week five: more doily love & a stitched tree

Woohoo!  

We made it through 5 weeks of cards: 2 designs each week, 10 of each design for a total of 

-----drum roll-----

100 cards!

This past weekend I took the boys' photo and ordered prints so we are good to go:

We might have done a little trespassing on a stranger's property to snap these pics, but I am just in love with the rustic look of this barn/shed.  And the red weathered door couldn't be more perfect for a Christmas photo shoot, right?  Even the vine growing up it looks like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, doesn't it?  In love!

After the shoot, I created these two cards that better match the rustic color scheme in the photo:

Just can't get enough doilies!

And a little stitched tree:

I'm going to run the card base through the embosser to give it a little more somethin'-somethin'.

And there we have it: 10 holiday card designs in 5 weeks!

Hope these cards were an inspiration for your own holiday card making.

Thanks so much for playing along with challenge.  Until next year...

week four {a week late}

Hey there!  

My profuse apologies for skipping out on last week's cards for the 

What kind of challenge host am I?

Actually, I was getting ready to do some hosting of the turkey variety and am using the excuse of being up to my eyeballs in stuffing and various other yummy items.

But now I can breathe a big 'ol fat sigh of relief (emphasis on the "fat" part--hello sweatpants!) and get back to business on the blog.

As I type, my Mac-Daddy

is hard at work backing up my whole system (yay Apple Time Machine!) so that I can box him up and drop him off to be looked at.  A week without my Mac makes for a busy day of drafting posts today.  Better get on with it.

Here are the cards for week 4:

That jumbo roll of snowflake washi is from Michaels' Recollections new line of tapes--love, love!

I created two versions of the next card just because I wasn't sure the stitching was worth the effort for the effect it gives:

So I decided on a little stamped banner with hand drawn string and ties:

The banner is stamped with a pencil eraser cut into a triangle--super easy to do!

I'm still on the fence.  What do you think: banners or stitches?

This week's cards (week 5) will go up on Wednesday.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

fall wreaths

I have a new love.  

Wreaths.

This week I've been working on some home decor items in preparation for Thanksgiving.  I had a wreath idea floating in my head: a combination of three I had seen on Pinterest:

I loved the burlap base of this one:

Source: 1.bp.blogspot.com via Michelle on Pinterest

The felt flowers on this one:

Source: craftinessisnotoptional.com via Michelle on Pinterest

And this twine wrapped letter:

Source: ejoym.blogspot.com via Michelle on Pinterest

I got to work on the funnest part: the felt flowers:

{Instagram pic}

{I wanted to do up tutorials for each of these myself, but time is scarce these days so I'll just link you to some great sites where you can find similar flowers}

**white rose**
**green and grey puffs**
**yellow and blue looped**
**chocolate**

Then I found a grape-vine wreath for $4 and change (we won't discuss the tacky felt turkey that was attached to it).

I fiddled and played with the burlap--cutting strips, making running stitch ruffles, twisting and turning.  It was just not working out for me.  A quick Google search turned up this burlap wreath tutorial.  How genius is that?  A wire wreath and some burlap strips!

I cut my strips to about 4 x 10", fan folded them and skewered them onto the hanger.

And then I ran out of burlap.

Necessity breeds creativity (or maybe it's "necessity is the mother of invention").  However it goes, I was not giving up on this project.  I went to my newly organized fabric drawer and pulled out some fabric.  I tore it into 1" by 6" strips and tied 2 between each section of burlap.

A fresh coat of paint on a little wooden banner that came on the ugly turkey wreath and a scripted "welcome" and the wreath was complete!

That fabric couldn't be a more perfect match for our purple door--running out of burlap was the best thing that could have happened to this wreath!

But now I had another little problem.  What to do with all those felt flowers I had made?

Make another wreath of course!

I still had the grape-vine base and a twine covered monogram.  I stitched up some muslin ruffles and hot glued it all together:

It's hanging on our dining room mirror:

Now back to more Thanksgiving prep!
Thanks for looking!

week three: doilies & envies

Happy Monday!  

The boys are home with me today in honor of Veteran's Day and being the {sometimes} poor planner that I am, I am drafting up this post while they run amok and shout orders out while playing Minecraft (they are totally and completely addicted!).  Needless to say this post will be a quick one.

With a houseful of boys, sometimes I just have to rip out the pink and pretties:

 Snowflakes seem to be a running theme with this year's cards.

That bitty envie couldn't have been any easier to put together.

cut a 2" square | mark the center on four sides | make a score line from center point to center point on three corners | fold three corners into center (star) and glue | round fourth corner | tie twine around center

How are your cards coming along?  Vero has been creating some gorgeous cards this month.  Please stop by her blog and give her some love.  Thanks so much for playing along, Vero!

gratitude

I always think of November as the month of gratitude.  

There is always, always something to be grateful for.

And I truly do believe the key to happiness lies in being grateful.

This month we are taking note of our daily gratitudes through:

the Happy Tapper Gratitude Journal app:

our family mini gratitude journal:

I also wish I could say I could keep up with the Instagram photo project #thirtydaysofthanksgiving, but I am really, really, really going to try to complete all of the #fmsphotoaday prompts this month (so far so good on day 4--you can see all of mine on my Instagram feed)

I'm also on the lookout for some inspiration for this year's Thanksgiving Day gratitude recorder.  Since I'm hosting Thanksgiving for the first time ever, I'm kind of tossing around the idea of having each guest write what they are thankful for on the tablecloth.  They can add the year and then we can reuse the cloth each year and add to it (that's assuming this year's food is yummy enough that I get to host Thanksgiving again!)

Here are our past gratitude projects:

2008

2009 (no blog post)

2010

2011

Are you doing anything special to record gratitude this month?

ps.  while we're on the topic, this is a beautiful book about gratitude:

check out the website  h e r e  for loads of inspiration

crochet wip's

The past few months I have felt like I have started more crochet projects than I have actually finished.

Do you do this?  I don't think I am alone {at least I hope not}.  Here's a few of the projects that have been on and off of my hook lately:

 Some ribbed fingerless mitts:

 or should I say, "mitt?"  The other is on my hook:

And neither is finished because the beautiful pattern calls for some crochet cables (I'm procrastinating on that part--cables scare me!)

I'm using the same pattern from above to create these stripey mitts:

 And wouldn't you know it, as I was snapping these pictures, I noticed a mistake:

I must have left out a row of single crochet.  Grrr.

And then we have this project:

the-never-ending-not-gonna-be-a-blanket project.

I decided on a new plan of attack after seeing BabyLove Brand's way of speedy crochet on Instagram.  This girl is amazing, and boy can she whip up blankets like nobody's business.   

Now I'm trying to crochet by the round: a bunch of circles, then the flowers, then the borders, then the attaching round.  Part of my trouble, though, is that I have very limited yarn in each color.

But, sadly that project up there is not my oldest wip.  At least I started that one this year.

These little cuties were started about a year ago as a Christmas gift:

Hmmm, well there's always this Christmas, right?!

After exposing all of my sad little wip's (and I'm sure I could find more around here if I just looked), I feel the need to leave you with this:

What???!!!??  A finished crochet project?!?

You betcha!  It's quick and so rewarding and you can find the pattern for it  h e r e.

To make the hanger detachable, I stitched the button to the ribbon so you can simply button it the star:

Wouldn't it be cute to make a little assortment of holiday/seasonally themed crochet motifs to change out?  I feel another wip coming on!

week two: merry snowflakes

Happy Monday!

Hope you all had a fantabulous weekend!

It's week two, and I have two cards to share with you today, thanks to a productive Saturday at the crafty table:

Creating with my favorite crafty partner + steamy coconut chai + Christmas tunes on the iPod = the perfect Saturday!

I can't resist a little pennant pin:

 Kept this one simple.  At this time of the year, simple is good.

How about you?  Did you craft up any cards this weekend?

Link 'em up in the sidebar so we can all ogle over them!