Pardon my Dust

I'm undergoing a bit of a renovation over here. I'm trying to tidy up and make my blog a more user friendly resource.

People who are not new to my blog will notice I have a new template now. I also have some tabbed pages up at the top that are new...About me, my Knitting Patterns and my Recipes.  These are still a smidge clunky. For now you can see all my knitting patterns on Ravelry (the page linked to above is also a work in progress).  I need to figure out a useful way to categorize my recipes, too.  For now the link will go to my Bake Space recipes page. You might also notice shiny new features like a search box, RSS feed link and Twitter link.

V-Day Cards

I am so not a Valentine's Day card person. I see all these advertisements for personalized valentines cards online and I yawn and think judgmental thoughts about commercialism and how companies just try to suck you in and steal your money.

Until I saw this blog post, which featured this family's V-day cards (which I thought were the most clever, adorable idea ever) and I knew I needed to make some with our kiddo wearing a fake mustachio (it also doesn't hurt that Shutterfly sent out an e-mail special today for 50 free prints if you just pay shipping...plus you get cashback if you head there via ebates).

So I cut out a mustache from some scrap fabric and headed outside with my muchkie. I'm pretty amused by some of these pictures:

Oven Mitt Cuteness

I know I said in my last blog post that I almost made this really awesome double oven mitt from Smashed Peas and Carrots. But then I did:

The only thing I did differently was that I added a layer of insulbrite between the 2 top mitt layers of fabric.

As usual (this is becoming a trend), it took a few hours longer than originally anticipated to make. BUT it was also the first time I used bias tape properly (when I made this project I had no idea what I was doing and just kind of folded it over the edge and tried to hold it all together and sew it down all at once.

I'm happy with it. I think it turned out super cute. I ended up giving it away as a birthday present but I think I need to make another one for me.

Dollar Store Christmas: More Awesome Ideas

I had so many other ideas for cool stuff for Dollar Store Christmas that I didn't get a chance to make yet. check out these awesome crafts:

    

Dollar Store Christmas: Birdhouse

Frugal Gift 4: Birdhouse

Dollar Store Christmas: Manly Chapstick

Frugal Gift 3: "Manly" Chapstick

For the husband of Ms. Footwarmer: "Manly chapstick." This guy loves nice chapstick. And who can blame him? Especially when you are about to be deployed to a desert? Sadly, most nice chapsticks are kind of girly looking. What's a soldier to do? Use respectable looking second class chapstick? Use nice but foofy looking "lip butter" and listen to the taunts of your peers? Neither! Just get a crafty friend to man up some nice chapsticks using duct tape (seriously, what's more manly than duct tape?).

Dollar Store Christmas: Footwarmer

Frugal Gift 2: Footwarmer

The husband of this gift recipient is being deployed to Iraq for a year with the army. She's a pretty skinny person and always cold, so when I saw the tutorial for how to make a "hot one" as the author called it, I knew it would be perfect.

Dollar Store Christmas: Crayon Rolls for Kids

Frugal Gift 1: Crayon Rolls for Kids

Life in Grace hosted an awesome tutorial written by Lindsey of The Pleated Poppy for how to make crayon rolls for kids that I followed to make these. I also made a taller version of this to hold colored pencils for a 13 year old budding artist.

"Dollar Store" Christmas Round Up

This year has definitely been a financially challenging one for us. My husband was laid off in January, we had a baby in May which involved a mostly unpaid maternity leave as well as huge leftover medical bills. God has been faithful throughout and we have always been able to pay our mortgage even if it had to be a little late.

But what to do for Christmas? I love giving gifts to people but our budget really didn't have any wiggle room in it to make normal gifts happen. We usually try to do homemade gifts, but this year was going to be a bit more extreme...homemade and inexpensive with an attempted budget of $3 or less per gift. Enter Dollar Store Crafts run by the fabulous Heather. Heather specializes in cheap and fabulous crafts made from dollar store (or other inexpensively acquired) finds. While all the gifts we did this year weren't necessarily from her site, Dollar Store Crafts was definitely my inspiration for this year's frugal crafting Christmas.