Swap Goodies!!!

I organized a fat quarter swap, which I have been horribly neglecting because of recent happenings. They have all been wonderful and patient! I received what was supposed to be 6 fat quarters yesterday, and it was SOOO much more!
Here is a group shot of all the wonderful goodies she sent! You see the 6 Moda!!! fat quarters in the middle. A gorgeous nest pin on the left. 2 sets of handpainted candles! A very touching card. And that cute pink purse on the right is for my niece Jorden!





As you can see Jorden loves it! She slept with it last night, she keeps her treasures in there, and has a picture of her sisters and mommy in there. The girl loves to accessorize! Thank you so much sewinglori!!!

Ugh, I'm back

Well, it seems the entire world got really sick around my birthday, and I haven't had much time to do anything. Well, so far everyone seems back to their old selves, and the weather has turned bitterly cold. So, you'll probably see me making up for lost time as we snuggle in at home.

My birthday was wonderful, I did nothing which was the goal. Tim's mom took the boys (they had off of school, and she had off of work, everyone was happy!) I watched some soaps (believe it or not, I totally caught up.) I took a long bath, painted my toenails, drank tea, watched the snow fall, read a bit from a book I enjoy, Tim brought home some Chinese (my fav, he hates,) and we did absolutely nothing! It was so nice!

I received some wonderful gifts from a craftster birthday swap. I got a neat crocheted fairy.

I received a whole package full of crafting goodies!

Also, I received my One Tiny Thing Swap item. It is a beautiful knitted wristlet. I know I need to get better at my picture taking techniques. I'd love to blame my old camera, but I really think itis more user error. Here it is and the picture doesn't do it any justice.

Well, that's fairly caught up.

S'more Swaps

Well, I had 2 swaps, and both are sent out. Both are out of the country, so I don't know when they will arrive. Hopefully they don't read here, or I may spill the beans just a little.


The first one was an unconditional swap. She requested a circle scarf that looked like this one. Not my personal favorite scarf, but if everyone liked the same thing, the world would be pretty darn boring. So this is what I made for her.












It took longer than I had anticipated, but I think it looks similar to her wish.








The next swap is a magic yarn ball swap. There are tons of these around. I am in one that is through craftster.org. If you don't know what a magic yarn ball is, basicly it's when someone has a ball of yarn that the other person would like, then they re-roll the yarn adding gifts inside the ball. Then as the recipient you get all of these wonderful, hidden, surprises as you unroll your ball. I won't show all of the things I included yet, but I will show you the whole thing rolled up.





If you look carefully you could probably pick out a few things, maybe not. After she receives I'll post everything that I put into the ball.

I got a bag!!

I asked for a tote bag to bring to preschool as one of my wishes on the Unconditional Swap. And thumbkin answered my wish and then some! I have an amazing bag!


Here it is in my bike basket! Doesn't it fit wonderfully!?!


Here you can see the whole thing.


Here is a shot of the inside. It is fairly full, but I took a few things out of my bag to take the pictures!


And here is a close up of the amazing fabric she used. It is perfect!
Thank you so much Thumbkin!

Lunch Lady Tab

Have you ever heard Adam Sandler's Lunch Lady Land? Well, as of Wednesday, I am helping out in the daycare's lunch room... ok, I'm there lunch lady now. So Tim, has started singing this lovely song except instead of "Lunch Lady Land" it's "Lunch Lady Tab". It was cute and funny, we all had a little chuckle. Well, now the song is totally stuck in my head. Tim said that I was humming it in my sleep. Do you ever get a song so stuck in your head like that. I do for weeks sometimes. Anyway, I guess there could be far worse songs stuck in my head right!?!

Well, I FINALLY got my yarn order in, so I can begin making some things for my Suzy Homemaker swap on craftster.org. I have been waiting and waiting for it. It was back ordered. I just hope I can get everything made by sendout date!
I also can't find any fabric that I like for this swap. I found some, and ordered it, but then they told me it was discontinued, and they forgot to remove it from their site. GRRR. Anyway, so I am sort of still looking. I found something that would probably work, but it's not exactly what I had hoped for.

I made a soccer hat for Liam, since it is starting to get colder. He'll probably wear it tonight. He has another game. It is sunny and nice, but a little chilly. Anyway, that's it for now. I get to do a hearing test at school tomorrow, so another "day off" gone =) The things we do for our kids!

Harry Potter Kids Swap What We Sent

Well, our partner received their goodies, so we can now post the items we made. The boys worked very hard, and we are glad they like the stuff we sent.
Here's the group shot. The "H" Crest is a drawstring bag for the tic tac toe. There is a red & yellow swirl hat, gryffindor stencil shirt, and potter puff pillow & activity books. I made all of that. The boys made hemp/bead bracelets, bead rings, zipper pouches, "lightning bolt coins," and a dementor shrinky keychain, and another shrinky dink key chain. (I forgot to take pics of those.)


Here's a closer look at the Voldemort VS Harry potter tic tac toe. The blue thing is a drawstring bag for the marbles/pieces.
We had so much fun making all this stuff. It was really a great swap!

HP for our kids swap

I received a wonderful package for my boys today. It is from ScrapperCL on Craftster.org the boys were giddy with the contents.

(They were playing in the backyard and didn't want to stand still for the picture, so that's why they all have goofy faces.) She made them each a shirt, the detail is amazing! Lore's is Harry Potter, Liam's is a Hippogriff, and Levi's is Dumbledore. Her eldest daughter (14) knit them each a Dobby Hat! Which the boys won't take off! Her other 2 daughters (9 & 7) made the boys each a monster notebook and a quill pen. The boys have been drawing and writting about the magical creatures they are finding in the yard. She also made them the Hogwarts Library Bag! It's amazing, here's a closer pic of the hogwarts symbol.

I will try to get a better pic of the shirts when they take them off. This swap was so great! I hope they like the stuff that we sent them. I will post those pics when she receives so she doesn't see it before hand.

Swaps Made, Destroyed, & Made Again

Well, I promised this post would be more upbeat, but I have a mini vent first.... stick with me I PROMISE this will be a positive post.... and if you're good, I'll even flash a picture!

So I was in a wishlist swap, and I claimed someone to make her a sleep mask. I had it all planned out. I got pink satin, pink flannel, black elastic, etc... . I painted the satin using some lace as the negative parts, (really neat, I don't think I'm explaining it well, basicly I tacked the lace down then painted with black over the lace, then I removed the lace and it was a great lace look painted onto the pink fabric,)
I assembled the sleep mask, loving it really. Planning on making myself one. Laid it all out went to get my camera, when I heard "Mom, Levi won't let me pour my own Pomegranite juice, he thinks I'm a baby!"
"No I don't, I just don't want you to spill... hey, get the juice out of the living room. Gimme That!"
"No, Mom will let me pour!"

[Quiet pause]

"You're going to be in SOOOOOOO much trouble!

Moaaaaaaaaaaahm, Lore spilled Pomegranite juice on the chaaaaaair!"

To this I said, "Please tell me it isn't the chair that my swap stuff is on...?"

To this Levi replied "Oh, you know it is!"
At this point I didn't even care about the chair, I ran into the bathroom and rinsed and rinsed the juice out of the mask, but I stained, immediently! I can't get it out, I have tried EVERYTHING! So I was supposed to send out the next day. I have a stained mask and a REALLY stained chair and carpet. (And 2 children who for awhile I kept seeing a bullseye on their butts [I'm not saying I spank them or ever would, but the fact that they were fighting over juice in the living room where they weren't supposed to be with the juice at all.... well, I was fuming to say the least!])
I remaid the mask, the lace didn't happen the second time, since I didn't have time to let it dry properly and send nearly on time.

But my WONDERFUL husband, took my kids to work with him for awhile, ( not an easy task for him either,) then dropped them off at the bus for swimming lessons for me. And I was able to embroider a "Do Not Disturb" on the front and make a new eyemask with out much interuption, ( ok, the phone was a bit annoying, but other than that,) So I don't love this one as much as the last one, but I'm still really happy with it. I added some shrinky dink papers and some Amy Butler Fat Quarters too. I hope she really likes it!
Here's a picture of the front of the mask


Here's a picture of the group I sent her.


AND
my baby Lore, the evil spiller child, has been asking to start embroidering. Now I realize you can't see what he's embroidered so far on this picture, but he was REALLY proud. He's half way done with the outside of the bat, from the batman logo. It's his first project. So here he is with his embroidery.

So it started out not great, but it definitly ended wonderfully!

Stuff N More Stuff

Ok, so for some reason my camera seems to be missing. I'm not exactly sure where or when I lost it but I did. I unfortunately have been putting off posting because I wanted to post pictures. But since I can't find it I will have to just post words (boring I know.)
Baseball has finished for the boys. I'm really quite glad of that. They both did really well, and I think they had fun, so that's what's important. I don't know if Levi will want to play next year. The age group he is in now is really quite competative, and he's really into it more for the friends and fun. Lore wants to be in it again next year, but the Squirt league that they had this year was really a joke, (they don't call any kids out, even if they are out they still run. Everyone scores, etc...) so if they make changes we'll let him be in it.
Liam's soccer starts up soon, so he's excited about that. I don't think he understands how much running is involved, but he's excited none the less.
Dance sign ups should be soon, but our dance teacher had to quite and get a full time job since her husband's job (teacher) was severly cut along with all of his benefits. So we're not sure if we'll have a dance instructor or not. I really hope so. We have the fairs, and swimming lessons coming up. Then back to school. No rest this summer I guess.

As far as crafting goes. I have a nice strip of my little postage stamp squares. I am really excited about this quilt, but I need more squares! Whenever someone is sweet enough to send me squares and I receive them in the mail, my husband announces. "You got more crack in the mail" because I just get excited and drop what ever I'm doing to sort through them and put them in their color catagory. It's like crack to me. Plus, every extra time I have I'm cutting all my scraps into little 1.5 inch squares. I am really trying to limit quilt to 1-2 squares of the same fabric, but I may have to break that if I don't start getting more fabric. We'll see.

I have been waiting for my next swap to begin. I'm very excited, and now there is only one day left to sign up, which means that the Harry Potter for our Kids, swap will be starting soon. I can't wait to get crafting! Craftster only seems to have specialized harry swap going on right now, so this one is a little more general which I like.

Well, that's about it for now. Wish me luck on finding my camera so you can see pics of my quilt and such.

Crochet Swap Squares

Well, I finished my squares for my Blankie Square Swap on Craftster.org. I like them a lot, I hope she does too. She asked for 9X9" squares, she said she really likes sheep in squares, she really didn't care about color, just no neons. And she wanted a picot edging around. So these are the squares I came up with.

Here's a picture of the collection. These are all pre-blocked.

Here's the lamb square. I just sort of winged it while in the van on the way to Ironstock. I used a light blue for the background. Black for the head and legs, and a boucle in white for the wool.

This is called the Fisherman's Ring. I made it in a soft acrylic in Dark blue

This is a knot type square that I made up. I was inspired by a friendship ring square I had seen and made for a different swap. The colors are the same blue I used in the fisherman's ring square above, a soft grey color, and a deep red/Burgundy color which on here looks sort of orange, but it's not. I REALLY love this square!

So that's what I've been up to. I hope you like it. It's been a long time since I've posted pictures and for that I am sorry. Enjoy!