At last, an update! Holiday Craftiness!

I have totally been slacking on my posting, but I have a good excuse. After Mike and I returned from Utah, I started my first student teaching placement of my master's program at a great school for the Deaf. Hopefully, I'll get to posting about that later. For now, here are the as promised details of my holiday craftiness.

The first was a Secret Hollow Book that I made for Michael. I got the directions from the How to do Stuff blog and it was a pretty easy, though somewhat time consuming project.

I took a trip to the local used book store to pick out the book. I had a little trouble at first, because I wanted to get a book that was hard cover and large enough to hold something. It also had to be a book that would be expected to be in Mike's collection, but not one that he would be upset about not being able to actually read. I settled on a wine encyclopedia that was updated for 1980.


Without its dust cover on it was a simple white book with just a little bit of texture. I thought it would look nice on a shelf in the office. Then it was time to break out the decoupage and paint brushes which i had from a chair project I never finished several years previously...


After it was all glued together, I had the arduous process of cutting out the middle. This took several hours and made a lot of mess. But the finished project was worth it!



I filled it with several little gifts and wrapped it up. Mike seemed pretty happy about the finished project and hopefully will be used in our house for quite some time.

The next gift was another idea that I stumbled upon though some blogs I read. This one was from With this Ring, one of the many wedding inspiration blogs that I read. It was a really cute and really simple apron made from a tea towel. I decided this would be cute for Jenny as well as a good hostess gift for Cassandra who was going to be taking care of us while we were in Utah.

This is the one I made for Jenny, I bought some cute matching towels from Bed, Bath and Beyond so I could add a pocket to the original design and give her another towel to have that matched.

Here's the basic design.


The only sewing in the basic design was attaching the buttons. The ribbon is actually just tied around the buttons.

Here's the finished product with pockets. They were pretty simple to put on, but I think they add a lot to the design. I also gave Jen a bag of Wegman's loose leaf tea. Last year I gave her a reusable tea basket (which you use in place of tea bags). I like to try encourage good eco-friendly habits in my friends when I can- plus its handy and the tea tastes bettter!


I also decided to make Mike an apron. I didn't have a whole lot of time when I came up with this idea and I thought he'd like a full one, so I went with embelshing a pre-made one instead of making my own or another tea towel one.

I picked one up at my favorite store, Wegamans. I decided to embroider it, even though I've never done that in my life. My strategy was to print out a letter from Microsoft Word, copy it on to tissue paper. Then I pined it to the apron and use an embrodery needle I got with a set and some thread that I had leftover from my friendship bracelet days.

I think the finished product again came out really nicely!



I did a few other crafty things, but I think this is plenty of showing off for one day. :)
I'll try to be back soon with a little bit about our Utah trip and goings on in my life right now. Take care everyone!

The engagement.... :)

I have already had to tell this story a million times, but here it is once more so I can say to future questions, "please refer to my blog". :)

And to answer it before anyone else asks, nope, we don't have a date yet! Except for maybe February 29th. Hah. (I am totally loving all the questions though :) As my grandma said, I can be heard smiling over the phone line. )

It all started Christmas eve day. It began a little rough with a 6 am wake-up to ambulances and police at my house. My grandfather and grandmother from Florida were up visiting and my grandfather had fallen when he got up that morning. He was taken to the nearest hospital where he, my mom and grandmother spent the rest of the day. It turns out he had a small bleed in the brain/stroke called a ...(Corey, insert correct terminology here). Many of the Christmas day activities then passed to me, not to mention my last minute gift making and wrapping. I was a little stressed.

Mike and I had planned to spend a little time at my house that night then go to his mom's to have snacks, sit by the fire and open presents. When I talked to him that afternoon and told him the story, he was concerned about exchanging gifts. I told him it would cheer me up and be better to keep things the way they were.

Mike came over that evening and had a few snacks so I be there when we did the traditional Christmas eve open one gift time. We always get Pjs. Ali was getting some that would match the American girl doll that she would be getting the next morning. Then we made our way to the door to go to Mike's mom's house. I slipped on a pair of clogs, but Mike grabbed my boots and brought the along. (Hmmm..)

We got in the car and Mike told me that my gift required a scavenger hunt. This wasn't completely out of the ordinary, I had made him do such things in the past for a gift. (but still... hmmmm..) I guessed in two guesses that we'd be heading to the local park, a place that we had spent alot of time together.

We arrived and I booted up. We had a lot of snow from a storm earlier in the week, but it had been raining all day so it was a little flat and soggy, but still pretty. It was dark and the houses around the park were prettily lit. There was no one else around. We started tromping through the snow, Mike giving me seemingly random "hot" and "cold" directions. I kept looking at the ground for a gift of some sort, but there wasn't much to see except snow. Then he told me to stop and "Look over there" towards a house with a christmas tree lit up in front of it. I looked, and didn't see anything gift-like. He told me to look again. I looked, but only saw that christmas tree. Then I sensed movement behind me felt a tug on my jacket and turned around to Mike on his knee with ring box in hand!

He asked and I dropped to my knees too, kissed him and said yes! The ring is beautiful and I was never happier to have wet socks and wet knees.

Here it is :)



Now this gets to be a wedding planning blog too! Yay!

Tis the season to unleash my craftiness

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate myself and my classmates for surviving our last semester of classes, ever! Only student teaching left and I'm work bound (hopefully)!

That said, it is now time to focus on the holiday season and for me that means lots of fun, crafty projects! I've never had a lot of money for gifts, and I really want to give gifts that will be meaningful to the recipient. So often my solution is so make things! This winter I already completed gifts for my classmates and teachers, lovely little bags of homemade truffles! I even made the gift tags (getting good at paper crafts is another goal of mine). Here are some pictures of the progress.

Each person was to receive three homemade truffles. Ali was a big help with some of them, so there were a couple that I *had* to eat because they were a bit misshapen. The three kinds were chocolate truffle dunked in coconut, mocha truffle covered in white chocolate and dusted with hot chocolate powder and chocolate truffle dunked in hot chocolate powder.


I found these fun paper supplies, stamps and twine as well as some cute little gift bags at Michaels... definitely things that I can use again for crafting or classroom use!


I created some hang tags for the little gift bags :) I wanted a bit og a rustic/homemade look and I think they came out nicely! You can't really see in the picture, but in the bottom corner of each one is a punched out hand print. I thought that was a great little symbol for all of us aspiring signers! I ended up handwriting a little note on the back of each one.



The finished project! 17 gift bags of truffles :)



I have a few other crafty projects in mind, including simple fabric dolls for my cousin's daughters, and a dress for another cousin. There are a couple more, but I don't want to mention them just in case the recipient is reading...

Giving Thanks

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and was able to take some time away from the craziness of work or school to relax and enjoy life.
As is tradition in my family we spent thanksgiving in Syracuse with my Dad's side of the family. This is one of the few times a year when most of that family can be all together. It also was bitter sweet, the first holiday season without my grandpa. I also got to see my new baby cousin Molly. What a little cutie!

Then it was back home to have dinner with my brother, my sister in law, my family and Mike. That was really nice too. My brother and sister in law live down in NC, at least for now while he finishes training for the Marines. I definitely wish they were closer because I'd like to see their little family developing (Them, Toque the big goofy boxer, and two Chamelions, Chomper and Ducky... I can wait a few more years for nieces and/or nephews!).

Thanksgiving is about being thankful, so I wanted to briefly post a few things that I'm thankful for right now (not an all inclusive list or in any particular order)

1. It being almost the end of the last semester of college classes ever- Whee!
2. Having a family in which there is never a dull moment.
3. Getting the creative juices flowing- especially on designing stuff for Holly's wedding!
4. Having an amazing boyfriend out there in Syracuse who is working in a great real person job, taking care of a rented house that was damaged by years of old lady trying to fix things and working on his thesis at the same time! (if you're reading this- Get back to work!)
5. Having an amazing boyfriend who doesn't get too mad at me about bugging him to work on his thesis....
6. Google reader- informative and wonderful procrastination tool all at the same time! Plus great for helping me out with #3! (did i mention that I'm a teensy bit of a hypocrite when it comes to procrastination?)
7. One of the little kiddos I'm working with remembering the order of the alphabet all the way to N for two days in a row! Woo! Simple pleasures of being a teacher!
8. The count down to my Utah trip is down to less than a month! (more about this later!)

What are you thankful for?