Heidi! (If you could go ahead and send me an email with your address, I will get that wristlet out in the mail for you.) I am actually wishing I had made more than one wristlet or prize so that I could send something out to each of you for such wonderful birthday wishes! Maybe I will just have to do another drawing again soon. My 200th post is coming up here (I think this post is like my 187th or something), so maybe I will do something for that.

I seem to be having a creative mental block the last 2 days…. It is starting to get a bit frustrating! Does anyone else ever feel this way? I went with Ben last night to take some pictures and I felt like everything I tried was just blah…. I couldn’t take anything that was slightly creative and different from normal. I also wanted to work on making a purse/bag to carry my dSLR camera and regular purse stuff in, but I have not been able to come up with a design. I want it to be very well padded to protect the camera, have a longer strap so I can cross it over my other arm, and be able to put my cellphone/keys/wallet/inhaler in it so I don’t have to carry a separate bag for all that. I am having a complete block though on how to design such a bag… I would just take a chance and start cutting, but I really wanted to use some linen and other nicer fabric for the bag so I don’t want to chance it being a complete flop…. Maybe I just need to do some sewing that doesn’t involve much thinking first and it will stop me from feeling so frustrated with my creativity?

It has been raining all day today, so I figured what better way to spend a rainy day that to do a bunch of sewing and use up some of my stash in the process. It wasn’t what I had planned on doing today, I had originally wanted to get outside and take pictures. Still it ended up being a productive and fairly fun day. (Although you will have to excuse the pictures, since there wasn’t much good light all day…)

A grocery shopping tote bag…

This is the second grocery shopping tote that I have made (both were out of the same thrifted curtains and cotton for the inside). I actually have a third one started, but didn’t finish it today. (I may put the 3rd one in my etsy shop, not sure yet though.)

A pincushion…

Can you believe that I have never used a pincushion?! I had one of those tomato ones, but hated it so I threw it away and just went without. I am loving this one though and might have to make a couple more!

A stuffed owl!

Yep, I tried making a stuffed owl like I had wanted to:) It was actually a first for me in a few ways…. my first time making a stuffed toy and my first time doing an appliqu

So this post is going to be completely self-centered sounding probably! :) Today is my birthday and I love birthdays, so I am going to celebrate a bit on my blog. I am a bit like a kid when it comes to birthdays. I countdown the days every year when it gets close to my birthday and try to convince everyone else that they too need a countdown to their birthday. I even celebrate my cats birthdays because I like birthdays so much!

So I figured what better way to celebrate my birthday than to hold a drawing on my blog! I already got my birthday present for this year a few weeks ago, so I thought I would make something as a little present for someone else. If you leave a comment on this entry sometime before Saturday afternoon, I will enter you to win a wristlet that I make out of this fabric…

Excuse the fact that is is wrinkly and I haven’t sewed it yet…. I just had this idea less than an hour ago. So leave me a comment on here sometime before Saturday (it doesn’t have to be about my birthday - you can just say hi) and I will draw a random name.

Now I am going to go and enjoy my birthday:)

“You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.” - C.S. Lewis (quote found on Megan’s blog)

Working on catching up on emails and my to do list today… Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more exciting:)

If you have time, go check out the treasury I created on etsy. (It expires tomorrow evening, so if you want to see it take a look soon.)

So I meant to get a bunch done today, but that didn’t really happen… Maybe tomorrow I will reply to all the comments I have gotten lately and catch up on my emails. Or maybe the next day? :)

Tonight after Ben got off work, we went to our city’s Taste Festival. There was food of course and also booths with handmade goods and photography. Someday I think it would be fun to have my own booth at events like that. For now, I just enjoyed looking at what everyone else had to offer and thinking of ways I would do things differently.
Waiting for Ben to buy some tickets for food, I took a picture of the fountain in the middle of the park and the beginnings of the crowds of people…

After we got a little bit of food (some apple donuts and slushies, yummy!) we decided to go to a park on the outside of town and take some pictures.
Sunflowers in the gardens at the park…

I also managed to take my very first pictures of a live, wild deer! It was absolutely amazing to be able to get close enough to photograph her. I was able to get a little less than 6 feet away from her. I have never been so close to a deer before in my life. Actually until earlier this year, I had never seen a deer up close in the wild (only ones standing on the side of the road and such). The amazing thing is this is the 3rd time this year I have been close to a wild deer.

I had my prime lens on the camera, so I couldn’t zoom in but I was able to get pretty close anyways!

I am definitely going to have to go back to this park again to take more photos…

All this picture taking means I haven’t done much else this week:) Hopefully this weekend I will get a little bit of sewing in! At least my laundry is finally done:)

I missed a day of posting yesterday! Actually I am surprised that I have managed to keep posting daily for this long. I think I am going to keep trying, even though I missed yesterday. (Although pretty soon, I am going to have to think of some sort of new titles… the day of the week isn’t really cutting it.)

This afternoon I went thrift store shopping since I was out anyways. I thought maybe I would find something for a swap I am participating in (one of the items in the swap is supposed to be thrifted). Unfortunately I didn’t really find anything for that, although I did find something for myself. I think I have mentioned before that I collect blue & white dishes. All of the dishes are mismatched, so while the colors are the same the patterns are completely different. Today I actually found a blue & white teacup at the thrift store, which is amazing since the thrift stores around here are not exactly full of great items.

There was another lady looking at the dishes while I was, and I was a little nervous that she might snatch the cup up. Luckily, she walked right past it and I think I gave a big sigh of relief when I was finally holding the cup in my hands!

Oh and that picture was taken in manual mode, which means I set the aperture and shutter speed:) I am actually starting to get the hang of figuring out what settings and it is starting to become enjoyable (rather than giving me a headache:).

Other than thrift store shopping, I went to the library this afternoon, and hung out with my friend Jes and her mom. Not a very productive day, but it was still a very nice day (and I can always be productive tomorrow, right?).
My friend Jes’ dog, Hazel who also came with us to the park to hang out…

Since I don’t have a dog, I take pictures of my friends dogs instead:)

Oh and if you have left a comment lately, please don’t think I am ignoring you… I really need to catch up on my replies, which I am hopefully planning on getting to tomorrow! I am really hoping that tomorrow will be a productive day:) (We will see how that goes!)

Not much going on around here today… I had a pretty bad headache so I slept, read, and did pretty much nothing today:) Not exactly the day I had planned but oh well!

I did get a bit of sewing in this afternoon (after my headache got a little bit better) and then Ben and I went to a park after he got off work. I am slowly learning a little more about shutter speeds/aperture/ISO and all those other wonderful things… I will probably have some pictures to show for it in a day or two.

As for that sewing this afternoon… I made a sewing machine cover, since I have just been using a piece of fabric draped over my machine to cover it. (Which doesn’t work so well, because it has to be just so in order to make sure the cats don’t get into it.) The new cover…

I am pretty happy with how it came out. All of the material is thrifted, the top is 100% linen from a thrifted skirt and the bottom is some sort of thicker cotton maybe. So now I can leave my sewing machine out and set up, which is a very good thing since I definitely sew more if it isn’t put away.

Oh and Ben would probably like me to mention that my desk is actually not as clean as that picture suggests. I actually moved everything off my desk in order to take the picture. Reality is that I have 2 very high stacks of magazines and papers sitting on my desk right now:)

So on Saturday, Ben and I went to a local park we had never been to before. We took some pictures and hiked around for a bit (until the bugs got so bad we had to turn around…)

All that picture taking and carrying my camera around my neck made me realize that the camera strap was rubbing against my neck a lot. It is just the typical Canon strap that comes with the camera, and it has Canon written all over it:) So I decided to make the strap look a little bit more me and also get some padding on it so that it would stop hurting my neck.

The cover can actually be removed in case I ever want to replace it, but I am loving it right now (so I don’t see that happening unless it gets dirty). I used some Amy Butler fabric out of my stash and some leftover fleece that I had to pad the inside of the cover. (Actually the fleece that it is sitting on is the same fleece as the inside of the cover.) Silly me though, I put the strap on the camera and realized afterwards that I had forgotten to take a picture of it! So the picture is with my old camera:)

Before we got home from the park (and before I made the cover for the camera strap), we drove through a very small town just to see how tiny it was. As we were driving through, we stopped so that I could take a picture of this old gas station sign outside a garage building.

While I was taking this picture, the man who owned the building drove up and told us we should come inside to see the rest of his collection. It was pretty amazing… I am guessing he is retired and just collects and restores items for a hobby. His main collections were license plates (displayed on the walls), gas station pumps and signs, Coca-cola vending machines, and barber shop chairs. (All of which were very old!) After we left, Ben and I wondered a little if the other people in this town have all seen this guys collection multiple times or if a lot of them have no clue about this place which could practically be a museum to the later 1800’s-early 1900’s history of the rural U.S.

A lot of my picture taking this weekend was of the cats, since they are fairly willing to be photographed. It is amazing what a difference a fast camera can make when photographing little cats that love to play and run around.

Axel isn’t much for running around, but for some reason I have never been able to get really good pictures of him. That is until this weekend… I got several great pictures of him! He always looks so serious:)

Pounce on the other hand lives for running around, so usually his pictures are a complete blur! It has been fun to really be able to capture his little expressions (I don’t know how else to put that…) and his playfulness…

My head did start hurting a little bit last night from all the information I am trying to absorb and learn. ISO/aperture/shutter speed…. It all starts to feel a little bit like math after awhile. It can be a tad tempting to just leave the camera on auto mode, but I definitely want to learn all of this so I am just planning on taking it slow and eventually figuring it out enough to never use auto mode again:)

One last thing before I hopefully go get some stuff done…
My ballet teacher called me today and offered for me to switch to the next class level up. She watched the next class level up the other day (she doesn’t teach that one) and feels that I have advanced enough to move on to that class. So I am going to go ahead and give the class a try this week and see how it goes…. If I feel overwhelmed by it, I can stay in my current class or if I feel ready move on up to the next level. So I am pretty excited right now about that!

I got my birthday present from Ben today. My birthday isn’t actually until the 27th, but he let me pick out and order my present ahead of time. (And I don’t think I could have waited that many more days to open it, I was practically going insane wondering when it was going to get here:)

My present was a new camera! :) In case anyone is curious, I did end up going with a Canon dSLR (there are more options for upgrading someday, and overall it just seemed like a better fit for me). So immediately after I opened the box, I got the battery charged, messed around trying to figure out at least a few settings, and then went for a walk to take a few pictures. For these pictures, I used the kit lens and pretty much left the camera on auto. However, I also got a nice prime (fixed) lens for my birthday so you can bet that in the next week or so I am going to be figuring out all the manual settings on this thing and trying out the other lens.

So thank you to my sweet husband for putting up with me and buying the nicest birthday present a girl could ask for! :)

I may post one or two pictures this weekend, depending on the weather and how I feel… Otherwise posting will resume again on Monday with hopefully a post a day again. (And hopefully a bit of sewing/crafting projects! :)

I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided I would have purple be the color today…. It definitely is not the easiest color to find! So you get a picture of the crystal light iced tea package, which I noticed was purple:)

Hmm, not exactly what you were expecting as far as photos go probably! Then there is the purple blanket that I have been working on knitting for a very long time…

I am actually thinking about pulling this apart and maybe using the yarn for something else. At this rate I don’t think I am going to finish this blanket until I am in my 60’s. Well, I guess I could just go along at the same pace and give it to my grandkids someday:) I think I prefer sewing over knitting, more instant gratification that way! (I never claimed to be the most patient person ever:)

That is all the purple that I could come up with for today! :) On a totally different note, could you not just live on this month’s Real Simple cover…

I would love to have a hammock in our backyard someday, although it would have to be strung from two trees. (And I suppose actually having a backyard might help a bit too) It just doesn’t seem as relaxing to me if it is on a hammock frame for some reason. The colors on that picture are just lovely too!

I could lounge out on the hammock in the new summer tops that I broke down and bought yesterday (along with the shorts that I gave in and bought a few weeks ago, I am not really a shorts kind of gal but when it is this hot out I don’t think I can be that picky)… This said on the tag that it is actually a dress, but I think I like it more as a top. (Yes, I am one of those people who likes to wear dresses as shirts instead.)

I also bought a few tank tops for layering, so hopefully that will solve needing some summer tops at least for awhile. I still would like to make a few tops myself though, so if you have any advice about the pattern I already tried or a different pattern you really like feel free to leave me a comment!

Tomorrow’s color is green… (I can hardly believe it is already the end of the week! I will probably take a break from posting over the weekend, but am going to try to keep posting every day next week as well.)