end of the weekend

craft night was a success. we made yarn wreaths, which was a great project to do together. we each brought our own supplies. this project was great for sipping tea and talking while we wrapped our wreaths with the yarn. then we gathered around the table to make and glue our flowers. it was quite fun. here's how mine turned out...

the weekend has been full. my love watched our little one yesterday and i headed out alone for a bit. i spent a few hours at a local coffee shop sipping on coffee and reading. it was so very relaxing. yesterday afternoon all of us (including the dog) headed out into the snow. we ended the day with homemade hot cocoa sweetened with honey (from this recipe).

sunday morning was blueberry muffins. mmm. we had nursery duty. our little one worked up the courage and went down the slide all by herself! she was so proud of herself, and so were we.

felt wee folk

this past fall, i came across the book, Felt Wee Folk, by Salley Mavor. this book is incredible and Sally Mavor is so talented. the book has many different patterns and ideas for making "wee folk". i started out by making a couple just as the book says, and now i am branching off and adding my own style to these little friends. it's so much fun! 

i started calling them "bend friends". i find it wonderful that they are appealing to all ages. my mom loves them (i actually gave her one for christmas), and they are wonderful for children as well. even our ten-month old daughter loves looking at them. she will certainly have her own collection when she is older! i look forward for making them for her for special occasions as little gifts.

their arms and legs are made out of pipe cleaners wrapped tightly in embroidery floss, so they are fully bendable. the one pictured is about 2.5 inches tall, but the book shows how to make several different sizes. i freely cut out the flower petal skirt and the shirt, and added the embroidery to the shirt. i use wool felt for the clothing when i make these little friends. the head is simply a wooden bead. i always leave the faces blank in waldorf style. the hair is made out of naturally dyed wool roving. this is the first little friend i have made who doesn't have hair that is a natural color. i like the natural colors and plan on usually using them, but i think the blue hair fits this little one.

 this is the back. for other dolls, i have used artificial flower petals for the skirt and wings and i really like that look as well.

it is so much fun for me to make these little people. i will definitely be sharing other ones here as i make them.

some friends are coming over for craft night in a couple of hours. i'll be back in the next day or two to show you what we made!

thankful

thankful for this little red sled and the little one in it.

for a first snow angel.

a message of love out of homemade yogurt and raw honey.

and a message of love out of honey-sweetened brownies.

we're all about the love over here today.

keep on keepin' on

well...the stomach flu is totally over, and i think the three of us are on our way to recovery from this cold. my hubby is in between his january term and spring (SPRING...did i say spring?!) semester, so he doesn't have any classes this week! he still has work in the afternoons, but it's nice to have a lighter schedule this week. yesterday afternoon we were all getting quite antsy and decided to have some family baking time.

i really look forward to baking and cooking with my little girl as she grows...it will be so fun when she is able to stir things and dump things in the bowl for me! even though she couldn't do much of that yesterday, it was certainly still a fun way to spend time together. the three of us made "brownies"...ones that we can eat with the current way we are eating. they have no sugar but honey instead, and are made with coconut flour. the recipe is from here. they are SO yummy. i don't know if they would be yummy to people who eat lots of very sweet things, but considering we haven't had sugar or anything chocolaty in quite a while - yum.

the babe was happy in the sling. she watched everything with wide eyes. reminds me i need to slow down and spend more time involving her in my daily tasks.

sickness

the stomach flu hit me on thursday afternoon, shortly after my hubby left for work. it was so bad that he came right back home and we have all been home since. the last two days have been spent snuggled under the electric blanket, lying on the couch or in bed, and feeling so very miserable. my loving husband has been waiting on me hand and foot, watching our daughter, and doing the laundry. he's amazing.

i thought things would be looking up today, but the baby and the hubby now have colds, and i feel like i'm coming down with one myself. we are drinking our elderberry syrup and trying to stay hydrated and rest. i think the evening will be spent snuggled under blankets watching netflix.

fabric chandelier

there was some time for crafting this past weekend. i worked on a project that i've had on my list for a while. it's a fabric chandelier.

our little one has several paper lanterns and other things hanging in her room, and she absolutely loves them. when i saw the idea for this "chandelier", i knew it would be something that she would enjoy looking at and it seemed like it would be a fun and easy project. i was right!

i got the idea from this tutorial. i used regular embroidery hoops for mine, not quilting hoops because i didn't want it to be that large. i also used more material and used some thin and some thick strips of fabric. i had some of the fabric in my stash, and some of it was taken from the remnant bin.

i was thrilled to find this bird cage fabric in the remnant bin. it's just a joanne's design, but i thought it was so cute, it gave my chandelier the extra little boost that it needed, and it goes with all the bird things in the little one's room.

this project probably took me about 1.5 hours (with some breaks). i ironed the fabric, used my rotary cutter to cut it into strips, put the fabric strips around the embroidery hoops, and wired them together.

i worked on this project after the baby was in bed, so i hung it from our dining room ceiling lamp so i could admire it. i like it so much...i have to admit that it is still there. it helps with the january gloom we are experiencing lately. one of these days it will find it's way up to the little one's room.

here's to the weekend

here's to the weekend. may it be filled with snuggles, baby giggles, extra pajama time, homemade meals, and family time (and maybe some home organization and crafting squeezed in). 

i hope your weekend is off to a great start.

valentine tree

i promised to post the other valentine's day decoration today, so here goes...

i was sad that there was a large empty space in our house where the christmas tree was, so i decided to put a valentine's day tree together. i loaded a bundled baby into the hiking backpack and hunted around in the woodsy area next to our house to find the branches. i had a large vase in the basement left over from a huge flower arrangement from several years ago (i knew it would come in handy someday!), so i filled it with rocks and arranged the branches into the tree.

 

i put the ornaments together in the morning...some red ornaments from the christmas decorations, a glittery heart i got when i was a hallmark employee in high school, and several ornaments that i made.

 in the front of the arrangement LOVE is spelled out with ornaments i made from buttons, scrabble tiles, pipe cleaners, and ribbon. i wrapped red ribbon around the pipe cleaner (it was brown), trimmed the pipe cleaner to the size i needed, put it through the holes in the button and glued the scrabble tile onto it.

the garland was a very quick project. i simply threaded a needle with white yarn, and sewed through some pom poms, and red, pink, and white buttons.

i had some left over candy-cane pipecleaners that i had been planning on using as gift decorations but didn't. they were in the shape of candycanes, but i just bent them into heart shapes and hung them on branches. 

the snowflakes are from a thrift store...i found a bag of them a while back and have used them for several different projects. the following photo shows one of the ornaments i made from the watercolor hearts i made yesterday. i used glue dots to give it a 3-D effect and taped some ribbon on the back.

the valentine's tree is the perfect decoration for our living room. i love how it turned out! how do you decorate for valentine's day?

valentine's day decor

i wasn't very motivated to take our christmas decorations down this year. in fact, i was still enjoying them. until today. i took them all down...except for the mistletoe...we decided to leave that up for another day or two. seriously...who doesn't love another excuse to kiss? i'm sure we will totally gross our kids out when they are teenagers. oh well. anyway...

we aren't big celebrators of valentine's day around here. we always exchange cards and maybe we are extra lovey-dovey that day, but we've never made it a point to have big celebrations. we didn't even have any decorations for valentine's day...until today.

when i was a kid, we had a valentine box (a shoebox my mom covered in red polka dot wrapping paper and cut a slit in the top of), and a box full of valentine making supplies, and the weeks before valentine's day were spent using way too much glue to create cards for each member of the family and then slipping the cards into the shoebox. after dinner on valentine's day, the shoebox was opened and valentine's were passed out. my dad always slipped a store-bought card in for each of us, and my mom always made some kind of special little goodie bag. it was a special tradition that we plan to continue with our family.

taking down the christmas decorations today had me feeling a bit blue...so i dug into my stash and crafted an assortment of decorations to brighten our home. i was fortunate to have my hubby home for part of the day, and a babe who took a {rare} long nap.

first, i made this heart garland to hang above a window. i cut hearts out of three different colors of felt and sewed through them with embroidery thread. simple.

i made another window garland. i think i saw this idea somewhere a while ago, but i honestly don't remember where it was...i don't remember it being a valentine's day idea, but i am using it as one. i had a packet of thin, red binding left over from some other project, so i used that. i took some medium sized paper doilies, folded them in half, and simply glued them to the binding. i let them dry and hung it up. it turned out to be so cute. (this photo definitely doesn't do it justice).

there was one more {bigger} valentine craft/decoration i created today. this next photo is a hint. i will post the completed project tomorrow. stay tuned!

snow and sun

the big, fluffy snowflakes continued on and off through the weekend. we took the little one out for her first snow adventure. it was magic.

  

 

most of the weekend was spent hunkered down at home. there were lots of snuggles, mary tyler moore (we're on season 4), book reading, church, some crafting (photos to come) and some football thrown in for my love. we even went to the pool on sunday afternoon, which was fun (until jeremy sliced his foot in the hot tub, bled all over, and they had to spray down the walkways and clear everyone out of the hot tub. nothing like getting a lot of attention that we really didn't want).

the sun is shining today, which is a lovely rarity during the winters here. the blue sky and sunshine does wonders for my soul.

needle felting

day five (i think) of big, fluffy snowflakes falling gently from the sky. our little blue eyes is napping.

i was taking some photographs of the snow the other day. i found a perfect snowflake on our car window, focused the camera on it, and by the time i went to snap the photo, it had melted.

last night was spent cuddled under blankets on the couch with my love. we drank tea, and i worked on a needle felt project while we watched mary tyler moore. love that show. i was working on the base of a needle-felted playscape. the base is my least favorite part as i find it gets boring rather quickly, but i finished it. tonight my love is going out with a friend and i am looking forward to spending the evening adding colored wool and bringing the playscape to life.

i just began felting wool this past fall and find it a satisfying way to make something beautiful. the wool is comforting in my hands...soft and real. i often find myself wondering about the sheep that the wool came from, especially when i find a small piece of hay or grass as i'm working.

 

this is my first playscape, created this past fall. i came up with a vague idea in my head, went with it, and this is the result. i am very happy with how it turned out. 

well, the little one is up from her nap. it's time for some soup for lunch.