Ick

I fell so bad that I haven't posted in almost a week! Sorry! I was actually out out of town since early Saturday morning to go to my great aunt's funeral. She was one heck of a woman who will be greatly missed. So my plan was to then have something fun to show you today, but after being up battling my acid reflux all night, I think I'm just going to take it easy and sleep and watch movies all day from the comfort of my bed. So you aren't left with nothing here are a few pictures from past travels.

Family friend's dog

Sneak Peek Part 2!

I finally ran to the store today to grab the things I need to finish up my project for Florida. 9 days! I'm getting a lot quicker at the four strand braid and finished the blue one in about an hour. 43 inches! That's more than I needed by 14 inches! Now I can make matching bows or something. All the ribbons are going to be braided except for the wide antique white grosgrain which is part of the waist band.

One thing that didn't make it into the photo is the new seam ripper that I desperately needed. I have been at a stand still the past few days due to my old seam ripper needing to be replaced. It was only, um, 20+ years old since I got it from my grandmother's craft stuff.

I was hoping to get a sketch of the project up today, but haven't done one yet. As soon as I get it done I will post it.

Also my second ballet class was today and it was no where near as painful as Monday's. YAY!

Ouch

Ouch covers a lot when it was originally going to be for one reason.

First of all, yesterday I went to my first ballet class in about 7 months, maybe 8, and I knew it was going to be killer and it was. After reading over the class descriptions I settled on the beginner/intermediate class and  was amazed that I could keep up with most of it. The two things that got me were the plié-relevés on one foot and the center combination, but the latter was because they learned it last week. Oh, and balancing. Apparently my core and therefor balancing skills were still on vacation and didn't let me know. At the end we worked on our turnout with a floor exercise before we went to jumps. Fast jumps. And I wasn't the only one who couldn't keep up which made me fell a little better.

Where does the ouch come it? Today my thighs and calves are killing me. I seriously stood at the top of my stairs this morning asking myself if food was really absolutely necessary. Food one in the end and I limped back up the stairs. It wasn't the pain sort of ouch, it was the good sort of ouch from working muscles I haven't used in quite a while.

Now the second ouch came from my lack of attention later on last night. Ad it came from me verses the iron and we all know that the iron has a tendency to win when it is on. At least that's how it always seems to work for me.

1.5 inch burn on the back of my arm right above my elbow

I received this lovely mark from reaching across the ironing board to save Tangie from burning her tail which was too close for comfort to the iron. She was sitting on the dresser right behind the ironing board. That's what I get for trying to help my cat apparently. 

And just for the record, taking a picture of the back of your arm is kind of hard to do.

Sneak Peek!

Because heaven forbid I don't have enough projects going on at once, I got an idea for another project the other night and just had to start it right then and there. Never mind the fact that it was about 10pm and I didn't have any similar weight fabric to make a mock up with. And let's not forget that I had no pattern either, just the idea in my head. Sounds like the perfect project!

A couple of nights ago was night two of working on the project and I really am starting to think I'm slightly masochistic when it comes to my sewing projects because I spent about three hours on a small piece of the project, mind you there were a few cursing breaks when I managed to iron my fingers or just get them a little too close to the steam. I am determined to have this project finished in the next week so that I can wear it once to make sure there are no issues before packing it to take to Florida! In the mean time since all other projects have been put slightly on hold, I leave you with some pictures.

 So I learned a new way of braiding today and have decided to keep the pieces the way that they are after much though about redoing them. However I had no way of figuring how much initial length I needed for each strand and how long the finished result would be due to the initial length so this one is too short for the strap. By about an inch. So more time at the iron soon!

Close up with funky coloring

Kusudama

I finished! Instead of watching bad movies on Netflix, I noticed that Ghost Whisperer was on and decided to watch that instead. I think this took me around two hours total, but there was some waiting for glue to dry, making sure the cookies in the oven didn't burn, getting rice cooking and a few other distractions along the way. But it is done! And Tangie took a bite out of it, but it was fixable as well! 

The biggest challenge that I ran into while working was that some of the pages were so darn fragile! But I guess you can't expect too much from a falling apart book that was printed in 1844. Yep, 1844. It is one old book. My apologies to anyone who is offended by reusing a book that is already damaged beyond repair and yes, I do know some people who are offended by stuff like this. Seriously though, if I tried to fold some of the 2 inch by 2 inch squares it just fell to pieces. Lucky for me, I cut some extra squares so all was good. I think I am going to use the two ribbon tails to tie a bow at the bottom.

And because I just can't leave you with a single picture, or rather the only one that came out halfway descent (thank you rainy weather), here is a picture of my stays mockup.

I am going to need to take the side seams in a tiny bit from the front piece so I get a gap between center front because it meets and you need the gap to get the lift/shelf effect of the time period. But that's easy and I might wait until after I cut the fashion fabric and get the lining together because it might just be that the mockup fabric stretched some.

An Old Book Gets New Life

The sad condition of the book, which looks better in the picture than in person

I have this poor old book that has seen better days. Like, has REALLY seen better days as the pages are falling out (and missing) and the cover is flaking off piece by piece. It is pretty much unsalvageable at this point and instead of tossing it or recycling it or whatever, I figured that it would make some fun decor for around my place. Well, I'm planning on turing what is still bound into an altered book/altered journal and using all the pages that are loose into fun decor. The first project I'm working on is a kusudama flower ball.

For the ball I need to fold 60 square sheets of paper, five per flower, to make all 12 flowers. Well, I have 7 pieces folded as of this moment, but am going to work on more while I watch really bad horror movies via netflix. Yeah, I will totally admit to that.

Sense and Sensibility Underthings Pattern

I also got my Sense and Sensibility Underthings pattern before I ran out the door this past weekend and managed to whip up a mock up of the short stays in a couple of hours completely by hand stitching. It fit rather well and I'm hoping to cut the fashion fabric in the next couple of days and get going on the project. Sadly, the paper cranes were left at my parents when I went home this weekend, so they are on partial hold until I make it back to snag them, but that won't be for at least a month because I leave to meet my little sister in 16 days!

Winnie the Pooh Day

Yes, you did read that right. Today is Winnie the Pooh Day! The day were we celebrate the birthday of A.A. Milne and his wonderful cast of furry (and feathered) friends from The Hundred Acre Woods. Enjoy the day by eating honey on toast, playing Pooh Sticks, going on a walk in your own neck of the woods (or you know, lack there of if you live in the city), watch one of the movies or episodes, or read one of the books.

Happy Winnie the Pooh Day!!!

French Macarons

Kitchen experiment time! I am so taking advantage of the fact that I have a kitchen this weekend while I'm home and I decided to attempt to make macarons. And go figure, I left my macaron book back at my place which is only four hours away. Meh. That is what the internet is for. So here is the mixed recipe macaroons with chocolate ganache filling:

Yummy

The macaroons are a bit on the large size and by a bit I mean about 2 inches across. I had issues trying to use my pastry bag after not touching it for way too long and the mixture seemed really loose to me, but hey, what do I know? I've never made macarons before so...yeah. Or it could have been that I used a piping tip that was a bit to large. But the tops didn't crack, they got little feet, but I didn't sift the dry ingredients well enough so there are some little lumps of almond meal. Eh, here they are right out of the oven.

Not the most uniformed and way too big....

Oh well, I'm going to try again with different filling and maybe be adventurous and make colored shells.

I also feel very acomplished today because not only did I make macaroons, but with the leftover 1/2 cup of cream I used in the filling, I made butter. Yes, butter! And I made it just by shaking a jar. Today was a  fun day in the kitchen.

Fresh butter!!!

Zodiac signs

Source

Have you heard the news about our zodiac signs? Astrological signs are figured by the position of the sun in relation to specific constellations on the date of a person's birth, however when the signs were determined based on these positions long ago, they weren't in the same places that they are today. Thank you earth for being wobbly in your rotation. And supposedly instead of 12 signs there are actually 13. So here are the 'new' signs:

Capricorn: January 20 - February 16

Aquarius: February 16 - March 11

Pisces: March 11 - April 18

Aries: April 18 - May 13

Taurus: May 13 - June 21

Gemini: June 21- July 20

Cancer: July 20 - August 10

Leo: August 10 - September 16

Virgo: September 16 - October 30

Libra: October 20 - November 23

Scorpio: November 23 - December 17 (or November 29, if you abide by the 13th sign)

(Ophiuchus: November 29 - December 17)

Sagittarius: December 17 - January 20

However astronomers and scientists seem to disagree on whether or not this is true or not so it is really all up to what you want to believe. It supposedly doesn't go into effect for those of us already born, but anyone born after a certain date (what ever the 'official' date that may be (supposedly 2009)) is under the new system.

If these are the 'true' signs that would have been had the earth not been wobbly on its course, the it would actually make sense for me as I have never seemed to have much of a connection with my zodiac, Cancer, and everyone I ever knew who was into astrology and zodiac and all that were pretty sure that I was a Gemini. Did anyone else ever have that happen to them?

What do you all think about this change in the zodicac?

Just a few of the many articles that were forwarded to me over the day or I found over the past hour or so:

New Zodiac Sign Dates

New Zodiac Signs are All Crock!

Why Your Horoscope for 2011 is All Wrong

There are a ton of articles out there, but these are just ones that were still open on my laptop while writing this.

Fighting a loosing battle

Just one small problem faced when there is only one space to sit next to a window.

Just snagging a few moments to let you know that posts this week will be sparse. But I'm not abandoning you all. And I have a giveaway in my previous post you should enter!

Invasion of the Hairpins!

There is seriously an invasion going on over here because I didn't have a pace to store them. At school they lived in one of the pockets in  my dance bag and at home they lived in an empty container in the bathroom, but here it was a free for all. And something had to be done about it. Enter the empty fruit drop tin...

Not my tin, but this is what it looked like. Mine ad a few more nicks and dents in it

Ok, cute tin and all, but kinda blah for my tastes. I pulled out some scrapbook paper, a gold Sharpie, some glue and went to work. This is what I came up with, the flowers don't exactly match, but it was the best I could do. And yep, the flower is very similar to the decoration post original flowers.

Hair pin tin

If When I get around to cleaning off the top of my dresser I will let you see the tin in its new home. For now, it is living on my desk. What do you think?

Decorating Part 2

I feel like there needs to be some cheesy music after that, like the dun dun DUNNNNNN kind of music. I hope you all get what I mean by that. And on a side note, the word cheesy looks really weird today.

So to the point of this post, I have some more flowers made and go figure at first I couldn't recreate how I did it so I ended up with a rose like flower. Then I kind of remembered after pulling out the flower I showed you before. The tally is now original flowers: 5 and rose flowers and buds: 5 (one of the rose buds is hiding out inside of the smallest original flower). And I still have two smaller flowers from the blue to play with.

Close up of the roses minus the bud that is hanging with the other flowers. The big rose still needs a bit of work because it doesn't want to stay in a more closed position.

I'm thinking that orange roses might also be in the crazy flower mix as well as some green roses which are all cut out. Heck I might just make a mix from the odds and ends of card stock I have hanging around. 

And because I haven't shown the trouble maker/my helper in bit

I really wanted to post this yesterday, but I was out all day at a commercial shoot which was awesome! I will definitely let you all know when it airs, but all I can say about it right now was it is funny how long it can take to make a bread wrapper/bag look camera ready.

I might be going a bit overboard

Doodle Parts dies make me think of doodlebugs for some reason...

But I got a new set of dies for my little Cuttlebug, which I don't think I've show you all yet. Oops. The dies are swirls! It's the Spellbinder's Doodle Parts which are lots of fun. Sadly, I've pretty much run out of things to decorate and I still have tons of the paper cuts left over from a project I was working on. See?

The picture is deceiving. There are about 25-30 swirls in that little pouch. And there are something like 120-ish flowers.

That is a lot of swirls. I cut them all from small scraps of the main colors I was using or trying to incorporate. I've also started having storage problems for them because I haven't run to the store for any storage containers yet so Tangie keeps trying to eat them all. I've tried storing them on the shelf of the book case, but since my fur baby had figured out how to climb the bookcase I think I'm fighting a loosing battle. I also went a little overboard with cutting little flowers I was going to use on the same project, but didn't and so now those are floating around too. Maybe if I get bored enough I'll string them all up and find some place to decorate in my room. Though I'm quickly running out of spaces. Maybe I'll decorate downstairs. I also had some fun cutting lots of flowers out of theatre gel samples. I have three of the little sample books and have barely made a dent in the first one.

I also really want to get some more of the Spellbinder dies as they are awesome. They are a three in one die: cut, emboss and stencil! Isn't that awesome! Let me show you...

The blueish silver on the little swirl is from an ink pad.

And just so I'm not playing favorites with my dies I also have some Cuttlebug and Sizzix dies that have been used on many occasions. I had let both the Cuttlebug and dies at home with I first moved, but since I know that one of the littles that I babysit for LOVES puzzles and drawing I thought, why not have a day when we make our own puzzles? Sure they aren't exactly the sturdiest things in the world and are probably going to be lost/destroyed pretty quickly, but it give us a few hours of entertainment.

I also got around to going to the craft store yesterday and managed to snag some pretty neat stuff that was on sale. First off one of those hard plastic scrapbook paper storage boxes. And the really awesome thing is: IT IS CAT PROOF! Take that Tangie. She has started trying to eat my scrapbooking stuff so I had to find a cat proof solution and voila! All my pretty papers fit nicely in it as do my tape roller and corner punch. I do have to admit that the box is also slightly me proof.

1 12x12 paper pack, 3 4.5"x6.5" packs, corner punch, glue roller, random loose 12x12 sheets and all my dies fit in the box. Not everything was in it for the picture.

Odd Holidays

Through out the year, well, rather just about everyday there is some odd holiday such as World Penguin Day, Emma M Nutt Day (first woman telephone operator), Middle Child's Day and many, many more. Some days even have multiple holidays. January 4th is Trivia Day, so in honor of it here is some odd/useless trivia:

• Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
• The average life span of a major league baseball is seven pitches.
• Everyone has a unique tongue print.
• Bruce Lee's movements were so fast in movies that they actually had to slow the slim speed down so the movements could be seen.
• The mask used by Michael Meyers in the original Halloween movie was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
• The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
• The liquid inside of young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.
• A dime has 118 ridges around its edge.
• A polar bear's fur is not white, it is clear.
• A few signatures of William Shakespeare's survive however none of the spellings are 'William Shakespeare'.
• The horse of many colors in "The Wizard of OZ" was colored with JELL-O crystals. The scenes had to be shot quickly because the horse would lick the crystals off.

I forgot...

So during my insomnia induced ponderings (more on those later) I realized that I never gave you guys an update with what happened during NaNoWriMo. Let's just said that I failed pretty miserably, though I will admit that I could have failed a lot worse than I did. I made it to around 20,000/50,000 before I got major writer's block and I started babysitting up a storm. Actually, I think saying I failed isn't really what I mean. It is more like I tried and I got pretty dang far. Maybe this just means that I'll get closer next year! I'm not giving up on what I started though, I'm going to push through and keep writing if only to give me something to do when I get bored/ADD/antsy/choose your own word.

Anywho, there is another post that is scheduled for later today that isn't craft related and I'm thinking that there might also be a run to the craft store so you might even get another one. Or I'll be mean and hold it off until Wednesday, though it looks like it will be a rather busy day. I have an interview with a temp agency here so I can start working with the city's convention center on the different conventions that come in while I continue job hunting. I have to say, if I could make convention work a full time job and make enough money working them, I would probably do it. There is quite a bit of free time during conventions depending on where you are stationed, but they tend to switch it all up every couple of conventions to make it fair. And sometimes the convention people give you really nice tips and feed you! OK, I'm going to attempt to go to sleep, but I will warn you there was some very interesting insomnia induced pondering aside from the one above that I might share some time. Some are crafty related, others are just random and others are about things I've seen that make me think.

Night! Or maybe I should say good morning at this point...

Decorating, decorating, decorating

Take a wild guess what this post is about. I bet you will never be able to figure it out!

Oh, you guessed it? Huh. So as you know know this post is going to have something to do about decorating. As much as I love the fish art in my place, it's not me. So I need to girly the place up. Cue the curtains that I was planning on using for my regency dress. Those are being saved from destruction and are being used as the manufacturer intended. Now I will admit that it is only because I found where I had stored quite a bit of a heavier light weight linen. YAY! Natural fibers!

Ribbon is temporary

Now I couldn't just leave the curtains plain and white cause that would defeat the purpose of trying to girl up the place a bit. I want flowers! But there is no way I am going to buy fake flowers. Yes they are pretty, but I want to customize them. Well I have bright colored card stock, scissors, glue and a host of other items.

It is a bit brighter than the photo

How do you like the flower so far? I have three more cut out of the bright blue that I haven't edged in gold yet and I have some purple,green and pink that I think might look good with them. I'm also thinking about doing a bunch of red flowers for my dresser or to be interchangeable with the blue/purple/pink/green when I want a change of decor. Though if I want to make a LOT more, I might invest in the Tim Holtz Flower dies because cutting that many flowers could get slightly annoying. Or maybe I'll just make a stencil for myself.

Now how is she planning on decorating the curtains? It is a valid question. Am I going to scatter them all over the curtain? Nope, though I did think about it. Am I going to attach them along the bottom edge? No cause I'm pretty sure Tangie would try to eat them. I am either going to cluster some along the top where the curtain is shadily attached to cover that or I will add some to a tie for when I would like to let more light in. As shown by my quick sketch. What do you think?

The scribblies are where the flowers would go.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy 2011! I hope everyone had a great night least night be it having gone out partying all night or crafting away until midnight or sleeping! I ended up going to my friend's party, dropping off the cupcakes, hanging out for about 30 minutes then heading to my place to chill and craft. I'd love to give you some awesome New Year picture, but I don't have any so here's a giraffe.

Picture by my friend Katie!

I'm also working away at one of my ongoing projects that I am determined as all getup to finish this year. I've been making paper cranes for as long as I can remember and I've always wanted to make 1000 cranes in one year and string them together. Now I've made well over a thousand over the past however many years, but either gave them away, they were all different sizes, or left them places. I found a pack of 500 sheet of origami paper and bought 4 so I could make the cranes and some modular flowers. Since this morning I have fifteen cranes to show.

Now 'haw is she going to string all of those and not have them take up a ton of space' you might be asking yourself. Well, I hope this gives you some idea on the size of these guys. I can fit 24 in a foot!

The paper is 1 5/8 inches square. I'm planning on hanging these in along the ceiling about my stairs where the nutcase can't reach them. Or maybe I'll give them away. I don't know.