Wall Art & A To-Do List

I am happy to report that with the help of a muscle relaxer, I slept last night. Like a log. Or a baby. Neither makes much sense- logs don't sleep, and babies toss and turn all night, waking up all the time. Ok, fine then, I slept like the dead.

It was glorious, though I'm reminded today of why I hate to medicate unless it's absolutely necessary. I'm all jittery feeling. I'm hyper sensitive to a lot of medications, so this is typical. Nothing horrible, I suppose, but just a weird feeling.

Moving on... I have a to-do list today. Will it get finished? No clue. Probably not. But I'll try. It's 11:30, and I've gotten 2 things done, though, so that's not too bad.

• Start & Finish a Wall Hanging someone won- this was a bit slow, but I only finally heard from the winner last week, and it's been one of those weeks so far. Happy to report this project was started and finished- and I. Fell. In. Love.
• Schedule all of the Birthday Week Giveaway posts, so everyone knows when their prize will be posted. Done, and done- and everyone emailed! Thank you again to everyone who offered a prize up! I'm so excited to post the contests!
• Finish the minky blanket for the shower this weekend. Dreading this- the minky is not easy to sew, it stretches just enough that it stops lining up after a while. I have 2 sides sewn, 2 left, then I can add the binding. 
• Bake the neighbor some thank-you brownie-cookie bites. He fixed my car muffler for me this week, and he gives us way too much of a good break on labor. Shops around here charge $80-100/hour for labor. He spent close to 3 hours doing the work, and charged us $50 total for labor. Not even, actually- the muffler wound up being about $10 more than it should have been, so he wound up only making $40 for all that work. I bake for him every time he fixes a car.
• Go to the store, because I have no cookie dough, or mixes, or stuff to make cookie dough. Will cheat, and buy pre-made dough. Yep, cheat. 

I think that's all. I have today & tomorrow to finish the blanket. The giveaways are scheduled, and I have a week to get the actual posts done up ahead of time. There will be a giveaway every day from Saturday the 24th to Friday the 30th. I am so excited to show all of my readers the awesome goodies that so many wonderful ladies donated!

I guess all I need to really do is the blanket, the store, and the brownie-cookie bites. Have you ever tried them? I found the recipe the other day, and man, does it sound GOOD.

You scoop brownie batter into the bottom of a mini muffin pan, filling it just under halfway. Then, drop a blob of cookie dough in the middle. Bake, cool, frost, sprinkle, eat, enjoy. I can't wait to try one. I'm sure my body will thank me, as will my rear end and thighs.

On to the Wall Art. This was done basically the same as the wall art I made for my Mom's bathroom, except the colors (obviously), and to incorporate all the colors, I used 3 different papers, plus stickers. I had all these little saying stickers that came in a packet for $.50 at Michaels. The blue & green paper were in that packet, too (it was from the $1 section, 50% off). The polka dot paper was $.59 at Jo-Ann's, the star was $.50 at HobLob. The base is another $1 store canvas.

Total Costs: $2.59 if you count the cost for ALL the paper, not just what I used. The paint & mod podge was on hand.

Tell me that isn't just FUN? It's for a teen's room, and she likes polka dots, bright blue, lime green, and brown. I thought the stickers were great for a teen. I really want one myself, now! I'll have to try and find more of those types of stickers- too fun!

Posted at the following Link Parties!

Productive Morning

Time is growing short. Can you feel the pinch? I know I'm feeling it. This morning, I have to wrap. HAVE to. Once the kids are done with school, that's it- I'm relegated to wrapping in the bedroom on the bed, which I hate. So, I have today and tomorrow, and then it's bedroom city.

Already this morning I have cut yarn for the kids to do yarn ornaments tonight, which I found on another blog this morning. Since they will be today's ornament of the day, you will see those later.

After doing that, I did up 2 quick Teacher's gifts for the kids to take into school tomorrow. I don't have much money, so I went with what I had on hand. Remember the spring clips I found at Goodwill in my basket of goodies? There was an Apple one. I had hoped there were two, but alas, only one apple. I used that one, and a flower shaped one to make the gifts.

For Gillian's teacher, I used the apple one, then Mod Podged red paper to each side. One side just says Happy Holidays over and over again in white on red. The other side is the center of a poinsettia flower with a snowflake center. From there, I used a sponge brush to stain the wooden bases with red & brown ink. I mod podged over top of that so the ink won't stain anyone elses fingers.

For Chris's teacher, I took the flower, and used the same red Happy Holidays paper on one side, and a black and white pattern on the other. I used red ink to stain the base, and once more, mod podged over the ink. My brush and the mod podge turned pinkish. Oops! Ah well, better than the fingers, I guess.

It was a fast project- about 10 minutes from start to finish.

Aside from wrapping, I need to finish Gillian's dress. Last year, I bought the cutest dress at Goodwill. It has a green velvet upper, and the skirt is long and full dark green taffeta. It's actually bigger than a circle skirt, that's how full it is. When I got it, I had visions of a tree skirt. After all, it was much too big for Gilly. Well, Gillian fell in love. Last year, I had the horrid sewing machine, so I used a plethora of safety pins to hoist the longer-than-ankle-length skirt up, and tighten the dress.

This year, I got ambitious. I decided to make a bubble skirt out of the dress, which this year, was still ankle length on her. I thought- easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I thought wrong.

{the skirt was not fully extended- thus, bigger than a circle, and also, inside out}

{the inner slip I sewed to create the bubble}

{the ruffles created by pulling the top thread of the machine stitch}

The skirt, being so full, was TOO full to hand pleat into a bubble. UGh. When did I figure that out? After I had hand pleated almost the entire thing, and ran out of space on the fleece slip I sewed into the dress. Yes, fleece- I live in Michigan. It could be 60 degrees on Christmas, or it could be -15. Fleece seemed the logical choice for added warmth, since -15 is far more likely than 60 (though, it has happened).

I undid all the pins, and brainstormed. After all, the slip was already sewn into the dress. I remembered the many tutorials on how to sew a straight stitch, and pull it to form a ruffle, and thought... well, I can do that. I hope.

So, I did. I failed to take into account, once more, the fullness of the skirt. The thread broke no less than 3 times. I sewed across the ruffles in many places, so they wouldn't be lost when the thread broke. After a Loooooong time, I finally had the entire thing ruffled.

From there, I tacked the skirt to the slip in 4 places, but ran out of time to fully stitch it to the slip. I tried it on Gillian last night, and of course, one of the tack's tore out. -sigh-

She better love this dress.