Busy

It's been a while, I know....   I have been making a bunch of stuff lately, but the rest of life has been so busy that I haven't had time to post about all that stuff :-)  I actually haven't had time to remember to take pictures of all that stuff either...

I recently crocheted several sets of baby booties and a matching hat as a gift for a new mom and dad.  This was one of the "I forgot to get a picture projects".  I made these from a pattern out of a book and luckily the booties were on the front cover so this is what they looked like....  but I made them in pink and off-white:

My youngest recently turned 3 and he decided that he wanted to have a "monster" themed birthday party, which pretty much just means that we eat off of paper plates with monsters on them :-)  We had 4 kids that were invited to the birthday party so I put together some party favors for them (and my 2 as well).  Have you seen those Ugly Dolls?

They were perfect for the theme of the party and a great little give aways for the kiddos (considering 3 of the 6 kids were under 2 years old) but even the smallest Ugly Doll is $10.99, which is a little much for a party favor.  So what did I do?  I made my own.  I have tons of micro fleece leftover from Halloween costumes in years past so I drew some up, made sure the size was going to fit into the monster favor bags that we got and I whipped them out. The most time consuming part was the embroidery, but even with the embroidery, these came together rather quickly and the best part, they didn't cost me anything to make since I had the materials already.   I neglected to get a picture of them all together, because they were all different, but here are the 2 that I made for my boys:

I have started a small collection of vintage Pyrex.  I am attracted mostly to the ones that are blue/blue green with fun designs.  The first set that I bought was the Amish print: 

A few months ago I got an e-mail from my BFF in Chicago, Jessica, saying that I should be expecting a package in the mail soon.  So, as expected UPS showed up and delivered a box at my door step and the minute I picked it up and heard some jingling and I thought, "MAN, I hope that isn't glass".  It sure was, Jessica bought me 2 Pyrex bowls off of eBay that had an AMAZING pattern printed on them, one that I had not previously seen before.  

Unfortunately the big bowl was shattered in the package.  Since the package was shipped directly from the seller, I told Jessica so that she should get some of her money back and she did, but I couldn't let those broken pieces to waste.  So I picked out the broken piece with the best pattern on it and made this as a thank you gift for Jessica:

I soldered around the piece and made a pendant out of it.  Anyone that has ever soldered before knows how difficult it can be to get it right...  I had a few trial and errors and this took me a while to accomplish but I am super happy with the result.  I use lead-free solder, that replaces the lead content with sterling silver, I added a sterling jump ring to the top and put it on a sterling 18" chain.  I need to wait until the Spring (I solder outside) when it warms up to solder myself one!!  :-)

I have a few other projects in the works right now and hopefully I will remember to take pictures of them all.

On a side note....  The kids decided on store-bought Halloween costumes this year, so I didn't make them.  I'm not sure if it that or the fact that life is just crazy busy right now, but I am also running out of time to make my Christmas cards this year, so I might have to settle on store-bought cards.  I know!!!  Nutty!!!  But I will try to start earlier next year so that we will have home made cards once again.