I Toiled you so!

Made this cute purse for a friend. She is in charge of the teacher appreciation gifts at her son's school and asked me to donate. I love it, I wanted to keep it, she had to rip it from my hands! Just kiddin'.

All HALE!

Last night was GREAT!

We had a blast at the Shannon Hale book signing. It was so great to meet the person who writes the books I love. She was a very accessible person, sweet, friendly, funny. There was about 60ish people there, so it was a small group and we were able to talk with her and ask questions. Not me of course because I was so nervous I didn't have anything to say, but my friends had plenty to say. I brought Book of a Thousand Days for her to sign, my favorite title of hers. It's a wonderful book with a sweet and innocent main character that I just fell in love with.

Now my dilemma, do I read the signed book or invest in a different copy???

Mother's Day is taken care of!

I've posted before how I love to get kitchen gadgets and appliances, and other crazy "housewife" stuff for gifts, I do however like the stuff just for me too! I know it's a little early for Mother's Day, but my hubby has given me my gift early. I'm headed up to the Chicago area tonight to attend a book signing for Shannon Hale. If you haven't read her books you should they are wonderful. She writes Young Adult Fiction and Adult Fiction. I've only read her YA stuff and they are the kind of books I would read over and over again.

So tonight my friends and I are headed on a bit of a road trip. There's going to be good conversation, good books, and possibly good food (oh and NO kids!!!) what more can a Mom ask for?

I'll post tomorrow on how it went, I'm a book signing virgin!

On the agenda

Last week was spent finishing up projects for my daughter's birthday. Let's just say it was not a good sewing week for me. I waited until the last minute to even start one of the projects and after sewing it wrong 3 different times, and then having it be too small in the end I gave up and told her that one of her gifts was an IOU!

So...on the agenda this week is the IOU gift, it's going to be a strap for her new digital camera. Hopefully I can cut it the right length, get the interfacing to fuse correctly, and don't run out of the right color thread (told you it was a bad week last week!). Sometimes I wonder how long I've been sewing, has it been 26 years or 26 minutes? I guess it really keeps things real for me and let's me sympathize with my sewing students when they mess up on their projects.

Also on the agenda is a tote bag for a giveaway at a friend's school. She contacted me to see if I would donate to her cause. My dilemma was what colors to make it. I don't know who it will be going to so I decided on a neutral black and white palate with a punch of red for color. I got a remnant of fabric from my store yesterday for $1.07, and some ribbon with my 40% off coupon and I'm ready to work tomorrow.

On the agenda will also be making myself a wet bag for my cloth diapers. I found a great tutorial online and if it works as well as it says I'll share when I'm done.

So those are a few projects that I'm working on this week...what are you're plans for the week?

Going Green...Literally

I have to admit that I don't typically think too much about our environment. I'm not a recycler, I don't compost, I don't ride my bike to the grocery store. However being thrifty most of the time, by nature makes you environmentally friendly. I do cook a lot from scratch (not a lot of packages in my trash), I do buy at thrift stores and garage sales, I do hand down clothes to my friends (and vise versa), I do cloth diaper, and I do make my own baby food. So it's not like I'm an "earth hater" or anything I just can't keep my brain focused long enough to separate my garbage. My adult ADD is for another post all together!!

I did however manage to make a cute earth friendly craft this week. I love those toys that have the crinkly stuff inside that babies love. I've often wondered what they made them out of. I'm sure there's cellophane or some other great material in the middle of them, but I improvised. Inside my crinkly tab blanket is an empty baby wipe container.

First I cut the wipe container at the seams and squared it up. It ended up being about 9"x10".

Then I pinned the ribbon to the Minky

Then I sandwiched a piece of flannel between the Minky and the wipe bag

and sewed the whole thing together. My 7 mo old really likes it, and I have to say it's oobercute.

Not a bad project and ZeRo dollars!

linkin' to

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