Swap! Altered Art Junkies Valentines swap

I've joined another swap! I had so much fun doing the "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" Swap sponsored by Much love, Illy and Sandyalamode that I just had to find another one!

Enter SwapDex!

Its a little spot for crafters looking to do swaps! such a great idea!

So after a bit of searching, i stumbled upon the Altered Art Junkies Valentines Swap.

I am super excited to make some awesome valentines! its not really something i've done before, so it'll be neat to think outside of the box a bit.

I dont have to mail them out till the 10th, so i'll update a bit once i'm closer to the deadline :D


What are you doing for Valentines day this year?

~~Love~~
~~GG~~

One A Day: 1/25/11 Little Felt Owl

Because of my new-found love of all things Owl (and especially retro-looking owls), I decided last night to make myself a little felt-y owl to use as an accessory.

Heres the little guy!

I used some left over felt for the body, eyes and beak, and an old pair of pants that I didnt wear to make the wings. Isnt he CUTE?!

Hes about 2 inches wide, perfect size for a hair clip!

I have a feeling i'll be making more of these little guys in different colors....

I am really happy with how he turned out, and it only took me about 20 min to cut and stitch him together (I was pausing every now and again to do some homework too).

How are you doing with your "One a Day"?

~~Love~~

~~GG~~

P.S.- If you see anything (origional) that I've made, and are interested in a tutorial or purchasing an already made product, send me an email, comment on my most recent post, or post a message to my Facebook!

One a Day Challange: 1/24/11 Crochet Chrysanthemum!

I just wanted to do a little quick something last night since I also had some homework to finish up, and some laundry to do... blah... So i decided to give this little pattern a try while I was watching American Pickers.

I wanted a mustard yellow flower to wear as a clippy (you know, a hair clip-thing...I'm not sure what they're really called. I call them Clippys), and I had seen this pattern before on Monster Crochet, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Here's my flower!

Its about 3 1/2 inches in diameter approx. I used a G gauge hook.

I really loved the way it turned out! I'll probably make another one with a lighter weight yarn (to make it a bit smaller). I think its going to make a FAB conversation starter :D

I am trying to decide if I should add a little something to it though.... maybe a little bling? I'm not sure yet. I'll keep you posted!

On a side note, Check out my new FACEBOOK PAGE!! I'll be updating with blog info, and perhaps putting a contest or two up for my "like"-ers.....


~~Love~~
~~GG~~

Random Ramblings

I know, Ive been way too absent for far too long, and i apologize!

Frankly, I've been feeling a little random lately, and haven't really been able to string two words together, much less come up with a cohesive, well written blog post.

so, in the spirit of all of the randomness going on in my brain, i decided to make a pretty random post!

Here are some of the goings on in my brain and life lately:

• I've been devoting a lot of my time and energy to decluttering our house, and following the FLYlady's instructions for a clean home. I've had a shiny sink now for over a week! and we have a garage i can actually park in!

Those two little blurs? yeah, those are the kids.

I actually believe Mike thinks I've completely lost my mind. I've been tossing all kinds of things!

• I've also been reading "4 hour workweek" (visit Timothy Ferriss' blog here), and got all kinds of interesting ideas.
• I've been doing a lot of school work with this round of classes (I take 2 classes at a time, for 9 weeks), so that's been taking up a lot of time, but I'm still getting A's!
• My Brother is here visiting from China! We haven't seen him in about 2 years, so its really nice to have him home for a bit.
• I've also been trying to get ideas on what I can make for my little shop that I'm planning on opening via Etsy. The problem is, you have to have a product before you can open a shop, and I just cant decide what to make. I don't want to do everything and end up with a weird jumbled mess. I'm looking for some kind of consistency.
• Along the same lines, I also need to get back into the swing of the "One a day challenge". Lately my nights have been filled with homework and decluttering, so I haven't been creating as much as I should. And now I am totally embarrassed because Mike is doing the same on his blog and is totally kicking my butt with it!
• Something that has been bugging me for some reason: the negative image that crafters and handmade gifts have gotten in the media. Now, this isn't something that I've seen recently (on TV anyways), but I've noticed that people tend to look at me like I've said i could sprout wings and fly away when i tell them that i craft and sew. IDK, it just irks me.

Is this what the word "crafter" makes you think of?! Image via
• and last but not least, my lovely Geisha tattoo is FINALLY FINISHED! Mikes dad is a tattoo artist here in Orlando, so he does all my work, but I try to leave him time for his non-related customers lol!

Here's my beautiful lady. Shes on my upper thigh on my left leg. Doesn't she look just like the little ceramic Geisha I found a week or two ago?!

I hope you all have a WONDERFUL week! Keep up your "365 pics" and your "One a days"!

~~Love~~

~~GG~~

P.S.- anything you want me to review? do a tutorial on? ramble about at length?! email me or comment on my most recent post! I'll have my elves pass along the message...

Tutorial: Crochet Vintage Cascade Cowl

Hello all!

I have gotten some emails and requests for a little tutorial on how to make my lovely vintage-y style cowl. Again, this is a LionBrand pattern that I followed, but I'll show how to do the basic stitches.

As I said in my other post, if you can double crochet (treble for the UK ladies) then you can handle this pattern.

I'm assuming that most are at least slightly experienced in crochet, so I'm not going to do a beginning-to-end step-by-step tutorial. This is just to show the two basic stitches that make up this pattern, the double crochet (dc), and double crocheting two stitches together (dc2tog).

Tutorial: A Helmet for Logan

My best friend of 22 years (or my "bestest of all best friends" as we call each other) has a beautiful little boy who turned 1 last week. I knew that I wanted to make him a little something special (to go along with the mountains of toys I knew he was going to get!).

His father is from Iceland, and we joke about him being a Viking, so I decided that I was going to make little Logan a Viking helmet, right down to the horns!

I decided to make it out of felt, because its not only very soft, but holds its shape well and is pretty easy to sew. I started with a sheet of steel gray, a sheet of white, and a sheet of a mottled brown that looked a little like wood.

I rounded the edges of the gray, making the straight edge approx. 10 inches wide (which makes a total of 20" for the hat. I measured this on my 2 yr olds head, so its a bit big, but he'll grow into it).

My week/weekend of adventures!

Wow, what a first week to 2011!

I've taken on several new challanges, including my own "One a Day Challange", the "365 pictures for 365 days" that everyone seems to be doing, and becoming a "FLYbaby". I've also celebrated the first birthday of my best friend of 22 years' son, Logan! I made him a very special gift that I'll share a tutorial on soon.

1/6/10- my first picture. My odd child playing with his scarf

I've been working my little tail off to do my best with 2 of those challanges (taking a picture a day isnt too super hard :D) and have gotten pretty good results so far.

I have been doing my one thing a day (with the exception of last wednesday. The lazies got hold of me that day and i ended up doing nothing and going to bed early). and will be posting pictures and tutorials later in the week.

1/7/10- Day 2. Found this little lady at GoodWill. I loved how much she looks like my Geisha Tattoo!

I've also started 2 new classes this week (I am currently pursuing my AA in finance, and going to univeristy of phoenix online. You do 2 classes at a time for 9 weeks) which is why i've been a little absent.

1/8/11- Day 3: Beautiful Birthday Boy Logan, enjoying a frozen banana dipped in chocolate!

I've also started out with my baby steps on FLYlady. I have a shiny sink!! And I've been able to maintain it now for 4 days, so I'm feeling pretty good about it.

I'm really trying to stick to my new years resolutions, and i've been doing ok so far. I still need to work on drinking less soda, and im going to be trying a zumba class today to start my exercising, so I am SUPER exicted.  

1/09/2011: Day 4- My little feetsies an the end of our bed

This is just a quick little update post. I'll have some goodies coming up later in the week, so stay tuned!!

~~Love~~

~~GG~~

Crochet Cowl

I hope you had a wonderful and safe new year! I know we did :D

We decided to spend New Years at Mikes parents house because we had the kids and didnt really want to go out. I decided to make use of my sitting around and do some crocheting. What I ended up with was this lovely cowl based on a pattern from Lion Brand called Vintage Cascade Cowl. I used Vannas choice yarn (not because its a lionbrand patter, but because it was on sale at Joanns :D) in Eggplant, purple print, charcoal grey and silver grey.

 The pattern actually calls for 5 different colors of yarn, but its a total of 16 rows, so 4 ended up working better for my sense of aesthetics because it divides evenly (yeah, im OCD like that).

Work Weight Loss Challange

I had gone out to lunch with a few of the girls that I work with the other day, and we got to talking about losing weight and our resolutions for the new year. I had mentioned to them that I was going to try to lessen and then give up soda as one of my resolutions, and that I wanted to start walking on my lunch breaks (its honestly not safe for me to walk by myself before or after work, and I'm not really able to take the kiddos with me on a power walk, so my lunch breaks are my best option).

So we got to talking and decided to start a weight loss challenge for all the girls in my office who were interested. It would be a period of 3 months ( so January 3rd till the end of March), and everyone would chip in a dollar a week (a total of $12 by the end). We could decide how we want to lose the weight (i.e. we can set our own programs to whatever suits us the best), and at the end of 3 months, we'd all weigh in again and whoever lost the largest percentage of weight wins the money pot!

I'm super excited about it, because this way we can all motivate each other, and we're all working towards a common goal. Even if I don't win, I'll still win because I've lost weight!

I didn't do my walk today because Mike came to have lunch with me (today is his last vacation day off, so we took advantage of him being close :D), but I start tomorrow, and will be doing some stretching and exercising tonight to get ready.

And who knows, maybe I'll make myself a pair of legwarmers :D

~~Love~~
~~GG~~