So much to do, so little time!

My plan was to write at about two post a week. It would seem I have overestimated to amount of time I would have in the day to get things done. I haven’t even sewn or crochet a single thing till last week. I really needed more drying mats for my sons bottle warmer. It took all day to make 3 but I finally got them done. They are made with a cute flannel prints I had left over from making his baby items. I am not sure on what the filling is because it was given to me from a friend. I can tell you that it is a quilt batting. Not the big puffing loose feeling kind, it is thinner but more heavy duty. My knowledge on quilt materials is very sad so I hope my description wasn’t too confusing. I thought about putting bias tape around the edge but instead I top stitched it.I didn’t have enough time to cut and iron the bias tape.

In the time I have been gone my son has turned one and last week he had his surgery done for his cleft palate. It wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. The first night was very long. The second day he was playing and having the time of his life.It also has finally cooled off enough that we can enjoy being outside instead of melting after five minutes. It has been a Hot summer here. Soon will be the time for soups and hot drinks. Fall is my favorite time of year. I’m hoping to get a pumpkin to cook and turn into yummy things.

Advertisement

Snow is Finally Here

After a long warm December and most of January the snow has finally come. I was starting to be convince that it never would and the weather would stay warm till next winter. Yesterday was the best kind of snow. It had just the right mixture of water and ice that we could build just about anything. We ended up building an igloo and a snowman.

 

The pup decided to attack the snowman so he lost a few things. Though it was entertaining when early in the morning the horse tried to eat him. Thankfully the snowman was just out of her reach. It was nice to finally have snow. We have been making a ton of soup and hot cocoa. MMmmm Soup!

Shop Remodeling

Some time last year I wrote a post on fabric yo yo’s. I was playing with them to see what else I could do with them. These cute little bits of fabric make cool barrettes. Adding a few buttons to them make them look a ton better. I always find it interesting how one simple adjustment makes a huge difference to a project. I am making as many of these as I can so that I can put them up in my shop.

I have been working on making new and old items to add to my Etsy shop Craftyloondesigns. My plan is to build up a massive inventory so I can take them to the market we have around here. I am honestly really excited about it. I will be adding over the next couple of months some really awesome projects. The old items that I will be making more of are the rice hand warmers, cup sleeves, and earrings. This style of hair clip and maybe another will be some of the new additions to the shop. I am also now taking custom orders based off of what I already have or have had in the shop. I can do other custom orders based off most of the things I put up on here.

Due to all of this remodeling, my Etsy shop is a little bit lacking of products. For that I apologize and hope you will keep visiting. Like I said before you can send me a custom order. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.

Homemade Gifts

Every year for Christmas I make some of the gifts for family members. This past Christmas I wasn’t able to do all that I wanted to. Maybe I’ll learn my lesson and start making gifts now for this year. HA HA or Not.

The two biggest projects I made was an apron and a hunting bucket seat. I sadly forgot to get a picture of the apron. I am happy with the way it turned out. It is a full length apron that ties around the neck and waist. The bucket seat was without a doubt a challenge for me. I have never made anything like it before and was limited on time. If I make this again I need to improve on the pockets that go around the side of it and maybe figure out a better way to attach them to the bucket. The seat part of the bucket came out a lot better than I thought it would. I even added a pocket in the seat for hand warmers. A warm bottom is important.

I found some cute unfinished wooden pieces that I just stained and then painted. I really like them and want to make more. I may even learn a bit about wood working. The box is meant to be a bug box. The metal at top is perfect to keep small bugs inside the box. The fire  truck and boat are both banks. I had also helped make about 5 knot blankets. The one in the picture was made for my husband. These type of blankets are easy to make. They just need a lot of space depending on the size of the blanket. The pink rug with Minnie Mouse was made for my niece. I used fabric paint on the bottom to help give it some friction so that it won’t slide as badly on the floor. The man card bottle opener was made by my brother-in-law. It fits inside a wallet like a credit card. Its really cool and I had to share it with you all.

Challenge Accepted!

A couple family members have brought me heavy duty cardboard tubing and thick flat pieces. They want to see what I can make out of them. I have accepted this challenge and I am going to attempt to make a play house for my 2 year old niece. I have a few different ideas on what i’m going to do. Now that I have a dremel tool  this projects is not going to be a tough as I thought it would.

So far I have a two room base set up. I am thinking of using the tubing as doors, more for support, then make a door our of regular cardboard. I am still unsure on how to attach all the pieces. I will need to make the playhouse so that it can be taken apart for moving and/or storage. I still have no idea how I am going to do this just yet but hopefully I will come up with something. I was thinking of using tape but that would make it difficult to move. I still have details I need to work on. Hopefully I won’t need to make the base smaller. I really like the set up I have going on at the moment. I will be keeping y’all in the loop on this one. What do y’all think of my plans so far?

Christmas Countdown

I try to make some of my Christmas gifts every year. This year is going to be kind of sad because of my son being born and then moving across state lines. My sister in law loves to tell everyone how many days are left till Christmas eve. I would rather go shopping with my husband than hear her tell me how many days I have left to finish all the projects I have going. I have a feeling I will be spending the last two days locked in my room.

The most complicated one hasn’t even been designed yet. I haven’t the slightest clue how I am going to make it. I would love to tell y’all what I am making and show off tons of pictures of every thing but you will just have to wait till after Christmas because my family members are sneaky. Very very sneaky. The kids keep trying to find the hidden gifts. One year they will outsmart me but hopefully its not this year.

During the holidays we bake a ton of cookies. After a day or two of making all the of cookie dough, mostly sugar cookie, we spend an entire day cutting out cookies and covering them in sprinkles. Some of you may have the image in your head of a few cookie trays and a couple different sprinkle containers. Nope, we fill a rather large table up with sprinkles and cook at least 10 batches of sugar cookie dough. This is not counting the 8 batches of chocolate chip, 2 of m&m, and 4 of peanut butter blossoms. I am fairly certain that I am missing one. We bake sooo many cookies. We give out a ton of them to friends and family as gifts or munches. After the oven gets backed up and there are no more cookie sheets left the kids scatter. I ended up making cookies alone. This year our sprinkle stash is low. We usually have a bunch more.

I can’t wait to share with y’all all the projects I have been making these past couple months. Some of them are pretty darn cool. If I don’t post again before I wish y’all a Merry Christmas.
What gifts have you made for Christmas and when did you start making it or them?

Christmas Candy Gifts

It has been a while since my last post. These past few months have been a little hectic. Adjusting to the little one and relearning how to do just about everything has been a challenge. Now that we are closer to family things should be a little easier. Though no matter how challenging things get he is beyond worth everything.

My mother in law and I were trying to come up with a good gift idea for a few friends. After a couple hours of us going back and forth on ideas we both remembered seeing these candy sleighs on Pinterest.  I don’t know about any one else but I am slightly addicted to the web site. Though we both thought about these candy sleighs and decided that they are the best gift idea. I also remembered seeing reindeer made out of candy canes that are really cute.

The sleighs are made with candy canes, kit kat bars,  Hersey’s miniatures and some ribbon. We didn’t read the instructions on the web page, come to think of it we didn’t even go to the web page. We just looked at the pictures and hot glued things in place. We also added a cute tag with a bow on the top of the sleighs. The reindeer were a lot simpler, not saying the sleighs were difficult, but the reindeer have less things to attach and less glue. We used pipe cleaners, cute fuzz balls, and eyes for these. I mixed the colored pipe cleaners for each one so that there was more color to them.I could also say I did that because I was playing with it all.

I had a lot of fun putting these two crafts together and would love to make some more if I have the time. I don’t think that I will with the big list of projects I have to get done. It seems that with everyday a new project is added. How many of y’all are making some gifts for Christmas?

 

New member to the family

A couple weeks ago my husband and I welcomed the new addition to our family. We are both very happy to have him. We named him Killian because we really wanted a Gaelic name and this one was the name that we fell in love with.
We sadly haven’t been able to use the cloth diapers yet. They fit well just they keep covering his belly button and its not fully healed yet so when I put him in them his belly gets really wet and more crusty than usual. But hopefully in a week I can start using these awesome cloth diapers. We have mostly pockets, but we also have some flats and prefolds. We just need more covers for them.
Before he was born I didn’t think I would need a lot of burp cloths. I was wrong, very very wrong. First chance I get I need to make some more, and stash them everywhere in my house and car. I have a feeling that four wet bags are not going to be enough. I have added them to my “need to get soon” list. Some of the things I thought I would need but don’t really use are mittens, hats and bibs. Though now that fall is finally here I will be able to use the hats and mittens. Before yesterday it was too hot to have him in anything but a thin shirt.
One of my favorite things we have is this rocker bed like thing not sure exactly what is it called but it is a life saver. Without it life would be way more difficult.

Rice Hand Warmers!

The cold weather months are fast approaching, and I truly cannot wait to pull out my throw blankets and hot tea. I believe that the cold weather is soo much better than the heat. Though if it is going to be extremely cold then there needs to be snow on the ground. There is no better way to brighten up a sad cold winter day than chucking a large cold snow ball at your husband and starting a snowball fight. I must admit, I may be the one that starts these fights but I rarely win. Even when I do I am convinced that he lets me.

Red & Blue Floral Rice Hand Warmers

One of these days that we were playing in the snow, I wished that I had something to help keep my hands warm while making snowballs. A friend of mine suggested that I fill a sock with rice and toss it in the microwave. I really didn’t want to use a sock so I started working on a pattern that would fit in my hands and pockets. The very first set was just a bit big but that didn’t bother me. I fixed the pattern up and made a bunch for family members. They love them, my grandmother who is in her 90’s always has cold hands so she uses her set to keep them warm. My In-laws who still have 4 kids at home also use them to keep their hands warm when it is cold outside. My mother-in-law tossed a couple of these hand warmers in the freezer to use as a cold pack for small injuries. This also works well when heated. My niece who is 2 is always getting hurt. That girl is more a clutz than I am which is pretty bad. I personally like to stuff them in my pockets. This is great for days when you forget your gloves or always were finger less ones.

Tons more rice hand warmers right here!

Black & Yellow Geometrical Rice Hand Warmer

After making and using these hand warmers I decided to make a few more for the shop. You can find them Here! These cute hand warmers have become my most popular item and honestly I can see why. They are very versatile on who they can be bought for. They could be given to someone you love, someone at work/school, or even someone that you are not sure on what they would like. These lovely rice hand warmers are a good way to say thank you or I hope you have a warm winter. They are also great to buy for yourself. You only need to toss them in the microwave for a minute to heat them up, or you could keep them in your freezer if you want to use them as a small cold pack for small injuries or summer months.

Black & Red Dragon Rice Hand Warmer

Cloth Baby Book

A couple years ago I went out shopping for baby themed fabrics. After combing thru all the different prints I found one that was unique in comparison to the rest. It had book pages and instructions on how to put it together printed on it. So I figured that I would give it a try. I never had the chance to get started on it and eventually it ended up lost in my fabric stash waiting to be put together. Recently I re-found the fabric mixed in with everything else.

With a new found determination, I started putting it together for the little one that should be here any day now. 😀 The pattern was for a Mother Goose book with some of the cutest pictures and rhymes. My favorite page is the pirate ship. I decided not to put the quilt batting in the front and back piece like the instructions said to. I had run out and did not want to wait till I could get to the store to be able to finish the book. It still turned out very nicely though. The cover is slightly larger than the rest and it is a bit off centered, but that just gives it a bit of its own umph. Plus it was the first time I had made one and all my first projects have their own bit of character to them.

After I made this book, my mother-in-law gave me a box filled with a few of my husbands old baby things. To my surprise I found a fabric book that my mother-in-law or her mother had made. This one is all about dinosaurs. It is really cute and I am happy she gave it to me. I love books and can’t wait to share these two with my little one. It will also be really nice that he will be able to play with and eventually read the same book my husband had at his age.

Even though he won’t really be able to understand fully we plan to read old classic books to him. Some of my favorites are Sherlock Holmes, Treasure Island, and The Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I hope he will grow to love reading as much as my husband and I do. Are there any old classics that you love to read?