Tag, tag, tag, sew, sew, sew

What a week! Between finishing up my contract with Bead For Life, getting ready for craft shows, teaching and writing a talk for Stake Conference, I am ready for a break!  Well, I',m not going to get one, but I do get a break from tagging and that is awesome. I was able to tag all 3000 items in my last batch in less than a week which has left me with lots of time to do all the other stuff I mentioned. Here are some pictures that represent the process of "tagging"....   

Beads in the Box

Necklaces sorted out on the table with the end that the tag goes on all on the same side.  

A close up of the end that gets the tag....

The tools.....Jump rings, Metal tags, and pliers...

The finished product...on it's way back into the box..

And bracelets look like this....

And that's what I've been up to for the past six months.....1500 bracelets or necklaces every week.  It gets a little tedious but thanks to things like all 4 seasons of Felicity and a Netflix account, I get through it and get a nice bit of additional income. I hope they give me another contract soon...We'll see. 

But, for now, it's time to sew!  Mom and I have been working furiously to get ready for the craft and doll shows that are coming up beginning next week. So here is what I made yesterday....

3 of these

And One of these (made with all of the different batiks that I found in my stash)...

And now I am off to go to the Bead Show to buy some more beads for the jewelry making efforts.  Gotta go!

Table Runner

So, A couple of weeks ago, we had a wedding reception to go to and we needed a gift.  After looking at the registry and seeing that the bride had chosen red and black dishcloths and tablecloths and accessories for their kitchen, I decided to dig into my ever-growing fabric stash and make a table runner.  It took a couple of hours to make, but now that I've done it once I think I could make it faster the next time. So here's how it turned out. 

I think it's super cute and I love the colors.  Can't wait to make another one....maybe one for Fall or Christmas next?

What I've Been Making

So I haven't blogged in forever and I thought I would just start by putting up a few pictures of what I've been making. I attempted to make a hexagon quilt that I thought was going to be awesome.....until I put is all together and realized that the green was a little blaring.   So, I took out all of the green pieces from the original quilt and made a smaller version  of the quilt using all of the green.  I thought it would be too ugly to do anything with, but it actually turned out alright.  I decided that this would be a good quilt to try to machine quilt since I didn't care about it that much anyway, so if I ruined it it wouldn't be the end of the world.  I sewed light blue ric rac around the center of all of the green.  I think it looks really good. 

Here's the full picture.  It turned out to be about crib size.  Now I just need to figure out who on earth I will give it to.....

I have been wanting to make a foot stool for my grandmother's little green rocking chair that now sits in my room.  It's a super comfortable chair, but it's a little low, which made it really difficult to find something the right height.  So, with some help from my brother and my mom, I made this little foot stool.  I love the fabric I found.  It has a slightly sueded feel to it and looks like faux tooled leather.

This is a purse I made for my friend Kami out of corduroy and a couple of left over quilt blocks that I used to make her a quilt for her wedding.  It's completely reversible and turned out really well. I do have to say that sewing on that bias tape around the whole thing ended up defeating me after I had unpicked it 3 times. Mom finished that part of it for me because I was so frustrated at that point that I was ready to chuck it and just go buy a purse!  Anyway.... thanks to her, it ended up getting done. (Thanks mom, you're the best!)

Finally, I have been making these name banners for my nieces and nephews throughout the year. (Thanks for the idea Liz and Sarah!)  I don't have pictures of all of them, but here are a few of them.

Magic Tile Quilt

My sister Sarah has been finishing projects and she has inspired me to do the same. So, I have a few quilts that have been in process. This one I started about 2 years ago and then haven't really touched it since. I began on Friday, finishing the magic tile blocks. They look like they're hard to do, but they are not difficult. I was just going to let the purple border be the outside and leave it as a small quilt that could be hung on a wall, but then I had vision of adding a strip pieced border. So, it took me about two hours to cut out ans sew all of the strips together to make the black/white/purple border. Today, I ran to the fabric store and picked out the black border and a purple backing. Now that the top is finished, I have to decide whether to hand quilt this one or tie it. I think it's going to have to be hand quilted. There's just no good way to tie it! Anyway, the picture that looks purple is the actual color. All the other pictures that were closer to the true color were blurry, so the one that looks blue is not actually blue, it's purple......

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With a cherry on top!

Today was the Lafayette Quaker Oatmeal Festival. It happens here every year and includes a 5K run, an oatmeal breakfast with a huge topping bar, and a baking contest. I entered the contest once before with a different recipe and nothing came of it. This year, I decided to enter the recipe that I created for the Pillsbury contest since it met the "1 cup of oatmeal in the recipe" requirement. So, I baked my Cherry Chocolate Fudge Bars yesterday and cut them up into bite-size pieces for sampling and mom put a cherry piece on each one for garnish. I put each piece into a mini-cupcake paper and filled up my mini-cupcake tree and took it over and entered them in the contest. They looked so pretty! I wish I had taken a picture, but the best I could do is take a picture of what is left in the pan so you can see what they look like.

I dropped off my bars to be judged by the officials and tasted by the public and then I ran off for a full day of teaching. The winners were announced at noon and since I couldn't be there, my parents went to pick up my cupcake tree and see if I won anything. After a long day of teaching I came home this afternoon and found THIS on the counter waiting for me.....

What, you can't see the sign? Well, let me zoom in......

That's right! I won 1st Place in the Desserts category!!! YAY!!!! Look at that happy smiling Quaker man on the oatmeal box. That's exactly what I looked like when I saw it (Just with shorter, brown-er hair *wink* ) I was so excited. I ACTUALLY won a prize in a baking contest! Who would have guessed. Here's a picture of everything that I got for winning. The cake pans are heavy and nice and I love the bowls. The spatula is a high heat resistant silicone - I've always wanted one of those. I even got a shot glass liquid teaspoon measure and free oatmeal. What more could a girl want??? See, good things do happen even when you have a bad haircut ;)

Do You see this face? Is this the face of someone who is having a good day??? I don't think so. This face, my face, is the face of someone who is stinking mad.

Why? Why am I so mad?? Well, I'll tell you. Today, I went to get my hair cut by a man who has cut my hair for the last 2 years. He has cut my hair at least 10 times in the current hairstyle that I have. Flipped out in the back, long bang in the front. Always the same. Well, today I walked in and he said, "Same thing as last time so you can kind of flip it or spike it in the back?" and I replied "Yes, it's gotten a little long and is getting hard to style, so it needs to be shorter. " Okay, this is our usual communication and he has never really botched it up....until today.

This, my friends, is why I am so mad. Somehow, Eddie thought that what I really meant is that I wanted an A-Line. So, he got out his clippers and SHAVED ONE INCH INTO MY HAIR LINE!!!! What was he thinking? Now, it's not unusual for him to take his clippers and trim along the hairline just to clean it up a bit. So, I didn't think anything of it and didn't realize that he was "trimming" so high. I mean, really, how often do you have someone trim the back of your head? I have no concept by feel alone of how high someone is touching the back of my neck. So, he cut my hair and spun me around and I just about died.

So, I said, "Eddie, you shaved an inch into my hairline!" And his response was "Isn't that what we always do???" At this point my jaw has dropped and I'm trying not to hyperventilate. So I said "No, we NEVER do that EVER! It's always at least Half of an inch long at the base of my hairline!" And his response was "Well, I thought you wanted an A=Line and since it was so short in the front, I shaved it to look like an A=Line. Let me see if I can fix it" YEAH RIGHT! You can't glue the hair back on! "Um, I don't think there is anything you can do." At this point I was barely holding it together. So, he said he wouldn't charge me and that I should come back as it grows in and he'll blend it together. I seriously doubt that I'll be going back. As I left I was already crying and he was apologizing profusely as I walked out the door. I got in the car and sobbed my way home where I continued to sob and mutter (AKA Yell) the occasional "What the HELL was he thinking!" To that, all I can think is that he wasn't thinking at all.

So, the possible solutions, 1. A WIG 2. Some goth make-up with a black leather and spike dog collar. or 3. A plethora of scarves that I can tie around my head with a big bow at the back until it grows. As you can see in the picture, it's going to take a big bow. So, if you wonder how I look there it is. AND to add insult to injury, I got my camera out to take pictures and guess what? The LCD screen has somehow broken so you can't see what you're taking pictures of! I have no idea how that happened, but it's so frustrating.

An update.....Finally......

I know it's shocking....I am finally updating my blog! I just never take the time to sit down and do it. The past few months have been busy with lots of stuff happening. So, here are a few things that I've been meaning to post...

This is a quilt that I've been working on. I just love these fabrics. I still have 2 borders to add and I'm thinking I'll use the striped material to back it ....

My friends and I made this quilt for another friends wedding. It was a whirlwind. We made it start to finish in 4 days....talk about hectic. It's one of those projects that was good in theory, but then reality sets in and you realize that you should have left yourself more time or picked out a gift from a store.. However, I have to admit that the finished product was beautiful.

In the same week that we tackled the quilt, we ended up in another pickle...literally! We got 5 cases of free cucumbers and decided to make pickles to put in our storage. Mom and I had fun with the process and we made some delicious dills and sweets.

My friend Wendy and I made curtains for her roommate. We made them for her doorway and her window. I think they turned out awesome. I want to make some curtains for me now. We'll see if that actually ever happens ;)

She doesn't have a door, so we wanted to make them look nice from the hallway too. So, we put a sheer overlay on the back. I really like how it looks.

Here are the set for the window.

This next picture is for Sarah - how's this for an inspiration purse!?

I love it!

This summer, I was in Idaho and went to Tautphus Park Zoo with my mom and Jer and Heidi's family. We had a great time. This video is of the Gibbon monkeys that we saw. They make the loudest noise ever and were hilarious to watch because they entertained themselves by swinging around the cage and then slamming into the glass to scare the people watching. This one's for Jer & Heidi.

The following pictures are a series of cakes I've made over the past few months for people's birthdays. There are a few more, but I don't have pictures. Breanne wanted the Molten Lava cake from Chili's, so we made a copy cat recipe. They were delicious.

That's all for now! I will try to post more often!!!!