kirstencan

Stamping Fabric

We made a couple of printed flour sack tea towels for an aunt and uncle's housewarming gift.  Cute, fun, easy.

Since I had bought a few extra to play with, I made another, and then tried celery roses - worked!  Fun stuff.

Today we broke out some squares of fabric, sharpies, fabric paint, inkpads, and stamps.

We are making garden wish flags (inspired by these).  Kinda like prayer flags, but with our wishes and good thoughts for the garden.

Monkey had a blast, he wrote "I hope we have more peach trees," and "I hope we have more apples."  Me too, buddy.

We were having fun printing with our handcarved stamps, so I made another one, a little seedling sprouting.  Also inspired by Totoro.

I kinda love it.



We've been out making plans and weeding some in the garden, so I thought I'd brighten it up a bit - I'll show you how they turn out when they're hanging up!  More ideas and dreams on my Fixing up the Garden pinterest board.

Made some stuff

Yup, I made a couple things for Christmas!  Believe it.

Two sets of birthday buntings + birthday pillowcases for my smallest nieces and nephew.

I haven't made bunting for years!  These were really fun to sew.  And it's really hard to get good photos of them, so I didn't try.  I just grabbed these with bad lighting before I wrapped them.  Last minute of course.  They are reversible, with primary (boyish) colors on one side, and cupcakes/brighter colors on the other - with a few vintage flags thrown in.

 We LOVE our birthday buntings, I can't believe we're going on 6 years with them, they are super festive and still look great.

The girl got a nook, so I made her a sleeve for it.  We prefer sleeves to book-style cases.  This was repurposed from an old skirt she wore when she was about... 7? and I saved it.  These embroidered ballerinas needed to be made into SOMETHING!

The other side:

Ugh, corderoy does like to get linty...

We made custom screen-savers out of photos of her dancing, and photos of Paris.
She's happy with it.  VERY happy with her nook.  We love nooks.  And Project Gutenberg.

For our primary children at church, the presidency decided to give ornaments with the theme on them - last year the theme was CTR, which stands for Choose the Right.  I used the transfer method I also used here, to put the logo on some wooden stars.  Thankfully, my mom helped and we knocked out 80 stars pretty quick!

On the back I wrote with a green sharpie 'primary 2012'.  The president drilled holes, added ribbon, and we were set!  Here's one hanging on our tree:

Speaking of ornaments, I didn't buy these, but I love to find vintage ornaments, and last year bought a set of these vintage beaded ice skater (skier?) ornaments for the girls in my family.  We had one of these on our tree growing up (green), and when I got married she was sent to my house.  But I thought everyone should have one. 


The kiddos' ornaments this year were these adorable (tiny!) red tomten.  I got some awesome Swedish stuff from this shop this year!

Costumes 2012

I think every year I've managed to post costumes before Halloween - mostly because costumes always have to be done for our neighborhood carnival the weekend before - but I didn't take photos until today.  And now the boys are tucked into candy-induced-sugar-comas bed I have a few minutes to post - so at least it's not AFTER Halloween! ;)

First up, a '20's girl'/flapper.  We were originally going for more of a Thoroughly Modern Millie look with a handkerchief skirt, but fringe is darn fun.  And darn expensive.  I didn't know that when I promised her...

My mom and I made the dress (fringe + slippery fabric = never. again.), I made the headband, bought the stockings and she borrowed the necklace and shoes.  We kinda faux-bobbed her hair, her hair is so thick and crazy luckily the headband hid some of it.

Her beads hang straight. ;)  Oh, and we gave her a 'beauty spot' on her cheek.

I need to post the video of her dancing to the 'Tapioca' when she was... 1 or 2.  No lie.  She loves that movie.

Next up:  can you guess from this shot?

It's Tintin and his dog, Snowy.  Off to solve a mystery.  He liked last year's movie, which led him to the comics and old cartoons on Netflix.

All I had to do for his costume was whip up some knicker-type pants and buy the dog.  His was still the cheapest costume (again).  His sister's sweatshirt turned inside out worked just fine - lucky for me!

This is the second time he's used his red-hair as a prop.  Next year he should be Archie.

Guess what his favorite part of his costume is? :)

And then the Egyptian Soldier.  Do not call him a Pharoah.  His sister got him into the Kane Chronicles books earlier this year, and then he got the Survival guide for the series because he's so into it.  Anyway, he loved his costume.

AND he loved that I made it.  Seriously, he said that it's cool that I make their costumes and that they are better than store-bought ones.  Made my day.

Anyway, this is a total Kirsten-style improv costume.  I couldn't tell you how I made it if I tried.  The white is a men's size L tshirt with a little gold ribbon trim on the sleeves.    I had the worst time with the iron-on stuff I used for the collar.  I usually use a different brand that works much better.

Here's a closeup of his headpiece.  The headpiece and necklace symbol are cardboard with hot glue spraypainted gold.

Originally they were all going to be from Lord of the Rings:  Galadriel, Frodo, and Sam.  *Sigh*  I love theme years.  But I think they ended up picking pretty cool things that they were really excited about, so that's awesome.

Also, they all got finished, which is awesome in itself as I wasn't sure it was going to happen.  Our little Egyptian was finished JUST in time for his piano party.  Cutting it close!

I LOVE seeing kiddo's Halloween costumes, esp DIY ones - let me know if you're posting yours!

Here's some from previous years (because I love looking back):

2011- Faerie, Knight, Ash from Pokemon

2010 - Felicity, Han Solo, Link

2009 - Hermione, Ron, Harry

2008 - Maid Marian, Postman, Spiderman

2007 - Leia, Star Wars pilots

Flowers

Also getting ready for the party:  lots of paper flowers.  I thought this would take me all week, but I busted out a sackful of them in just two sittings.

Some are tissue paper and some are crepe paper (streamers, which aren't ideal, but I couldn't find crepe paper sheets - I've bought them before and they're better.)

Once again, being creative = happiness.

I don't know what it is about making flowers.  Apparently whatever kind you make you'll end up making tons.

And I just realized I still had my ISO bumped way up.  Oops.

Just pretend I meant for these photos to look all grainy.

Or something.

1912

Aaron's grandma turned 100 last week!  She was born a few days after the Titanic sunk, isn't that amazing?

We headed up for her party, and I came up with a photobook for her gift.  Aaron's parents found photos of her when she was younger and scanned them for me, and I asked all of her children and grandchildren to send me some.

I love the sailor dress + bows!

Her children were adorable, too.  I included pictures of Emma when she was young, when her children were young (and then teenagers), a photo of each of her children's families when they were younger, and a photo of each of the grandchildren's families.  All her people in one place.

It was a surprising amount of work, but I'm pleased with how it turned out.  I used Shutterfly (I always use Shutterfly) and the quality was excellent as usual (not a sponsored post, I just like them).  Their new customized pages are SO cool and make my life easier.

Since I don't know Emma that well, it was fun to look through all these pictures and put this together for her.  I also don't get to do much family history at this point, so that felt good, too.

So anyway, we drove the 6 hours and let the kids play in the hotel pool the night before the party.  I chuckled because at 9:30pm there were 13 kids in that pool.  They were probably stuck in the car all day, too.

We brought up our birthday buntings (they've served us well over the years, we have used them for every birthday (they're reversible) for... 5 years? and they still look great) and I made a little accordian 1912 book for the table.

I just researched facts about 1912, and (hurriedly, not my best work) put them together for people to read.  She shares her Centennial birthday with LifeSavers, Oreo, Girl Scouts, and stainless steel.

Of course, the above photos were taken by Aaron with the point and shoot, a camera not really worthy of the occasion.  Why?  Because the girl and I were quarantined at the hotel all day and missed the party!

Yep, she was up half the night with a stomach bug.  Bummer!  There are worse things than spending a day holed up in a hotel with a nice TV, comfy duvet and your Nook (thank goodness for my nook!) but I missed talking to people we don't see too often, plus being there for Emma.   I also missed taking photos of the whole thing.  From all accounts it was a fun party and the birthday girl was thrilled.  That's what matters.

I ordered extra copies of the book for our family and Aaron's parents, and his siblings will all get one for Christmas (shh).  The kids love looking through it and saying 'THAT's Papa?'

Families are cool.

Day Camp

Sorry that last post was whiney.  I almost deleted it, but didn't - let's move on, shall we?

Last weekend I helped run a really fun activity for the 8-11 year old girls from church.  It was 3 hours, and they did 3 really fun classes.

We made pillowcases.  A lovely lady in our ward owns a quilt shop and donated enough fabric for everyone - I was so happy because it saved our (meager) budget for the activity and because it's always nicer and easier to sew with quality fabric.

We had leaders and moms helping sew.

We even lucked out and the room was decorated for a baby shower later that day - it was cute with no effort by me!

This was a very doable project for these girls (8-11yo).  I made a new instruction sheet with clearer directions/illustrations just to make it EXTRA easy.  And we omitted the trim to simplify - so just two fabrics, not three.

We had basketball clinics.  Conveniently SOMEONE (ahem) still had the ward jerseys and basketballs (and rappor to recruit a teenager from the team to come help me).  They thought wearing these jerseys was the coolest thing.

The younger group did surprisingly well!

The last class was frosting and then used fondant and chocolate molding clay to decorate their own cake!

It was pretty crazy to see what even little girls can do given the right tools.

The results were pretty awesome.  One of our leaders does wedding cakes and taught this class..

We all shared my girl's cake the next night (not above, hers had her name on it)- and that fondant is surprisingly thick! ;)

It was a way fun morning - a bit ambitious, though - glad we pulled it off!

 

Stencilled

For a geeky little friend's 7th birthday (that is a compliment, not an insult, btw) I helped Monkey stencil a tshirt (with freezer paper).

A Portal shirt!  Inspired by a design online (which I can't find now - but again, they don't make them small enough - like the Totoro ones or The Cure ones).  Monkey really wanted a design with a turret, and this is the one he picked.

Also recently I made a triangle shirt (inspired by this one).  It was fun to make, I drew them on freezer paper and then used my rotary cutter to cut straight lines.  Metallic gold paint really stands out on dark shirts (again).

I'm pretty sure I never posted our stencilled Zelda tshirts either. I should find those...

If you've somehow never freezer-paper stencilled before, I made a quick how-to (check my sidebar) years ago - it's really easy!  I've done quite a few.

p.s. It's March 14th!  Happy Pie Day!  (3.14)

Handmade gifts

So, guess how many gifts I made for my children's Christmas this year! 

Are you ready?

ZERO.  Edit:  One (duh).

But I did manage a couple little cute gifties for the nieces and nephew.

I used this awesome idea from Lil Blue Boo to make a wooden matching game.

The transfer method uses a laser printout and some natural orange cleaner.  I was pretty sick of the smell of the cleaner by the end, but it worked!

A few are smudged, but I'm pretty happy with it.  And it opens up all kinds of other ideas...

For my 1yo niece, I dyed some playsilks.  Having done it a few times before, it wasn't too hard. 

As a bonus, I discovered that after you dye these is the perfect time to clean your microwave!  Seriously, you are spending minutes microwaving water + vinegar + koolaid (citric acid!).  So there you go.

My daughter made her a better present, though.  Last time she was at our house, she loved one of my daughter's dolls (this one).  So the girl decided to make a Black Apple doll for her cousin.  Grandma helped her, so I had nothing to do with it, even.

It was appreciated, which made my girl happy.

How did you do in the handmade gift department this year?

All is calm... sometimes.

I've been wanting to put up cut-out song lyrics since I saw this post.  But it just won't work in our space, sadly.  The idea is so awesome, though, it's stuck with me.

Then I saw (and immediately pinned) this glitter-letter garland and just knew I had the perfect place for it:  Over the big red canvas!

Except I didn't want to do the glitter/glue messy thing.  Then I heard of glittered cardstock, which I thought would be perfect.  Except what I could find of it only came in multi-colored packs and I wanted all the same (white, silver, or gold) and it wasn't nearly as glittery as I thought.

After checking out several other options, I found some glittered craft felt.  The really stiff felt.

Anyway, I did it.  And I love it.

I went to print the template from the original idea, but it's way small.  I wanted something bigger, so I just picked a chunky sans serif font (impact) and printed out my own.

After cutting them out, I hot glued the letters to baker's twine.

The felt will hold up better in storage than paper would have, so I can get it out next year!

And I call the below picture "All is silly and dark".

He won't ever stay still when my camera is out!

Ornaments & Stuff

I've been loving all the stamped ornaments on Pinterest (so many!) so a while back (this was last month, actually), the girl and I tried it out.

We got paper clay from Hobby Lobby, which worked great.  Easy to work with.  And I bought a snowflake stamp.  It pretty much worked how I was hoping.

By far the hardest part was rolling them out to a consistent thickness, and if it's too thin, they get wavy when they dry.  It was a learning process.

I was going to do brown velvet ribbon, but found these already tied ornament hangers at Ikea - worth it!

I think they'll be gift tags for our family gifts this year.  But next year, I think we'll do them for all the Primary kids in church maybe.  With a CTR stamp.  If I start way before the holidays!

In other news:

I shrunk the Lucia gown we borrowed for Lucia.  I felt awful about it and was a nervous wreck until I the lady I borrowed it from  told me she  didn't care at all (whew!).  But I got called on the gown being 1/2" too short by the director and had to attach lace to make it work.  At least it worked!  Next year we're making our own gown.  With plenty of tucks and grow stripes.

Lucia went well, and my boys got to be pepparkakksgubbar (gingerbread men).

The boys insisted on writing letters to Santa (I'm not so into this tradition anymore) after watching Charlie & Lola (good thing you're so cute, Lola!) and are now asking for completely different things than they did when we ordered stuff for them.  Oh, goody.  We're trying to explain that Santa always brings something awesome, but not always what you exactly asked for, and that the elves have already finished making toys, so it's a bit late to change your mind.  Also, those elves.  Monkey keeps asking for crazy stuff that's not made anymore, and when I say that that was discontinued or whatever, he just says 'That's okay, Santa's elves will make it!'.  Ugh.

I had to talk to the youth in our ward about Swedish Christmas traditions, which was pretty fun.  The girl volunteered to come with me and play Lucia to them, which was beautiful, she did a great job.  I'm so glad she is willing to do stuff like that!

Our tree is up - more on that later.  We did go with a small one!

Yesterday my kids did this fun Elf Application - they all loved it!

And with that:  God Jul and Happy St. Lucia day!  Our girl brought us cinnamon buns this morning - yay!