A Himmeli Inspired Mobile

I love making items for my babies. When I saw this post on the Oh Joy! blog many months ago, I pinned it, knowing that something like this would be so beautiful as a baby mobile. 

I found the paper fans in JoAnn's along with the bells and bought the paper straws at Target. 

red straws
red rosettes
silver rosettes
silver bells (here them ring...)

There are a lot of paper online resources for additional colors and patterns if the stores don't have what you're looking for. Pro tip though - the mini silver rosettes from Joann's come with tiny clothespins that are perfect for assembling the mobiles.

I wasn't sure exactly what I would end up making, so I used all the images over on Oh Joy! as inspiration and just went from there. The pdf is really easy to follow and gives far better images and instructions than I could ever hope to try and give.  

I then screwed some eye hooks into the ceiling above Holland's crib. Or should I say, the husband screwed some eye hooks above Holland's crib while moved his elbow to exactly where I thought the drill bit should go. Teamwork. 

I love how they turned out and Holland loves them as well.  I just give them a little push and she's in a trance. Baby hypnosis. I am thinking of adding one more.  Holland's room theme is supposed to be kind of French with creamy walls and red, baby blue, and gray accents so I'm thinking of finding some baby blue to contrast all the red. I'd love to give you all a tour of her nursery as soon as I get figured out where a painting is going.

DIY First Dance Word Art

About two months ago, I got really inspired about owning a home. Apartment living for the last 5.5 years had taken it's toll on my creativity, even if I am a designer for a living. I've always felt like not only could I not get super creative about my living space, but I also couldn't because of limited finances - hello mid-twenties - and let's just say it fear. 

In an era where we display our doing, our works, our faces to everyone who will look over the internet, it's easy to get insecure. What if so-and-so doesn't "like" it? What if she thinks I'm copying her? It can go on and on.

But on a quiet night this past week - and by quiet i mean not-quiet because Gavin woke up a few times - I plopped down in the living room floor, turned on some Doctor Who and started.

The result is pretty good. It's mine. I slowly got the hang of how to move a brush to make the letters appear more calligraphy style. Yes, it is still in the floor ... all in good time my friends.

Little Shoes for Little Buddy

Over the weekend I gave into my preggo cravings and crossed the street to the local Shipley's donuts. Here I bought a half dozen, carefully choosing two for the husband, went home and immediately poured out some coffee fresh out of the press and proceeded to eat all four donuts...and an orange.

While eating said donuts, I stitched up something for the little buddy.  Some felt baby shoes!

I "pinned" the tutorial a couple of years ago intending to make some for niece kaitlyn. Now that she is almost 2 I found it about darn time to try these out.  The tutorial is from The Purl Bee and every tutorial that they do is enchanting and beyond my skillset as a knitter, but I love looking at them just the same.

They took most of the morning. Cutting and pinning the felt was really easy. I'd guess that in total the little project maybe took 2-3 hours, but I took lots of breaks and was very distracted by season 3 of Parenthood on Hulu.

I've got another pair in the works for my niece who arrived on Tuesday! But I think I will wait to give them to her until I can put them on her precious little feet myself!

Blanket for a Baby

No, not my baby, but a sweet baby girl who is actually due today! I cannot wait to see her little face and hopefully meet her very soon :)

I made her big sister a baby blanket for her arrival (although the blanket ended up being a Christmas gift about 5 months late) so I knew I wanted to make one for my new little niece too.  I decided to try and copy the "super easy baby blanket" by purl bee and choose some super chunky yarn in colors chosen for new baby by my sister: purple and yellow.

I quickly realized that I did not have enough yarn.  I cast on around 120 stitches and it ended up making a blanket probably as wide as the crib.

After I figured out how much yarn I actually needed, the blanket didn't take too long to make.  I used the pattern k-2, p-2, k-2, p-2, etc. and then reversed the stitch on the next row.

I think it turned out pretty.

Little niece-poo may not be able to use it much over the summer, but it's very warm and heavy to keep her toasty when it gets cool again in the fall.

Fun with Stamps

One of the benefits of my career is that I (and everyone else in the office) gets regular visits from product reps who bring us tasty treats and leave us fun things - including their new products.

A few weeks ago we found a rad Eames stamp set in the finish library, and I brought it home to play around with.

So I pulled out a normal piece of print paper and went to town.

I had just bought a frame at target on clearance (the glass was cracked) so this piece of completely free art is waiting on the wall to inspire baby boy and influence his creative genes.

Do any fun projects lately?

Hooray, a scarf!

I knew I had to have a snood, or infinity scarf if you will, for this winter. I also knew that I had the exact colors (possibly my favorite colors to wear) that I wanted in my knitting box.

Yes, a gray and white striped scarf! Just what I've always wanted. I play around a lot with the pattern. I mean striped can mean alot of things. Do I want little stripes or big honkin' stripes. At first I knit and purled consecutively, then purled knit in the next color block, but this made the scarf zig-zaggy in profile and I just wasn't digging it. 

So I decided to knit every line and rotate colors every 2 - which was the only possibility since I was using 2 needles (instead of circulars).

Yes, I do have a white and gray comforter...

It was pretty slow going. I knit in the car and at Nathan's shows. I knit mostly while watching Revenge on Netflix. And finally, yesterday, I finished! And I basically haven't taken it off since. 

And just to emphasize my gray and white strip problem...Triple Whammy!

Working

Well, we have been in Nashville officially for a week and are still working on getting our apartment set up. In the meantime we are living upstairs with our landlords (also good friends). During the day, Nathan goes to work and I get up  water the garden (which I'm super excited about) and then do some work downstairs. Yesterday, and most days before it, that included painting.


Now, painting walls I can handle, but yesterday I bought a can of spray paint and attempted to paint some shelves that go in the open pantry in the kitchen. Before they were all mismatched woods.


Well, I think I discovered that I am the worst spray painter ever. Not only am I terrible at spraying evenly, but my finger gets tired and then it blocks the spray and I get drips all over the shelves.

I am currently watching tutorials on how to do this correctly, but I might go buy a small can of paint anyway. I think I may have used all the paint anyway.


But, I am excited that things are really coming together down there and I think we'll have all the painting finished today and maybe get the floors cleaned up. Then we can move in some on Thursday and Friday! Hooray!

My road toward craftiness...

As in, my road toward craftiness is not very promising and is off to a slow start if this is all I can come up with...

Anyway, last night I had a burst of inspiration in the midst of slowly watching every episode of Star Trek (I'm on episode 4). Shatner's hilarious.

Anyway, again...I'd tired of my kitchen sink looking like this:

Yes, it is gross, but I did wash this dishes before snapping this photo. You're welcome internets.

So I took a little planter not in use, wiped the 1 year caked on dirt off, cut my finger on a bit of chipped ceramic on the bottom, and finally resulted in this:

Three cheers for planters that hold scrubbing brushes and dish detergent!

For my Sister

I traveled to my parents last weekend to help throw my little sister a bridal shower. Instead of finding something off her registry, which I did peruse anyway, I wanted to give her something a little more personal and sweet.

Blank printed sheet

After seeing a free download link to Love vs. Design's free printable page, via How about Orange, I knew that I wanted to write out recipe cards for Laura.

filling them in.

It was a super easy thing. Just print out the cards and write in the recipes. I was stoked to find so many of the people who attended her shower wanted to participate too. Now she has a box 1/6 (maybe?) full of family recipes. So exciting.

I even wrote out some fun cooking quotes on the divider cards. 

Oh, MFK Fisher, you know me.

All in all, it was super successful. I think I ended up with almost 70 recipes. And they all seemed simple enough for a new cook to do!

Be bold Laura, keep trying new things! That's the only way that I learned to cook and feel confident! And remember, if all else fails.

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