I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We visited with family for a few days (drove 14 hours total with 2 cats in the car), got to have a very white (and cold) Christmas and now we are home. I thought maybe I would share a few photos from our Christmas…

I am having issues with the skirt I am trying to make for the holidays… trying is the key word here too. I was actually thinking about using the Amy Butler Barcelona skirt pattern but slightly modifying it so that it would look more like my original inspiration… Well let’s just say that isn’t happening! The pattern is the source of my frustration. I love Amy Butler’s fabrics & her sense of overall style, but I can’t stand her patterns. I feel like she designs & sews the item first and then decides as an after thought she should make a pattern to go with the item. I hope everyone who loves her patterns will forgive me for this rambling, since like I said I do still love her fabrics. Anyways, luckily I had made a muslin of the skirt before proceeding to actually use my good fabric so not all is lost. I guess though that really I am back to square one, which means I need to make my own pattern for the skirt (when I totally should be getting other stuff done, oh well!).

This is a short post with no photos, because even though I have taken a few photos lately all the photos I have taken have been of the cats. I guess that is what happens when it is cold outside and you haven’t accomplished much on the sewing front… Hopefully I will have a skirt to show soon, although I guess it will depend on how frustrated I get trying to make up my own pattern…

Today was quite the day… Earlier today I got my hair dyed & cut, which it so needed! Then this afternoon I had grand plans for accomplishing a ton of stuff, but that was quickly sidetracked when I bit down on a chocolate covered pretzel and split my gum open (yeah I know I have to be the only person in the world who could manage to do that!). So then I had to spend over an hour at the dentist office to get it looked at (I am fine, although my mouth is a bit sore - most of that hour was spent waiting), which totally meant that my afternoon was completely shot. On the bright side it has been a wonderful mail week…

I got these lovely postcards in the mail yesterday from Laura…

Her photography is absolutely lovely and she was so generous in sending me a stack of her beautiful postcards! Thanks Laura!

Then today, I got some lovely mail from Meshell…

Christmas fabric, Polaroid postcards by Maditi (I am seriously loving all the amazing postcards out there…), adorable Christmas light earrings, and buttons (which she so cleverly put in the card she sent me like confetti!). Thanks Meshell!

Of course someone else wanted to help with the photo shoot and steal some buttons! :)

My to do list for this week is quite long and today definitely sidetracked it… Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more productive as far as that goes. Although I did manage to finally finish making the rest of our cloth napkins…

We definitely have enough now to last between washings and it really will be nice not to have to buy any more paper napkins. Goodbye paper napkins! :)

Cross your fingers for me that I accomplish tons tomorrow! :)

It snowed almost all day yesterday, so the ground is covered in snow today. I will admit that a fresh coat of snow on the ground always makes it look quite lovely and cozy. Although I could do without the cold temperatures that it brings… I went outside to take a few photos of it this morning, but didn’t last long outside since it was so cold. Ben let me use his camera so that mine wouldn’t have to experience the severe drop in temp from inside to outside (which was very nice of him, since it meant that his camera did have to go through the drop in temp). Although my fingers couldn’t handle the drop in temp, so it meant that I wasn’t outside for long:)

I got these lovely goodies in the mail the other day from the very sweet Elena of TickledPinkKnits. I don’t think Elena has a blog, but her shop is absolutely lovely and she is very sweet! Thanks Elena! :)

I have only been doing a tiny bit of crafting & sewing lately… I really need to get more done on that skirt if I want to have it made for the holidays. I did get another scarf made and into my shop though…

I had actually been thinking about this scarf for awhile and had set the fabrics aside for making a scarf. It is the same fabric combination as this bag that I made back in July. I love these two prints and love how well they go together even though they are from completely different fabric lines. I order most of my fabric online, so sometimes it can be difficult to match colors and make sure things go together if you can’t look at it in real life and compare. I feel like I sort of lucked out on this fabric combination:)

Axel and Pounce were sitting on the couch together last night, so I thought I would take a few photos. (Both of them have gotten pretty use to the camera and the clicking it makes while they are trying to sleep:) Ben had shown me some photos of Abyssinian cats on flickr the other day, and there was one photo in particular that I really liked and wanted to try to capture something like that of Axel (who is a tabby/abyssinian mix). I didn’t get quite what I wanted, but I do like this photo that I took quite a bit at least…

Speaking of flickr & photography… I really need to get myself a pro flickr account. When I started using flickr, I really wondered why anyone would pay for a flickr account & now with over 200 photos in my flickr stream I totally get it:)

I have been working on making some more cloth napkins like the ones that I made in October. (Wow, this year really is flying by…) Of course the new ones are still sitting on my works in progress pile, but I will hopefully finish those up soon. In the meantime I thought I would share a little tutorial on how to make these (this is my very first tutorial ever too, so bear with me:). If you are looking for a last minute, quick to make Christmas gift I think these would make a great gift…

(You can click on any of the photos for a larger view.)
Step One: Cut a 14 x 14 inch square piece of fabric for each napkin that you want to make.

Step Two: This step is optional, but I highly recommend it since I think it makes everything go a bit quicker. Sew a line a little less than 1/4 an inch from the edges. (This helps you know where to iron, rather than having to mess with measuring it while you are ironing.)

Step 3: Iron the edge of one side over 1/4 an inch using the line you just sewed. (Make sure that the line you made in step 2 is tucked towards the wrong side of the fabric so that the thread doesn’t show when you finish the napkin - see photo if that doesn’t make sense:)

Step 4: Now tuck under the edge another 1/4 inch and iron so that the raw edge is now hidden.

Step 5: Sew along this edge, backstitching at the start and finish.

Step 6: Now repeat these same steps on the opposite side of the napkin. At this point you will have 2 finished edges & 2 raw edges.

Step 7: With the remaining 2 raw edges follow steps 3, 4, 5, & 6 again.

Now all the edges of the napkin should be finished off. Go ahead and make a few more to complete your new set of napkins! :)

If you have any questions, feel free to email me or leave a comment. Hopefully it all makes sense… It is pretty basic, but these look lovely when you are finished and are so much nicer than ordinary paper napkins (plus so much better for the environment!).

This tutorial is intended for personal use only. Feel free to link to this tutorial, but please do not repost it in its entirety without permission from me. All photos & content on this site are copyrighted by me. Thanks!

The fabric for my holiday skirt….

Black velvet, black tulle, and a grey/silverish fabric that is actually quite sparkley in real life but the photo didn’t pick that up. I looked at 2 different fabric stores and had quite a hard time deciding what to go with for under the tulle. When I saw that fabric though, I thought it would be perfect. Cross your fingers that I actually finish the skirt by the holidays! :) Does anyone have any tips about sewing with tulle? I have a feeling I might need some tips…

I am thinking about putting an about page on my blog… Right now I just have a little blurb in the sidebar, but it doesn’t say much at all and I have this whole website so I might as well make an about page, right! :) I thought I would check first though and see if anyone has any questions for me about my blog, me, or just life in general? Now would be the perfect time to delurk, say hi, and ask me my favorite color (which changes every five minutes in case you were wondering…)

And because I thought this was just too cute not to share…

(They are best buddies most days, but Pounce doesn’t normally tolerate Axel cuddling up to him like that for very long so I was pretty surprised to see them cuddling. Even more surprising was that they let me take a photo without running off to eat or play.)

This is probably going to be one of those posts that jumps around quite a bit… well at least it will be if I can remember all the things I keep thinking I should blog about. :)

Did you know that excel has a random number function? Very cool! I used it to pick the two winners of the drawing… Kristi & Cate! If you could both email me with your addresses that would be wonderful.

It snowed last night & a little today for the first time this year… I was actually kind of sad when it first started. Although I suppose it was about time for it to snow here, especially since New Mexico got snow before we did! :) I don’t think I really like winter at all… At least the snow might make for some pretty photos? I took the one above today, while trying to keep my camera covered with a shawl (which was a bit tricky).

Speaking of taking photos… awhile back I mentioned wanting to learn more about some of the adobe photoshop programs. Well I found a book at the library that was all about adobe photoshop lightroom and I have to say I had a lot of fun learning how to use lightroom. Next I am planning on reading a book or two on photoshop elements… Although lightroom does most of what I want it to do without elements. In fact it is better than elements in some ways (at least in my opinion) because I shoot my photos in RAW format and lightroom is meant more for editing this format (with elements you need a special plug-in to edit RAW photos). Anyways it is fun & who would have thought that a program like that could actually be fun! :)

I have lots of ideas right now for projects to work on… One of my ideas is for a holiday skirt for myself, which I think I will probably start working on this week. I have an idea in mind but sort of need to decide on colors for it… I am thinking about making something similar to this L.A.M.B. skirt….

Which I think was from last years line and was over $400, which is obviously way way more than I would ever spend on a skirt! Although maybe I shouldn’t really say it will be all that similar, because I am definitely going to make my own version of it and already the version in my head is a bit different than this… Anyways, colors? Anyone have any suggestions? I am definitely going with black for the tulle part, but can’t decide on what color to go with the black… I’m not sure if I am really a fan of the tan color on the L.A.M.B. skirt though, so I was thinking maybe grey, pink, or black? Hmm, any suggestions? Of course all this depends on if I can actually find the right fabric for it and get a move on working on it because Christmas is not that far away! :)

First Jessica features me on her blog (see my last post), then I discovered that one of my scarves is in one of the Etsy gift guides, then I just discovered that the treasury I made last night is on the front page of etsy. I feel a bit wowed right now! :) My treasury is still on the front page, but it will probably only be there for a short bit so I did take a screen shot for anyone who wants to see…

Don’t forget to leave a comment on my last entry to be entered in my little giveaway! :) Hope everyone else is having a wonderful weekend!