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My Funny Valentines

Happy Valentines to all of my favorite people! I know it’s a cheesy greeting card company holiday, but I always like any excuse to tell the special people in your life how much you love them (and of course, involving Hallmark is a personal decision). So to all of my family and friends, near and far … thanks for being in my life and I LOVE YOU!

This year, with all of our recent out-of-town-ness, we didn’t do so well with making Valentines. Tabby and I constructed 18 glittery messes for her classmates and I made these mailboxes for the kids (they are filled with new socks and sunglasses and probably some sort of candy I’ve since forgotten about). I will hand them over to the kids at dinner tonight.

I was happy to see the mailboxes in the Target dollar bin when we were there one day. I still have a little white mailbox with red hearts on it that was given to me one Valentine’s day by my parents. It sits on a shelf in my office and holds my sticky notes. I just decked these out with a little light pink vinyl, cut on my Silhouette.

I hope you all have a Happy Valentine’s day with your special people.

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Super Hero Shirts

I have happily made my kids (and my best friend’s kids) ornaments the past two Christmases. This Christmas, I had a SNAFU with the paint-your-own pottery place and it didn’t happen.

Luckily, I thought of a different fun thing to make for the kids: Super Hero Shirts! Piecing together info from tutorials on APPLIQUE (hate that word – sounds boring and stodgy), I came up what I think are some pretty cute t’shirts.

I might write a tutorial after a while, but here’s the jist. You iron on some heat ‘n’ bond to the back of some scrap fabric. You cut out shapes/letters, etc. and then you bond those to your t’shirt wherever you like them. Then using whatever stitch works for you, you sew around the edges. Each shirt took me about 30 minutes and I am in LOVE with them (and the kids who wear them).

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Napkins!

A few months ago, I purchased some cloth napkins on Etsy. They’re pretty, simple things in a variety of nice patterns. I do a lot of laundry anyhow and so tossing these in the wash as we go about our daily business is never a problem. The only problem was that we ran out of them fairly quickly.

Though I thought them a good value from the Etsy seller, I wanted to try to make some of my own. The original ones I got had a nice little rolled hem and so I tried to duplicate this on my own machine. But I didn’t have a ton of luck. I could get it started and sometimes even sew for a while, but inevitably, I’d pull in too much fabric or not enough and the seam would go all over the place. It was not very nice looking.

So I decided to just do my own thing and double-roll over the edges about 1/4″, press and sew. This created a much nicer finished product and not nearly so much swearing. The results are quite pretty. Tabby was particularly happy with the ones I made from fabric she picked out (pink swirls).

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My Neglected Hobbies

I made mention yesterday of my neglected hobbies. My list of Martha Stewart Sins is long and sordid. See once upon a time, I had time. Then I had kids. And I stubbornly refused to give up things – well actually that's not true, I did pretty much give up TV – and in fact, I added some new things in addition to all the kids and the time I spend playing with them, namely their upkeep in the form of laundry and organization and dinner provision (apparently, it's no longer acceptable to just set out a bowl of salsa and some chips and call it dinner).

Though I haven't exactly given up on my hobbies and sometimes make quite valiant efforts to do this or that, even completing a few projects, the lists of unfinished ones is much much longer.

A sampling for your amusement/horror:
• cute sign I made for our front door – it has never been hung
• two t'shirts for some cute kiddos that I have yet to decorate
• printable magnet paper that is still blank
• several mini scrapbooks, still un-decorated
• glass squares I was going to do something with – coasters?
• quite a lot of fabric, really … what is it all for?
• a whole carton of t'shirts – they were supposed to become a quilt – HA!
• photo mat I was planning to doodle on as a 3rd b'day gift for Tabby (she'll be 4 in like 5 months)

And now I'm taking sewing lessons. Lord help us.

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More Fun with the Silhouette!!

whiteboard

I have been having too much fun making these custom white boards

The one on the left is our brand new menu board (which fell off the kitchen counter and smashed after I finished transferring all those teeny tiny letters!!!) and on the right is the one I made for a new college student for her dorm room.

Totally simple … just frame, scrapbook paper and vinyl letters, cut by the Silhouette, of course.

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Mama’s Day Off

I asked Matt and the kids not to get me anything and instead, I gave myself a few b’day presents. I bought some stuff off Etsy (a vintage pickle jar, some headbands for running and some cloth napkins) and some new PJs at Target. But the biggest gift I gave myself was a day off.

It was oddly hard to get over the guilt of 8+ hours of uninterrupted “me time.” I felt bad about sending the kids off to our sitter while I played, but then I reasoned with myself that I hang with them every Friday, so I got over it.

It was a very nice, super relaxing day. I got up at my normal early hour and instead of beating it to work on the double, I drove up to a trailhead and had a 10 mile run. It was very nice not to have the clock hanging over my head. It was a new trail, beautiful and wonderful weather. I even saw two blue herrings in a tree on my way back.

When I got home I skipped the shower and jumped right into a craft project. I wanted to use my new Silhouette to make a couple of things … I made two, one turned out. The gals at HowDoesShe? are always making cute signs out of decoupaged 2x4s. Since our neighborhood is a magnet for door-to-door salespeople, I’ve wanted a no soliciting sign for a long time. My awesome Aunt Peggy has had a sign that reads “No offense, but no solicitors, religious or otherwise.” on her door for as long as I can remember and so I fashioned my own version. It was a lot of fun. It still needs to be hung up though.

After crafty time, I had lunch with my sweetie. Then I finally had a shower and settled in to listen to my audio book for a while and play some solitaire. I think I napped for a while and maybe goofed around on the internet.

It all went by very very fast. I had a great time, but I was happy to see my kiddos … and Matt too.

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Decked Out Laptop

I am slowly but surely getting some use out of my Silhouette. It is time-consuming to do crafty things when you know what you’re doing, but learning it as well? So I am SLOW.

I’ve practiced the cutting on a couple of pieces of cardstock (cheap!). The level of detail you can achieve with the machine is really impressive. I also learned that you can use the software to do a print/cut, where you use your printer to print the image on whatever paper you like. The software adds some guidelines for the machine to read to the printout and then you run it through the cutter to get the final cut. Very cool (still have to try this).

But this was my first “project.” I took some of the stock artwork I used on the blog’s template and imported it into the software. All I had to “find the edges” on the images, which is just a simple command. Then I had the Silhouette use those traced edges to cut out the pink vinyl which I then stuck to the back of my laptop. Voila … cute running girls on my laptop.

Yesterday I placed an order with Expressions Vinyl for a bunch more vinyl and some t’shirt transfers, so this will not be the last you see of my Silhouette projects.

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Treadputer?

Last night my darling hubby installed his latest project on our treadmill. At my request, he built me a laptop holder for our treadmill, based on some instructions from somewhere on the web (don’t remember where now and we didn’t really follow them anyhow,so I won’t bother to find them). It’s made of PVC pipe (3/4″, I believe) and tied on with bungee cords. Certainly not the most elegant or beautiful solution, but it’s secure, it came together quickly and it was CHEAP! Sucker probably cost less than $10.

So now you’re probably envisioning me playing Sims while jogging along at a good clip. WRONG! I plan to use this for a couple of things: 1. To watch stuff on the web while I run (TV shows, etc. from Hulu or whatever) or 2. To do light web browsing (google reader, Facebook) while I walk slooowly. I tried it out a bit last night and it will take some practice. I also think I might want a little arm extension on the right for a mouse platform … I am terrible with the trackpad.

Now we just need to do something about the name. Treadputer doesn’t really roll off the tongue. Lapmill? Treadtop? Walkstation?

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Say ‘Ello to My Leetle Friend

So I made a little purchase yesterday. It’s called a Silhouette and it’s a die-cut machine, similar to a Cricut, or, apparently, as I now know, about 10 other machines (who knew die-cutting machines was a growth industry??). But with this baby, you hook it up to your computer and print your own designs (my thing!). I wanted to get one in town. I wanted to use it this past weekend, but I will settle for whenever the heck the thing shows up. Now I just need to hope it shows up AFTER this weekend, so I can keep my nose to the grindstone, making websites.

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Miscellany

I find myself in the midst of the Christmas season (yes, still). We have a charming tradition of spending the week after New Year’s in Vail which makes the wind down after Christmas much easier. My parents also host their New Year’s Eve party which is a good time. Matt’s hoping Tabby will be able to stay up for the fireworks. I will be bringing buffalo chicken dip and what I have decided to refer to as Breakin’ Dishes Jell-o … or maybe this awesome-looking candycane angel food cake.

That thingy on the right is Tabby’s brand new stuffed animal holder. It’s just an over-the-door shoe holder that Matt installed on hooks on her wall. It was a bit tricky, apparently, but I like how it ends up. I can’t take credit for this idea … I found it somewhere on the internets. It was about the best solution I saw to tame stuffed-animal clutter … most of the rest involved nets or cages (not kidding!).

On the left you’ll find the ornaments that I painted for our kids and our best friends’ kids. They were really fun to do. We also did more Tabby art ornaments this year. We found teeny canvases (3″x3″, maybe) at a local hardware store and had her paint them. She had a great time doing it. Then I screwed eyehooks into the top of them and strung them with ribbon. They turned out very cute. Will have to put up a photo later because I still have not gotten one.

The freaking tile is still not in. It’s supposed to be in today, though we’ve been lied to so many times I’m not really trusting what they say anymore. We could get a refund, but then we’re out tile that we really like and a ton of time since we’d still have to order in more tile. And we have not yet been able to select carpet. Our carpet guy was supposed to be getting a bunch more samples from his manufacturer, but they are not in yet. I just want this done in the worst way.

I got some really cool stuff for Christmas. My new Sansa Clip is an awesome MP3 player for workouts, being all tiny and clippable. I am also loving Sims 3: World Adventure, though I did have to pick up a strategy guide for it yesterday (*shame*) since I don’t have a ton of time to fool around playing it. I also got Scribblenauts, which I haven’t gotten to check out and a cool cookbook from my sista that I can’t wait to try. Santa was very good to me.

And I suppose that is about it for now. Hope you’re enjoying this little short, slow week. Cheers!