Christmas Owls and a Very Good Cause

Dear Kelly,

My friend Meaghan has been super busy raising money for her friend Nicole, who unfortunately is fighting stage 3 ovarian cancer without insurance, with The Fiercegrrl Fund. Meaghan has an amazing ornament shop going where all proceeds go to purchase Nicole a super comfy, hot pink recliner so she can sleep more comfortably. I sent in this:



The owls are by Mochimochiland. I added the Santa hats and am quite proud of myself for finishing the whole thing properly; there's felt on the back to hide the mess of threads and the sides of the hoop are covered in pink ribbon (Nicole's favorite color).

I was super excited to hear that it sold right away, so I'm finishing up a second one to be sold and thinking of what else I can stitch up - the only requirement is that the ornament include hot pink :)

Love,
Shayne

---

Dear Readers,

Please, please, please go take a look at the ornament shop and buy an ornament to help out Nicole. She is a very cool, crafty lady and deserves the best while going through this ordeal. If you're crafty and would like to contribute an ornament, send an email to Meaghan to get the details. You could also help out by buying one of Nicole's adorable aprons from her Etsy shop, Fancy Bolts.

Love,
Shayne

Sippy Cups

Dear Kelly,

My friend Renee recently (eek, 9 months ago!) had a gorgeous baby girl. Since I was late getting to make a baby gift, I decided to go with sippy cups that come with these plastic-y inserts for cross-stitching. I made a set of three - breakfast, lunch and dinner:



They didn't photograph well, but you get the idea :)

Love,
Shayne

Crafting Mama!

Dear Shayne,

Aw, yeah! Craft + Video Game = Awesome!

I'm not much of a gamer, but when I stumbled across Crafting Mama, my eyes glazed over and I said, "Must... have..."

Fortunately, my husband is awesome, saw the drool, and bought it for me!


This game is super fun! I had two fears about it, both of which were dispelled as soon as I started playing it.

Fear #1: I would not be able to play it.
I usually suck at video games. Even ones meant for children. But I can play this game! Yay! If you're a very good gamer, this one will probably be boring for you. But I am not good, so it's fun for me, and I love it.

Fear #2: I would feel like I was wasting valuable crafting time.
I worried that I would feel like, "I could be actually making this craft in the time I am virtually making it!" No worries -- the game allows you to make crafts waaaaay faster than you do in real life (and with less mess!) So it satisfies the Crafty Urge at times when you are not able to craft (I can finally make candles while waiting in line at the Post Office. Yesss!)

Further, I've actually learned about making some crafts by playing this game. It's edu-tainment! I've made candles, earrings, pinwheels, a xylophone, and pressed flowers and that's just the tip of the iceburg. I've unlocked several more crafts so far -- there are a lot of different crafts in this game.

The graphics a pretty great, too. Mama is really cute, but if you do screw up, she gets flames in her eyes and yet cheerfully tells you to "Try again!" which cracks me up. Love. It!

Okay... back to the game!

love,
kelly

Quilt 1, Quilt 2

Dear Shayne,

As you know, we have niece and nephew twins. Know what twins means? Two of everything! Including... quilts!

They're toddlers now, but since their older brother wasn't too interested in the quilt I made him before he was born, we waited to see if they were blankie babies before whipping out the needle and thread.

Good news! They are! I've been promising to make these quilts for... oh, over a year now. Nice to finally be getting them done. They're at the shop right now getting quilted and bound. Here are the in progress shots...

For our niece:

I still had a lot of green and yellow fabrics leftover from their brother's quilt, so I used those. I think it's cool that they'll have some common fabrics.

For our nephew (photo taken before they were even sewn together):

I'll post the completed quilts when I get 'em back in a few weeks. Yay!

love,
kelly

Braaainz...

Dear Shayne,

Things have been kinda hectic around here, so I'm late in my yearly "What I did on skates for Halloween" post.

As you know, I wear skates every year to work and make my costume around that. I've been a Mini Cooper (that's a link to Craftster -- pre-blog!), Holy Roller (gotta scroll down for that one), Rolling Stones, Rolling PIN.

Hmm... I've also done Hell on Wheels, but cannot seem to find a photo of that. (I think the costume is still in the basement, though -- I should dig it up and take photos. The flames were great.)

This year, the theme at work was Zombie Halloween (or a "Zomberee," if you will...) so I bought a bunch of rubber brains and glued them to a big tray, dressed as a waitperson, slapped on my skates and...

Meals on Wheels!

Heh. Gross, eh? Here's the Brain Tray:


Mmm... delicious brains!

love,
kelly