Contrary to the accountant part of my brain that tends to guide my spreadsheet-loving ways and general first impressions ("oh, you must be good at math!" = sigh...), I love making things. And being crafty and creative and spending too much money at Jo-Ann. And in a stroke of his own creative genius, Craig lovingly braved a scary place called Sewing World a few months ago (all by himself! I'm beyond proud) and got me a kick-ass new sewing machine (can a sewing machine be kick-ass? I think so...) for my birthday.
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| hello, my love |
I was in a state of shock at first and really scared to use it because it's all computery and LCDed where my trusty old machine was very...not...but I finally sat down with it and read the manual page by page and made it do things and IT'S AMAZING. I didn't know things like automatic thread-cutting could be a part of my life, and now I'm not sure how I lived quite so long without it. Dramatic much? Who, me? Never! I'm also glad we have a giant dining room table adjacent to my crafty space command center so I can explode onto it with excessive amounts of stuff in my crafty adventures.
I had a baby shower to go to last weekend and used that as a convenient excuse to go on a "tiny things are adorable!!" bender for learning the sewing machine. It was also a great excuse to do dorky things like make my own bias tape with this really cool little doodad.
I told Craig it was my version of a power tool. He was not really impressed. Anyway, see adorable tiny things below:
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| tiny things are adorable, prepster edition - square cookie cutters also make really excellent templates for appliqué |
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| tiny things are adorable, owl + teeny onesie dress edition |
I may have become slightly obsessed with tiny owls. Aren't they just adorable??
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| who wouldn't want a tiny adorable stuffed owl? it was even soft and cuddly with its snuggle fleece body. oh, owl, I love you. |
However, my temporary obsession may have also turned Craig against tiny owls.
Erin: Craig, look at this tiny owl! Isn't it just super-cute?
Craig: Uh-huh.
Twenty minutes later...
Erin: Omgggg, how freaking cute is THIS tiny owl? I just love him!
Craig: Uh-huh.
Really not too much later...
Erin (possibly for the fourteenth time): Craig, look at this tiny owl!! Isn't it adorable?!?
Craig: Please don't show me any more owls.
So then I just started showing the owls to Zach and Harry for approval, which was going pretty well until Zach decided he might like to maim and destroy the tiny stuffed owl, which was absolutely not part of my plan. Fortunately, no animals, real or fabric-made, were harmed in the making of the tiny owls.
A couple of our friends from DC also recently welcomed a sweet little boy into the world, so I toned down the level of owlsy cuteness and switched from pink & green to blue & yellow for some teensy little boy craftiness, too.
And then to make Zach feel better for denying him the pleasure of destroying a stuffed thing, I made a little label for his new bed. It now says "zach" in really cute letters instead of saying "KONG" in ugly letters. He loves it. And I love automatic thread-cutting (even more than I love tiny owls...I think). Thanks, honey. On to curtains!
Oh hi, remember me? Yeah, I barely remember me, too. It's ok, we'll get to know each other again. Maybe. I'll try.
I'm probably not the only one who's happy to have a new year come around. Fresh-ish start to things. Not totally fresh, because everything that's ever happened has definitely still happened, but sometimes it's nice to get a new perspective, regain focus...oh, let's not get too philosophical here, New Year's Eve is a great reason to drink champagne! Pink bubbles AND normal bubbles! Let's party!!
Bubbles in your own home are especially nice, too - no driving, phew. Although Cards Against Humanity - not so nice. At all. But HILARIOUS in a disturbing kind of way. We had a fantastic time with the Vaughns, Keffers, and Nicholseseses* - plenty of food (waaaaay too much food, pretty much the way we always do it), maybe a little too much to drink, excessive gaming, and general merriment all the way around. Bring it, 2013!
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| Happy new year, ladies!! I wore some sparkles - I just had to. It's also really awesome how the nutcracker appears to be balancing on my head - talented fellow. |
New year, new start - I'm not even going to pretend that I'll play catch-up with my life on here - we're just going to move forward with new adventures and maybe throw in some older adventures here and there for fun. For instance...did you know that Craig & I went to Philadelphia for a really awesome wedding? In October? Of 2011? That's right. I might tell you about it sometime.
* Last names that end in "s" really threw me for a loop as a kid. I never knew if it was supposed to be an apostrophe situation for plural or possessive or when to add the -es or if there should maybe just be a way to work around it entirely, which is why I use "s" last names as a descriptor when possible rather than dealing with it (i.e., the Christmas card was totally addressed to "The Nichols Family" rather than "The Nicholses" - help me...). And NOW I am one of those "s" people!! Why do you think I jokingly (but maybe kinda half-seriously...) use Pendarvii instead of Pendarvises? Yup.
