An excellent haul!

Have any of you other Wacoans heard of Esme's?  I like to pretend that it's my own special little secret, but maybe everyone knows about how awesome it is.  Esme's is a little shop on LaSalle, kinda near the cemetary I think.  I never actually remember where it is, and always have to look until I see it.  It's a sort of antique/nick nack/junk store that Stephen and I love to go to.  It's only open certain Saturdays, and the next open date is usually posted on the door.  The owner (Esme, duh!) is super nice, and you can get some great deals.  The majority of Stephen's cocktail glass collection comes from here:

This is just what we picked up on the latest trip

As did the champagne flutes we used at our wedding:

Photo by the wonderful Nicole Berrett

On our last trip I thought "I wonder if she has fabric there"  And just my luck!  She did!  I got all of this for $5!!

Admittedly, I don't know what I'm going to use all of this for, but it's over 10 yards of fabric so you really can't beat that.  I have already used the yellow floral - it's actually a tablecloth -  on the bottom right for something (which I forgot to take any pictures of... oops!)  and I love love love the embroidered plaid on the top right.  I'm hoping to make a cute dress or something out of it, but we'll see!

Rolled felt pincushions - quick and easy, and oh so useful!

I found yet another tutorial over at Polka Dot Pineapple that I had to try!  This one happened to use two materials that I have an excessive amount of - bottle caps and felt.  Go over and check out her rolled felt pincushions, because I am really enjoying mine. As you may recall, I have tons of bottlecaps that I just keep saving, and I also have a couple of huge pieces of red felt left over from a poodle skirt, so when I saw this tutorial I knew this would be a great use for them! Mine aren't nearly as cute as Lettie's, but they are totally functional - I've got one by the sewing machine, and one in my "random box" which is full of supplies that get carried around the house from time to time.  Love it!

One-Yard Wonders: Not Ugly Car Trash Bag

I completed another One-Yard Wonders project!  Hooray!

I planned on making this one a loooooong time ago.  I had a trash bag in my car for almost as long as I had my car, but since we usually travel in Stephen's car, I'd just been stuffing all the straw wrappers and receipts in the little pocket in his car door.  I'm pretty sure that this was very annoying for Stephen, even though he didn't say much about it.  So when I saw the car trash bag pattern in the OYW book, I had an idea.
"Stephen," I said, "I will make myself a pretty car trash bag from this book, and then you can have my old ugly but very functional black one."
"That sounds absolutely wonderful!" said Stephen.
So we went to Joann and I bought some super cute fabric and the buckle for the strap, came home, cut out the pattern pieces and proceeded to do nothing with them for a month or so.  There really is no good excuse for me not putting the thing together faster because the pattern couldn't be easier!  It took me like 20 minutes (tops) to sew it together, and that's mostly just because I'm slow at ironing.  I'm not going to go into the process since it's laid out in the book, but here are a few photos!

All my pieces cut out and ready to go.  This was my first time using a buckle like this - EXCITING!

Ironing the straps.  I used to never iron stuff as I sewed, because I hate it.  Strangely enough, when I started ironing my finished projects started looking nicer.  Weird right?

Action shot!  Sewing on the not-actually-cut-on-the-bias bias tape.

And adding the straps...

Tada!  Done! Super easy.

Wouldn't you know it after I made it, it took me another couple of weeks to actually put it in my car, then maybe another week or so before I hung it on the seat.  I guess this project was just destined to be slow...

I'm not sure why it is so wrinkled. I think maybe it got stuffed down the side of the couch.

Before I put the trash bag in the car, it occurred to me that this might be a great, and potentially very fashionable, personal trash storage system.

I think I may be on to something! Don't you?

My first job

Back in March my friend Sha gave me my first craft job!  Actually, he also gave me my first real job too as a student work at the library - weird huh?  Anyways, after seeing my incredible work on the blog he asked me to make a set of blocks for a friend of his who just had a baby.  Hooray for me! Who knew I was so talented!  Here are a few pictures:

This is what I've been wanting to use for rattles every single time I've made these, but this is the first time mini plastic Easter eggs have been in season. 

Here are the blocks pre-stuffing.  I really like using random colors for things, but I must admit that color coordination looks good.

And the finished blocks!  There really isn't a great place to take a photo in this house but the couch seems to have become my standby for baby blocks...

I guess this makes me a professional now!  My email is on my profile page if you're interested in a set of your own :)

That's what I like about Texas

When you haven't blogged for a really long time, it's hard to know what to start back with, in fact I've been sitting here all morning trying to decide what to blog about.  I've been going through all the crafting photos I have saved up but nothing is really striking me, so I decided to post a few of the awesome wildflower pictures we got this year!  I thought it might be fun to show off some of Stephen's photography since it's one of his "crafts" (he's got way more patience for playing with the camera and getting a great shot than I do!)

Texas has some great wildflowers in the spring.  An amazing variety of different flowers in all sorts of colors.  I don't know if people who have lived in Texas their whole lives get as excited about the flowers as I do (I'm sure they must - who wouldn't?) but coming from Florida, where it pretty much looks the same all year round, I always look forward to the first bluebonnets of the year!  This year  had the best display I've seen yet!  We had a really wet winter so the flowers really put on a show.  When we were in Yoakum back at the beginning of April we drove out to look at some of the fields blanketed in flowers - enjoy the pics!

This is Stephen's Mom's front yard (well, front pasture). Lovely! I wanted to run around in the flowers, but I didn't want to stomp all over them, and I also didn't want grasshoppers to jump on me.

The yellow ones up close.  I don't know what these are called.

A field blanketed in flowers

Purple wine cups?? Some of my favorites! I liked the wiggly things in the top right one (stamens?).

 Pink and red phlox

Why is red so hard to photograph??

The obligatory bluebonnet shot

I noticed how cool Indian paintbrushes (?) looked from straight above

Awesome!!

More sunny yellow ones

I hope you enjoyed the wildflowers as much as I did!

Mega Swap

I read about this on Craft Blog today.  Doesn't this look like the most fun thing ever?  And a great reason to clean out your closets! If only I lived in New York.  I doubt Waco will be getting on board any time soon...

I'm not dead!

I just wanted to stop in for a quick update! I haven't died. I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I haven't given up on crafting.  I just have a husband who is nearing the end of the semester in library school and has a lot of work to do, and he has to use the computer during the times I would likely spend blogging.  He's done after this week and I've got tons of pictures saved up, so hopefully the blog will overflow with crafty goodness in the near future! 

Now, since I know all of you are dying to know what I've been up to, here is one of the inspiring things I've worked on recently.

This is a piece of cardboard cut to a specific angle that Stephen uses to set up microphones.  It took us an hour to make this.  This is not a joke. So much for my math degree!