Christmas round up

We had a lovely Christmas, celebrating the day with close family, extended family and friends. There was gorgeous food and great wine, and of course some pressies!

I was very excited to receive this inspiring gift from a great friend:

And The Junior Crafter (8 years old) was beyond excited to receive this great present from her Nonna and Nonno:

It's a real one! Not a little kid's one, but an honest-to-goodness really truly proper sewing machine!

So we set to learning how to use the new machine. The junior crafter sewed a pincushion, all by herself:

(you can never have too many pins, right?)

which was an unquailfied success:

so I immediately requested she make another one for me:

And, voila! New pincushions for all the crafty girls in the house, beautifully weighted with rice in the bottom and hobbyfill in the top, and finished with the sweetest little hand stitching you've ever seen!

 

She even put my name on mine in pins.

The  Junior Crafter also received a couple of Spotlight vouchers for Christmas, so no doubt we'll be on a shopping trip in the next few days to stock up on supplies.

Hope your Christmas was merry and bright too!

Brown paper packages tied up with string...

these are a few of my favourite things.

Merry Christmas lovely bloggers :)

Christmas gift tags tutorial

This week we made our Christmas gift tags and they were a great success, so I thought I would share with you how we made them.

First, using Word (or a similar word processing program) type in your text. My text reads "Merry Christmas from the *surname here* family". Then cut and paste your text so it repeats across the width and length of the page. At the beginning of each line of text on the page delete a word or two so the text appears random across the whole page and the words do not line up exactly underneath each other.

Select any fancy font you like and change the font colour to red. I used Angelina font in 12 point.

Then print onto an A4 sheet of natural coloured paper.

Using a paper trimmer cut your A4 sheets into strips. I cut some sheets vertically into 4 strips, and some sheets horizontally into 5 or 6 strips - this way you will end up with some 'landscape' oriented tags and some 'portrait' oriented. Next, cut your strips into 'tag size' rectangles. I didn't measure at all and all the tags ended up being different sizes which I like as I was going for the rustic look. Feel free to measure if you want them all the same size!

Now, put the kids to work! Take one of your rectangular tags and cut off 2 of the corners, and punch a hole in the top. Then thread some Jute or twine through the hole.

Now using a date stamp and some black ink stamp the tags with "25 Dec 2009".

Done! Christmas Tags ready to go. And since you already have your family name printed on the tags, you can simply write the recipient's name on the tag with a black marker.

Today is our 11th Wedding Anniversary. And we will be celebrating together as a family as our two eldest children will be flowergirl and pageboy for their Aunty's wedding today. And just in case you were wondering what we did last year on the 19th of December to celebrate our 10th anniversary...our two eldest children were flowergirl and pageboy for my best friend's wedding and I was Matron of Honour (and 7 months pregnant with number three, see pic below!).

(This is me a year ago, stay tuned for an updated pic after today!)

My little ones, a year ago today.

I'm starting to sense a pattern developing...I wonder who is thinking of getting married on our anniversary next year?

Hurrah!

My blog list is back! Thanks to everyone for your advice, I logged out, left it all day and when I logged back in it was fixed! Hurrah :) Off to catch up on some blogs while I sip my Vodka, Lime & Soda, and then off to continue stitching a little doll I'm making for my darling daughter for Christmas.

Help!

I think we have already established that Technical Genius I am not. However, I am completely stumped by this latest development. My Blogger 'Dashboard' informed me this morning that I am not currently following any blogs.

Aaarrggghhh!

I am, I really am! Well...I was. In fact I had a lovely big long list of bloggy friends and bloggy things I love to read, how will I ever find them all again??? And what happened to my bloglist? Any suggestions peeps?

Need more time?

It's a busy time of year for everyone. I get that. But lately, I simply do not have enough hours in the day to cope with all the Christmas preparations (not the crafty kind unfortunately), the many end of year school and kinder events, not to mention preparations for my sister-in-law's wedding (which is next week. Yes, really.) and which includes two of my three kids in the wedding party. And all this is being done on next to no sleep thanks to my little Poor Point 3.

It's little wonder really that I have no time left for crafty adventures! However, I seem to have found the answer to my problem in this great little Crafter's Clock I picked up at the Daylesford Makers Market.

Jodie, you're a genius. I'll be back on top of everything by Tuesday.

Stitched, Stuffed, Delivered...

My very first softie is finished! What do you think?

Not only is she finished, but since she's a Softie for Mirabel the kids and I dropped her off at Pip's this afternoon. Hoorah!

However, I must tell you that The Great Softie Adventure Chapter One was not all smooth sailing.

First, when I managed to scrape together a half hour of spare time for crafting (rarer than hen's teeth these days) I realised I had no felt in my stash (doh!). Ever resourceful, and too stubborn to let a little thing like 'lack of correct materials' get in the way, I decided to use brown cotton drill for the hair. (Please feel free to note my obvious lack of softie making experience here.) Okay, so at some point I realised the reason felt is used is because the hair is top stitched on and felt doesn't fray. (Just for the record, cotton drill does). Doh! So, after checking my trusty Most Resourceful Girl Merit Badge I recut the hair piece times 2, carefully adding a seam allowance, stitched the hair pieces right sides together, turned them out, THEN topstitched in place. Can anyone say 'extra work'????  I'd also like to be able to say that her arms are deliberately open wide just waiting for a hug, but I fear I've a lot to learn regarding the importance of limb placement when stitching body panels right sides together.

The rest of The Great Softie Adventure came together remarkably smoothly after my somewhat wobbly start, and I'm please to say my little softie girl is living happily ever after in Pip's front window. (Well, at least until Sunday when she'll be whisked off to meet, and hopefully live happily ever after with, her new owner!)

Happiness Kit

I recently received this thoughtful and cheery present from a dear friend at a time when I was feeling very down, and it was just the thing to brighten my day, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Happiness Kit

• Eraser - to make mistakes disappear
• Rubber bands - to stretch yourself to the limit
• Coin - so you never have to say you have no money
• String - to tie things together when they fall apart
• Button - to press in case of panic
• Rose - to remind you of the sweet things in life

Where would we be without sweet friends?

I think I can, I think I can...

My softie is almost finished - stay tuned for final results.

The fact that I have left my run a teensy bit late, combined with the unfortunate but undeniable reputation of Mr Australia Post for being less than reliable might necessitate a trip to Meet Me At Mikes to deliver my softie in person. Yes, that's me doing a little happy dance in the corner.

My Creative Space

Usually when I take a pic of My Creative Space, I stage it just a little. I tidy up. I make sure all the important elements of my craft make it into the shot (and the brekky dishes do not). So the end result is that it's a  concise and aesthetically pleasing photographic representation of my crafty adventures, rather than a picture of my space when I'm actually getting creative. Well, in the spirit of honesty, today you are getting The Real Deal.

Yep, this is how I create. In real life. Yes, that's my kitchen table. Yes, that's a coffee cup left over from breakfast in the background - you wouldn't want me to waste valuable crafting time by doing housework, now would you?
And because my creative space got too big for the table, I did some of it on the loungeroom floor.

Don't look too closely at the carpet, I haven't vacuumed in weeks.

I'm working on my Softie for Mirabel. For more pics of chicks avoiding housework Creative Spaces visit Kirsty.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

The tree is up.

The calender is full of goodies.

The kids' Christmas table is set up.

But to be perfectly honest, I'm not feeling all that festive right now. Maybe it's something to do with the complete lack of homemade decorations on my tree this year :(

The Ultimate Secret Handshake

What a fabulous day we had at the Daylesford Market on Saturday! Armed with "The Ultimate Secret Handshake" we were warmly greeted at the door with "I spy some bloggers!" which was a lovely welcome. The next person I spied inside was the lovely Liesl with...was it Argy or Bargy? That was a lovely surprise, as I haven't seen Liesl for aaaaages!

Big thanks to Julie for the scrumptious yo-yo biccies, what a yummy way to start my market outing!

I saw some lovely creative bloggy friends, including Cam. I am now the proud owner of that gorgeous little heart shaped brooch on the bottom left of Cam's display :)

There's the very talented Jodie from VintageRicRac peering out from her awesome display shelf.

I think I have a blog crush.

(sorry the picture is blurry, but I think it hides my wrinkles rather well, but Jodie says it's because she's drunk).

We took a refreshment break from all our shopping at Frango & Frangos, and marked off purchases against our Christmas Lists.  See my "Secret Handshake" in the background behind the glasses? (No, they weren't both for me!)

We headed back to the market for some more shopping (pics to follow), then made our way to Lark. Heavenly. I want to live there. A quick stop at the Mill Markets then back on the road again, where we were met by this:

We made it home safely, exhausted, inspired and buzzing from such a lovely day out. Thanks Marketeers :)