they need a home. I decided to make a birthday card one, and a box for just regular cards. Here they are:

I really don’t care for the birthday box. I don’t even know what it is, but I hate it. I thought I liked the stamp that I used for the card font, and I think it was going to be different in my head, but when I saw it, I just didn’t like it. And I know what you’re thinking, why didn’t I just start all over again? Because once a craft is finished, it’s finished. I didn’t know how else I would fix it, so I just left it alone. I do like the other box, and that’s good, and that’s the one that I’ll be proud of, of the two of these.

Miscellaneous Monday

Yesterday, my nephew had his baby blessing. He was adopted 6 months ago, but since you have to wait for 6 months to seal your adopted child to you, they had to wait for this as well. There was a small family shindig afterwards, and I was asked to make a dessert to bring to it. Of course, I pulled out my standard quick dessert, and made my mini chocolate treasures. I think they turned out ok.

They were all snapped up at the lunch, which made me sad because I wanted to take some home with me, I actually only got to eat one. But that’s ok, at least I know they were good.

After I was done making and frosting them, I was cleaning up, putting dishes into the dishwasher, etc. I had just finished putting everything in there, and I was ready to run it. I had just put some stuff down the garbage disposal, and ran it, and it made the most AWFUL noise. It took me about 30 seconds to realize, the thing making the awful noise? Oh, just the decorating tip I had accidentally dropped down the sink and didn’t realize. I waited for the blades to stop, and carefully put my hand down there, and pulled out the tip. Alas, it was ruined, not even usable a little bit. I should have taken a pic, but I was so distraught in the moment that I didn’t think of it. Now, I need to go back to the store (I bought it at Gygi, so of course I have to go to SLC) and hopefully find the same one, because I loved it.

I need a new card box, soon, so while I had a little bit of time yesterday, I made one. Now, I don’t know what cards I’ll be putting in there yet, so I didn’t have a specific decoration in mind, so I made it sort of generic. I like the way it turned out though, and I can’t wait to assign some cards to it.

Crafty Home

Today is General Conference, as we all know. When I watch conference, I have to be doing something. Not reading, or playing on the internet, because then I don’t listen. I need an activity that requires focus, yet doesn’t require too much thinking, or else I won’t listen. Usually, I craft. Mostly cards, but since I’ll be doing my cards tomorrow during the Sunday session, I needed something for today, which would be my First Ever time of sitting down and watching the Saturday session. I was putting away my Easter blocks when I happened to notice that I had some blocks I haven’t painted yet. I got these at Christmas time, in case I wanted to give them away as a gift, then I never got around to it, I gave away others instead, so these are just hanging out in my shed, not doing anything. So, after the first session of Conference, I skedaddled over to Craft Wood Cutouts to look at how theirs was decorated (because I have to copy theirs, they always make them cute, and I hoped they still had it in stock/decorated) and they did! So I bought all the stuff, and returned home to finish it during the second session.

It took me the whole session, plus a bit after to finish it, but finally, I did! Here’s what it looks like

I think it turned out ok – but only because I copied the way they did it. And this is the perfect fill-in until the craft club makes our next craft, which I hope is soon! In case you wanted to know what it looks like up there

You really can’t see it well, and its blurry because I was falling a little when I took it, but at least I got a pic of it.

Crafty Times

Today was a crafty sort of day. Today at work, I bought a Cricut machine from Chelle’s mom, something I’ve never had before but have been wanting. So after a brief tutorial from Chelle about how to use it, I used some letters and made us both some name tags:

Fancy, eh? So I made myself one, and then I liked it so much, I made one for Chelle, in case she wanted to enjoy one of her own, haha. But in any case, I’m psyched for my Cricut and can’t wait for my new cartridge to arrive.

After I got home from work tonight, I decided to clean things up a little. One of the things I needed to clean up was the cards from my recent card club. Since I had accumulated a bunch of sympathy cards this time around, I decided to make a sympathy card box. I don’t really have sympathy paper, so I just it pretty plain this time.

And because I had run out of A stickers (of course) I made the A here by taking a lower-case Q and cutting off the tail. I think it works. And now, all my cards fit in there, and things are looking clean! …For now!

A SNOW-Y Craft

Craft club has struck again! This months is especially cute. I think I say that every month but it’s always true. This one seemed to give us a bit of trouble. There was something about it, we had bad luck at every turn. But we soldiered one, and finished a magnificent craft.

CUTE, right? The snowflake in the middle there, we painted it, and immediately put glitter all over it, which was easy and yet, difficult. to hurry while it was wet, and evenly get it everywhere. When we finished, it was almost like a sigh of relief, we didn’t ruin anything. (We just had some paint spillage, soda spillage, kept knocking over our letters…holy cow) Naturally when I got home, I put it up.

An odd pic, for some reason you can’t really see it, but you get the idea. I’m glad to have another successful month of crafting.

Mason Jar o’ Fun

For the year 2013, I have vowed to have more adventures. Since I’m such a sissy with everything, I usually turn things down, and don’t want to do things. Let me specify. Husband is very outdoorsy, he likes to river raft, and all sorts of things like that, and I don’t care for things like this. I don’t want to die, is all I’m saying. So I promised him and myself, that I would do more adventurey things this year. After I said this, I saw a thing on Pinterest that is going to help me keep track of things.

What you do, is take a mason jar. A plain ol’ mason jar, and every time during the year you have a great experience, or a memory of any kind, you write it down and put it in the jar. Then, on New Years Eve, you take it out, read all the slips, and have a walk down the memory lane of the previous year. So, I thought this was a great idea, and I decorated this jar:

Now, I know that you’ll notice right away that it’s sort of sparse, and yes, that’s true. I couldn’t really figure out exactly how to do it, so I just kept it small. And I ran of out sticker 2’s, so I had to substitute a Z for it, but I think it works. And Chelle helped me cut out small pieces of paper, so I could have them right next to the jar, should anything good happen. I put it out on the mantle:

Kyle there is holding the pen, I like that. Now, I hope that many good things happen in 2013, even if I have to make them happen myself, and I wish a good 2013 to all!

Birthday Cards

This upcoming weekend (Saturday, specifically) is a meeting of the minds. The Card Club is meeting up again, so naturally, I had to come up with 2 cards on my own, one following the format. It was birthday cards for both of the cards this month, instead of being different, and that worked with me. So, without any further ado, here are my cards:

I like the cupcake one, but I’m still on the fence about the balloon one. It’s not as cute as I originally hoped it would be. But I’m sticking with it, so there’s that. When I thought of the cupcake one, I didn’t anticipate the difficulty in cutting out each cupcake with the candle and everything. They were originally a scrapbook paper that I just cut the individual ones out of. Worth it, though I like it!

Home Sweet Home

A looong time ago, I saw a cute craft in a book that I wanted to try. I ordered the materials for it, and sadly, they were on back order. As it neared my mom's birthday, I thought, I should make this craft for her too, and then we'll be twinsies! So, I ordered another set to make it, and...that also went on backorder. Sadly, the order didn't get here in time for my mom's November birthday. I told her so, apologized, and promised she'd have it as soon as I got the supplies. The supplies finally made it here a couple of weeks before Christmas. Because of my Christmas crafts I was doing as gifts, sadly, the birthday craft got put onto the backburner. Finally, last Sunday, I had time, and thought, I am doing this. After about an hour or so, I was finished!

Cute, right? I was so pleased with myself. After I finished, I still had it on the table and I thought, I should go get ready for my meeting. Right then, my nose decided to have a WICKED AWFUL nose bleed, and it was bad. It was running down my arms, it got all over my WHITE shirt, and my pants, and the table...the floor, everywhere. As I saw my blood dripping onto the carpet (Husband couldn't hear me shouting for him, apparently, and I was in no condition to walk with this dripping) I reached for the water bottle on the table, to apply some water to it. As I reached for the bottle, I knocked it over, and it dumped ALL OVER my newly finished craft. I won't lie, I just started to cry. (SISSY) So I told my mom I wasn't ready yet, and started anew.
On Wednesday, I had some time, so I made a new one, and I think it turned out pretty good.

Not bad, eh? I was pleased. But I didn't get to my mom's yet (I was planning on going on the weekend, but I was smart, and as soon as I finished it, I moved it to another table, to keep it intact. Then, tonight, I thought, I should make mine too, I have time right now, so I settled in again. The more I make this craft, the better and quicker I get at it. Here's the final one:

And now we both have this craft, and I think they all look swell. So happy birthday mom, just a little over a month late.

A FAMILY Christmas

Now that Christmas is over, I can blog about this! For my presents this year, I decided to give crafts to my siblings. I never know what to get people, but I feel like a craft is something people like and appreciate. It's nice for the home, it's pleasing to the eye, and it makes you feel like the person cares for you, because they spent time on your gift. This year, I chose the same word for everyone, and just changed colors for each family, mostly in the color I think represents the family. So here, without further ado, is the gift, all of them:

Ta-daaaa! I’ll never really know if my siblings hated these, or liked them, but in my head, I’ll imagine that they loved them, and set them up in their houses.