Hey guys!

Boy, this week week between Christmas and New Year's really wreaks havoc with stuff. I haven't been doing things I know I should, and instead sitting on my tuckus enjoying all the trimmings of Christmas.

I did get a ton of stuff done before the holidays, but I only took pictures of  one of the gifts, because I'm a dodo.

Dana will have to supply some photos of her gift for you guys, but I'm sure she will. I'm an excellent nag. Ask the hubs. :)

So anyways, back to the conversation at hand - handmade gifts. I should really say altered gift in this case, but whatever the case - I want some for myself.

My sister, Nicole moved into her own place with her fiance' this year and as such she's been setting up her house.

She's decided that the colors in her kitchen will be black and white. That's a palette I can work with. :)

So I headed to Target and got some of their flour sack dish towels. These are great. They're large and they're only $5 for 4 of them.

Then I found these Sharpie fabric markers.

Click the picture to go to Sharpie's page.

Now, I bought them before I really thought about the implications.

I would have to draw on these towels with these. Draw. Ergh. I'm not an artist. Not the pencil and creating and image out of it kind of artist, but my head down and ram it attitude provided me with the determination (note that I did not say confidence) to tackle this project.

I went to The Graphics Fairy and downloaded a couple of black and white steampunk images. Love her site! So then I printed out said images in a 5 x7 format, but I made sure that the images weren't cropped or anything.

I laid the pictures beneath the towel and outlined the picture, then I moved the image out from underneath the towel and went to town on them. I think I did alright. here are some close-ups.



The fan is my favorite one, and the utensils were the first ones I did. I think I improved between them and all the rest. The marker was very smooth and didn't catch on the fabric at all.

I want some for myself now, and I have some good ideas with the rest of the colors.

See you guys later!

So blogger decided to erase my first post so this one might not be as eloquent.

 Firstly, did everyone have a nice Christmas? I did the hubs spoiled me and got me the running and gym gear I wanted.

 I got these new Zumba shoes. Aren't they awesome?
Isn't that pajama'ed leg awesome?

I can't wait  for Zumba tomorrow. These shoes are so very comfortable.

Second he got me the Nike+ SportBand. I can't wait to try this thing out. I don't know how soon I'll be using it since its been sort of miserable lately, but I am excited about it nonetheless. I was hoping to be able to use it at the gym since some of the machines are Nike+ compatible, but according to Nike's website, they are not compatible. Sigh.

Anyways, back to the goals and stuff. When I set up the SportBand, I had to sign up for a Nike+ account and of course that led to some exploring and playing. I decided to start the coaching program for the 10k training. I'm excited about this because when I run the 8k in March I'll be ready, because the training will end two weeks after the race, but given the distance variance between the training and the race, I think I'll do ok.

My goal for next week is to  log 3 runs. Two 3-milers and one 5-miler. The latter should be interesting as I've never run that far before, but I'm hoping that my time doesn't suffer too much because of the added distance.

Anyways, that's all I wanted to ramble on about tonight. I hope you guys have a great evening.

At 12:01 AM I was going into labor - 6 years ago.

It was my due date, but I didn't think I'd actually be giving birth. It was another false labor, just like the other 4 or 5 times. They send me home around 3:30 or 4. I'm effaced enough but not dilated enough.

They tell me to get some sleep and go to my OB in the AM. Sleep eludes me. I finally give up around 6.

I waddle out to our living room and sit in my favorite chair. I watch the sun rise. My contractions are getting worse, but I don't want to wake anyone. It was a long night for them too. If I only knew.

18 hours of labor is what I was in. You, big guy, decided to grace us with your presence at 6:30 on the dot.

Happy 6th Birthday D!

I can't believe how you've grown.





Happy Birthday Big Guy! We love you so much and we're so blessed to have you in our lives.

Its been a busy week for us here at the house.  Wrapping gifts, baking, and sewing. 40 minutes spent standing in line at the USPS to get stamps. Don't you just love the holiday season?

I do!

So without any ado, here is how the house is decked out. I'm only sharing the main floor today, tomorrow I'll get to the kids' trees. :)

So first up is the dining room. We have a new tree! I've never had a white tree. It was pretty fun to put up and decorate.


The table is set for Christmas Eve dinner already. Thank goodness some paper plates will be going on that china so I don't have to wash dishes. Its the compromise that I made  with the hubs this year, since he's usually the one doing the dishes.

I tried to just stick with silver and white for the tree in the dining room, but while I was  putting out ornaments, I found some  antique ornaments and decided that they could have a place on the tree as well. I think next year I'll have to do something else with them.


So now we're back to the family room. I switched up the trees this year, because I didn't want to move my chair. This is also a new tree. Its a little slimmer than the tree it replaced. Its also fairly bright,  which is nice, but I think next year I'll be putting more lights on it. :)
 
 And there's the whole tableau. So very pretty and traditional. I like it. I also like how everything pops nicely off the orange walls. I do think that my poor mixed nut wreath needs some beefing up next year. Don't worry I have an idea for this :)

Now on to the living room. Here's my shining glory tree! I love this tree. I just can't explain how much I love this tree.

 So here's a view of our balcony from right in front of the front door, looking up. That's the kids tree. I added some white lights to it this year and I love it. I'll share the trees upstairs tomorrow.
Hope you guys enjoyed this quick and dirty tour. :)

You know there are some things that I do really well, and others....well, at least I tried.

Not to say that today's ornament is not a looker. I'm quite pleased with how these three turned out, but its a good thing that I'm not a cartographer. Or maybe if I was then these would be more geographically correct.

By now you all  have seen and drooled over these lovelies in the Pottery Barn catalog. If not, well you and I have missed out because they are now sold out.

Oh well. Its not like they were too hard to replicate. Well they were hard to replicate accurately, but like I said. I like my creations.
Isn't she pretty? I like her.

Here's PB's version

There are some slight differences. The main one being that I think they used silver German glass glitter, whereas I used clear.

Here's another shot of mine.
I like  the outline in silver. I used a Sharpie oil-based marker in silver metallic for these cuties. I will not show you the very first one. Its not pretty. I tried coloring in the continents and it didn't go well, because you can see every stroke I made on it. Not good. The glitter did not hide them either. So I'll just stick with the latter two. Of course, you're seeing the better, geographically speaking, of  the two.

Even though they're not perfect I still like them. :)

G'night ya'll

Well I'm sharing some ornaments with you guys again today.

I just can't seem to get enough of wood grain, so I decided that I would freehand some on some ornaments.

I painted the inside of these ornaments and let that dry completely.

Then I grabbed a Sharpie oil-based marker in white and to town.


I just went around and around making knots every so often in my woody texture.

I'm pretty pleased with myself over how these came out. I ended up making a set of four. Glitter on these guys would look pretty amazing too.

What do you guys think?

I’m going to start by saying that my big guy is such a sweet sentimental guy. I don’t know what Hubs and I did to deserve such a sweetheart, but maybe we’re doing something right.

This year each kiddo has their own tree in their room, and my super sweet, sentimental guy wanted me to make him ornaments. He told me that he wanted everyone’s name on his tree. I asked him why and he said – Because we’re a  family and I want all of you guys on my tree.   *heart melts*

Well after playing around on Silhouette Studio and not being happy with any of my ideas for our names, I decided that I was going to simplify my life a bit. We’re going to go with our monograms inside a circle. What I ended up with, I think, is timeless. I really love these ornaments, and so does the big guy. Not to mention he now knows all of our middle names.

So I’ve created a tutorial with {a lot of} pictures to walk you guys just what I did to create these wonderful little works of art.

What you’re going to need:
Cardstock
Glue or a sticker machine like  Xyron – 5” Creative Station
Glitter
Modge Podge

What I did:
I started in Silhouette Studio and a new document. Then with the type tool I typed out the first set of initials. I made sure they were all in caps to make my life easier. Then I picked a font. I ended up going with Calisto. Don’t know where I got it, but I’m going to hazard a guess that it was at dafont.com.

Next up is the circle shape tool. Hold down the shift key while you draw a circle somewhere on your page. When you’ve got about a 3” circle let go. Go to your resize screen and make your circle exactly 3” around.

Next we’re going to make an outside offset for our circle.  In the offset screen make sure your offset is set to a 1/4” and hit apply. Now highlight both of your circles (making sure not to move one or the other) and right click and click make compound path.

 Now back at your text, right click and ungroup your letters. Then drag the initial of the last name to the center of your circles.

While holding down Shift, click on the circle. Both your circles and the letter should now be highlighted. On the modify menu, go to align, and click on center-middle. This will center your letter inside the circles. This is about where I realized I was working with the wrong letter. Darn it. So I had to go back and fix it.

Now on just your letter, we want to start transforming it to fit inside our circle. With the letter highlighted, start pulling the top and bottom edges of the letter until they intersect the innermost circle. I also adjust the width of my letter so that it is just under 1” wide. Recenter your letter inside the circles by repeating the step from above.

 Now grab one of your other letters and bring it to the circle. I started with the middle initial, which is why its going on the right side of the letter we just worked on. I just eyeballed where I thought the center of this letter was in the white space next to the right of the center. Now stretch this letter so that the top and bottom intersect the inner-most circle.

When positioning these side letters, I try to space them so that the bounding box of the letter is even with the center letter. That gives me enough of a margin between the letters, so that it doesn’t look crowded. Highlight the letter and the circles, go up to the object menu and click on align, this time click on middle. This should center your letter in the circle, without moving it on top of the letter we were just working on. Repeat for the last letter.


Now highlight all of the letters and the circles and weld them. I try to not have any of my letters extend past the outer circle, because it makes it easier to weld. Weld all of your shapes and letters.


*If your letters extend past the outer circle then instead of welding everything right now, you will click on subtract all. Then click on the individual shapes that are outside of the outer circle and delete them. Now highlight everything again and weld again. Sometimes after doing this you need to go in and adjust or delete some of the points, but not always.

Now we’re going to make another small circle to  hold a ribbon or an ornament hanger. I did this on only two ornaments, because I got the first 3 done before I had my Eureka! moment. Click on the circle shape again, and while holding shift make about a 1/2” circle. Go back to the resize menu and resize the circle to 1/2”, if need be.


Now click on the offset window again, and this time click on internal offset. Keep reducing your offset circle until it is 1/4” big.

Highlight both small circles and right click. Click on the Make Compound Path.

Now move your circles to about top center of your monogram. I try to line up the outer edge of the ornament with the inner edge of the smaller circle. with everything highlighted click on the object menu and click on align. Now click center. This will horizontally center your smaller circle against the ornament.

Highlight everything and weld it all together.

Move your ornament to the top left corner of your paper. Make sure to stay within the cutting margins of your paper. Go to the Clone menu and click on the column of three. Now you should have three copies of your ornament.

Move one of the copies to the upper right corner, and move the last one below and centered the other two. This will maximize your leftover paper.

Following the instructions to cut out your ornaments. Remove the ornaments from the cutting mat, and toss the negative space. I would keep the larger paper though, because that bottom half could be used for something.

Now that you have 3 identical ornaments cut out its time to layer them together. This is where my Xyron comes in handy. At least it would if I hadn’t run out sticker stuff. Oh well, we’re going to do this last ornament old school. Bring out the glue stick! On the wrong side of your ornament apply glue everywhere, paying special attention to any small or dangling areas. Making sure to have your ornaments lined up correctly, glue two of the pieces together. Make sure everything is firmly adhered and lined up. Glue the remaining ornament on top of the two ornaments you just glued together. Your ornament now has some beef to it.


Time to paint some Modge Podge on this baby. I covered both sides of my ornament in Modge Podge. It was messy, but it got the job done. Immediately after I was done painting both sides of the ornament, I popped it into a bowl of German glass glitter and gently shook it around, unfortunately that was taking too long so I dumped some more glitter on top of my ornament. Then fish out the ornament, I used an ornament hanger, and hang to dry.

Then hang on tree and enjoy.




Wondering about the monogram I made in this tutorial? Its our friend who stays with us quite often. The boys think of him as part of the family, so when I was making these family ornaments, Dev was quite adamant that I found out Evan’s middle name and make him an ornament too.  Such a sweetheart! Oh and its still drying.

Well I hope you guys have liked this little tutorial. I had a blast making these and they’re so very easy and personal. I may have to make up some more to decorate Christmas gifts with!

Have a great day ya’ll.