Another Crafty Project

I'm pretty proud of this quick little task! It's not a Christmasy craft, but that's okay. My inspiration for this project came from A Soft Place To Land (she's got TONS of awesome crafts!).

I have about half a dozen glass vases around my house and they really don't match the rustic/warm theme of my decor. I try to fill them with seeds or stones or something natural so they aren't so harsh, but this works WAY better! Was way easy too!

I bought a hot glue gun! Just start at the bottom, trying to
be sure that you get the base nice and straight.

Keep going around and around until you're at the top!
My twine was really thick; I wish I would have paid
more attention to getting it tight to the row below.

Ta Da! Some branches from outside finish it off, and I'm the happiest
I've ever been with my end table. :)

Oh, and here's a picture of where my Christmas tree landed:

Alright folks! I'm pretty determined to finish off that scarf today, so I better get started. I really want to cast on some mittens soon! I want them to have a nice long wrist part that will tuck under my coat! I'll let you know when I decide on a pattern for that. :)

Only 4 more sleeps until Santa gets here!!!

Read more...

Christmas Tree and Knitting Updates

I was surfing around different craft blogs this morning and I caught the crafting bug. I know I saw something like this on one of them, but I couldn't find it again! Please, if anyone knows what crafting blog I bumped in to and saw this, please let me know because I feel bad I didn't bookmark it or something!

So here's the materials I used. All stuff that was laying around the house. The frame came free along with a bigger one I bought, burlap is left over wedding decorations, the lace is from a garage sale and I was using it to wrap gifts last year, and the buttons came with a shirt I bought.

Then, on to starting:

1) Cut burlap using the glass as a template.

2) Cut 3 progressively smaller pieces of lace and tack them
to the burlap with a needle and thread.

3) Iron down some unruly Lace
(hopefully without melting it a little. oops!)

4) TA DA! Put it in the frame!

I don't know where I'm going to put it or anything, but I'll find a spot. I'm think I'm pretty fond of it, considering it took me all of 15 minutes. hehe I'm headed to the hardware store here in a few minutes to pick up a glue gun for another project I have in mind! That coming soon!


I wanted to update you on how my knitting projects are coming too. Yesterday I cast on a slip-stitch scarf that uses scrap yarn and so far I have bout an inch and a bit of scarf:

scrappy lengthwise scarf

And I'm one done with one whole repeat of the first chart in the Traveling Woman shawl. It's getting to be pretty tedious work because each row is so so so long now! I guess that makes sense though considering it's final dimensions. hehe I'm happy with how the repeats are going and they're all lined up and stuff. The edges though... lol I think I started with too many stitches and consequently the edge doesn't line up. I'm certainly not taking it all out now. It is my first shawl after all. :)

Read more...

The Great Snows of '09

Holy Crow, People. I'm sure many of you out there are in a similar situation right now, but this is not normal for our tiny town in Virginia. Apparently we haven't had more than 5" since about 1991, way way before I moved here! Take a look at what Mr. Pie and I woke up to:

!!!

16" and it's still forecasted to snow all day today! Mr. Pie couldn't even make it to work!

So today is going to be a cozy day inside. hehe Good thing I got this little project done yesterday! I've done this once before, where I took the branches that you cut off the bottom of your christmas tree (to make it fit in the stand) and tie them together with some twine. This is hanging in the hall now:

I really like this look! I like that it's rustic, unexpected and uncomplicated. Though it seems to me like it needs just a little something. Any ideas?

Read more...

A VERY Cool Giveaway!

I think I found a new favorite Etsy store to add to my list! :) Head on over to Tea Rose Home for the chance at a gift certificate!

Read more...

Chrismas Going-Ons

While I'm still plugging away on my Traveling Woman Shawl I decided to take a break and do a quick bulky hat in some Lion's Brand Thick n' Quick. And let me tell you.. It's both THICK and QUICK! I did this hat in about the span of one movie:

look mom, no pattern!

So as we're getting ready for dinner guests tonight, the snow starts. About two hours later, it looks like this outside:

And the inside of the house looks like this:


Should be a fun evening! Happy Friday everyone! We should be getting back to normal Find a Deal Fridays SOON! I promise! :)

Read more...

General Updates

Hi folks! I hope everyone's Holiday Season is moving along smoothly. :) I have all but one gift out in the mail and the last is going out this afternoon. I have all my gifts bought for Mr. Pie they just need wrapping. All this means that I get to dedicate a bunch of my break to knitting!

I'm truckin' along on the Traveling Woman Shawl, but it's slower going than other projects so far because I'm reading from the charts. I'd post pictures, but it pretty much looks the same as last time. hehe

Oh, and did I mention that I'm done my finals??? YAY! I kinda feel a bit shell shocked still, but I'm makin' my way to relaxed!!

Read more...

2 Finals Down, 1 To Go

... and instead of doing that final that's due today, I'm writing you a post about Gingerbread Houses because yesterday Mr. Pie and I finished our very own Gingerbread house! From Scratch! (and because I'm a pretty good procrastinator. lol) We really didn't know anything about building gingerbread houses unless you count "Buy a kit" as step one. hehe

So we made our gingerbread dough like you would for a gingersnap cookie and rolled it out in to sheets. I cut out templates like those I found online and we got to cutting out our pieces. The crazy part is that our oven is so tiny (just the 24" apartment kind of thing) that we couldn't bake all the pieces at once, so we baked them a couple at a time over 3 days. lol

We were very very nervous when we first started putting the pieces together! Does this look to you like it wants to remain standing?


We let that rest and get hard for an entire day from morning until after dinner, then we delicately added the roof.

You can see there was a slight accident with the roof breaking in half. More on that later! We let that sit overnight and then the next morning we got to decorating!


And here's the final product!

our crazy resident ghost snowman

Here's what we learned and will do different next time:

1. Keep template pieces so you can compare the pre-baked size to the post-baked size. Use a bread knife to cut away what doesn't fit the template anymore.
2. Put the dough in the fridge for a while before you cut the pieces. Otherwise, they stick to the templates!
3. Bake the pieces extra long so that they are very crisp and hard. If they are too soft they fall apart in construction. Ex) the roof. hehe
4. Make your frosting with extra powdered sugar so it's more paste-like than you might use for cookies. Like the consistency of elmer's glue. hehe

On the knitting front I have very little news to give you. I have one last minute Christmas gift, which I said I wouldn't do, but I realized that there was one person I forgot on my list. Argh! It'll be a blue and white hat for the PennState Football team. I bought some LionBrand Thick and Chunky for that. lol Hopefully it'll be done today!

Alright... now I'm off to tackle that stupid essay. Wish me luck!

Read more...