My Only Sunshine

Fancy Friendship Bracelets

My friends at Klutz have another book I think you might like.

My Itty Bitty has been totally into friendship bracelets since learning how to make them for a Girl Scout badge a few weeks ago.  She's 8 and has plenty of friends to give bracelets to.

When Klutz offered to send me this book to try out I wondered if they live next door and know my Bitty personally, what great timing.  You know what's better than sending me a free book to try out?  You guessed it, they will send books to my friends too!  Everyone loves a good giveaway.

Here's what Klutz has to say about this book, "New from the Klutz bookshelf!
Introducing Fancy Friendship Bracelets, the original Friendship Bracelet’s new best friend! Klutz started with super-simple instructions for a flock of all-new bracelet designs. We added five different colors of cord and more than 200 sparkling beads. Then we threw in some stylish charms for good measure. The result is even better than we hoped."

How about a look inside.

 Bit and I haven't had time to make all the bracelets in the book yet but the ones we have tried have been fun.  Even though they are called "fancy" bracelets, Bit found them pretty easy to put together.  The finishing instructions and the beads included were my favorite part.

So here are the details - Comment on this post and on December 30 I will pick two winners.  Those two winners will each get a Fancy Friendship Bracelets book from Klutz for themselves and a second book to share with a friend.  Don't forget to give me your email address so I can let you know if you won.  Good Luck!

I Finished Something!!

I recently posted a review, on Craft Critique, of a product I got at CHA this summer.  Now that it is nearly time for CHA winter I thought I should show you what I made.

I made these yoga socks for Bug on my Clover 9" circular needle.  Go take a look at my review.  As you can see, I love this knitting needle! 

I do pretty well with the magic loop method.  I'm even relatively good with two circs.  I just can't seem to get good at DPNs at all.  With just one short needle I can whip up a project so fast that even my short attention span doesn't run out before it is finished.  Shocking isn't it?

Can you see Bug's cute little chill bumps up there?  What a great foot model I have.  She'll roll up her pants and go out in the cold with me for a photo shoot.  She is getting a really cool pair of socks out of the deal.  At least I think they are.

These are knit with Knit Picks sock yarn that is so old that they don't have anything like it on their website anymore.  It's close to this though.

I made up the pattern myself.  It's basically just a tube.  I knit some 1x1 rib, then switched to 4x1 rib.  Then I knit another section of 1x1 rib and I cast off half of the stitches in the middle of the section and cast them back on in the next round.  When I switched back to the 4x1 rib I threw in a few K2tog.  A little more 1x1 rib and I was ready to cast off.

Aren't they cute on my little dancer Bug?  She's most excited to have socks she can wear with her flip flops.  She wants to wear new Croc flip flops no matter how cold it is outside.  Silly girl.

B00!

If you live in my neighborhood, LOOK AWAY!!!!

We got this cute little bag and card delivered to our door last night.  It's a BOO.  In our neighborhood people leave treats on each others porches at Halloween.  The people who receive the "Boo"s then make their own treats and pass the fun on to another family.  This is all done in secret and is great fun for all the kids.  We will put the ghost that came in our bag on our front door so everyone will know that we have had our treats and somebody else is waiting for a surprise.

The funny thing about getting our Boo last night is that we had nearly finished making Boos of our own to start things off.  Now we're ready to pass on the fun.  The Girlies and I made chocolate pretzel rods, cookies, and mummymallows.  I'll let the fun pictures speak for themselves.

This is the sign our victims will hang up in order to tell others they have already been BOO'd and the poem to explain what is going on.

I used Martha Stewart's new tinsel glitter to "liven" up my ghost and BOO a little.

Orange hot chocolate, can you stand it?  So cute!

The Girlies picked out pencils and buttons to include too.  They are excited to see the people they Boo'd in secret using their pencils in class.  What are the odds they won't give themselves away?

Here it is, all bundled up and ready to be left on someone's front porch.  We put all the goodies in a halloween sand bucket.  The kids will deliver under the cover of darkness tonight.

iPhone Thursday - Did I make you wait long enough?

Thank you for waiting so patiently to hear who won the KLUTZ books.  I was waiting to tell you until I had gotten the delivery of their books all set up with KLUTZ.  Now that the books are on the way I can announce that Stacie, Wendi, and Brittany won the fun little books.  They should arrive on Monday and I can't wait to hear what they think of them.

Now for a little iPhone Thursday action, today we have Video! This is Bug in Tuesday's "mini-meet". She recently joined the swim team (which is amazing since she was scared to get in the water a year ago) and had her first competition this week. The coaches are amazed at her strength, from all the dancing, so are working hard to teach her the strokes fast so they can get her competing against kids outside her own team. This mini-meet is just for kids on the city wide swim team. In this video Bug is swimming her first ever race. It's the 25meter Freestyle and she is in the middle lane.

Did you notice that Bug totally killed the other kids? She's so amazing. She went on to win the 25m Backstroke as well, which she taught herself. Then she placed 3rd in her final race which was the 25m Breaststroke. She had only done a single lap of breaststroke in her life before that competition.  I'm a pretty proud Mommy, as you can imagine.

While Bug has been swimming, Bitty has been playing volleyball.  She's tiny and sometimes has a hard time serving the ball over the net.  At the same time, she is more into the game and practice than any other kid on the team.  She LOVES it and you can tell in everything she does.  It's amazing.

So my next post will be about my whirlwind week with Provocraft.  Right now it's time to head to the school library for a little book shelving.

My kids are KLUTZes too

This is Bitty's fairy from the Paper Fashions Fairy book I told you about last week.  I learned two things from working on this with her.  One, 8 year olds will make each individual piece a different color and pattern if you let them.  Most of the time they don't care if these colors and patterns look good together.  Two, 8 year olds may have a hard time visualizing what they are doing if you try to help them draw their stencils on the back of the patterned paper to avoid the pencil lines showing.

This is Bug's "Mermaid Fairy Waitress".  I learned a couple of things working with her as well.  One, 10 year olds will also put as many colors and patterns as possible together but at least this 10 year old will stress over what goes together and what doesn't.  They may not end up making the right call on this.  Two, 10 year olds are old enough to understand the concept of mirror image when it comes to drawing on the back and flipping and also making one glove stencil work for both right and left hand gloves.

I also have a word of warning to any of you who might use this with your kids...  Kids love glitter glue.  This little bit of trouble (it's both glue and glitter, how can that not be a problem on occasion?) is outweighed by the fact that my kids have spent HOURS just playing with the stencils.  They love drawing different fashion ideas on plain typing paper over and over.  It's wonderful to see how their imagination has been sparked.

Bug actually liked this so much that she spent her own money to buy this...

Now they can mix and match their stencils and papers.  Oh, and more glitter glue!!!

Don't forget that if you want to win your own Paper Fashions Fantasy book you need to comment with your email address to this post.

KLUTZ - Paper Fashions Fantasy

Several weeks ago I received this very cute book from KLUTZ.  They wanted to know if I'd like to review it.  Boy, how could I pass up crafts, fashion design, kid projects, and tiny little clothes hangers all wrapped up in one package?  I mean really, look at those tiny hangers!

Things have been totally crazy at my house but I did make time to tear this open and do a little paper fashion design and it was SO MUCH FUN.  Here's a synopsis of the book.

"In the Klutz paper fashions tradition, this book comes with everything girls need to design an entire one-of-a-kind wardrobe, including irresistibly tiny hangers to finish the fashions in style. Unique to this book, though, are fashions that are the stuff of fantasy: goddess gowns, pretty princess dresses, fairy finery, and more. Specially designed papers and stencils make it simple to create everything from flowing cloaks and twinkling tiaras to mermaid tails and fairy wings. And we've even added glitter to the glue — a simple way to sparkle up any fashion.
 
For ages 8 to Adult!"

On my first pass through the book I noticed that it had several types of fantasy fashion to build on.

You can create Fairies, Princesses, Witches, Goddesses, and Mermaids.

The ideas for these different ladies are amazing.  Whoever did the designing for the book is very creative.  I was completely engaged without having even opened the crafting supplies. 

Along with all the lovely pictures and ideas the book comes with patterned and solid paper and some great sheer and glittery paper as well.  The embellishments include ribbons, beads, sequins, and sparkly glitter glue.  The contents I found most wonderful were the stencils.  KLUTZ has broken down the different design pieces into their elements and created nice sturdy template plastic stencils.

I found the kit very easy to use which left me wide open to creativity.  I decided to go a little Project Runway for my first fantasy dress.  You know what I mean, big collar going straight up on the shoulder.  It was so much fun to make.  I do have one hint.

I used my stencils on plain paper first to put the different design pieces together so that I could cut them out as one unit.  Then I laid the piece that the pattern had been cut away from to lay on my final paper so I could make sure the paper design would show through the way I wanted before I cut on the paper I only had one small piece of.  This picture is my white paper laid over my patterned paper for placement.

Here's the final product hanging on it's teeny tiny hanger.

See the big collar?  So PR, Non?

Tonight I am going to let the Girlies play around with me and I will show you how that goes on Monday.  Oh, and I can't forget, KLUTZ has generously offered to give three of my readers a copy of this cute little book and kit.  Leave me a comment and be sure to include your email address and next week I will draw three names.

Copic Markers

Want to read more about this color chart?  Go take a look at my article on Craft Critique and don't forget to leave a comment so you can win some really cool stuff.

Creativity has left the building

Wow, I fell off the posting wagon, didn't I?  I meant to keep up better but things have been so crazy.  School started, PTA board started, Craft Critique is ramping up, dance is in full swing, and we had birthdays.  I've had more than I can keep up with.

Another big problem, I am not feeling at all creative this week.  I feel like I used it all up for the birthday party (did I mention we had nearly 60 people?) and now am just worn out.

I do have one exciting thing to mention though, Stalker Angie is back!!!  Yay.  Boy have I missed you!

The Birthday Week

My Girlies have birthdays that are 8 days apart.  Right now we are in that 8 days in which they are 8 and 9.  It's a funny time.  We always seem to have a week of gifts instead of just one day each.  Not only that, but a week of cake, and the birthday song, and everything that goes along.  It will all be capped off by the giant carnival we are having at our house this weekend.  We're all very excited.  The only bad thing about the carnival...  I have more than you can imagine to get done.  So I'll leave you with this picture of my 8 and 9 year olds.

 

I need your organizational help

I'm a volunteer.  We call it "Mommy" around here most of the time, but truly what I do is volunteer.  I say that because the things I volunteer for don't always directly relate to my children.  Not only am I a volunteer, but I'm an over-volunteerer (I know that's not a word, just so you know).  My husband doesn't always like that I tend to over volunteer myself (and sometimes him) but he likes it even less that I can get stressed when I have spread myself too thin.  I don't care for that part much either.

This is where I need your help.  No, I'm not going to ask you to take over my duties in the school library, (What are you doing on Thursdays this fall?) I just need some suggestions.  You are going to think it is funny that I need your ideas on keeping a personal journal right here on my personal journal, but what I need is different from this blog.  On my blog I tell you things, and show you things, that I think at least a few of you might be interested in.  What I am wanting to do to help with my different commitments is to start some kind of log of where I am and what I do each day.  I am already using Bento as my personal database and I love it.  What I need is some way to keep a journal or log of what I do each day.  I could do this in a project based way in which I make a note in a specific project any time anything happens with that project, and I usually do.  The problem is that sometimes I have a single thing that needs to be done that doesn't need an entire project set up just for it, but I still need to write it down so I don't forget it.  As an example, today I agreed to create a large piece of wall art to decorate the outside of the library door at the elementary school.  I can't do this project today because I have too many other things that take priority.  I need to make a note of what day I agreed to do this along with some other notes on the day and I am not sure exactly where to do this. 

It used to be that people would take notes like this on the page for the current day in their daily Franklin-Covey planner or whatever.  I would do that now but I'm not really a paper kind of person unless it is my art journal.  I can't keep those notes in my art journal, they would just get painted over.  So this is what I am asking of you.  I need suggestions for how I can keep a daily log of what I have gotten done, not gotten done, agreed to, declined, etc.  I need that log to be digital and accessible from anywhere on both my iPhone and my MacBook Pro.  I've thought about just creating a blank document in Word but that takes too many computer resources and would take too much work to move around from my laptop to my iPhone and back.  I've also thought about creating a second typepad blog and just password protecting it.  I haven't tried that out yet to see how well it would work.  Do any of you keep a daily life log like this?  Does anyone have any suggestions for me to try or any experiences to share?  I would love to get some ideas.