Under Construction

Jam job

My sister's friend paid me to make 30 tiny jars of strawberry jam and package them up cute for engagement party favors. As I suspected making the jam was tons of fun. Packaging was sort of annoying.

There must be a better way but the best I came up with was to use a rubberband to temporarily hold the fabric "hats" on the jar while tying with string. Worked well enough.

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I'm pretty sure all internet posts today are supposed to be about Mother's Day. So here's a cute photo of my mom, the girl who made me a mom, and my sister getting ready to go to a bike race.

Nothing says Mother's Day like the Tour of California bike race. Am I right?

 

 

Hearts + river rocks

Last weekend we collected rocks at the river.

Biscuit painted hearts

Then added initials to the back and we sprayed them with a clear acrylic.

And, in typical Biscuit fashion, she wrote notes on envelopes and enclosed a stone and a package of smarties. All set for Tuesday.

Unrelated to giving folks rocks for Valentine's Day but related to love, we got this Knock Knock brand note pad from a friend for Christmas.

It's really perfect for lunchbox notes. If you like to put notes in lunchboxes I'd recommend it.

Resolved

A month (and a few days) late I think I've finalized my New Year's Resolutions. In fact, this might be my new timeline for resolutions--start thinking about it on New Year's and finalize the list by my birthday.

Or maybe I'll work off the Chinese New Year. After all it's MY year this year. I'm a Dragon. A story on NPR tells me this is very lucky so I'm feeling lucky this week. Probably because I am very lucky in so many ways.

So, resolutions. For 2012 (or age 36) (or the year of the dragon)

• Prettify the house and conduct a photoshoot of each room as though I was going to be on a design blog (which I'm totally not)
• Run a half marathon
• Use up my stash of Crest whitestrips
• Do some sort of social crafting monthly (teach a sewing class, get together with a group of friends to craft etc)
• Launch the quilt project I keep thinking about and not acting on

Should be a pretty good year, eh? Better fitness, whiter teeth, cuter house and plenty of crafting. Just perfect.

Anything but not everything

I saw a poster on Pinterest that said

"You can do anything but you can't do everything."

So true.

Crafting, reading, exercising, keeping up with friends, cooking, working or, you know, parenting. Options abound but there isn't time for all of them. This month seems to be dominated by dishwashing (apparently we failed in our attempt to fix our dishwasher), reading (Blackout and now All Clear by Connie Willis) and planning/thinking without a lot of doing. 

The only exception seemed to be yesterday when I actually got something done (along with the dishes). A good 10 years after my mom gave me an album to keep all our annual holiday cards/letters I finally started using it.

For the 2011 page I took an idea from Ali Edwards and punched squares out of all the cards we received to make a collage.

This was the perfect solution to my inability to throw away received cards but my lack of desire to store  said cards for decades.

It was kind of a kick to look back on old letters (those I could find anyway)

And to rediscover the card I made in 2003 when I decided to try linoleum printing with an overly complicated design.

This should be any easy album to keep up and it's nice to have that easy project checked off the list.

Now I'm going back to my book. Maybe I'll turn some of the ideas into projects in February.

This and that

We spent the last few days at the beach with my family. Kind of a random trip but fun to hang out with my parents and sister and the weather and scenery were amazing.

Before the beach, Christmas was fabulous. Biscuit outdid herself with beautiful gift making (mini "art" quilts for the grandmas, painted ceramic mugs for the grandpas and dad) but the funniest were the painted, wood flags.

She painted these over the summer on leftover wood plaques. They've been in a drawer for months but apparently she pulled them out and wrapped them up for gifts. I had no idea till they got opened and it was hilarious. Especially all of us trying to identify the state flags. "This is Ohio," she'd state confidently. "Ummm, I'm pretty sure that's New Mexico" I'd suggest. We were probably both wrong. My mom's was labeled on the back "I think this flag is Texes." It wasn't.

These are the things I brought home from the beach. I'm almost as obsessed with seaweed as I am with lichen and moss.

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I've been in the mood to go running/jogging. This morning was super foggy and perfect for a run/jog so I went. I think it's time to get back in shape. Perfect with the New Year.

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While I was running (jogging) I imagined a project I'd like to make. Jogged to Michael's but they were sold out of the supplies I needed. Typical, right? Jogged home and Mr. H had precisely what I needed and I was able to make a prototype in about 15 minutes. It's exactly what I had in mind. Don't you love that? Photos once I've got it perfect.

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Our house is in a completely unbearable state. Messy, cluttered, ugh. We spent the day after Christmas dismantling the diswasher (completely!) It works again but we never caught up on dishes. Then we went on a trip so now we're behind on laundry. Plus the holiday stuff. Tomorrow I plan to put away/clean/purge and start the new year fresh. Biscuit is freshening the windows with wintery snowflakes.

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Oscar's a grouch. I'm guessing teeth but there's a touch of a cold and he's trying to learn to crawl and that's a lot to do when you're a baby. He's generally SO happy we don't quite know what to do with him when he fusses. Fussy babies are a lot more work.

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Biscuit is hilarious. She's also endlessly hungry and clumsy. Growth spurt?

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I'm trying to finish up some scrapbooking projects so I best sign off for the evening.

Happy New Year!

Christmas 2011

First off, thank you ALL for the super nice comments on the contest post. It seems the secret to getting comments is awesome free stuff. Still, it was nice to hear from some readers who don't usually comment. I was online right at midnight 12/23 and used random.org to choose among the 38 comments received. The winner was #4, Becky from Hilton Krew. I emailed her and promptly logged off in favor of making more Christmas gifts and some unbelievable cinnamon rolls. So yay for Becky and as a consolation prize for the rest of you awesome folks may I recommend a recipe? I know pretty much everyone reads The Pioneer Woman but I bought her cookbook for a Christmas gift and first photocopied the cinnamon roll recipe. It's also online here. They are SO GOOD. Make yourself some! A pan of those and you'll totally forget you didn't win the book.

Christmas was great. Biscuit originally asked for an iPad, and iPhone and some other electronic she wasn't going to get but a few weeks before Christmas had a change of heart and asked for a Razor scooter (along with Skittles, Judy Moody books and a diamond ring ;) She got all those items but the diamond wasn't real ;).

This is the funniest photo of Christmas. We were all up for HOURS waiting for Biscuit. Finally, Mr. H woke her up at 8 am and she dragged herself to the livingroom. Talk about anticlimactic. But it all went up from there.

Hope yours was merry and bright. More later when I can be more coherent but Monique asked who won the contest and I realized I hadn't posted the winner!

Miniature

Inspired by the work of an artist we saw at Renegade who used model train miniatures in her work, I made some little scenes in glass vials.

They're ornaments.

Those little figures are so expensive at the model train store so I was glad I could make a second ornament for friends representing their two boys on the scooters they got this year.

The top one is for us. Biscuit in the blue dress and a more grown up Oscar on our tire swing. The bit of branch is from the tree our tire swing actually hangs from. The moss is from our sidewalk. I wonder how it will dry? I was too impatient to dry the moss before assembly so we might have mold by next Christmas.

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In other news, still 24 hours to enter the book drawing (I mis-wrote yesterday--it's open through the 23rd). It's so fun to see all the comments and I'm sorry I'm so lame about responding.

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I just finished a Christmas present that came out exactly like I wanted. It's so funky/cool. Can't wait to share it post holiday.

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Hope you're ready for Christmas if you're celebrating. I'm off to wrap and figure out what the jolly red guy is bringing Oscar.

 

A wrap

The giant $20 roll of white paper from the printing store has to be one of the best purchases I've made in the past 5 years. It just keeps going.

Add colorful tissue paper snowflakes

Or crepe paper,  holiday napkins, doilies and label stickers

And you've got a pretty awesome, totally fun-to-do wrapping system. Biscuit and I have been wrapping fools and we're getting close to done (at least with the presents that are done--also still working on making gifts ;)

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Don't forget, there's still time to enter the book give-away below. Friends and family are totally welcome to enter as well (I know a few of you are reading). Deadline is tomorrow at midnight. It's been so fun to get comments from new folks, regular commenters and lurkers. Thanks so much, guys!

Stocking holders

You wouldn't be able to tell by looking but Mr. H and I spent a few days going back and forth on the design for these. I was 100% minimalist. Mr. H was in favor of more embellishment. We ended up with the chimneys and they're perfect. Even better than what I had in mind.

Four holders, four woods.

Mr. H picked beautiful straight grain fir.

I picked plywood. The kids got cherry and quartersawn white oak. Biscuit wants her silver tree back.

And I made a little glitter science display. Mr. H's friend who is a science teacher thought it looked very dangerous. He knows how hard it is to clean up spilled glitter.

I love those tiny Erlenmeyer flasks.

Candy!

I kind of loving having our Christmas tree up. So sparkly.

I always want to host a holiday making party and always run out of time but not this year. Last Friday I had a few friends over for candy making. It was so fun and much easier than hosting a crafting party. Granted, I invited folks only 24 hours in advance but three friends came over and we spent 3 delightful hours in the kitchen making

Peppermint Bark (so good!)

Caramel

Peppernuts (four QUARTS!--now I remember why I always halve the recipe)

Mulling Spice packets (aren't they pretty?)

Rum Balls (a friend made these with her family recipe)

Really, so fun. And productive!

They even did the dishes.