Well, the first week of November is about over.  At this point I’m mainly working on Christmas gifts, or at least I was until I got a phone call.  The tea room where I have some things on consignment has a few busy weeks coming up and she wanted to be well stocked.  So that’s what I got busy on so that I could have it up to her before baby 6 decides to come.

First up, 3 cell phone holders.

Next is more chapstick holders. 

And lastly for the tea room lady was pony tail holders

Two things not for the tea room were a multi-green bath puff

And a Christmas gift for my sister.

So there’s what I’ve been working on.  It definately wasn’t a slow week.

So end of last week you saw my challenge item for Christy’s Craft challenge and now it’s time to vote.  Head over to her blog and please, please vote for the drawstring bag with pins.

Well it’s that time again.  It’s time to vote in the Etsyhookers Creative Challenge.  Our mission this time?  To create something either reused, recycled, or repurposed something.  I got say, making a decision on which on to vote for is difficult but once you have it only takes seconds to place your vote.  Head on over to the blog to see the entries and place your vote.

Well sometimes things just make you wonder.  Last night I was reminiscing with some residents and we started talking about brown paper packages tied up with string.  When was the last night you saw a brown paper package tied up with string?  Depending on your age you may just think I’m talking about a line in a song but seriously, once a upon a time packages where sent in brown paper and tied with twine.  I can remember my finger being used to hold down the twine while my grandmother made her knot.  Course I hadn’t thought of such things until last night but sometimes it’s good to go strolling down memory lane.

Okay, I know it’s been awhile but hey life happens.  I thought I would share some things that recently came off the hook.

First up is a tea cup pincushion that I made for me secret sister at church for Christmas.  The pattern is from the Lion Brand website.

Next up is a granny square hat.  I had made one earlier this year in summer colors and my aunt requested I make one in black for the winter.  She is thrilled with it.  That pattern was in Crochet World earlier this year.

I’ve made 2 bath items this week.  One is a bath puff and the other is a soap bag.  The bath puff is a modified version of one in Crochet World a year or so ago and the soap bag is from the lion brand website.

Last up is a diamond baby blanket that I just kinda figured out as I went.  I made it for our new little one due to arrive in about 2 weeks.

Well that’s.  I hope you have enjoyed them.

And let me tell you it was a challenge!  So let’s start at the beginning.  At the end of September I was on twitter and reading down through.  I came across a tweet about get a free craft challenge kit.  I started dming with the person and said sure I’d give it a go.  After that I kinda forgot about it until it arrived in my mail box.  When I opened the package, here’s what I saw:

I quickly read through the instructions, glanced at the bag and then set it aside.  It wasn’t the day to open and create.  When I did get a  chance to open it, I thought my goodness, I’m out of my league.

Pink netting, I needed to do something with pink netting, oh boy.  I’ve worked with netting and it certainly is not the easiest thing to work with.  So thinking I’m a pro in my hobby I thought, well I’ll cut it into strips and crochet with it.  Ha! Ha!   Maybe others can, but I couldn’t.  It was time to rethink things.

Thankfully I hadn’t cut all of it into strips and thus I came up with the idea for a drawstring bag.  That worked up rather easily and then I was left with my next challenge, the sequins.

I’ve never worked with sequins in my life!  I wasn’t even completely sure why there was tape at both ends of the strip but I’m pretty sure it has to do with them coming undo.  This is where my hobby comes into play.  I threaded those sequins on some thread and then crocheted with them to make the draw string for the bag.  It worked great.  However, this still left me with one ribbon unused and I need to use a least some of each item in the bag.  Since this month the challenge was Celebrating Breast Cancer Awareness I thought what would be better than adding a pink support ribbon.  I cut my ribbon and began to sew it on.  That lasted for about 4 stitches before I finally decided that it just wasn’t worth it.  I decided to glue it into shape and then glue it on a pin back.  This was great because now you can either leave them on the bag or take them off and wear them (yes there are 2, one on each side).  So there you have.  Here’s the finished product.

 

I hope that come next week I will get some votes when the voting opens.  Voting will take place from Oct. 29-30 at ChristyNelson.net

Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I’m sure most of you know that but it’s always good for a reminder.  In honor of that the one team I’m on at etsy challenged it’s members to come up with items for that.  Many talented people came up with lots of different things and I encourage you to click here to see all the many items.  A lot of them are donating some money towards breast cancer research or something along those lines.  I also have made a section in my shop called Think Pink, which is all my ideas for Breast Cancer awareness month.  25% of the profit from those items will be donated towards breast cancer research.  I hope you will take a few moments and see what my team mates and I have created.

habitat picture taken by bambam

So yesterday as part of our science we were to observe a square yard of our backyard.  We had a great time with this and here are the pictures the kids took of the area.

Slug in our habitat area

 

habitat picture taken by pebbles

Well for quite some time now, I have had thoughts of doing gift baskets.  I often look at the gift basket making books at my local craft store and just haven’t made a decision about them yet.  Well on a recent search on etsy I found an ebook for $1 on dong gift baskets.  For that price I couldn’t pass it up.  So I bought it and upon receiving it in my email began looking through all the pages.  Well it is loaded with information and ideas.  I mean honestly I don’t know if I could have come up with all these things on my own.  Not only are there gift basket ideas but also ideas for survival kits and balloon gifts.  This has lead me in a different direction.  While I still like the gift basket idea the survival kits are appealing to me more.  While I could crochet the basket for the gift baskets, I like the idea of making the “container” for the survival kits and filling them with the different goodies.  I’m hoping to have some put together until the end of October and we’ll see how they go.  Look for them soon!

And for anyone interested I got the ebook from infooncd.  She has quite a few ebooks and I would highly recommend her shop!

Well, I made a hard but reasonable decision about homeschooling this year.  After using Heart of Dakota for two years, it was time to change curriculum.  Don’t get me wrong, Heart of Dakota is great but our situation has changed and I know that it would no longer be a good fit for our family.  As I made up my mind not to use it, I also felt this overwhelming sensation of the whole “finding cirriculum” process again.  One can get forget how many choices are out there and how overwhelming it all can be.  This time though, I had an advantage of having homeschooled for the last 2 years and knew what I wanted.  The big key things I wanted:  I wanted to be able to use the same program for the oldest 2 children and I needed it to be basically planned out for me.  So I knew I was looking at a unit study and the question became which one.  In the end, it came down to 3.  The Weaver, Christian Cottage Unit Studies, and My Father’s World.  From here though, it became difficult.  They each seemed to have their own strenghts and weaknesses and I was running out of time to decide.  However, my decision came down to 2 things, 1.  how easily I could see samples of what we were going to be doing, and 2.  I really liked the geography year that My Father’s World offers. So that was who I went with.  I think if I had been able to see plans and samples for the other 2, maybe there would have been a different outcome.  However, MFW gave me the samples of their plans right on their website and like I said, I was very drawn to that geography year and am thrilled that’s what we are starting with.  The kids and I are both looking forward to starting the new curriculum, Exploring Countries and Cultures this year