new necklace

Here's a necklace I've been working on for my friend. I hope that she likes it! :)

Dancing with the Star Wars Stars...

OMG, this is too funny! It takes my two favorite things and puts them together....Dancing with the Stars and Star Wars!

Thanks Otto!

Kitty cat

more animals

Found this on Icanhascheezburger. I just love it. :)

Catch up...

Sorry I've been absent for a few days. Ok, it's only been 3, but I love to blog and it feels weird when I'm not here every day. lol

I've been working on a couple of embroidery things. One actually got finished. It's the football logo that we did a month ago. After a couple of changes we've actually done it on a jacket. Updated picture tomorrow. It turned out ok, but I've learned I don't like to embroider lined windbreaker jackets. I'll do it, but I don't have to like it. LOL

A few of my family members have had some health problems the past couple of weeks. It makes me sad because you don't want to see your aunts and uncles getting older, you think they'll be around forever. But of course, when they get ill, you realize how short life is, and how much they are a part of your life. I get a little sad when I see them go through things, and I wish I could change them. But all you can do is pray, and hope they have a good doctor!!

I'm going to get back into crafting now that the jacket is done. I'm hoping that being creative will help to take my mind off of things and to get grounded again. I'll post what I've come up with when I get stuff done. :)

Quantum of Solace

Today Kristen and I went to see Quantum of Solace. And talk about an action movie!! From the very start you are just thrust into action. It was amazing! I love this series of Bond movies. I was never a really big fan of the Bond movies. I mean I think that Sean Connery made the best Bond. But they just didn't float my boat.

But how can you not just LOVE Daniel Craig? He is so awesome. We both were bummed that there was no bathing suit scene of him in the movie. Really bummed!

And there were no fun car gadgets like in the other movies, but it was cool to think that he could do all that without a ton of gadgets. Did just LOVE the computer that they used though. I would totally love to have that as my computer.

And one thing that I totally didn't love was the opening music. Can you say, "ICK!"...ok, I'll do it for you...."ICK!!!" It was horrible. I am a fan of Alicia Keys, but this was totally not the best song she's ever sung.

I won't go into more than that, I don't want to ruin it for anyone that hasn't seen it. And if you haven't seen it...GO SEE IT!! Two thumbs up!

A Broken Aluminum Bat

Here's Phil back in his softball playing days. And he actually broke this bat during a game. We had to take a photo cause the bat is Aluminum, and it is pretty unusual to break an aluminum bat! The game actually stopped so that they could look at the bat. I don't even remember if he got a hit off that or not.

I had my engineer boss at the time look at the bat, and he said there must have been a flaw in the metal to make it break like that. Ok, burst our bubble. We'd like to think that he hit the ball so hard that it broke the bat. ;)

Tree Skirt Finished!

I finally finished!! Here is what the final tree skirt will look like. You can barely see the sequins, but they're there, trust me! LOL


I really like how it turned out, I think I have to scour the thrift stores to find more skirts to make tree skirts. What a great way to reuse old clothing. So scour your closets to see if you can find a skirt that will go with your tree. Especially if you were going to donate it in the first place.

I sewed a lot of this together, but you can really do this without sewing. You can glue to glue all the accents onto the skirt. And if the skirt has frayed edges, you really don't have to finish the side seams. And you can glue the ties onto the skirt too. Or if it doesn't matter, you can just leave them laying flat without tying them together.

I'm going to cut up a dress next and use that as the next tree skirt. I'll keep you posted.

Close up view of tree skirt

While going through some stuff today I found iridescent sequins and beads. I thought that would be a great accent to put in between the holly leaves. That way they wouldn't take away from the holly accents. So here's a close up of the beading. I've done about 1/3 of the skirt. I think I'll do more while I'm watching Grey's tonight. It looks kinda neat so far. :)

Tree skirt

This is the beginnings to the tree skirt. One of the trees we're going to do for the craft show is going to be in pink. So, what would be better than a tree skirt? This one is actually made from a reuse skirt.

I cut part of the top off, then sewed the top part so it was a bit more ruffly. Ok, I don't know all the technical sewing terms here, but I just lightly gathered the top and sewed a straight stitch. I also cut a straight cut up the side so that you can get it around the tree. I sewed ties to it as well, so that they can tie it together.

Where the light pink area is, I added the holly leaves cut from an old pair of green jeans. They matched the leaves in the calico print! And then I'm sewing on some pearls from a recycled necklace that my friend had in her stash.

I'll take another photo tomorrow so you can see my status. It's really fun putting together something new from reused items.

Reuse Charm Bracelets

These bracelets were made from pieces of jewelry that my friend had in her stash. Some of them were pieces from a bigger jewelry piece that was damaged. Like one side of a pair of earrings. Or maybe jewels had fallen out of a piece, but part of it could be used for something else.

I didn't put a ton of things on them. I think they look classic with fewer components. This one looks like a victorian heart bracelet. I didn't have a fancy toggle, so I just used a plain one. Maybe I can salvage one from a different piece? The crystals on this one were actually from a chandelier. And the pearls were from one side of an earring.

This next bracelet is so victorian looking. The crystals are from another chandelier. And the other pieces were just floating around in her stash. It's gold-tone, and the chain was in her stash as well.

It's fun to envision new pieces of jewelry from things we would have probably thrown out. We're helping to not fill up the landfill, and we're getting a pretty cool piece of jewelry too. :)

We're going to try to sell these pieces to benefit her non-profit program, the Green Youth Art Project. She's going to have an arts and crafts faire in December. If you're in the Martinez area and would like more info, leave me a comment with your email addy and I'll forward along the info to you.

Jeans purses

I've been spending the past few days trying to come up with ideas to decorate the jeans purses that I made from old recycled jeans. These ones aren't lined cause my sewing machine couldn't sew in the lining. But I think they're awfully cute and a great way to recycle jeans.

This pair is from a tan/taupe pair of jeans. I had these appliqué butterflies in my stash, and decided that they would look really cool on this pair:

I then cut out a kawaii skull from felt and sewed that on a pair of khaki pants that I made into a purse. I found the checkered belt with the skull from that cool second-hand store in San Mateo. Thought it would go well together.

I then figured that I could embroider on the jeans before sewing them up. So I embroidered a bunch of these little pink flowers that were already in the machine. I thought the middles of the flowers would look really cute filled in, so I found my fabric paint and painted them in.

I made the belt out of this fun material my friend gave to me to use for different projects.


Those are what I have done so far. I'll get more stuff done during the week. I'll post as I create. My creative juices are flowing again...YAY!

Do you ever feel....

Do you ever feel like you have adult ADD? LOL That is my day today. I start all these little things to do, cause I of course procrastinated again, and now have too much on my plate today. So I keep starting all these little projects, and haven't completed any of them.

I started cleaning the kitchen,
then started laundry,
then started to shampoo the rugs,
went back to the kitchen,
then had a brilliant idea on embroidering a jeans purse,
went to picking up stuff in the livingroom
got a call from a friend, now am looking for stuff for a project we're working on,
went back to the laundry...

PHEW! Now I'm taking a break on the computer and watching NCIS while trying NOT to get hooked into Gaiaonline's zOMG game.

See what I'm saying??

Do you ever do that?

Go out and Vote!

Tomorrow is voting day, and I'm really excited. Excited to be voting, but more excited that all the political ads will be gone!! I'm getting tired of the ads, the tv spots, the flyers in the mail, messages in my inbox. Although it was cool seeing Kelsey Grammer's name in my email box the other day! LOL

It is so important to get out and vote. Remember ladies, women fought for the right to vote!! (That's my favorite saying right now). LOL

So anyway, if you haven't mailed in your ballot already, get out there and vote!!

Follow your heart necklace and embroidery

I've been working on a couple of things the past few days. Well, that and trying to get inspired to create things. I've been in a funk, not sure if it's cause I'm not feeling 100% or not. But today I felt inspired to create. :)

My friend Debi is making an apron for her friend Imelda. And Debi wanted some embroidery on the apron. Here's how it turned out:

And I've been working on ideas for a necklace for a friend. It's hard to try to make something when I'm not sure if they're going to like it, so here's my interpretation of what she wanted:

I found that cool charm that says Love Life Live Life, and when you flip it over it says: Follow your Heart. Cool huh?

I have to put an extender chain on it, so I'm not done yet. But the bulk of it is done. I hope she'll like it, if not, it's goin' on etsy! LOL

Halloween at Debi's

Every year my friend Debi dresses up for Halloween. This year it was the Wizard of Oz theme. She was going to have all these spooky trees in her yard, but since it was so windy, they kept blowing over. :(

Here is Debi and her future Daughter-in-law as the Wicked Witch and Glinda.
Here's Alex playing like she's dead. Alex and her friends would lay around the yard like that, then get up and scare the kids! LOL It helped that the next door neighbor had a dummy in his front yard, so the kids just thought it was more of the same.
And here's cousin Frannie and Alex. It was a ton of fun watching them scare kids. Can't wait till next year!