Craft Room Furniture! This is Finally Happening!

Hello! It's been a while since I've blogged. I'm afraid to look at how long. If you were reading my blog before, I'm sure you thought it was dead. I meant to keep blogging. I never meant to stop. But, I got very busy trying to be Utah's sole source of actresses between the ages if 17-35. I think I was in every community production In Utah County in the last year. If I wasn't, I saw it or knew someone in it. I got sucked into the vortex of community theater and almost the only crafting I did was sewing my costumes for productions. 

Recently, I was Ms. TeaVee in Willy Wonka. Using a mash up of vintage patterns, I made this dress: 

Anyway, I'm getting distracted. What I really came to post about is this disaster: 

Yep, my craft room. Sad, isn't it? And, this is after cleaning up for a while (a long, long while--and paying one of my kids $10 to help me). A huge part of it is that I have no workspace, so stuff ends up everywhere when I'm working. (Also, I have too much stuff, but I'm pretending that isn't a problem.)

Well, my friends, that is about to change! I recently came into a very cool couch and about $100. I want the couch to fit in this room so people can hang out with me while I craft, and the $100 is perfect for building a huge desk.

Last Saturday, David and I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore looking for kitchen cabinets to use to make this desk. We got a big fat zero, and they were more expensive than I was hoping. I could have cobbled something together, but it would have eaten my entire budget and nothing would have matched. Nothing would have matched! It was not working for me. So, on the way home I got the bright idea to look on KSL (basically the Craig's List of Utah--no idea why everyone posts there, but we do).

And there it was. Some guy remodeled four matching kitchens and was selling off the cabinets for $10 a piece. And he was home when we called! And didn't sound too eccentric! We were wrong about that last part, but that's okay. 

So, we go to this guy's house (which is upgraded in every possible way--the doorbell chime lasted longer than Beethoven's Symphony No. 9); he makes us remove our shoes to walk across the hardwood floors. Then we ride his elevator (yes, elevator) down to the walkout basement four car garage where he has the kitchen cabinets. We pick out six of them, and pay the guy. We was a perfectly nice normal guy. I'm not sure why he had an elevator, but I'll go with it. Our daughter was with us, and she thought it was cool. 

So, here they are, my new cabinets. 

The dude who sold them to us told us there was nothing wrong with them; that they were just outdated. Dude might have an elevator, but he was wrong about that. They are stinky--like old apartment smell--and greasy and damaged in spots. The hinges have plastic pieces that were breaking apart. There is some nasty gunky on one of the shelves that I am not even going to attempt to clean off. That thing is just getting replaced.

However, they are perfect for what I want them to do. More on that soon. Very, very soon. 

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Momma and Baby Knit Monsters

I was just about to start writing this post, and as some reconnaissance, I casually asked my daughter if she had a name for her knit monster toys. She told me no, and that she "didn't necessary like them that much." Ahhh, the fickleness of four year olds. And here I was, all prepared to rave about how much she loved these monsters. 

Direct quote after asking her about her monsters, "I'm getting super mad at you for not letting me [eat] anything." I'm sure I seem like the most horrible mother ever, making her wait 10 minutes to eat until dinner is ready. So, her dislike might have been influenced by her rumbling tummy and my horrible mommy meanness.

I love these monsters. If she doesn't like them anymore, I will start sleeping with them at night. I went to five different fabric stores looking for real wool felt to make their mouths. I carefully selected the yarn. I agonized over what type of eyes to use. I even had to use double pointed needles! Heck, I may even change out the yellow in my gray and yellow bedroom to pink and green to match, I'm so darn fond of these little monsters.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Grace Lace Beret

I knit this Grace Lace Beret to escape the deep, dark abyss I feel into when I graduated from college in December. The name of this abyss is "what in the heck am I going to do with this degree and therefore the rest of my life besides being a wife and mother which is awesome and all but not the whole sum of my existence because I'd really like to do things in addition to being a good wife and mother because most days kids make me want to eat my fingernails and bend my brain into itself except when they are being totally adorable and drawing cute pictures of flamingos (see exhibit A)?" This question is much too large, even for my newly enlarged, degreed brain. So, I quite naturally fell to knitting to ease my mind of such weighty questions. I knit a lot in January. A lot.

 Exhibit A (Courtesy of Aubrey)

I knit it twice. Because I am a contradiction. I hate figuring out gauge. I would rather guess. I know enough about the way I knit and crochet to know that I have a very tight gauge. So, I guess. Educatedly.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

The Bee's Knees Digital Scrapbooking Kit Freebie

New to digital scrapbooking? Never downloaded a digital kit before? What in the world are .rar files anyway? Get your answers here: How to Unzip Files So You Can Digi Scrap.

Apparently, I've gone too long without designing a kit. Shaunte, over at This Too Shall Pass has progressed to harassment in order to get me to design another digital kit. This is good, because I apparently need harassment levels of persuasion in order to get me motivated to do anything after graduating. While harassment isn't supposed to make you feel desirable, I feel privileged to be Shaunte's object of harassment. If she progresses to stalker I will probably never be able to deflate my ego.

(If you don't read Shaunte's blog, you should. She's the type of funny that makes me realize that my attempts at humor are. . .how can I be kind? . . .underdeveloped. Perhaps if I had gone the extra step and had five children like her instead of four, I would have gone that extra bit of insane that would have imbued me with the truly funny stuff--not that I'm commenting on Shaunte. Really. Just on me. But, it's too late now to add any more crazy to our house. I must be content with envying Shaunte's comedic ability and forever wishing I had her finely-honed thrift-store shoe-finding abilities.)

I'm also hoping that this kit will be helpful to another friend who is in charge of an girl's camp this summer. Their theme is centered around bees, hence the theme of this kit. It just so happened to work perfectly with Aubriana's Halloween costume from this past year. Even if you don't have a need for a bee theme, there are plenty of unrelated papers in this kit--I'm quite fond of the clouds and the chevrons.

So, cheers all around for my first digital kit in ages! I enjoyed making it--I forgot how much fun it is to have an excuse to watch endless TV and dink around in Illustrator. I hope you like it!

(Click to download)

Kit contains: 33 pattern papers, 1 set stitches, 1 overlay, 1 sheet honeycomb stickers, tags, 1 mask, 1 torn edge, 2 bee stickers, 2 flower stickers

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Halloween!

So, I stayed up sewing until 3:30 am on Sunday night. Maxton, really wanted to be Aang, from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I couldn't find any in the stores and for some reason, it didn't occur to me to check online until it was too late. This is cooler, because he's the cartoon Aang, not the live-action movie Aang.

So, of course, I didn't have a pattern, so this is hodge-podged together. The pants I based off a super easy pattern, then I added elastic around the bottom. The cape I sewed in one try, making up my own pattern, and same with the belt.

The collar took me four tries to get right (it's separate from the shirt). I'd never sewn anything like that, and I had to make my own pattern, so that was some serious trial and error. The shirt was a nightmare. The pattern I chose for the shirt was all wrong--the directions did not make any sense (or I was just not getting it, I'm going with the first because it makes me feel better), so I ended up just doing my own thing with it. But, it's done!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

The Pinterest Challenge--A Floor Lamp Make-Over

A little bit ago, Sherry from Young House Love got together with a few of her friends and issued a Pinterest challenge, the idea being to actually use Pinterest to inspire you to make something, and not just to glamour you like a time-sucking vampire with the pretty colors. Oooooo, pretty colors.

Surprisingly, I actually have used Pinterest a few times to inspire real-life projects. How is it that so many projects do not end up on the blog??? My sister and I spent a whole day once doing naughty things to t-shirts (like cutting them up and then not even sewing proper hems on them!) inspired by Pinterest projects. I guess most of those ended up belonging to Melissa, which is why they didn't show up here.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

More Photos from My Over-scheduled Summer

I'm going to have to reassess my evaluation of myself as a person who isn't very busy. This summer has been the most intense of my life. I have never tried to have so much fun in so little time. Note previous posts about Disneyland and Arches, plus all the little things, like a movie every week with my sister, craft day every week, hanging out with friends more, playing baseball for the older two boys, and then there are still four more majorish trips we have planned for this summer. Zion, Yellowstone, another family reunion and climbing Mt. Nebo. I swear, this is turning into a travel blog. Sorry, I swear I'll stop after the summer is over.

In the past few weeks, we went to David's family reunion. His parents and all their eight children, their spouses and then all the grandchildren gather every other summer--the only time we are all in the same spot. It's an event.

Some of my favorite pictures from the week:

Maxton playing the piano at the piano recital.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

UFO, I'm coming for you.

Over the past three weeks, I've been working on my unfinished objects. I'm killing them off, one by one. 13 out of 41 are done (although I don't thing everything in my unfinished box is on that list--I may need to do a little revising--still it's close enough).

Some of them have turned out cute. Some of them, not as cute. But, the most important part of this process is that they are done and I can either give them away (even if it's to the thrift store) or start using them or realizing that I'm not going to use them. Such is the way of the things I make. I'm pretty sure that Aubrey does not like the dress I finished for her.

Anyway, here's the list as it looks so far.

Spray paint frames
Tree tote bag
Pettycoat skirt
Ampersand
Yellow rosette pillow
Patches on jeans
Long blue tank refashion
Box purse
Let out Citrus halter
Sew pom pom on poncho
Crochet tan bag
Blue and brown crochet hoodie
White floaty scarf
Pink shirt refashion
Wrap around vest refashion
Crochet fingerless gloves
Repair pink and grey hair flower
Hexagon quilt
Thanksgiving wall hanging
Rehang crochet butterfly in kitchen
Garden quilt
Grandkid silhouettes
Gold sweater
Yellow flower/pink flower/pink felted flower/purple headband/pink cuff
Curtains
Green knitted buckets
Painted linen skirt
Blue serving stand
Braided rug
Mom's messenger bag
Santa Claus wall hanging
Repair grey and pink hair flower
Grandma Jensen quilt--blues and purples
Crochet beaded bag
Butterfly embroidery
Wool scarf
Cross stitch Noah's Ark
Blue and Pink diamond quilt
Orange and green diamond quilt
Mom's Christmas present albums
Bag embroidery

Now to the good stuff. Pictures.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

In which I Go to Disneyland

I keep thinking about my blog and how much I want to update it. I keep doing 10 projects in steps and rotating them in such a way that I never finish one project. Ever. I have some really cool things to show you. Probably one or two more cycles through my rotation and I'll be exploding with things to show you.

In the meantime, we went on a trip to Disneyland last week or so. It was my kids' first trip. We didn't tell them we were going--which was so fun! We picked up the older two from school and left. It was literally snowing huge snowflakes as we left. In MAY! I was never so glad to leave.

I had a huge bag of activities for the kids to do in the car. Every 30 minutes (I brought a timer), they got something new out of the bag. I'll do a post with a list soon. It worked amazingly well. Almost no whining.

We decided to only go to Las Vegas the first day and stay overnight there (about a six hour drive). We drove with the kids down the strip and let them see all the cool hotels. We saw the volcano going and the fountains in front of the Bellagio. Nice timing.

Then, we woke up and drove the rest of the way to California. We went with my parents and my youngest brother, Ty, and we all rented a house. It was a great vacation--you know, all the regular vacation cliches. Which is why the rest of this post is going to be photos with a tiny bit of commentary.

Maxton waiting to leave the Las Vegas hotel.

 

The kids getting a bit restless now. We did eventually leave.

Griffin lying on the bed of nails at the Discovery Science Center.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Make It Your Own--Northridge Publishing

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to film with Kristine McKay from Northridge Publishing. It was so much fun to be in front of the camera and I hope I don't seem too goofy, shifty-eyed or nervous. I had a blast, and here's one of the segments we filmed.

Many thanks to them for having me!




And the super-sassy photo of Aubrey I took with her in the skirt (which weirdly printed up backwards on my printer the morning of filming, but I didn't have time to print a second, not-backwards version):

And, a close up of the owl:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Well, Almost Two Out of Three Isn't Bad. . .

Well, instead of just whining about my broken things, like I did in my last post, I decided yesterday to, you know, do something about them. I'm really good at whining, and you know what people say about following your passions. But there sometimes come times when you have to stop whining and do something about your situation.

Part of the proactive stance was forced upon me. Aubrey has discovered Netflix watch instantly on my iPod Touch. This is bad. I showed it to her once in desperation for a little time to do some school, and she figured out how to get there on her own. Now she will use any means necessary to watch. Yesterday, we got in a slight tussle over the iPod. She was reaching for it, I was on the laptop, I was trying to get it first, and the screen took a nosedive backward and broke its spine, from which it would never recover. It was still basically functional, except for the part where the screen wouldn't stay up unless propped against the wall.

This is Aubrey today. I'm using our point and shoot. This reminds me why I never, ever use it to take photos of the children. The delay is like 20 seconds. It's pretty much useless for shots of toddlers. Although this one cracks me up. And yes, she is eating a cookie in my bed. This is even my side of the bed. I live under the thumb of a tyrant. Someone send help.

I really thought I had this parenting thing down until I had my younger two. I was a fool.

Oh yeah, the point of all of that is that I have a new laptop! I spent only about 8 hours (maybe more?) a day on the thing, and I just don't want to sit at a desktop for all of that. My bums falls asleep. Between all the school and the blog and the general surfing of the net, I'm always on the thing. It's a HP Pavilion dv7-4061nr Entertainment Notebook if that means anything to you. It doesn't really to me. I just like that it turns on and the hinges hold up the screen. They seem nice and sturdy.

Pretty, huh? It's actually got swirly, wavy things along the back. I kinda wish it was pink or light blue, but I can deal.

On to the almost 2nd thing I fixed. My sewing machine! I got it out and wiped all the dust off of it. I got out the foot petal and the cord. It looked like this:

Not good.

I took off the bottom and there were two little screws with metal bits (shoot, should have taken pictures). I unscrewed those, put the ends of the wires under them and screwed them back down.

Then I opened up the top of my sewing machine and took out all the things my children had stuffed down there. There were a few Cheerios, a crayon, a hair band, and even a pen (!?!). I turned it upside down and shook it a bit. Then I cranked it a bit to see if turned. It seemed to do ok.

Then I plugged everything in, and pressed the foot petal. Success! Everything looked like it was moving correctly. Except. . . something still didn't seem quite right. Here's my machine. It was manufactured in the late sixties in all probability (from my internet research).

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Oh yes, where is my foot? I have no idea. Did my children take it off and lose it? Does my mom still have it? Will I be able to buy a replacement one if I can't find it? (It's not in my sewing things, I already scoured them). Yes, I have fixed my sewing machine, but I still can't sew with it. So, I'm only counting it 1/2 fixed.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Joint Birthday Party! Cake Pictures Abound

Last Saturday, we celebrated Aubriana's and Graham's birthdays. I'm thinking celebrating them together is going to be a common occurance, with my nephew Graham's birthday being just two days before Aubrey's. I was hoping he would be born on her birthday (also my parents' anniversary), but nope.

Aubriana turned three and Graham was turning one. Melissa and I spent all of Friday doing their cakes together. Melissa is fantastic at baking. Seriously, she is so talented. She baked this delicious Devil's Food cake. Let me tell you, it was almost like brownies, it was so rich. It wouldn't come out of the pan though. It also didn't shape well. It was a delicious pain in the rear end, but we made it work.

I had been wanting to do a purse cake for Aubrey, but we sort of wanted the cakes to coordinate. David suggested the tool box for Graham, and it was perfect! Melissa wanted a smash cake for him, so we made it much smaller than the purse cake which was to feed everyone. She baked the cakes, made the frosting, helped me stack them, frosted them, and then she had to leave, just when we were finally ready to go the fondant part, so I ended up finishing all that up on my own.

This post is loaded with pictures of them, so beware.

Ok, here we have a shot of them together. Remember the cake that was being so difficult? That is part of the reason Graham's cake is the leaning tower of toolbox.

The hammer and all the other parts are fondant. We have a great little cake shop in town, which is where I bought the food-safe silver paint. Actually, I didn't buy it. David bought it. *Love*. That man is so nice to me.

I knew I wasn't going to have room to pipe "Happy Birthday" so I made the cute little flags. I love how they turned out.

Graham's has little hinges in the back.

Aubrey's cake was so fun. I went a little crazy with it. I wish I had done the handles a bit differently, but I think they still turned out all right. I did all the little stitching with a knife, and then later, a fondue skewer.

It's complete with a zipper on the top.

I rolled fondant to make her name, then decorated it with little flowers I cut out with a cookie cutter. For some reason, I didn't notice the drifting flower that's supposed to be on the A. I moved it for the party, but alas, the cake has been eaten, so no more picture opportunities, so the rouge flower is in the permanent cake record.

When Aubrey woke up, we told her happy birthday. She stumbled around for a second and then wished us both a happy birthday. Later in the day, when we told her happy birthday, she would respond, "Happy Birthday, Aubrey." By the party, she was saying thank you.

The party was great. I love having people over. I made bbq beef for sandwiches for dinner.

We sang to Aubrey and she blew out her candles.

Graham was a different story. We sang to him seperately.

Here, Melissa approaches with the cake. He looks apprehensive, but interested.

Oh, look, he likes it.

. . .

Oh look. He doesn't like it.

He was too upset after that to really eat it. I think it was the combination of everyone looking at him and singing. Poor little guy. He does the most pity-inducing lower lip stick out/quiver.

Then we ate cake. Aubrey stuffed most of the butterfly into her mouth.

She also got a ton of presents. I did three days of sewing for her. I'm planning a bunch of posts over the next few weeks to show you everything I did. She was completely spoiled.

Also, a huge shout out to my parents, who also celebrated 30 years of marriage on Saturday. They have always been a wonderful example of love and how to make a marriage work. They went for a hike together on Saturday, and look what they made. So so cute!

Linking Up Here:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

I think I'll have a hamburger because. . .

Moving is hard work.

At this point, I'm sure all of you are like, "Duh, we knew that."

So did I. It's a different thing to experience it all over again.

It's hard when you need things you don't have in order to have a prayer of putting things away. Remember all my fabulous finds at Savers, in this post and this post? I'm trying hard to find a home for them all of them. I know eventually I will have the shelves and console tables and the bookcases I need.

I've never moved and also tried to decorate. In our last place, we never really even got to hanging up pictures, since once the furniture was moved in, there wasn't much wall space left. Not with this house. There is so much potential and I'm impatient to have it realized, at least in the living room and kitchen.

We had a party at our house for David's birthday and it was pretty cool. You know, except for the fact that there's no furniture in our living room.

Miles also rubbed toothpaste on my downstairs couch while we were all distracted. Not that I really mind. After all, I'm pretty sure that someone saw Miles coming and decided to invent that fabulous stuff in order to preserve most of the sanity left in humanity.

I'm a poet and didn't know it.

Anyway, all that is to basically say, enjoy these pictures of Aubrey looking all ragtag while I work to get more things to show you! Love how her hair is sticking straight out.

Also, this photo shows perfectly her eye color. Natalie (check out her blog at getscatty.blogspot.com--you will be amazed!) and I were trying to decide what color they are. I guess the all encompassing one is hazel, but otherwise, I would have to say green-grey-bluish brownish. What do you all think?

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Share-A-Craft: Crystal Strawberries Quilt

Share-A-Craft is just as much fun as a tilt-a-whirl, but with less stomach upset and possible vomiting. Every Monday, I post a project of any type that I've recently or not so recently done. We'd love to see what you've been making too. Send me an email with your name and a link to your project at karah99 @ gmail.com. 
 
Well, last Friday I started an UFO challenge, and I finished a quilt. The crazy thing is, I was looking for another post (wondering if I had shown you another quilt) and found this one from August 21 of last year, where I say:

I also have a quilt I technically finished ages ago, but I hated the way I quilted it and started to unpick it. This week I finished unpicking it and started quilting it again, but didn't get too far on it. The nice thing about this project is that I already did the binding, sooooo, as soon as I finish quilting, I will be instantly done! Hopefully, next week I will finish. I have to say I'm pretty sick of quilting, lol.

Yep, that's the very same quilt that I finished last week. I bought fabric for it and for the purple/green quilt when I found out I was pregnant with Aubrey. I finished the purple one before she was born. The pink/green one, not so much.

I even found a picture of the fabric, which I bought in February of 2007. Isn't it so pretty?

Look, it's pregnant me, holding the quilt. Too bad you can't see the bump that is Miss Bree Bree.

I had always planned on doing this intensely complicated quilt for the pink/green one, from Quiltmaker magazine, the Nov/Dec 2000 issue.

I sewed it up and I was a little disappointed that it didn't have more contrast. I still love the pattern though. When I first quilted it, I did stippling, which is an overall, random pattern. It looked even worse, because the lines of the blocks were diminished. I unpicked it, and decided to do a simple stitch in the ditch. Simple meaning crazy complicated and time consuming and completely boring, which is why I stopped in the middle and never came back to it.

It turned out much better than the stippling, and I'm glad it's finally done.

Aubrey likes it too. Poor thing has been sick for ages. She has a gaunt looking face and swollen eyes. I will rejoice at the day when we are all healthy again.

I'm linking up at:





(Darn it, just realized those are supposed to be tutorials. Sorry about that!)

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.