The Winners of Our Random Crafty Bits

So I'm a little late posting our winners. I've been busy finishing swap packages and completing reports for work before we head off on vacation this weekend. It's been busy around here!

My random number generator.

I finally sat down tonight and used my random number generator to pick the winners of our random crafty bits giveaway. She picked:

Karen
Christy
Val

Congrats ladies, you'll be receiving random bits of craftiness from us sometime this year. I'm excited to craft something for each of you. I'm not sure what it will be yet, but how fun!

YOE January Ornaments

I joined Val's Year of Enchantment(YOE) ornament swap this year. They had so much fun last year so I've been super excited to participate in it this year! I sent off my first YOE package earlier this week to my partner Gin. Here are the ornaments I sent.

The two snow birds are painted on a sand dollar and the other two ornaments are sewn from recycled bits of felted wool. You can see other YOE participants ornaments here. Below was my first attempt at a YOE ornament. It was added to my unfinished pile as a misfit, though I think I'll will finish it up for myself.

Have you ever had an idea that looked better in your mind? This happens to me all the time!!! That's what happened with my snowman snowflake ornament. This was my original sketch and my first attempt at sewing it. Nature Girl thought it looked like a snowman with lots of hair and she didn't like the scarf as it didn't match my drawing. My husband agreed with her on the hair so it was back to the drawing board or in this case the bag with the recycled wool bits for a second try. I think the version I sent Gin was closer but still not quite what I had originally envisioned. This misfit one is destined to hang on my YOE tree I think, though I may need to have a second tree for all of the misfits I create this year! Either way it was fun trying to create it. Now I'm working on the February YOE ornament, it's a gnome home theme. Since it's a craft along in February so I get to keep what I create. Let's hope my gnome home ornament turns out closer to the idea in my head!

** On another note did you notice the blog background change? Nature Girl picked out this frog recycling background. She thought it was very clever to have the recycle symbol as the leaves in the tree. It seems appropriate for a little Nature Girl!

Lovely Mail

We've been fortunate enough to get some lovely mail recently. Karen from Sewmuch2luv opened her own Etsy shop. We purchased two of her beautiful owl pincushions. They arrived last weekend and are just so sweet! Nature Girl picked out the blue owl for her birthday. She squealed when it arrived and spent hours playing with both owls.



She took lots of pictures, found furniture for them and just had fun playing with them. Nature Girl has no intentions of sticking pins in her owl, she's using him as a softie instead. I can't say that I blame her as the owls are truly lovely with beautifully hand stitched embroidery patterns on their wings. Each owl is unique. I have to admit that I haven't stuck pins in mine yet either, I think he might be too cute to pick!


The package Karen sent was beautifully wrapped in tissue paper with stickers that match her shop logo. Karen definitely puts together a wonderful package! She's thought of all of the little details that make for a lovely shopping experience. She just added a lovely little gnome pincushion to her shop. Go take a peek at her shop now, you'll be glad you did!



Now I have to brag for a minute. I recently won two giveaways. That's right two! I won this beautiful snowflake ornament from Val as part of the Year of Enchantment January swap. It arrived on Monday and is beautiful. I still need to get my YOE tree put up so I can put my new ornament on it. The second giveaway was Karen's. She did a giveaway where she chose several winners to receive a random crafted surprise this year. I was lucky enough to win! It's very exciting to win two giveaways! I feel very fortunate! Of course when you're fortunate enough to win you have to share the love so don't forget to enter our random bits of crafty mail giveaway. We'll choose three winners on February 20th. You can enter by going to the post here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

As you know, I like to doodle and zentangle. I thought gift tags would be a nice thing to create, so while sitting in a workshop today, I listened to the presentation and doodled. I created these circle gift tags.
It's Valentine's Day, a day to share love and kindness with your family and friends(really everyday is a day to share love and kindness, but I digress.) Since we couldn't send each and every one of you a Valentine we're sharing these zentangled gift tags instead. They can be printed on cardstock, cut out, then punch a small hole and add a bit of string before attaching them to a gift. We hope you'll enjoy them. Click here to download a pdf with the circle gift tags.

Or if you'd prefer a different set of tags, how about these. Click here to download these gift tags instead. Enjoy and have a lovely Valentine's Day!

Happy Birthday and a Giveaway

Guess who turned seven? That's right Nature Girl is seven. Can you even believe it? I can't, she's growing up so fast!! At our house we have several birthday traditions. Our first birthday tradition is going to your favorite restaurant for dinner. The second tradition is choosing a birthday dessert that the rest of the family makes for the birthday person.
Nature Girl celebrated her 7th birthday with Boston cream donuts for breakfast and dinner at the Outback. She chose the restaurant and for her birthday dessert she wanted cheesecake. We baked it at night and placed it in the fridge to cool. The next morning she woke up and asked for cheesecake for breakfast. We served it up on our birthday plate.

This year we took a few of Nature Girl's friends to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch. Here she is wearing her new pink 7 shirt. The photo is a little dark as the resturant is somewhat dark inside. It was her first visit to the Rainforest Cafe. She loved it!

Here we are outside the Rainforst Cafe. These two girls have been friends with Nature Girl since they were all babies. It's fun watching them all grow up together. They're sweet girls! They had fun looking at all of the animals and watching it rain inside the restaurant. It was a great afternoon. All three declared "This is the best birthday party ever!"


This is Nature's Girl's latest self portrait. It seems appropriate to share along with her 7th birthday post. By the way, not only are we celebrating Nature Girl's 7th birthday with this post, but it marks our 200th blog post as well! Thanks to all of you that have shared our adventures with us over the last 200 posts.
With so much to celebrate, it seems only right to have a give away. I'm going to borrow an idea I saw posted over Sew Much 2 Luv. We'll choose three comments at random then send a special handmade surprise to the three lucky commentors sometime this year. Who doesn't love random surprise mail?! We'll choose our winners on February 2oth. Good luck!

Sweet Things!

My school got a grant to serve fresh fruit for snack this year. Last week, I sent one of my students to the cafeteria. My student brought what we needed and also brought back this bag of oranges. He handed it to me and said "Here's Mrs. Tacy, these are for you for all the nice things you do for us." I tell you, my heart melted right there! See I'm easy to please . . . a few kind words, some fruit and I'm happy! I thought it was very sweet!!!

Speaking of sweet things, here's my sweet little Nature Girl. She was bored the other day and asked to pull out the playdoh. She played for a couple of hours setting up a playdoh town. She got to wear the playdough apron her Mimi got her for Christmas.

These are her playdoh people sitting under a tree she devised. I love to watch her play and create!

Lists of Good Things to Do!

The new year is underway. What is it about the new year that makes us reflect on the past and plan for a better future? I'm not really one for making resolutions. I try to live my life a little better each year. So I don't have any resolutions but instead I have a focus for this year. My plan is to focus on taking better care of myself. This includes maintaining my weight loss(25 lbs,) organizing my life and materials (to decrease the chaos and stress,) taking better care of my family by focusing more on them(after all they are an extension of me,) and I want to set aside more time to be creative as this recharges my batteries. I've been thinking that some daily doodles, musings or crafting would help accomplish this. I sat down with Nature Girl to doodle for a bit today and this is what I created! I had a very enjoyable time and was happy with my results. I just love my crayola twist-able colored pencils. I bought myself a sketchpad about 6 months ago so I would have a place to doodle but I haven't been able to make myself draw in it. my reasoning behind not drawing in it is this, what if the doodles are horrible or messy? I haven't wanted to ruin the sketchpad. No worries I devised a new plan to get around this . . . I can doodle on paper then paste it into my sketchbook. I've decided to add my new year's mouse and my owl as my first doodles in my sketchpad. Best of all I spent quality time with Nature Girl and produced a doodle at the same time. See I'm starting the new year on the right foot.
Here's hoping 2011 is filled with good things for you and lots of time to create and enjoy life!