FIVE!

Happy Birthday Superman!

I can't believe Nathn is 5 today. Seriously, five! Time has gone so fast.

Every morning for the past week, he's asked if it was his birthday. This morning, he walked in and said, "Mommy, today is my birthday. Can I open my presents now?". So, we've had a great day, starting with birthday breakfast and presents. Moved on to a very active party at a local play center, with lots of friends. Ate pizza and chocolate cake. Opend more presents. Played with said presents. And finally, had a lovely afternoon nap.

Nathan, I hope you've had a wonderful Fifth Birthday!

Dog Days of Summer Bloggy Giveaway Winner

First of all, a HUGE thank you to Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer for hosting such a fun blog event! I was so excited to see the comments coming in on my blog and to throw my hat in for other giveaways. (I did win a prize, which I will show you when it arrives.) The generosity out in blogland is amazing. There were so many fun, thoughtful, exciting prizes!

And now, with no further ado......the winner of the "50 Ways With Salads" recipe book is Kim of The Misplaced Midwesterner. If you're reading this Kim, please email your snail mail address to me.

Thanks to everyone who was interested in my giveaway. And a special thanks to those who commented on my blog content and/or the photo of the giveaway prize. :) I couldn't photograph just the book now, could I? No, I had to make it cute!

I do have some swap goodies to show you all, but that'll have to wait 'til tomorrow when the sun is up!

Dog Days of Summer Giveaway

Last night, I came across this great blog giveaway and thought I'd join in. Shannon over at Rocks In My Dryer is hosting the Dog Days of Summer Blog Giveaway. Each participating blogger is having their own individual giveaway. Last time I looked, there were nearly 400 giveaways listed! That's an amazing amount of generosity out there in blogland and plenty of new blogs to check out!

In honor of summer and my it's-just-too-darn-hot-to-cook attitude, I'm giving away a great salad cookbook. 50 Ways With Salad by Katherine Blakemore is 110 pages of beautiful salad photographs and recipes. To enter my giveaway, please leave a comment on this post. Bloggers and non-bloggers are welcome, just make sure I can get in touch with you if you're the winner. Comment any time between now and Friday the 27th at noon. I'll draw a name from all commenters and post the results Friday afternoon or evening.

Hope you're all having a great summer! And don't forget to visit Shannon's giveaway post to see the list of participants.

Small Time Stash Busting

I joined the "Use What You Have Challenge" flickr group a while ago, but haven't been doing very well. It's not that I'm buying more fabric to stash, because I'm not. It's just that I haven't been very motivated (again) to do much with all the fabric I have. So, I've done a couple little things to get me started.

Yes, I know these tags aren't fabric. Well, technically the two pink ones are. I decoupaged those fabric scraps to the tags, then embellished them. The rest come from my small paper/cardstock/sticker/miscellaneous embellishments stash. Therefore, it counts toward stash busting.

And a couple of fluffy fabric flower pins. These are much cuter and fluffier in person.



That's about all from here. I do have the best of intentions to work on some market bags soon. I think I'm going to try the Morsbag style. The construction looks pretty simple and I like the concept of working together globally to do what we can for the environment. Oh and I'm going to make my bags from some lovely thrifted sheets. Repurposing the sheets makes the bags even better for the environment!

Green Week

Our local Recycling Center for bottles & cans

There hasn't been a whole lot of crafting going on here, so I thought I'd invite you all to join AfricanKelli's Green Week. Join her Flickr group and share what you do in your every day life to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I've posted a couple photos there, but I'll share some of my greening activities here too.

Nathan helping with the recycling

We recycle bottles (glass & plastic) and cans at the recycling center. Nathan is starting to understand that new things will be made from the items we recycle. We don't have any sort of curbside recycling program, but I'm going to do some research and find out what other sorts of recycling facilities we have around town.

Other things we do to be more earth friendly:

-Use CFL lightbulbs instead of incandescent

-Combine errands by "trip linking". I also cut down on errands by using the ATM in the grocery store to get cash and buy stamp. Groceries, cash, stamps...all in one stop.

-Buy in bulk, which cuts down on packaging.

-Use cold water for washing most clothes.

I know there are many little things we can all do to make a difference. What are you doing to live a greener life?

Another small finished object

Can you guess what it is?



How about in this photo? Now can you see what it is?



It's a "Personl Case". I've also seen them called "Women's Cases" and "Ragtotes". And no, I didn't make that last one up. Personally, I don't care for that name, but they do exist. I've been thinking of making one for a while and finally whipped one up. I've had more than a few embarassing moments with Feminine Hygiene products being flung onto counter or table while pulling my wallet, keys, etc. out of my purse. The last was at a restaurant with my son. Of course he asked, in a loud voice, "Mommy, what exactly is THAT?". Ugh! You cannot explain exactly what THAT is to a nearly-five year old boy! Don't even try. So, now I have a pretty case to carry monthly essentials in. For anyone who thinks I'm trying to "hide" the fact that I am a woman, I say Ha! I'm celebrating being a woman by carrying a pretty pink, flowery case!

I'm still here

No, I haven't gone on vacation. Or fallen off the face of the earth. Life's been a bit crazy and there hasn't been much creating going on here. It's also been VERY hot here. I'm talking 112* hot. Luckily, it's cooled off a bit and was only about 95* today.

I did manage one finished object recently.


I originally pieced the triangles to be part of a handbag, but didn't like the way they looked. Some of the fabrics were scraps from a quilt I made for a friend's daughter. she recently had a birthday and I wanted to make a little gift for her. So, after some inspiration from Sarah, I made my first bunting.

Other than that, there's been a lot of jigsaw puzzling, fingerpainting, fort building, DVD watching and other assorted kid friendly activities going on. Oh, and I took Nathan bowling yesterday for the first time. I did take a couple photos, so maybe I'll have them loaded and ready to go tomorrow.

Hope you're all enjoying your summer and staying cool!

It's a Pincushion

Yes, a Pincushion.



Really.

It's got pins in it and it's cushiony....ergo, a Pincushion.

And of course there's a story behind this pincushion.

A while ago, I bought a new box of "Extra Fine" (read extra sharp & pointy) pins. I've finally poked myself enough times to realize that I really do need a pincushion. So, I looked online, found lots of cute pincushions and tutorials for making them. I decided to make it easy on myself and chose a simple 4" felted wool model with blanket stitch.

Hold on....did I say Blanket Stitch??? As in, embroidery? You may not have noticed previously, but none of my projects have a single stitch of embroidery on them. There's a reason for that. I am Horrible (with a capital H) at embroidery. I've never been any good at it, but I thought it's a simple stitch. I'll just find some good instructions and give it a try. I read through Anna Maria's tutorial on doing the blanket stitch. I followed her instructions. I ripped out the stitches. Four times! I finally decided that no matter what I do my stitches will look wonky. So I went ahead with the wonky stitching and ta da! A new pincushion to save my tender little fingertips!

Hopefully, there will be more professional looking projects to post about in the near future. :)