Runaway October

So it’s been roughly 6 months since I’ve posted here. That’s prob­a­bly the longest break I’ve taken. I’ve just been busy, I guess.

Here’s a cou­ple excuses rea­sons why:

• Went back to school at the last minute. (Not rec­om­mended. Sum­mer semes­ter with sci­ence and math is not rec­om­mended either.)
• Declan started Kindergarten.
• Hal­loween party planning.
• … Uhm, Pin­ter­est?

Wow, that’s not nearly the list of impres­sive rea­sons I kept pic­tur­ing in my mind. The good news is that I’m sure most of my fol­low­ers know me some­what in per­son and have been in touch on FaceBook.If you don’t know me per­son­ally… well, come say ‘Hi’. The worst thing that will hap­pen is I end up with some crazy stalker and they leave dead ani­mals on my porch. I already have a cat that does that, so you’ll have to try harder than that crazy, future, poten­tial stalker.

Declan did sur­pris­ingly well with his first day. He seems gen­uinely excited to go.

 Just a few days after start­ing school, he lost his first tooth!

I’ve been work­ing on a whole lot of Hal­loween stuff. Here’s a quick Save The Date I made for the party so far.

I only edited this to fit dif­fer­ent word­ing. When I find the orig­i­nal source again, I will give credit where credit is due.

And if I was any kind of GOOD blog­ger I’d promise pic­tures of my Hal­loween stuff and what­not. But we all know I’m not a very GOOD blog­ger so maybe, just maybe, I might post again soon.

In case you’re liv­ing under a rock, like I was until recently, this is the run down of Cre­ative Estates.

Doesn’t that sound like a mil­lion pounds of fun? (Who really says things like ‘a mil­lion pounds of fun’?)

Any­way, the con­fer­ence is in Chan­dler, Ari­zona on April 8^th, 9^th and 10^th. Tick­ets are only $149, which is dang cheap for a 3 day con­fer­ence of this type.

Check out the Agenda here. I’d have a hard time choos­ing which ses­sions to go to if I was able to go.

You can reg­is­ter here, but be sure to check out the whole Cre­ative Estates web­site, espe­cially the guest speak­ers.

If you’re like me and need to win tick­ets in order to go, be sure to check out Shey B’s Get Your Butt to Ari­zona give­away post here. She’s gen­er­ously giv­ing away 2 or more all-inclusive passes to the lucky win­ners. YAY!

Do you already have your tick­ets? No?! Bet­ter hurry! And let us know if you’ll be attend­ing!

I took all these pic­tures inside at night, so par­don the crappy qual­ity. It was either take them NOW or know that I’d never get to it later.

Not a hand­made present, but Curt the Dirt was my craft­ing buddy through the 3 mad days I did most of these in. I really need to stop procrastinating.

Oh god, look­ing over these pic­tures.… I really should be shot for post­ing some of these. :S

Com­plete with tramp stamp:

Seat belt covers:

Tuto­r­ial here: Seat­belt sleeves by AfricanKelli

Car trash bag:

It uses bon­ing to keep itself open. Cool huh? Tuto­r­ial here: Trash Bag by Make it and Love it

A few belts to help keep the pants up on my super skinny boys. Tuto­r­ial here: Boy Belts by Elsie Marley

Can­is­ter sleeves for my mother in law to match her red kitchen. Time con­sum­ing but super cute, eh?

Tuto­r­ial here: Quilted Can­is­ter Sleeves by HandmadeMommy

Some freezer paper sten­cil shirts. Appar­ently I for­got to take a pic­ture of some, but here’s a few of them.

(I was try­ing for a grungy look. I swear. )

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Did you make any­thing for Christ­mas presents? Let us know!

Some­times when you aim to hand make all of your gifts, the final goal can get away from you. Sure, that super cute scarf would be fun to make, but in Ari­zona who’s going to use it?

So the boys (with lots of help from Mama) are mak­ing soap to give as gifts this year. Who can’t use soap, right?

Don’t worry, the stove was not on yet.

My fancy dou­ble boiler.

Adding flax meal for exfo­liants and kelp pow­der which is a great detox­i­cant. (Is that a word?)

Soap on a Rope, poured and set­ting up.

In the molds, with a fin­ger­print… for authenticity.

We did two dif­fer­ent batches so far–one for the gals, one for the guys.

The Guy Recipe

• 1 lb sus­pen­sion Shea But­ter soap base
• 2 table­spoons Kelp Powder
• 2 table­spoons Flax Seed Meal
• 15–20 drops Tea Tree Essen­tial Oil

The Gal Recipe

• 1 lb Honey melt & pour soap
• 4 Tb Beeswax
• 4 Tb Honey
• 15 — 20 Sweet Orange Essen­tial Oil
• 1 tsp shim­mery Mica for sparkle

(P.S. — If the boys give you a gift of soap, pre­tend to be sur­prised! They are very proud of their efforts! )

Or the S.M.O.R as I like to call it — The Sewing Machines Oper­a­tions Room.

Remem­ber this sorry lit­tle 11’x11’ room?

Which was later cleaned and some­what orga­nized to look like this:

Well, it’s kind of fin­ished now. It’s now a very work­able space and I can actu­ally com­plete projects some­where other than the kitchen table. YAY!

I took at least 100 pic­tures today, and about 20 a few weeks ago. This room is very very hard to photograph.

I even tried to take a video with my fancy new Flip Video Cam­corder from my Prilosec spon­sor­ship, but it eats bat­ter­ies like no other.

Of course I couldn’t find any bat­ter­ies to replace them with.

Such is the life of a mom.

The project table is com­pletely hand­made by me and my dad. We used plans from Knock Off Wood. Here’s the top and the cubby sides.

I’ll go into it in a lit­tle more detail later.

I’ll have to slowly buy or make some pretty bas­kets on con­tain­ers to go in here.

Love these stools from Overstock.com

Hand­made string balls made by one of the boys.

There was two.

One of them bit the dust, or rather, the dogs water bowl.

The string ball, not the boys.

Well, okay, they usu­ally assault the water bowl at least once a day, but they don’t melt.

Unless you count the dirt that melts off.

I should make some more. String Balls, not boys. Maybe a lit­tle girl but that’s a dif­fer­ent sub­ject.

Now maybe I can get these bad boys quilted and bound and in use.

And what craft room photo shoot is com­plete with­out a pic­ture of a cat.

I used Martha Stew­art Hydrangea flat paint for the walls. I also painted the ceil­ing and all the trim, but can’t find the names of them. They’re the same ones that were rec­om­mended on the paint chip palette. No wor­ries about every­thing match­ing together. What a smart girl, eh?

I can’t seem to find a decent sam­ple color online, so you’ll just have to squint and imag­ine you can tell the true color of everything.

I do hope to make some roman blinds or cur­tains for the win­dows. And the bas­kets I men­tioned ear­lier. I def­i­nitely need some art­work and other pret­ties to hang up and keep me happy while I work. I would really really love a stereo or MP3 player of some sort in there too. I work so much bet­ter with music.

So, that’s the S.M.O.R.

What do you think?

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