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Ever the procrastinator, Sienna and I worked on her class Valentines today. We also worked on special treats just for her best buds, Vinny and Emma, pink chocolate covered sandwich cookies.

I loved this idea when I saw it last year and finally did it. These are for her classmates.
Sienna had a lot of fun making these with me. She was a great sprinkle adder.

I joined a bunch of Valentine themed swaps. This one was for A Piece of My Heart swap. I pulled out my Melting Pot and Ultra Thick Embossing Powder (UTEE) and some rubber stamps and started playing. I got the idea from this video on youtube.
This one was for a handmade heart swap. The birds and small heart were die cut using my Sizzix. I hand cut the big heart and free handed the love. I added fabric stiffener to the back of the heart, which is why it’s curved on the edges.

Some simple heart embellished paper clips.
Initial heart pendants. Initials cut by my Cameo using vinyl.

And here are a bunch of cards I did for card swaps:
 (I absolutely adore the kissing kids from the Silhouette store!)

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I know I have a lot of catching up to do! Thought I’d start the new year with a Sienna achievement! She was so happy about this.

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For the Monster Brooch swap, my partner justingrid. Based off a cute monster I saw in the Silhouette store!


These bracelets are for the Happy Crafters USA Favorite Craft swap and my partner ncsue. I’ve just started learning macramé and I love it! The first one is from the book Micro Macramé Jewellery that I have renewed from the library like 3 times already! The bottom one is kumihimo, something else I just started learning as well.


These 2 are not for swaps but for 2 friends that had babies recently. A former coworker of mine had a baby girl in August and another friend actually had her baby boy back in April so that one was a little late! I made the Brooklyn onesie, the Texas state and the “live with my parents” items with the Silhouette (as well as the bibs) and the month/date onesie is an iron on.

Bookmark for my swap partner whose name is Catherine!

Some Halloween cards I made at a Rubber, Paper, Ink meetup I went to in September!

A Pumpkin and Jack O Lantern stamp carve for my partner LavendarLizard.

A Birthday card for Sienna’s friend Leah!

For the Round 15 Craft Your Partner A Craft. Patterns from the same book I mentioned above!

For the Handmade Halloween/Spooky Charm swap. Even though the swap didn’t require the necklace, I wanted to macramé one anyway! Pattern from the same book mentioned above! For the pendant, I stamped a spider onto Halloween themed scrapbook paper and then embossed the whole thing with sparkly embossing powder and then coated with UV resin.

This pendant was made the same way as mentioned above. It was included with other goodies in the coffin shown below for the Halloween in a Trick-or-Treat baggie swap.

My partner likes skulls, as do I, so I made this for her the same way as the other pendants. Another Halloween swap, Halloween in a treat bag!

I made 3 of these adorable bats (from the new Super Cute Felt book by Laura Howard, I really love the book, BTW!)

And here’s that coffin I told you about. I used Martha Stewart’s template and traced it in my Silhouette program.

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Lots of Halloween fun over the weekend! First off, last Friday, we met Starr and Sylvie at the library in Bay Ridge for a special Halloween storytime and craft. I was afraid to let Sienna wear her Thor costume too much in fear of ruining it so Starr was nice enough to bring something from her stash.

I think it’s hysterical that Robin is taller than Batman! They look cute regardless!


They made paper plate ghosts (which was one of the crafts I had set up for the kids for Shirley’s party Saturday!)

And speaking of Shirley’s party, it happened on the day we got a freak snowstorm! Thankfully, we didn’t have far to go. I set up a craft table for the kids with pom poms and pipe cleaners, markers and crayons, glue and tape, etc. I made pasta salad and apple cupcakes with chocolate buttercream and apple cider cupcakes with apple cider cream cheese frosting with fancy Halloween themed cupcake wrappers that I made with my Silhouette SD. AND I FORGOT MY CAMERA!! Boo hoo! So no photos from the party from me! Anyway, the apple cupcakes were good but I didn’t get a chance to try the apple cider cupcakes! And the craft table was big hit with the kids! Even the boys wanted in on it!

On Halloween, Sienna’s class had a party and the parents were invited to come during the last hour. We got to see a little bit of what they do during school.

Her class sitting on the rug. There are 18 kids in her class.

Eating goodies from the party

Dancing and Sienna turns and smiles at me (awwww!)

Sienna and her 2 best buds!

This is why Sienna loves this song:

Later on that day, we went trick or treating with Emma and Leah, like we did last year. I forgot to take a photo of all 3 of them posed together tho! Darn! Where is my brain?

Just like last year, Emma and Leah were ready to go home after about an hour but Sienna kept wanting to ring more doorbells! LOL! That’s funny because she didn’t even eat all the candy she had gotten from last year! I guess she just likes to get free stuff like her mom! HA!

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Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy and safe Halloween! More to come later! We’re off to go fight crime! (photo by Shirley!)

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Last month, on September 29, I woke up at the insane hour of 5:30 to attend a taping of the new ABC show, The Chew. It was Rosh Hashanah so Sienna was off from school so I had my dad sleep over the night before since I had to leave so early! The Chew is a talk show centering around food with 5 co-hosts. It replaces the long running, now canceled All My Children so it already has that running against it. I have a friend who hopes the new show will be canceled so they could bring back AMC. I think she ignored me when I said even if they cancel The Chew, they aren’t going to bring back AMC, at least on tv! Anyway, the taping was at 7:30 allllll the way up by Lincoln Center. I went with Brenda, who told me about the tickets, and Joy. I won’t lie to you, I was hoping for some good swag or at least some good food to taste! Got neither (unless you consider a Mickey Mouse apron good swag!)

A self portrait

The taping was really like any other show taping. There’s a comedian there to get you in a good mood and to tell you when to clap. Paula Deen was on the show and although she is not my favorite chef, it was fun to see her. She really is like how she is on TV! Very personable. They did actual cooking on the show and it was such torture to smell all the goodness! The taping ended around 10:30 and there were seats available for the 2nd taping (there are 2 tapings on Thursdays). No way! We are going to go eat! I am actually surprised Brenda was able to keep her eyes open, having come home at 1 am the night before. No sympathy as she was at the Radiohead show at Roseland!

My bad photo of Paula Deen

Brenda dealing with work issues

All done!

I had wrote in my Facebook status that I was going to the taping and my friend told me to say hello to Clinton Kelly. She is good friends with him and they went to high school together. I actually had the chance as he was in the audience talking with someone. Nice guy! Michael Symon also seemed like a personable guy as I noticed he was chatting with several audience members. The others, well, they really didn’t even turn our way. Not a criticism, just an observation! And as a coincidence, Yves had videotaped Carla Hall the day before as she was a former Girl Scout!

Now, on to lunch! We decided to go to Shopsin’s! It’s been so long.

I ordered poutine (exact name on their menu, I don’t remember!) MMMMMMM!

Brenda got a pancake sandwich with bacon and eggs. They don’t skimp on bacon!

I think Joy got some sort of baked potato with fresh ricotta?

Of course, I had to stop off at Economy Candy! All in all a nice day!

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I know that Sienna’s first day of school was over a month ago and things have been going really well so didn’t want to jinx it by posting too early. She actually says she likes school!! Practically everyday that we would walk across the street to nursery school last semester, she would tell me she doesn’t like school. From practically the first day of this new school, she would wake me up in the morning by asking if we can go to school now. At 6:30 in the morning. The first few days there were issues with walking the 3 blocks home, where she wouldn’t want to walk home. Things are better now, thank goodness. Don’t know what that was all about. And while lately, she hasn’t been waking me up to go to school, she is still happy to go!

It is now part of the routine to walk over the bump everyday going to and from school. The bump is from the Hurricane Irene back in late August when a tree fell over and uprooted the sidewalk. Almost 2 months later and it still hasn’t been fixed!

She instantly became friends with a girl we had met when we were at the school to register, back in June. Her name is Emma. She is also friends with a boy named Vinny and usually the 3 of them play in the playground if it is nice after school (or even when it’s not so nice out!) and I get to hang out with the moms for some adult talk!

Playing with chalk on a sunny day

Playing Simon Says, it had just stopped raining! Do you see Vinny’s butt all wet? They had just finished running around the whole playground and Vinny was sitting on the play areas!

A self portrait!

I’m happy that she has a chance to run and play after school. It helps the time go by since she gets out of school so early. I have a bunch of craft kits in the arsenal to pull out for the winter, when it’s too cold for the playground. I hope that they will be adequate substitutes!

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On Friday, Yves and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary! 10 years ago on Friday, we went to Vegas to get married and a handful of our friends and family joined us. We had planned it earlier that year as October is my favorite month. It was nice to get so many well wishes on my Facebook page. Our friend, Rob, who went to Vegas with us, reminded us of how his room in the Tropicana hotel had mirrors on the ceiling! LOL! He also wanted to make note that he did not request the mirrors! HA! Yeah, ok! Anyway, we celebrated on Friday by going to Morton’s Steakhouse. I knew of the place, having bought a gift card for friends Bill and Laura, who were moving from New York to Chicago a few years ago (all the cdmomers chipped in!). Our friend, Jana, highly recommended the place so we said, why not?

Here’s the photo they took of us. The service was wonderful and everyone wished us a happy anniversary. The food was so good! I am still full from the dinner on Friday! We opted for the steak and seafood special. They started us off with warm onion bread. I could have easily eaten the whole thing! But I only cut off 2 pieces! I ordered the chopped salad and Yves got the caesar. I love that salad! It was so delicious! I’m going to have to attempt to make that at home. I got the Shrimp Alexander with my filet mignon. The shrimp was jumbo, lightly breaded with a butter wine sauce. MMMM. I also ordered the brussel sprouts sauteed in bacon and shallots! Yves got the lump crab cake with his filet and the grilled asparagus with balsamic glaze. I was already half way full when our entrees came! I was only able to eat half of my warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream! It was so good but I felt like I was going to burst! Yves got carrot cake. It was very light and fresh but it had cloves in it, something that Yves doesn’t like. If it wasn’t for that, it would be the perfect carrot cake! He ended up taking home the carrot cake. It’s too bad I couldn’t take the warm chocolate cake home!

My chopped salad, you can see the onion bread in the back!

Sorry for the bad vegetable photos but I just wanted to make sure I document them. We ended up taking them home too.

Afterwards we had originally thought of going to check out a movie. Going to the movies is not something we do often since Yves has unofficially banned going to movies. He ALWAYS seems to get stuck sitting by the noise makers! But since it was a special occasion, we were thinking of giving it a go. Well, we were so stuffed from dinner that sitting down for a movie did not appeal to us. We had to walk it off! So we decided to walk down to the Brooklyn Promenade. It was very nice! We haven’t been down there in awhile. We also took a few night shots, which we used to love doing!

All in all, a very nice evening! Oh, here is the card I made for Yves too! Very simple.

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I joined a superheroine swap and found out my partner likes She-Ra. I thought it was quite convenient as Sienna is really into She-Ra too (yay for Netflix streaming!) I suppose I should also link this photo too!

Made for a swap and sent to a Gone With The Wind fan. I guess I should watch that movie one day!

Cut the elephant with my Silhouette. I really like how this came out!

This is one of my favorites! It was for an Etsy inspiration swap where you check out your partner’s Etsy favorites list and make something inspired by something on their list. Being a fan of zombies, I really wanted to make this or something similiar. Of course, the original item is laser cut from stainless steel! I made mine with paper, vinyl and UV resin! I’ve done something similar a couple of times before, see here, here and here. And at first, I attempted to do the same way, cut several pieces out with paper and layer them together with glue. It wasn’t working out. Too many details and the Silhouette could not cut cleanly on the paper. I almost gave up. Then I though of vinyl! Or course, that would mean I couldn’t make the middle see through as I had to lay the vinyl on something! So I used red glitter paper to cut a frame, put the vinyl on top (which cut perfectly!) and then decided to coat it with Magic Glos. I’m not totally happy with how the hole for the jump ring got messed up and that is definitely something I will be extra careful with for the next one! My partner loved it!

I decided to use vinyl again for these hummingbirds since the beak is so small and delicate. I used dimensional fabric paint to make the flowers. I really like how they came out. By the way, this is 2 pendants that I made into one double sided one.

This was also for the Etsy inspire swap for the same person that got the zombie pendant. I am also a big fan of anatomical hearts so I carved one for myself as well!

Wall vinyl for the last item for the Etsy inspire swap. Just in time for Halloween!

Bookmarks! The one with beads is strung onto elastic cord. The top right is ribbon and the bottom right is scrapbook paper.

I saw this idea on pinterest (btw, totally love pinterest!) but on a bracelet so I adjusted it for these old earrings I had. Well, after this, I am totally addicted to doing macramé! More projects with macramé this to come!

When I saw this tutorial on Honestly…WTF (love that blog name too!), I couldn’t wait to give it a try! I plan on making more!

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The weather is starting to get cooler and I couldn’t be more happier! Autumn is my favorite time of year! Comfort food cooking, light jackets, getting cuddly and cozy and having more time for crafting! The summer days went by so fast with keeping Sienna occupied, road trips and just being worn out from the humidity. I didn’t feel like I did a lot of crafts over these past few months but when I compiled all my photos, there were a lot more than I thought. So I decided to just break it up into 2 posts.

I attempted shrinky dinks again with some rubber stamps. I colored them in with pencils and put glitter paper in the back and made them pins. Sorry for the bad photo!

Raven stamp carve

This was for my niece, Elianna, who lives in Thailand. Apparently Our World is big with the 10 year olds and it’s hard to get stuff so I made this with t-shirt vinyl. I heard she likes the shirt!

I bought this princess fabric from This and That from Japan. I love their shop! I love the fabric as it is a little thicker than quilting cotton. I made this pouch for Sienna to hold her little tiny princess dolls, it has since turned into the snack pouch.

I also made this Superman/Batman pouch to hold her Batman and villians dolls (see a couple here). The reason it is half and half is because I used remnants I had after making her these pillowcases:


I made this pouch for a Hello Kitty/skull fan on swap-bot.

This was for a bird brooch swap

I made these lighthouse notecards with my Silhouette. I’m not really happy with how poorly it cut the tiny details like the windows but it’s still better than hand cutting!

I made these photo notecards using my photos. The flower and tree frames were cut with the Silhouette.
And to round off this post, Thank you cards, also cut with the Silhouette:

Sienna’s goofy face is a little extra bonus for you! HA! Anyway, I totally cased this card from another Silhouette user. I really loved it so I made 2! One is for Yves’ cousin in Tunisia, who sent Sienna these cute outfits (see here) and yummy Tunisian pastries for us (I can’t believe I forgot to take a photo of them! I was really impressed with how intricate some of the designs were!) The other card was for the Olson’s, whose house we stayed at during our Chicago trip.

Summer Crafts 2 to follow!

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