More Christmas gifts and Muffins

Christmas was better then I expected this year. The drive down to L.A. took around 7 hours because there was horrible weather through the Grapevine, but for me it went super fast since I just crafted the whole time....Craig drove it all! I had no problems driving, but he wanted to.

Christmas Eve was just spent driving to L.A. and when we got there his Mom had some tamales and soup, and we rented the movie Traitor. It was just nice and relaxing, and I ended up falling asleep at like 10pm lol. I don't think I've ever been to sleep on Christmas Eve that early!

The next day we got up around 8 and were at Craig's grandparents house in Laguna Beach by I think 2pm or so. I brought all those cookies/truffles that I made a week before, and I was so happy that everyone LOVED them. They were all impressed....I thought it was kind of funny since I made the easiest things ever lol.

We then opened presents and we got a lot of giftcards for the baby, which is awesome :) One of Craig's cousins put on the scarf I made her and never took it off...it was still on when she left! I'm glad she liked it so much.

On Sunday we went to my parents house for Christmas and that was a lot of fun! We had pizza and Rave cake, exchanged gifts and my grandparents came over for a bit.

I had made this for my Dad's parents since they've been to Japan a few times, it's an embroidered cherry branch. The pattern is from Urban Threads.



This was for Craig's grandparents since they LOVE birds...they have bird stuff all over their house. Unfortunately I bought a cheap frame and couldn't get it unwrinkled no matter how hard we tried...I actually didn't finish it until Christmas morning so we couldn't even run to the store for a better one. That was pretty disappointing, but I told his grandma she could always switch frames if it bothered her, and she just said "Oh! I thought it was supposed to look like that!" I guess that's a good thing? :P

The picture sucks because I was in a hurry and there was horrible lighting in the room. Pattern from Urbanthreads.com again.




This Tinkerbell pattern took so much longer then I thought it would, but I also usually only make tiny ami's. It was so worth it though. I think she is super adorable...even though I couldn't figure out the second half of the arm pattern, so I just made one up! Pattern from Crochetfaery on Etsy



I also made my Mom this Tinkerbell phone/card holder which was just made out of felt, embroidery floss and a Tinkerbell applique from Joanns.



For my brother I made him a Triforce scarf from Zelda. I don't even know if he's gone to my parents house to get it yet though!



And because I was hungry, I made cranberry orange muffins :)

....the boxed kind from Trader Joe's lol.

Wine Embroidery, Ninja Turtle Beanies and More!

I was planning on visiting my parents today to drop off Christmas gifts and go to the mall to try and find pants that fit for Craig's grandparents house heh....but I still was not *quite* done with all the gifts I needed to drop off. So today I'm finishing the last 2 gifts and baking, and tomorrow I'll go to San Jose.

I embroidered this little picture for 1 set of grandparents, and I got the image from Urban Threads.
This is before I ironed it obviously lol. I'm also doing another picture for the other set of grandparents that I need to finish up today.

If it's kind of hard to see, it says "I love cooking with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food."






I also made some Ninja Turtle beanies for some friends...which I hope they don't read this blog haha. The only thing I wish I did differently was to cinch the middle between the eyes, I couldn't decide on which way I liked better...and now that I mailed them I wish I cinched it.



Craig and I got way spoiled by our friends in Alaska....look what they sent us!

Top left to right:

- Blue Alaska princess shirt for me, which my belly is to big for at the moment haha, but it will be great after
the baby!
- Chocolate Moose slipper socks for me which I loooooooove.
- A remember Alaska Once in a Blue Moose tote for baby stuff.
- 3 CDs for Craig from 36CrazyFists.
- Alaskin Yoga t-shirt haha it's awesome.
- A cookbook for the Ulu they sent us.
- 2 onesies...one is a polar bear skull and crossbones :), the other says "Alaska Grown"
- A really pretty and soft shawl for me, which is currently on the back of my chair in case I need it.
- An "Alaska Grown" shirt for Craig that matches the babies.
- An Ulu. It's a type of cutting tool that is popular over there...I'm glad for it because our knives suck, I had to keep asking Craig to help me cut the sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner.



My parents also gave us our Christmas present early...a mixer! Yay! Baking will be MUCH easier now!

Mini Holiday Swap!

Yay I got my swap package from sweetlysedated on Craftster! I LOVE it. She did an awesome job. I actually didn't even know I received, the package was behind my tomato plant...luckily I actually like to water them haha.

I mentioned that I love snowmen, and I got a package full of snowmany goodness!

When I opened the package, I was greeted to this (minus the ornament, I forgot to put it in the picture oops)...



The first present had an adorable little snowman themed stocking...perfect for the baby! I especially love the carrot colored buttons! It also contained little snowman coasters that are almost to cute to actually use....so I have them hanging up as a decoration :) I *might* let Craig use one if he's good!



Then she sent not one, but TWO embroidered onesies! Her embroidery is perfect, my newbie skills are very jealous :) I cant wait to show Craig the BYOB one, he will love it haha. Turquoise is my favorite color so of course I'm loving the Bebe one :)





She also stalked my Wists a bit and saw some super glittery ornaments I have on it...and she made me one! I LOVE it. I don't know what it is about glitter, but it makes me happy. Here is a picture of it on my tree.



She also sent me the leftover snowman fabric which is super awesome, don't the snowmen look like they are made from marshmallows? AND some snowmen scissors! That's actually pretty funny, I was just saying today that I need new scissors to cut my felt since they are getting to dull.



Thank you sweetlysedated, I love everything!!

Oh and whatever kind of chocolate is in the orange wrappers is amaaaaaazing.

Christmas Gifts and Baking

Today I'm going to my grandparents house, but I wanted to share a few pictures first. I've finished*most* of my Christmas gifts, and here are a couple of pictures that I know the recipients wont see first :)

2 "One Skein Scarves" from the book The Happy Hooker by Debbie Stoller. These are super easy and really cute, so I made them for Craig's 2 cousins. I also might make one for Shellie, depending on if we do anything for her birthday. The green picture here was taken at night so the color is a bit off, but it's a nice Olive green. Both were made using Caron's Simply Soft Eco yarn.





I also attempted freehand embroidery on a onesie that I'm going to give to Craig, it just says "Punk", but I made the U into a smiley because it was so huge lol. It's not the best looking, but eh I'm sure the baby wont mind :)



I also spent yesterday baking, and I think I might make 1 more thing, depending on if I finish my crochet projects.

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies. While I really really love the flavor of these, I do wish it was more of a chewy cookie recipe instead of cake-like. Next time I will try adding banana to a chewy recipe :)



Beinjinho de Coco aka "Little Coconut Kiss". I was actually surprised how chewy these were, they are definitely more of a chewy candy then a cookie like I thought they would be. Craig said "Grats babe, you invented a new gum!" LOL. They aren't that chewy, but I think he wasn't expecting chewy either.These don't get a fancy plate because my dishwasher is the size of a toddler, so paper it is :)

This recipe is pretty much the one I used, except I omitted the cloves and rolled them in a mixture of powdered/granule sugar and coconut flakes.They have a slight natural coconut flavor, and they are really neat. I think they would be better as like a gift for a little kid, dyed all crazy colors.



I didn't get a picture of all my baking since I wanted to put it in tins asap, but I also made Martha Stewart Pecan Squares and omigosh they are so good! Superediculoustupid (can you read that? lol) fattening, but oh so good.


Chocolate Cream Cheese Truffles mmmm these are my favorite of everything I made. So good, so chocolaty and tangy....and cheap to make! They are a bit soft, but I'll just tell them to keep them in the fridge or something. I wont post her image here, because I love her site so I don't want to take her bandwidth.

Mini Holiday Swap

Since my partner received her package for the Mini Holiday Swap, so I can post the pictures!Two of the things she said she loved are Nightmare Before Christmas, retro/rockabilly...so I tried to craft using that theme. I crochet a black scarf and attached a felt cherry applique that I made, crochet a Jack Skellington ornament, and that white tree from a few posts down. I also sent her some Christmas Hello Kitty stickers and a Rudolph pez dispenser.

I had my second doctor appointment yesterday, and I've only gained about 10lbs so far,and I'm like 20/21 weeks...which surprised me since I feel like I've gained a lot more then that! I do have to go for another ultrasound since they weren't able to get an accurate picture of all the chambers in the heart...but that's ok with me because that means I get to see the baby again :)

I've finished all of my Christmas shopping (although I forgot Craig's Uncle, oops!) and I've just got something like less then 10 projects to finish and I'll be done lol. They are quick projects though. If I have time I also might make some ornaments for everyone. We'll see!

Christmas Tree

I FINALLY have the tree up! I actually set it up on Monday, but then I though "Hey! I'll crochet a long scarf to act like garland! That would be cool!"

Doh.

Never. Again.

It actually wasn't to bad, I just did rows of double crochet with a single crochet border, but I never thought it would take me 3 days of crocheting for HOURS each day. The tree doesn't seem that big, it's 6 foot...but it's a skinny tree. The one thing that sucks about it is that I must of done the color changes pretty evenly, because half the tree is red/green and the other half is pink/blue lol.

The bulb ornaments are from a little craft store that had tubes of them for $4 each, so one tube was red/gold/green and the other was blues/purple/silver. The rest of the ornaments are mixtures of WalMart and Dollar Tree. If I have time between all the present making, I'm going to crochet a few more ornaments for it.

I think the tree topper is kinda ugly though, but they didn't have much of a selection at WalMart.

I do need a tree skirt though, I've been thinking of just going to Joann's and getting some red velvet and some white fun fur and just making a big circle with the red velvet and gluing white fun fur as trim since my sewing machine isn't working.

Here are a couple of bad pictures...it was hard to take them since it's sunset and my huge sliding glass door is kinda south west. Tomorrow I'll try for better ones in the morning.

I put my little sled girl on the tree too :)

This picture makes it look a little bare, I have no idea why...it's plenty full :)

The other day I sold my first pattern! Woohoo! I feel bad, I was supposed to go to the grocery store today to get some little items and go deposit Craig's paychecks....but my back is still kinda sore and I feel just weak today. I hope he wont mind to much when he gets home :P

Grr I don't know why Photobucket is refusing to save my pictures right. If you click on the giant pictures below then right click, under properties it shows them being much smaller. Like 280x200 something. BUT if you check properties on the posts below, then are like 680x800. So frusterating.

Swap Package and Knitpicks Order

We FINALLY got the car registration all set, and got our shiny new blue sticker! After being at the DMV for an hour (which actually is not bad) I came home to TWO packages on my doorstep.

First was my Christmas Ornament swap package from Craftster! ehinders made me a really cool box with some gorgeous ribbon on the side, a red ornament that is embellished with winter themes and sayings, and a reindeer pez dispenser!

I also received my yarn from Knitpicks! It is exactly the color I had hoped for, so I'm glad it all worked out.

Hopefully I can start on the bolero today, but I have a few more things to finish up for the Mini Christmas swap...I really want to be done with that before I start ANY new project, including Christmas presents. I have most of my "To Do List" for Christmas already, and I do have most of the supplies already.

I also put up the Snowboarder girl pattern for sale on Etsy and Ravelry :)

Thanksgiving, Ami Snowgirl and Ultrasound

Two days ago was our 19 week ultrasound...and it's a boy!! It was so cool to see the heart pumping, the spine, the fingers...everything. We're going to make copies and send pictures to everyone in Christmas cards, but I also took a picture of the ultrasound picture to email to people :)

It's a little fuzzy, but pretty good I think for being a picture of a picture.



Good thing I never gave away that starghan I made!

After the ultrasound we went out to lunch/early dinner with my parents at Red Robin, and they gave us a little bib and some cute socks that have a picture of a puppy on them....and it looks like our dog Misty :). We went into the WalMart right across the street after Red Robins, and I bought us an artificial Christmas tree! It was between the 4 foot prelit tree for $25, or the skinny6 foot tree for $20. I ended up going with the 6 footer because it really didn't look that big,I think it's a perfect size. I'll probably set it up on Monday, and that will still give me plenty of time to see if I need more ornaments or anything. For the garland, I'm going to crochet a long skinny scarf and just wrap that around.

Craig and I were planning on just spending Thanksgiving together, and then going to my parents house on Sunday for another Thanksgiving. Craig said he'd make a turkey on Thursday, I'm making the super easy sweet potato's (mmm my favorite), Stove Top Cranberry stuffing with added orange zest, and a pumpkin cheesecake. I'm at least going to *attempt* a pumpkin cheesecake, since I bought the premade cheesecake filling and I'm not sure if I can just mix the pumpkin straight in or what.

Now Craig is saying there is a *slight* chance we might still be able to go to his family's house down in L.A., if he can finish all of his clients today then his work said he could have Friday and Saturday off. BUT one client is being stubborn and only wants services on Saturday, so we'll see if he was able to do it today.

I finally finished my snowboarder girl! I ended up giving a bonus sled pattern, since the first snowboard I made was a bit to big, and Craig said it looked like a sled. Ahaha good idea :)
I'll have the pattern up for sale today as soon as I find our copy of Adobe PDF maker, there is a lot of instructional pictures in the pattern, so to PDF is to big for all the free PDF makers that I've seen.







LOL Lynelle (the hooker from the movie Borat) is on the radio this morning and she's hilarious.

Handmade Christmas Trees

It's still November, but already I'm in a Christmas mood. I even put on some Christmas music the other day while I was cleaning! Don't tell Craig though, he hates it haha.

I've been meaning to make these for *years*, but I just always got caught up in Christmas giftmaking that I never had much time for decorations. Since I have PLENTY of time on my hands these days, I decided to just sit down and do them. They were super fast, maybe a half hour each..tops.I think some other colors might be fun, like a white tree with aqua and magenta accents. They are also pretty cheap to make so I definitely could make more.

I put them up on Etsy, but I have to say that I would not be to sad if they don't sell :)

This white one might look kind of sparse as far as decor goes, but the yarn is just so soft and fuzzy with a hint of sheen...that it really didn't need much added decoration.



The green one is probably my favorite, I might even make another one just because it looks so Christmasy to me :)



See that glittery Noel decoration? I just bought that for $2.50 in the $1 (haha yeah doesn't make sense) section at Target! I love all things glittery. I think that would also be easy to replicate with the wooden letters at Michaels and some glitter.



Craig has off both Saturday and Sunday this weekend, so I'm going to try and talk him into running to the store to buy a fake tree. I was going to get one yesterday at Wal-Mart, but they were kinda heavy and I always hate asking for help. They had a 4 1/2 foot one that I think would be perfect, and small enough to store in our apartment until next year :)

I've also finished 1 small item for my Mini Christmas swap partner, and I think she'll love it. Her tastes seem completely different from mine, but that's good....it gets me to think outside my normal crafty ways :)

I'm not sure if blogger is a good place for me, it ALWAYS cuts off half of my pictures...or it takes me forever to find the right size. They really need to widen the space where you post, even if just a little bit.

Turkey!

I was up at 5:30 am this morning with Craig, I just couldn't fall back to sleep. I had to be up by 6:30 anyway to take the car into the shop....and I was supposed to wait there.

All. Freaking. Day.

Luckily the guy at the shop took pity on me, and drove me home....I was less then 10 minutes away anyway. I had brought this pattern with me to the shop hoping to keep myself busy, so I thought I'd still do it. The turkey pattern is from Bittersweet Blog.It was pretty easy, and took me about 3 hours, but that was stopping for a quick lunch, email checks etc.

I'm having a lot of problems with photobucket and blogger, so hopefully this picture doesn't look distorted like they have been. You can always check my pictures out on Flickr though!

I was going to start on some stuff for a new Christmas swap I'm in, but I think I need a little nap first :)

Starting the Short and Sweet Bolero

So far in my crochet, I've pretty much just stuck to do amigurumi's, cozies, scarfs, and hats.Today I've finally decided to start a project that I've been wanting to do for forever, the Short and Sweet Bolero in the book The Happy Hooker by Debbie Stoller. I've never made anything like it, but I thought I'd give it a try. Here are some Flickr photos so you can see what I'm talking about.

I went over to the super slow site (sorry but it is sloooow) Knitpicks and picked up their Shine Sport Yarn in the color "Harbor". I think in person it will be more blue then this swatch, at least from what I've seen.

I swear, picking out colors is the hardest part! The pattern calls for 100% mercerized cotton yarn, but I've seen some great FO's using this yarn.Besides, it's only $2.95 a skein, so if it doesn't work...it's a great practice one!

I'm still putting the finishing touches on my Ami snowboarder, and I need to make another ami beer bottle since I only wrote down half the pattern; before I put the patterns up for sale.
I've also got some more ideas for patterns (and Christmas presents!), but I need to just sit and focus on ONE project at a time...I swear I have crochet ADD ;)

Rum Bottle Pattern

Woohoo I have my first pattern for sale on Ravelry! It's super easy, and shouldn't take very long at all. I'm going to go make a white one (coconut rum!) with a pink flower, I think that would be cute and tropical :)






I'm going to make another beer bottle before I offer the pattern up, just to double check it.

Beer and Sasquatch!

These patterns are almost compete, along with the PDF. I'm also making a little snowboarder girl, so when that is finished I will post a picture and get the pattern up :)

Ami Sasquatch

I've been working on an ami bigfoot pattern, and so far I have this.



The torso is to long I think, and I'm not sure if I like the way his big feet looks. I will probably tweak the pattern a bit more before I offer it up for sale.

Or I was thinking leaving the pattern the way it is, and just creating a baby sasquatch to go along with him :)

Ami Rum Bottle Pattern

I'm finally getting things set up for my patterns! I've got my first PDF file completely finished and ready to go. All I'm waiting for is to get approved on Ravelry to start selling my patterns, and for Etsy all I have to do is make a banner for my shop.

I've got a few more patterns done, but I need to take more photos and turn them into PDF's, but here is the rum bottle that is completely finished.

Christmas Ornament Swap

I signed up for a Christmas Ornament Swap over on Craftster, and I was done within a week. I guess that's what happens when you aren't currently working ;)

I'll put bigger pictures up on Flickr when my partner receives her package.








We didin't really have any specifications, except for it to be Christmas related. So I crochet a retro Christmas ornament with Roxycraft's awesome pattern. The pattern calls for it to be crochet in the round, but I did it in a spiral...it's just an easier technique for me. I used Caron Simply Soft in a Cranberry color, and Patons Divine Brilliant in the sparkly silver. They were out of the sparkly red, but the cranberry yarn had a sheen...so it worked. It looks much more vibrant in person, I had JUST gotten my new camera that day...so I was still figuring it out :)





I got the santa ornament idea from her wists, there was a beautiful handpainted santa face with a white fluffy feather perfectly glued on top. Well I cannot paint that good heh, so I got those rub-on faces at Michaels and just used that. In place of the feather I just glued some white fluffy yarn. It is a little crooked, but it's still cute :)



The embroiderd ornament is just a little snowman with the words "Let it Snow" above him. Super easy and it only took maybe an hour.



At Michaels I found some Candy Cane Pop Rocks which I thought were pretty cool, and a little tube of holiday M&M mini's. The Hello Kitty Christmas stickers are from the $1 section at Target, and the take out box I stuffed with packing peanuts for the santa ornament.

My swap partner should be receiving her package any day now, so I hope she doesn't find this post first! :)

Since I'm crazy and love crafting, today I signed up for another Christmas swap!