baby bibs for sharon

this friday is one of the lovely ladies in AP's baby shower.  in the past i've made changing carry bags and stuffed animals, but i wanted to make sharon some cute bibs.  i've been following some sewing boards on pinterest and when i saw this ruffled bib, i knew it was the one i wanted to make sharon.

i also wanted to make more than one, so i decided on three and then took a gander through my old patches and here is the finished product!

i think my mom gave me the patches a long time ago.  they are super cute!

here's what the backs of them look like:

i hope she likes them, i'll find out on friday!!

sue's new bag!

my friend sue requested a new bag from me.  i made her a bag years ago and she wore that thing into the ground.  i really should have taken a picture of the old bag...it was pretty impressive.

she requested that the new bag be the same design, but just a little bit bigger.  with a flap. and she just wanted a brownish colored fabric.

i've been sitting on the outside fabric for a while now and was super excited to use it.  and i'm totally a fan of the plaid i used on the inside.  i was a little apprehensive to just make her a bag without her seeing the fabric first, but i just jumped right in.  and made a bag that i LOVE!!

if she didn't like it, i was more than willing to take it back and make her a different one because i could have used this one for quite some time!

she loved it.  apparently she was wearing it around pcc while she was working and showing it off.  that's great!  i'm so happy that she liked it so much!!

now on to erin's and noelle's bags!!

yellow kitteh!

it was my friend nikki's baby shower at work today.  last weekend i made this cuuuuuute yellow kitteh for her.  i can't get over how cute it is!

her two year old daughter liked it, so i'm feeling pretty good that the new baby will too!

happy halloween!!!

halloween at my work is a big BIG deal.  i was in a different department last year and my current department won our company competition last year, so this year it was a real challenge to win again.

we had meetings about halloween months in advance and still managed to not start really getting anything together until late august.  

we have 10 people in our department, so it was kind of hard to come up with something where everyone would have a good part.  the solution:  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  the roles?  all 7 dwarfs, snow white, the prince and the evil queen.  our director, who never participates in halloween and always takes the day off was the mirror.

the dwarf costumes were a pain in the butt because they all needed to be the same, but to buy a whole set of costumes was expensive!!  so marnie and i got together, found a pattern, went to joanne's and made all 7 tunics.  then we all just had to wear brown pants and brown shoes.  steve found just the masks pretty cheap so i think the dwarf costumes came out great.

i also volunteered to make cute little forest animals for our department decorations.  i borrowed a projector from work and with some help from maya drew the outlines, painted them and then glued them on cardboard.

the cardboard was a way bigger pain in the ass to cut through than i had anticipated so everyone at work had to help out and cut out a couple because i thought my fingers were going to break.

our department came out looking pretty good though:

steve had gotten his daughter a little cardboard playhouse that we confiscated and re-painted to look like the dwarfs cottage.  people liked to go inside:

we also had an interactive website that steve put together.  we all wrote bio's for the dwarf match and some of us put together the "boots wow", "bunnies united" and "witch apples" commercials for the website.  you should look around the site and see all the stuff that we put together!!  here are some of the pics that i put together for the bunnies united commercial:

we also had a skit that we practiced on for weeks and jodeena totally choreographed it.  the different departments that want to participate get a skit together and then the whole company gathers in our lobby on halloween to watch them.  watch the video...it's pretty funny!

lots of people and departments dress up and compete and it's a lot of fun!!

it was a lot of fun and a lot of work.  i'm already wondering what we're going to do next year!!  and next year we're going to have to up our game even more because WE WON!!!!!  2nd year in a row!!  that big ass trophy will be sitting in our department for another year.

and i'm just going to leave you with my favorite shot from snow white this halloween.  i always wondered how those lips were so pretty!!

foodie pen pals!

september was my first month in participating in foodie pen pals!  it was super fun and i'm really excited to taste my treats this month.

the girl who got me is jessie from hawaii!  i was so excited when she emailed me and asked what my food preferences were and said that i was getting treats from hawaii.  someday i will make it to hawaii!

here's what i received!:

chocolate coconut macadamia pancake mix, dark hawaiian coffee, nummy looking popcorn topping, granola, hawaiin bbq, chocolate macadamia treats and three cute pouches of different kinds of roasted macadamias.

i'm really looking forward to the weekend and breaking into the coffee and pancake mix.

thanks so much jessie for your super foodie package!!!  it was great to come home and have your package waiting for me!  i hope that your first month was as good as mine!

let's see what october will bring!!

backyard barter!

I'M BACK!  didn't realize how long it's been since i put up a post.  *cringy face*

but yesterday i went to my first backyard barter at the NW solar fest in shoreline.  what a super awesome idea and fun thing to do.  you bring handmade stuff; canned items, baked items, homebrew, stuff from the garden, crafts, whatever; and you barter for other people's items.  so fantastic!  

there were about 4 rows of tables set up for people to display the items they wanted to barter.

this wonderful woman brought kimchi and handmade bowls and cups.  i bartered two jars of my marinated veggies for the cup by itself in the 2nd row there.  this was my favorite thing bartered for!!

here's everything i traded for.  i had lots of marinated veggies and plum butter from last year to trade with:

1. worm tea (i'm gonna use it on my houseplants)
2. tart aronia jam
3. dilled green beans
4. rhubarb vanilla early grey jam
5. peach rosemary sauce
6. green chili salsa
7. oatmeal lavendar soap
8. cottonwood salve
9. a bunch of lavendar
10. matchboxes
11. a delicious brownie
12. the most awesome handmade cup

and the NW solar fest was pretty cool.  i didn't look around at it much, but i did see this sweet bus:

and GOATS!  i petted some goats!

the next backyard barter is august 22 or 23 maybe up on beacon hill.  i hope to rope a couple of people i know into doing this also.  i think both of them will love it.  yes, i'm talking about you, GRACE!  i also signed up to volunteer so i hope sarah calls me to help  out!!

i got my bead on...

when my mom was here recently, we went to shipwreck beads out in lacey.  this place was friggin huge!  mom said it was like a big warehouse of beads and she was not joking.  it. was. awesome.

i haven't done much beading in years.  after the ridiculousness of my last year of college and the bead projects i did, i was a little burnt out.  i've been working on a single loomwork piece for over 10 years now and have yet to even get halfway done.  i will finish that thing before i die though.

so, blowing some money (thanks mom and debbie!!) at the bead store for some new necklaces and earrings was a nice change of pace.  i came home and pulled out some supplies and started in.

(this is not the extent of my boxes of beads by a loooong shot)

here's what i have done so far.  some easy necklaces and earrings.

there are matching earrings for the flower necklace and the bracelet and earrings under it are also a set.

i really liked these black and gold beads.  so pretty!

 quite a while ago i put some cork board in a picture frame i had so i could easily hang up my earrings and be able to see them as well.  i've also given some of these to friends as gifts.

i finally found a long frame i liked so i could hang my necklaces.  there's all sorts of room for more necklaces!!

now i just have to get the rest of the items made from my trip to the bead store!  YAY!