Christmas Purse

Are you tired of hearing about my Christmas sewing? Here's the last post. I made this purse for my friend Lorelei. She likes when I send her my old purses, so I figured I'd be nice and make her one specially. I've improved a great deal in my skillz since I last sewed her a purse. Side note: not only have my sewing skills improved, so have my blogging skills apparently. What was with the spacing? Also, I still have the headband and the shirt I'm wearing in those pictures. You probably didn't click the link until now to see the shirt did you? I knew it. 

It's a modified version of this pattern. I made it square, not rounded, and the bottom is flat like a tote bag so it stands up on it's own. The fabric is fake suede again. I bought tons of it. I like the way the purses turn out, but get nervous I am going to burn it into my expensive iron. I'll be glad when my stock pile of this type of fabric is used up.

Since Lorelei is super cool she has an iPhone so I made her a pocket that hopefully fits an iPhone, I even looked up the measurements.

These are my new tags. I like them. Same font as before but on a fatter tag. Sorry for the blur. I'm still getting used to the different lens for my camera.

Okay, that's all for Christmas handmades. I promise.

Lauren

Feather Pillow

I finally figured out what to do with my pieced feathers. I did what I originally planned to do, make a pillow. This one went to my other sister in law. She's spunky so I figured she would like something with some pizzaz. 

 I tried to quilt the feathers with silver thread but it kept breaking so I settled for purple thread.

Check out this invisible zipper. The first one I accidentally broke/melted so this one is white. Only the pull showed though so I am quite impressed with myself. I tried to paint it with dark nail polish so it wouldn't show, but that did not work. So alas, the white zipper pull it is.  

Since Danielle lives in Las Vegas and has to travel with all of her presents I just gave this to her unstuffed with a $5 bill inside so she can buy stuffing when she gets home. I'm so dang smart, how does my brain not explode?

Lauren.

Embroidered Pouches

Merry Christmas peeps! I went into an embroidery kick this holiday season. Here are the two things I embroidered. 

The first is a camera accessories pouch for my brothers girlfriend Jaimie. I bought her some cleaning tools and a few lens leashes (a must have if you ask me) to go inside. I had fun embroidering the camera on the front. Jaimie likes bold colors so it was nice to use colors I wouldn't normally use (orange, neon green).

                 

I wrote "snap" "flash" "click" in cursive thread on it too. I really liked it, and kind of didn't want to give it away. 

Next up was my sister in law. I couldn't think of what to make her, but I kept thinking about pickles. She likes pickles, she even eats them when she runs instead of "eating" Gu. I decided to make her a pickle pouch. Inside are a bunch of things you would need if you were "in a pickle". Doogy poop bags, tylenol, chapstick, toothpicks, a few hair elastics, etc. 


After I sewed "In a pickle?" I felt like the In and a were too close so whenever I look at it I think it says "Ina pickle?" What do you think?

More soon on the Christmas front.

Lauren 

Pistachio Christmas Cookies

I wanted to share my favorite holiday cookie recipe. I make these pistachio chocolate chip cookies at least once during the holidays. They are delicious and the green pistachios give it a holiday color.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 package pistachio pudding mix (instant) 
• 1 cup chocolate chips

1. Heat the oven to 350, and lightly grease a baking sheet. 
2. Mix butter and sugar together until blended, then add eggs, milk, and vanilla. 
3. Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix a little bit. 
4. Add the package of pudding mix. Mix more. The flour and pudding mix should be just blended together, in other words, don't over mix the flour.
5. Add the chocolate chips and mix just a bit more. 
6. Put spoonful sized balls on the baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes until the bottoms are golden brown. 
7. Enjoy with a glass of ice cold milk or bring to a holiday party to impress your co-workers with your awesome baking skills. 

Enjoy!

Lauren 

Salt Dough and Wrapping

Charlie must hate Pinterest. I see lots of cool ideas and then force him to help me make them a reality. Last weekends project was salt dough gift tags. 

I used this recipe, but if you google salt dough you can find 100 recipes, mostly all the same ingredients, just of varying quantities. Some say to bake the ornaments/tags, but we let them dry for 2-3 days and they were fine. Baking them would make the tags puffy, and I wanted flat tags. 

Charlie did an excellent job of rolling out the dough, then he pretended to be busy so he wouldn't have to actually make any. He says he has crafting anxiety and I put him under too much pressure. We/I decorated the dough with rubber stamps. After cutting out shapes with cookie cutters and being sure to poke a hole for ribbon/string, we let them dry for 2 days. This wasn't hard because we were both sick and didn't really go in the kitchen very much. 

Once they were dry I painted them. Painting them makes the stamped effect stand out more. 

Then come the fun part; wrapping. In an effort to be eco friendly I primarily used old newspapers from the library as well as some raffia, ribbon and tissue paper (even though I swore to never touch tissue paper again). 

This one is my favorite. I don't have much else to post, because all the things I've been sewing are gifts and I don't want to ruin the surprises like I ruined my breakfast. 

Lauren 

Christmas Cards

Every year around Thanksgiving I remember that I like making Holiday cards to send to my friends and relatives. Every year thinking of a creative/new idea becomes more challenging. If memory serves me right I talked about this a few years ago. Yep! I did. Pinterest makes this a bit less challenging. The idea for this years card came from Pinterest. Before I show it to though I thought I'd show you the past few years cards. 

2007. To this day this one is still my favorite. Skates and mittens made from paper, blades of the skates are paperclips. My grandmother always e-mails to say thank you for each years card, and then says that this one is still her favorite. She still has it on her bulletin board in the kitchen.

2008. Reindeer thumbprints. I liked doing this one, but the individual painting of each card took a long time, and a lot of space. This was when we still lived in our tiny apartment and I remember cards being strewn everywhere. 

2009. I liked this card too. It was made with paper lunch bags so the back had the opening in it, which is where I put the picture of Charlie and I. This was the last year I used brads (the little star) on cards because I had to pay 20 cents extra for each card since the envelopes were not flat. What a pain.

2010. The next two I cut up to put in a scrapbook so just the main part is saved. This card took a while too. It's made out of four different potato stamps. I love potato stamping, you should try it.

2011. Last years card idea came from Pinterest as well. It's the bottom of a celery stalk.

2012. This years card is made from paint swatches. They were pretty fun to make as well. I always complain about the process but then I have fun making them, and I love to hear from my family that they liked the card.

Here is the picture we included this year. Thank you Jaimie for taking 100 shots of us. Charlie liked it this year because I blamed the bad shots on Penny, not him. And, if you really like us you can read our holiday letter. I'd never done one before, and felt kind of weird writing it because I thought holiday letters were only for people with kids, but it was fun to review the year and think of what was most important. Charlie made me cut out all of the funny parts. He also signed half of them with his full name, like he would sign a check. Jeeze! 

Lauren

Meteor Shower

Charlie, science nerd, knew there would be a meteor shower last night. He's very into outer space stuff. Remember? We drove to Hebron to a big piece of property that was going to be made into a development, but never got any father than clearing the land and building driveways. Perfect spot for viewing stars and meteor showers. I also brought my camera and a tripod.  After many attempts, a few of which I know meteors went through the area the camera was focused on, I realized that the shutter speed was too slow to catch the streaks of light. Oh well, I got some great shots of the stars. Enjoy!

Newfound Lake and Bridgewater where the lights are.

And us, bundled up. In case you're wondering faux fur hoods are great for keeping warm, but obstruct your peripheral vision when viewing meteor showers.

Have a good day!

Lauren