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I’ve mentioned this numerous times before or at least something similiar, if I didn’t do crafts, I’d probably drive myself crazy. You know the saying idle hands is the devil’s work? Did I get that right? That goes along with an idle brain too. Not that crafting is rocket science but if my mind wasn’t thinking about crafts or making something, it would be focusing too much on analyzing all my daughter’s moves or any other such nonsense. People always marvel about all the things I make and I say, well I MUST! It’s my sanity! With that, here are some of the latest things I’ve done!

There’s a meetup group I belong to where Heather sells Stampin Up products. I haven’t really been much into stamping lately but I stay in the group because I like that the meetings are in Bay Ridge. She had a recent class at the Storefront making jewelry and I was super excited about that! The projects were making a bracelet using Build A Brads and a pendant using game pieces. Another project was making a pin stamping and painting on thin wood.

Here are some of the custom brads I made. You can then attach this to a bracelet. I haven’t commited to that yet.

Here’s the butterfly pin (wood) and the game piece pendant (the game piece is on the bottom right, I didn’t put my stamped piece in yet)

And of course, lots of swap projects too! I mentioned that I was in a lot of Christmas ornament swaps. They are fun as I get to try making lots of different ornaments and get some fun ones in return!

This partridge pattern is from Retro Mama.

This mouse is from Pimp Stitch.

I got this penguin template from the Crafts & Things magazine archives. It was actually intended for a card.

This house is from Orange Flower Patterns.

Snowman courtesy of Lion Brand Yarns

And other swaps besides ornaments:

Owl swap in the Felt and Stuff group. Pattern from Wee folk art. It’s actually a doorstop but I opted not to put any pellets in it. My partner was in the UK after all.

Crochet Christmas Light potholder. For the I Made This swap! LOL! (I downloaded this pattern last year and can’t find the link. If you want the pattern, please let me know.)

For an embroidery swap. My partner loves Doxie’s so I googled it and found this image to embroider.

This is the 2nd time I’ve made this recipe cozy. This time I used the recipe cards she created for this and included my favorite banana bread recipe. This was for the I Made This swap (same partner as the potholder above)

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As I mentioned in the previous post, I met up with Brenda for dinner before the surprise baby shower for Robyn in October. We went to Kampuchea restaurant, they make Cambodian street food. It was quite tasty. We got the Num Pang (sandwiches) and did the tasting, a choice of three sandwiches. I’m afraid the photo of the sandwiches don’t really tell you much. Once I start eating, I forget about taking pictures! We got the oxtail, the pork meat balls and the house made pork pate and headcheese terrine. I was most excited to try the oxtail and sadly, I was disappointed in it. It was good but just didn’t have that oomph I expect from eating oxtail. Surprisingly, my favorite was the pork pate! MMMM!! We also ordered a side of bacon fried rice and drank fresh watermelon juice. I’d like to go back and try the crispy pork belly! MMMM!

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Speaking of babies, we had a surprise baby shower for Robyn during the October mixer. (Hmm, I guess you can’t really call it a mixer since no cd’s were exchanged!) We went back to the Magician, since it worked so well for the surprise shower they gave me back in January 2007. I was so glad that Robyn was surprised! Whew! Such pressure to keep it a surprise. Of course, we also bought a dozen cupcakes from Sugar Sweet Sunshine. Robyn and Eric both loved all the gifts, the cupcakes and the surprise (well, just Robyn since Eric knew about it!) It only took 2.5 years for another CDMOMer to get pregnant, who’s next?!!!

I met up with Brenda before the mixer for dinner. I suppose I should keep that post separate and will write about it next.

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A big warm welcome to my nephew, Saul Ambroise! He was born on Wednesday November 4th. All is healthy and well. Yay!

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I don’t have to tell you how much I enjoy crafting and making things. Truth be known, tho, left to my own devices I probably wouldn’t get much done! I can procrastinate and get lazy and then I would feel bad and really be down on myself and really never get anything done! It could be a vicious cycle. That’s why I’m so glad for swap-bot! Although I sometimes do wait for the last minute with some swaps, I try not to. Here are some recent swaps I’ve sent.

For the Halloween Felt Fun swap that I forgot to post before:

For the Wearable Kawaii Cute:

A Bear Brooch from this Felties book (which I adore!)

A Hello Kitty glass pendant

For the Crafting Queens group Profile Surprise (send 1 thing they like and 1 thing they craft) so I sent my partner 2 fat quarters and made 3 awareness pins from felt (breast cancer, kidney cancer and asthma).

I’ve joined a bunch of Holiday Ornament swaps and 2 of them were due in October. It was a little hard to get into the Christmas spirit before Halloween!

The gingerbread pattern is from Elsie Marley and the Santa is from a Japanese craft book I recently got.

The above 2 ornaments were for the same partner. The cow I kinda made myself from an image on the internet and the angel is from a Craft n Things archived issue. My partner likes cows and angels!

The following is for the Wacky Holidays November swap (you pick 4 holidays and send stuff for them)

Party with your Bear day (Nov 16) I crocheted the bear and put a party hat and included invites and confetti.

Recipe cozy for Cook Something Bold day November 8 (with some 2 “bold” recipes and blank recipe cards). It was a bit big for the standard recipe cards and I knew that but decided to follow the pattern anyway. I should have made it smaller or at least use the recipe cards designed for this.
I made a felt magnet for Deviled Egg day (Nov 2)
The last holiday I picked was Absurdity Day (Nov 20) and sent a silly fortune fish (the kind you put in your palm to “read” your fortune)

This last craft I’m posting was actually for a Winner Take All tag on one of the forums. The winner drinks tea so I made this tea bag cozy for her. I think it came out so cute I might have to make one for myself!

I can’t find the actual pattern I used but here is a similar one. I found the pattern! It’s here.

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Saturday was Halloween and we went to the festival at Owl’s Head Park. It started at 2 so we opted not to give Sienna her nap. Of course she fell asleep right when we got there! She woke up when we tried to put her in her stroller and looked around and realized where she was and voila! She was awake!

I wanna ride dat!

The Maze ride

The short bouncy ride

Sliding down the maze ride

Got a ‘babboon’

I’m ambivalent about how the day went. Nobody’s fault but my own. I had delusions of grandeur. Last year she was sick so this was really her first Halloween (plus I think she would have been too young to really get it last year anyway). I was picturing her getting so into it. There were bouncy rides at the park and she went thru one and actually liked it! It was a maze and at the end you go down the slide. I was amazed because the last time a bouncy ride was involved was at Sesame Place and that didn’t go well. Ha, well I spoke too soon. She wanted to go on a jump up and down bouncy ride next and that didn’t last. At least she didn’t cry. Then there was the slide one that you could go on 2 times. She didn’t want to do the 2nd turn even though she said she liked it. It was really kind of an up and down day for me. I guess me and Sienna were both overwhelmed. We decided to enter the Fairytale Forest and encountered hunchback Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Fooh and “Kookie” Monster. LOL. I think you’ll know what I mean when you see the photos below. She really liked that and it made no difference to her that these fellows were a little ‘off.’ HA! Plus ske kept asking where Mickey was!

We ran into Geneva and Layne with Phoenix dressed up as a zombie bride and Starr with Nico as a firefighter and Sylvie as a little ladybug. Earlier we saw Liz with her dinosaurs Henry and Nora. Kerry was also therewith Rory as Spiderman. I’m sure there were lots of other people I knew there that we probably passed without noticing. We opted not to do trick or treating since I wasn’t sure how Sienna was going to hold up without her nap. We ended up having an early outside dinner at Yellow Hook Grille and I’m glad we did because it started to rain near the end of our dinner.

Sienna woke up crying for me at about ??? I don’t remember now. Oh,maybe 1:30 in the morning. I wasn’t surprised because of no nap and the excitement of the afternoon. (Although she did do this Thursday night but that night her nose was bleeding, a lot!) I tried to calm her and she tried to get me to sleep on the floor in her room (also a repeat of Thursday night). Another repeat is that she wanted to get up and out of bed. She eventually woke up around 6 and Yves got up. Later that day, she had a fever of 100.3. She seemed better after tylenol but then it went back up later that day and we ended up putting her to bed at 6:30 (which is technically 7:30 for her since we had daylight savings.)

She’s better today (cross fingers!) and she slept through the whole night last night (cross fingers again!)

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