Just me and my blog

I'm pretty sure I've never, in the history of this blog, dedicated an entire post to just me... no craft project... just me and my thoughts.  This is it, this is the scoop, the background, the reason I haven't posted as frequently as usual, and consequently the precursor to lots of really exciting posts to come.  I hope you'll humor me this one picture free, just me and my blog post. 

I started working when I was 15 and haven't stopped since.  My first job was part-time at the Sears in my small home town's mall.  As soon as I graduated high school I started full time at a local Professional Employer Organization (PEO - they provide payroll and HR services to other companies), then I moved to a new town and worked for State Farm's corporate office for a few years.  I decided FL was the place for me, and after a short stint as a waitress (I personally think everyone should be a waiter/waitress at least once in their life time... it's fun, responsibility free, and eye opening!) worked for another PEO.  I started out in customer service and despised every single moment of it!  I did everything non-customer service related I could get my hands on.  It took me 2 years, but I moved out of customer service and made a place for myself working on projects and whatever other "fun stuff" the company had in the works.  I had no idea at that time, that the job I thought I created out of thin air, would grow into the business analyst role. 

I love everything about being a business analyst! I get to work collaboratively, improve the way my co-workers do their jobs, be innovative, make the company a better place to work and do business, and influence change. 

So many wonderful friendships, a wedding, a house, a blog, 2 children, and almost 12 years later, I quit that job I loved.  I didn't quit being a business analyst, but I did quit working for the company that I sort of "grew up" in and where I discover my passion for it.  Even though I was so excited about my new opportunity, I knew leaving my comfort zone and the people I loved working with was going to be difficult.  What better coping mechanism/diversion could a creative girl hope for than a design challenge?!  In the new position I would work from home full time, so I decided to funnel all the energy I could've spent worrying "am I gonna get the new job? how is my leaving going to impact my co-workers? will my current projects be okay without me? How will the transition from working at home part time to full time go?" into designing a new home office. 

I've been working in my new job, from my new office, for the last 4 weeks and I absolutely can.not.wait. to show you my amazing office space! My darling husband and I and every aunt, uncle, parent, and friend who would come to our aid have been turning my happy place into a reality every available minute since the day I got the official job offer almost 2 months ago.  Frankly, we all just needed a break, so it's not quite photo shoot ready yet.  There's still a door to be painted, a chair to be upholstered, a clock to be hung, and a deck to be built, but I'm gonna start showing you pieces of it and by the time it's ready for its close up I'll have made it through all the preliminary posts... at least that's my plan.  Oh and if design isn't really your thing you'll be happy to know a grand opening party is in the works too :) Stay tuned! 

Toy Car Playmat/Bag

Oh boys!  It's so hard to come up with adorable handmade boy stuff.  I was super excited when I found this fabric panel:

I knew it would make the perfect toy car playmat/bag!  It was so easy too!  Just pick a fun fabric for the back, a solid fabric for the bag part and follow this tutorial I put together for the beach towel backpack.

Check out this fun HotWheels fabric:

All wrapped up and pulled tight, it's the perfect place to store all those toy cars and a great way to tote your favorite toys to Grandma & Grandpa's house!

Ikea hack -PAX wardrobe

Our room was a disaster area! Seriously our clothes were out of control!! I was so over living out of laundry baskets, we decided it was worth the money to rearrange our room and install an Ikea wardrobe. We spent an entire weekend putting together the Pax wardrobe... it took a Saturday evening until 3am and the majority of a Sunday to complete. The part I want to tell you about though is how we modified it to accommodate an electrical outlet and gave me the ability to charge my phone and iPad.

We used a rotary saw to cut away the cabinet around the outlet that was behind the wardrobe.

Next we cut a hole in the side between to two cabinets of the wardrobe and hot glued a curtain grommet to each side of the rough cut hole.






Then all we had to do was mount a power strip on the inside of the wardrobe and plug all my chargers in.






Now my clothes are all hung neatly in their place, shoes nestled on their slide out rack, iPad softly displays the time, and my precious (a.k.a. iPhone)charges all night while I sleep peacefully.













It was a happy day when I was able to wrangle my clothes and shoes and relinquish the closet to my Doug! Good thing because cleaning up this mess was a giant pain!!







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

More PJs

 

So did you catch in my last post that I said I made 8 sets of pajamas but there were only 7 accounted for? Ok, yeah probably not, but anyway… I wanted to post these separately because they’re not Christmasy and would make a really great gift (especially for hard-to-make-for boys) for any occasion.

Did you know there’s a line of fabric from the beautifully illustrated books of the famous children’s author Eric Carle? Yep, just Google it and bask in the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear Brown Bear, Grouchy Ladybug, and 10 Rubber Ducks goodness! I scooped up two coordinating prints from the Brown Bear Brown Bear line to make these simple drawstring lounge pants & a matching appliquéd T. I included the Brown Bear Brown Bear book and shipped it off to my little nephew in Germany for Christmas.

PJs

I can't believe I still haven't posted all my Christmas projects!  I even wrote them all... they're all just waiting for me to add pictures and I haven't even done that.  Better late than never though I guess.

This Christmas was the year of the pajama in our house. I made 8 sets of PJs! They were all simple draw string pants with coordinating T shirts (I never imagined how difficult it would be to find plain solid color Ts!) that I appliquéd. For most, I used this method to draft the pattern from an existing pair of pants and added a plain or ruffled hem.

It just doesn’t get any better than sisters in matching Christmas PJs!
I even used a simplicity pattern to make tiny versions for my girls' dolls (you'll have to take my word for it though... I didn't take a picture and they're both tucked into bed with their "mommy's" at the moment).

A second set for family friend’s kiddos (& doll).


For this year I’m thinking I should do a flannel version and including Mom & Dad in the fun!

Date Nights!

My Doug is really difficult to buy for. He’s very particular about… well really everything… so I have more success with “abstract” ideas, like this Love Notes Jar I made for him 2 Valentine’s ago, and a glass blowing class I got for him for his last birthday. So I was really excited that he LOVED the idea I came up with for him this Christmas… date nights!

It isn’t a difficult gift to put together, but it does take some time and patience; I started working on it 6 months ago. The idea is to plan for a date night every month of the upcoming year (or maybe for a Valentine's gift you could do every weekend of the coming month?). I have something of a little “addiction” to those discount sites like Groupon and Living Social. I love that you can get a great deal and discover something new and fun going on in your town! I started watching for deals on things to do that would make a great date night and didn’t expire until into the future year (a hazard of planning too far in advance). I kept a calendar of when the deals I bought expired and made sure to plan around those and still end up with one date per month.

When it was time to put together the gift, I made a calendar template for each month that fits on the front of a 5x9 manilla envelope, printed out one for each month and adhered it to the front of 12 envelopes. I printed off the vouchers, put them in the envelope for the month that we’ll be going on that date, and made a decorative band to slip around all the envelopes to keep them together.

I wasn’t able to get vouchers for every month of the year yet, since some of the deals expire within months that we already have a date for, but I was able to get quite a few; things like a wine tasting, dinner and a movie, paddleboard lessons, comedy club, and swimming with the manatees.

I love this gift, for so many reasons! Committing to a date night every month will be a great way to make sure we’re spending quality alone time together (unfortunately, it’s easy to just pass that up when you have 2 little ones), we’ll get to do lots of new things we haven’t tried before, putting photos and memorabilia from our dates in the envelopes will be a convenient way to keep track of some of the fun stuff we did throughout the year, but I think my most favorite thing about it is that I can just keep it going every year and completely eliminate the painful task of gift giving for my picky (albeit wonderful) husband!

Chore Chart

I wanted to make a chore/allowance/behavior chart for my 6 year old. I decided a magnetic dry erase board would be perfect for the job but the boards at the office supply stores were so expensive that I figured I could make one for much less. A million ideas involving various iterations of a DIY magnetic dry erase board and purchases including dry erase paint, metal flashing, magnetic paint, plexiglass, and oil drip pans later, I found a magnetic dry erase board at Target for $20…. go figure! I exchanged all those supplies for the $20 board, pinstriping tape (from the automotive store), 2 bags of flat edge glass marbles (Elle prefers to call them “gems”), & some magnets. Here’s how this fun project came together.

 

 

I started by planning out what I wanted to chart with this chart and decided on 3 sections:

• Choices – Elle starts every day with 4 choices “gems”. She can loose a gem for making a bad choice. If she finishes the week with a pre-determined number of choices gems she gets to choose something fun to do like picking where we eat breakfast on the weekend, playing a board game with Mom & Dad, staying up late to watch a movie on Friday night etc.

• Chores – These are the things she is expected to do every day, they contribute to being a productive part of keeping the house clean and taking care of herself. She places a check mark in each of the items as they’re completed every day.

• Allowance – Elle places a green “gem” in the row for each of these items she completes. The green gems are assigned a value… it can be whatever you think is reasonable, a nickel, a dime, a quarter etc. As long as she completes all her chores for the day as well, at the end of the week she cashes in her green gems for her earned allowance.

 

Once I devised the method for each of the sections & had an idea of how many rows we would need, I used pin striping to make a grid on the board. I also had vinyl decals made for each of the sections and days of the week. Lastly I hot glued magnets to the back of the flat sided marbles (you can buy them by the bag at Michaels). We’re on week 3 of the chart, and it’s been a complete success thus far! My child’s room has never been cleaner, I don’t have to hunt for her lunch box every morning, figuring out how much allowance she’s earned every week has been a good math lesson, and she loves seeing her bank grow!

 

Show-and-tell

One of the things I really like about the town we live in is its thriving art community… there are lots of galleries and museums and theaters near by. My most recent find is the Zen Glass Studio. I bought a Groupon for My Doug for his birthday to take a class there to make a wine glass. We made a date night of it and had a great time! It was really amazing to see the different effects you can get from just spinning, mixing, and pressing the molten glass. Check out My Doug’s handiwork:





Wondering where my glass is? I suspected… and was right about… working with glass being a little too free form for me. I am not artistic, I need rules to follow, methods to utilize… yes I know that’s not terribly exciting, but it makes me a decent sewer and a good analyst (my “real” job). But I certainly admire those of you who have that artistic flare! More show-and-tell to come.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Mason Jar Pin Cushion Tutorial

 

This was one of those projects that I started out thinking I would whip it right up in no time flat, easy peasy. I thought I would post a picture of the finished pin cushion and link to any of the many tutorials there are for mason jar pin cushions (they’re all pretty much the same). Alas after 2 attempts, I kept ending up with too much bulk in the lid so it was too difficult to screw on (although I probably could’ve lived with it if it weren’t a Christmas gift for a friend). So I figured out my own way of doing this little project and now you get a tutorial of your own!

You’ll need:

A mason jar

A scrap of fabric

Hot glue

Batting

Fun stuff to fill the jar with

Just so I don’t loose you below, there are two parts to the mason jar lid… I’m going to refer the  piece in the first picture below as the “disc” and the piece in the second picture as the “screw top”.

Step 1 – Using the disc as a template, cut a circle of fabric from your scrap piece that is half an inch bigger all the way around.

Step 2 – Fold the fabric circle in half and then in half again and make little marks at the 4 points of the folds along the outside edge. Mark the same four “sections” with a sharpie on the underside of the top lip of the screw top. When you unfold the fabric, they’ll look like this:

Step 3 – Match up one of the marks on your fabric with one of the marks on your screw top and start there hot gluing the right side of the fabric to the underside of the top lip of the screw top, pleating the fabric as you go so that the 4 marks in the fabric match up with the 4 marks on the lid.

Step 4 – shape the batting into a ball and stuff the fabric until it’s full and puffy

Step 5 – Press the disc part of the lid into the screw top and make sure the fabric is as full and puffy as possible but the disc still lays flat inside the screw top. Once you’re satisfied with the amount of fluffiness, hot glue the disc into the screw top.

Step 6 – Fill the jar with something fun! I picked some fun notions from my stash – bits of ribbon, lace, a jingle bell, a big pom-pom, but if the person you're making it for doesn't already have them, you could include some sewing basics like needles, pins, a seam ripper etc.

If this isn’t 1 of 4,000 handmade Christmas gifts you’re trying to finish up the week of Christmas, and have a little more time, you should definitely make some really adorable decorative pin toppers to go with your pin cushion! Check out this great tutorial a friend of mine did for those on her blog- A girl in Paradise. http://agirlinparadise.blogspot.com/2011/05/decorative-pin-toppers.html

Artwork Mug

Ok this isn’t exactly “handmade” but it is a creative idea and one of my favorite Christmas gifts this year so I wanted to share. We make a concerted effort to focus more on giving at Christmas than getting, and part of that was to make sure our 6 year old thought of gifts she wanted to get for each of us. We talked about the things Daddy likes; among others, she listed coffee & her art work. She finally decided on a coffee mug for him and was beyond excited when I told her I was pretty sure we would be able to have some of her art work printed on a mug.

I started with the sites I was familiar with, and found some good deals for printing photos on mugs, but since I wanted to use a line drawing she made, was worried that the white of the paper she drew on wouldn’t be the same as the white of the coffee mug and you would see the outline of the “photograph”. So I poked around a little more looking for sites that you can upload graphics to customize your item with, not just photos. There were a few sites, but I settled on Zazzle.com because they have a great little “set whites as transparent” feature where all the white parts of your design will be transparent so the item you’re having it printed on just shows through. It was so easy, I just picked the coffee mug I wanted, scanned Elle’s art work, uploaded it to Zazzle, and set the white as transparent. A few days later, the mug arrived and was perfect in every way! Elle was so excited to give Daddy her gift… maybe even a little more excited than she was about the gifts she received… maybe. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad