A Few Wild Weeks...

I started writing a blog post several weeks ago.  Then I added on a few weeks later.  Then when I looked at it again I figured that everything was so out of date that I'd just better start over.

Amanda, here is your post ;) I didn't fall off the Earth.

I'm hoping now I can finally settle into a rhythm.  But you may be thinking, "Evan, you've been in your new job for two months now, and you still aren't in a rhythm?"  My answer:  Christmas Season.  Hubs and I have had to make so many changes and adjustments over the last two months.  Not bad changes, mind you, and I've spent much fewer hours crying and whining and moping. Which made me realize, I think I was looking for love and acceptance among the blog world because that was the only place I was getting any "human" interaction besides that of Hubs.  Working at the front desk of Daddy's local dental office where most people know me definitely has it's rewards there. 

So, nothing personal to any of my blog readers and any of you who I loyally followed, I have found that I no longer need my blog to try to find some purpose in my life besides my job.  Because that was formerly the only purpose I seemed to have. 

In keeping with tradition of my blog, here's what I've been up to.  With no pictures.  Sorry.  You'll get over it ;)

~Immigration day costume for my niece Emma including a crocheted hat.  She was Adelaide Bryant who immigrated from England in the 1900s.
~Elf costume for Emma which included a tulle puff slip, circle skirt and hat trimmed in faux fur and suspenders.  By the way, it looked like about 20 white cats had been sleeping in the sewing room floor after cutting that faux fur.
~Pillowcase dress for little cousin Emma (different one) with purple corduroy and lime green ruffle ribbon trim.
~Fleece jingle bell ball for little cousin Brentley following Jenilyn's tutorial here -->Baby Football Tutorial  Except mine made more of a round ball.  Not sure how that happened, but it was still cute and Brentley liked it before it was ever opened.
~Khaki purse with grommets and leopard print ribbon.  We gave it to Hubs's hair lady for Christmas.  I really regret not getting a picture of this at all, but it needs some design adjustments.
~A few wallet and bag orders for Christmas.  Things got sticky for a while since most of my orders came in the same week that Hub's uncle and aunt were in town from Arkansas.  But it got done!

Now I've got a few things that I want to make happen here in the next few weeks.

~I have a few friends having little ones soon.  Gonna make some diaper bags and accessories for those.
~Bought some fabric intended for diaper bags but dreamed up some cute bag combos in the process.  Got it prewashed today too.  Love All About Fabrics! 
~Gotta go to Hancock tomorrow and gets some fusible fleece, table cloth vinyl and some lining fabric.  And something else that will be a surprise to debut soon!

Oh!  And the newest thing that makes me quite happy!  For Christmas I got some "custom" insoles for my shoes since I have warped up feet that used to hurt all the time.  I put these insoles in some Alegria shoes, and this really is my new happy!  My feet haven't hurt in a whole week!  You have no idea how nice this is!

So...what's been new for you?

Keep Chugging!

So I have no internet access at home, and haven't for a week.  It should be fixed tomorrow.  And I'm still adjusting to my new schedule, although I can tell you that I like it much better than my previous arrangements.  So since I'm on my lunch break and still need to drop the old paycheck in the bank, I'm just giving you a quickie of what I've been up to.

~My favorite--an Immigration Day project for Emma.  She will be Adelaide Bryant who immigrated to the US from Liverpool, England in the 1900s.  It is so cute!  I'll post pictures when I have some.
~A wallet order
~A bag order
~I made my Dollywood bag and it is now doubling as a lunch box since I lined it with ripstop nylon.
~Mama told me she wants a bag like my pleated one too.  So that's to be done.

That's all for now.  Off to the bank!

Bear with Me!

Hi everyone!  I didn't fall off a mountain this weekend.  I promise.  Though I did decide to take the lazy way out on our vacation and I didn't take a lot of pictures.  I didn't even take the first ball of yarn.  It was amazing.

ANYWAY...

The reason I'm asking you to bear with me is because I started my new job yesterday!  8:30AM to 6PM with a 2 hr lunch, Monday through Thursday.  It's nice.  Plus I'm working for a boss who I loved so much that I kissed when I left yesterday.  My boss is my Daddy.  But I won't have as much down time to blog and mindlessly surf the internet for craft ideas like I did at my other job.  I'm OK with this.  Very OK. 

So just hang with me until I can get in a steady schedule and I promise I'll be back with goodies!  Goodies for all!

Selvage Earring Tutorial

Ever wonder what you could do with all those selvages or thin tiny fabric scraps?  Ever have an outfit that you could never find earrings to match?  Fret no more! 

I finally got the time to make my selvage earring tutorial!  So here goes.

Materials Needed:
~Low temp hot glue gun
~Bendable wire (I used floral wire)
~Ear wires
~Crimp beads
~Needle nosed pliers and wire cutters
~Scissors
~About 18 inches of selvage or just 18 inches of 1/2 inch thick fabric

Depending on how big you want your earrings, cut your wire into two equal lengths.  Mine were 5 inches.

Place a small strip of glue at an angle at the end of the selvage.  You want to use the smallest amount of glue possible so the ends will go into the crimp bead easily.  Glue the wire down at an angle like so.  Then just start wrapping the wire.  You may need to glue it at points here and there if the wires are much longer than 5 inches.

When you get to the end of your wire, glue down the selvage with a thin bit of hot glue.  Make sure to glue it to the wire and not just other fabric.  You don't want the wrapping to unspin.  When it's glued down, cut the extra selvage off.  This will be used to make the second earring.  Excuse my camera strap at the bottom of the picture.  It has nothing to do with the earrings.

Now bend your wrapped wire into the shape of a horseshoe. 

Pinch the ends of the wire together and apply a crimp bead to the top.  I used a wider set of pliers for this than my needle nose, but needle nose should work just fine.  Then trim off the scraggly ends at the top of the bead. 

Now use your needle nose pliers to open the bottom loop on the earwire enough to thread the crimp bead onto it.  Make sure the pretty side faces front and thread the crimp bead onto the earwire.  Close the earwire back with the needle noses.  If you were a little violent with your project (like me), you may need to reshape your fabric/wire loop at this point.

And there you have it!  Now just do the same thing for the other earring using the rest of the selvage scrap.

If you make some of these I'd love to see a picture!  Upload one to my Flickr group here --> Evan Becky's Fan Pics on Flickr



To-Do List 10-21-11

This post is more for my sanity than anything else.  But on the other hand, I'm thinking about doing a giveaway soon!  Who's with me?

~Alter the peasant dress (which may entail more work than I thought) It's done!  (hehehe!)  And I didn't have to tear it apart!
~Belt and bag to match peasant dress (I have some nice microsuede polyester for this!)<-- This is not done because I realized that my poly suede doesn't match.  I think I'll just buy a belt.  And save the poly suede for a different bag.
~Make the "fur" lined coat--This has been put on the back burner.  It's not all that important that I get it done.  I have all winter to wear it.
~Dollywood bag--I think I'm going through with it.  It shouldn't (shouldn't being the keyword) take long
~A-line skirt with black, white and pink plaid material
~Make a tutorial for the selvage earrings.<--Got the pictures made!  They are super cute! 
~Remake a train engineer hat for an order.  I knew in the back of my mind that this might happen though.  I made the hat a little too small.
~Redesign my jewelry case idea.  I like the new design much better
~Made the executive decision that I'm going to All About Fabrics again tomorrow for some molded plastic zippers and rip-stop nylon--These are for new travel kits Turns out I didn't need molded plastic zippers.  Oh well, they were cheap
~I'd really like to make a "catalog" of stuff that I make.

Now for the new stuff:
~Try printing on ribbons and fabric using some tutorials I found online
~Make my Pretties with the wine satin and white lace.  Got that idea here --> Etcetorize
~Make the Sweater Bangles like I found here --> A Very Sweet November
~Make a Ruffle scarf like Merediths here --> Haute to Sew
~More Travel Kits and Gift Card Holders

And for the Must be Done Monday List:
~Get up early (hmm, this doesn't sound right, get up early on my day off...)
~Finish off my pedicure gift card from my Mother-in-law :)
~Find some bangles to make above said bangles
~Find some brown leg warmers, maybe...
~Find a dress belt if not done before Monday
~The Pretties
~Sweater Bangles
~Dollywood Bag
~Then if I have time, the pre-cut Travel Kits and Gift Card Holders

I should probably get up at about 6 AM.  That oughta do it.

Awkward and Awesome 10-20-11

I'm just gonna bust right on in with it.

Awkward

~All the craziness that seems to be going on everywhere!  I think that since it was cloudy all last week to cover up the full moon, everybody realized this week that they missed it, so they are extra crazy.  Going shopping today started to get on my nerves because people were being rude and had no regard for someone in scrubs who might have to go into work soon.

~Spending most of the past two days with urine all over my hands from working on the urinalysis counter.  Not the job I had in mind when I went to college.

~Almost ending up in a whipped cream fight on my back porch with a bunch of middle school girls.  See this post for a few pics. 

~Having to save my brother's girlfriend by tickling one of the above middle schoolers. 

~This wasn't awkward for me, but for Hubs.  Sam and Megan (my brother and his girlfriend) almost seeing Hubs in only his tidy whities on Sunday afternoon before the kids got to our house.

~Having to wash my dress jeans after only a few hours wear because Ike Beast slurped me up the side of the leg.  Dog slobber isn't exactly a fashion statement I'd like to make.

~Hoping to goodness that Ike Beast didn't get too "excited" (if you know what I mean...) for our Christmas card picture.

I just realized that all but the first two awkwards happened on Sunday.

Awesome

~Getting the Christmas card picture made with Ike looking at the camera and without him being too excited.  This was a Christmas miracle in and of itself.  I'll post the card when it gets closer to Christmas.  We just wanted to make sure we had enough time to print the pics.

~Scoring some great deals at Old Navy for Hubs.  I just hope he likes what I picked out.

~I bought some wine colored satin, white lace and tiny elastic at Hobby Lobby today.  Hubs and I are going on a romanic trip to the mountains next weekend.  Can you guess what's going to be made from the satin and lace?  ;)

~I found out what to do with the left over sweater from my pumpkins.  Look here -->A Very Sweet November

~I figured out how to alter my peasant dress without tearing it apart and starting over.  Sure, it would probably fit better if I started over, but I don't have time for that.  You really don't know how excited this really makes me.  I'm gonna try to do this before Sunday so I can have WIWW pics of it.

~Finding these little babies on sale for $15 at Old Navy today

I almost passed them by, but I couldn't help it.  I had been wanting some leopard print flats.  And my recent check of the website says that they are $20 from there and they don't have my size.  Score!  Now, for the first time in my life, I kind of want some brown leg warmers to wear with my jeggings and these shoes...

~The new Casting Crowns CD came out this week.  I pre-bought mine for practically $5 and picked it up today!

~Only 6.5 more days before I'm no longer an employee at the hospital!  Ok, so I really do like my job and most of the people I work with, I just hate the hours.  Plus, it doesn't matter how good the boss is elsewhere, they don't hold a candle to my Daddy being my boss.  I'm also soooo looking forward to being able to cook dinner for Hubs every night. 

I think that's all I'll leave you with today.  There really have been so many awesome things happend this week.  I think doing Awkward and Awesome is just God's way of telling me that the good really does rule over the bad and that He will always look out for me. 

Eventful Weekend

So much happened this weekend, yet, I feel like I didn't get much done.  And truthfully, I didn't get much done off my to-list, but a lot of stuff that needed to get done, got done.

First of all, I got my sweater punkins made:

I first saw these from Rachel at My Happily Ever After, who found the tutorial over at Small Fry and Co.  They do such a good job with it, I'm not gonna go into the gory details of it, but whether you are a seamstress or not, these were so easy to make.  I tried to find sweaters at the Goodwill that I didn't think anyone would wear, but I still had a hard time hacking up a perfectly good sweater.  But they made great centerpieces for my dining room table.  And I still have lots of sweater left of the gold and white ones because I only used the sleeves for those!

And we did a big cleaning of the house.  Hubs was especially excited about that.  He's a clean freak.  I am not.  But I'm trying my best to keep it clean so we won't have so much work to do at Christmas.  That's really what took up most of my time on Saturday.  Between that and the preschool Fall Festival at church.  We aren't preschool workers, but our youth were helping to run booths, so we were also helping.  I also put on about 12 quarts of vegetable soup for my Mother-in-law's birthday party on Sunday.

So skip ahead to Sunday, after church we finished throwing together the birthday party.  This included making 2 dozen cornbread muffins and decorating a giant pumpkin pie with whipped cream.  The whipped cream melted and made a mess of the pie, but luckily it was store bought and I didn't feel like I had too much invested in it.  Everybody said it tasted good.  But we had a lot of fun and a lot of food!

Hubs's mom (and dad) blowing out candles.  That's her mother on the other side.  Can you believe that Hubs's grandmother will be 90 next month?!  (Don't tell her I told...)

Me and Emma, my middle niece.  She is a girl after my own heart.  She wanted to know what projects I was working on and was thrilled about my sewing room.  She's also the one who always makes sure I can come to her birthday parties.

Then on Sunday night we had our crazy bunch of Middle Schoolers over for Small Groups.  We decided that the snack for that night was going to be pancakes.  Hubs made about 50 pancakes and they were all gone by the end of the night.  Along with some ice cream, about half of the left over pumpkin pie and a few bags of chips.  They will eat you out of house and home!  And did I mention, that we had chocolate and strawberry syrups and whipped cream for the pancakes?  They took over that.

That's our pastor's daughter with her mouth open.

And her mom and dad lead High School Small Groups

They're crazy, but I love them!