chocolate-covered pretzels

Wow!!! That sure was an unintentional blogging break! After not blogging for several days I started to feel over-whelmed with the idea of posting again. I had so much to say! I decided to ease back in slowly, so here I am.

We had a super Christmas, and believe me, I must have been a VERY good girl this year because Santa was VERY good to me!!

I finally got the camera I've been drooling over for over a year now. The Canon Digital Rebel XT. It scares me.

Santa also brought me a chocolate melting pot.



We are going to a pot-luck dinner tonight, so I made some chocolate-covered pretzels to take (among other things). They aren't pretty, but they ARE yummy. I know. I've already had about 6.



Happy New Year's everyone!!! I will not disappear that long again. It actually feels great to be back.

Lazy Gift Bags

Whew!!! What a week it's been. I'm completely "burned-out" and I can't wait for the Christmas Break!!!

I've yet to put the finishing touches on my Christmas shopping. I don't have much left to do, but still, I HAVE to get out there and get it done! I'm just not feeling the motivation to go and face the crowds.

I realized yesterday that I had to deliver my "school gifts" today. I haven't even bought gift bags yet, so I whipped out my glue, buttons and rick rack and made these.





Ok, now I can see that I need to trim the rick rack on one of the bags. Good thing I haven't delivered them yet.

I think I'm going to sit down and seriously make a list of all the things I have to do in the next few days. Maybe then I'll feel better.

Merry Christmas to me!

I found a gift certficate for Chapters that I had totally forgot about. How did that happen???

Anyways, I finally bought myself a copy of Last Minute Patchwork Quilted Gifts.



I had a couple of dollars left after I bought the book so I grabbed a magazine that I had not heard of before, Crafts Beautiful.



Wow! I love this magazine, it certainly lives up to it's name!

I LOVE this Christmas ornament:



And this card:



We are expecting a major winter storm this weekend including up to a foot of snow! This is very inconvenient timing for me as this was the weekend I had hoped to get the bulk of my Christmas shopping done. I have to say though, a weekend spent in front of a roaring fire drinking hot chocolate is not exactly making me sad.

More Christmas Craftiness!

Inspired by these cute little trees I made my own for the library.



These were my second and third attempts. Trust me, attempt number one was not a pretty sight. I think they look sweet using the old spools of thread as bases.

And then last night I got it into my head that I needed to knit a mini sweater ornament. I used this pattern.

My first attempt was a disaster. Why can't I ever ever ever ever get anything right the first time??? he he he I blame the fact that I didn't exactly READ the pattern, I assumed what it was going to say and off I went.



I quickly cast-on sweater number two. It took me much longer to knit because I was actually READING the pattern very carefully as I went along. The snowflake on the front is from my scrapbooking stash (yes, I have one of those too!) and the drapery hook was part of an AMAZING package sent to me from Felicia. (Thanks AGAIN Felicia!!!)



Just to prove that sweater 1 & 2 are not the same:



And as if I don't have anything else to do (ya right!). I cast-on a mini hat ornament this morning to match the sweater. I'm crazy.

Workplace Crafting

Yesterday I had it in my head that I was going to do some Christmas deocorating at work. In the morning I made the paper chain garland to decorate the circulation desk.



In the afternoon, I managed to bully two teenage boys into helping make a paper version of these adorable trees. When they asked how many I wanted and I said "a forest" they both rolled their eyes. I laughed. By the end of our tree-making session, they wanted to make more. They carefully arranged the trees in clumps on the desk for me and even taped them down so that nobody would steal them. It was amazing.

A Scrappy Garland

I went into my craft room early on Sunday morning with the plan to do a little bit of organizing. I came across a stack of Christmas fabric that I bought and haven't yet used. I drew up a pattern for a Christmas stocking, but my heart wasn't really in it.

I was trying to decide if I really wanted to make Christmas stockings and I dragged out some red rick rack. A light bulb went off. A scrappy garland! Yes!

I threw out the pattern for the stocking and after a couple of hours of tying strips of fabric to the rick rack, here's my new scrappy garland.



Our living room is way too dark for a photo of the garland in action, but trust me, it's cute.



It even matches my little Christmas trees.

Another button bracelet

I'm all about using my button collection lately. Inspired by this awesome bracelet by Regina of Creative Kismet I made this...



The bracelet is laying on top of my new taupe-coloured hoodie cardigan. I can't wait to wear them together. Maybe today!

I have to say not much crafting has been going on around here. Today is day 4 of a super-duper migraine. I've been working through it, but basically coming home and sleeping away the evenings. I hope this is the end of it!

Have a great weekend!

Easy Peasy Gift Tags

I bought two rolls of wrapping paper on the weekend and I wanted to make tags to match. All I did was snip a strip off each roll, cut it into tag-sized pieces, tacked it onto the tag with a bit of double-sided tape and stitched the paper to the tag. Easy peasy.



In some cases I sewed around the perimeter of the paper, in others I zig-zagged over it. I know it's nothing fancy, but at least now I have gift tags to match the paper (I love that!).

Yesterday my bath bomb making supplies arrived. If my head is better, I might make another batch (or two, or three) tonight after work.

My little forest

As soon as I saw this tutorial I KNEW I had to make my own.



Due to technical difficulties, (the interfacing I used was too light), I had to improvise a little bit. Instead of sewing the zig zag seam along the bottom edges of the cones, I sewed a band of rick rack on. Instead of stitching the cones closed, I cheated in a big way and used fabric glue.

Mid-way through the first tree I was going to give up because they weren't turning out the way they looked in the tutorial, but I fought that urge and kept going. I'm glad I did.

They look less wonky in real life than they do in the photo (thank goodness!).

This was a great little project for a snowy winter day.

Our First Snowfall

Well, let me tell you, the world looks a whole lot different this morning than it did yesterday.



That is the view early this morning from our back porch. Yes, that's my new car all covered in snow!

Thank goodness for snow blowers is all I can say! My job was to clean off the cars and shovel the front and back porch. I've been done for about 20 minutes. Joe is still outside blowing not only our snow, but most of our neighbour's walkways as well.

I had fun with the dogs while I was shoveling the back porch.



Apparently it's fun to have shovels of snow thrown at you and to jump high in the air and try to eat it (if you're a dog).



The black dog is Dolby, he's a Whippet/Rottweiler mix, dumb as a stump. Chinook is the Shepherd mix. She has failing hips although you'd never know it from her antics this morning.



I think it's time for a hot bath (with a bath bomb, of course) and then it's time for a little sewing and maybe even a nap!

Oh, the freezing rain is expected to start anytime now. That will be fun.