Tuesday Progress

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  Are you having a good week so far?  I certainly am.  It feels really nice to get back into the swing of designing and crafting again, although I have to say it's hard for me to keep focused when I'm out of my routine.  The way I would like my day to go is to eat breakfast with my husband, do my daily meditating and writing until 9am, then work on my designing and blogging until noon, eat lunch, and then do my house cleaning and such until about 4pm when I start making dinner. 

Well of course that doesn't always happen.  We don't have children, but we do help with my elderly parents and that can sometimes feel like being a parent.  My mom called and asked me to help her go shopping this morning.  She has a bad hip and back, and has a hard time walking around the three miles of Walmart to get everything on her list.  Afterwards, she wanted to go get coffee so we could catch up.  I'm glad I went.  I'm so grateful that I'm able to help her and to spend time with her still and that we're so close.  Yes, my morning got messed up because I was out until 10am, but I can't let that stop me from doing the work that needs to be done.

So once I got home, I got back to work on my fall design!  It's coming along.  I'm just starting to get the pieces finished off and soon I'll be able to glue it all together.

I like it.  I think it's a cool rustic piece that will fit in my home pretty well.  I'm going for a kind of country rustic design in our home.  We have several barn stars in the living room, and we have one on our front porch too!  I think they're really cool. 

Tomorrow I plan on posting more about how my life's been going since I took a break, so I'll see you then!  I need to go get my lunch made and then I'm off to get the house chores done.  Have a great day!

Refreshed and Ready to Go!

Hi everyone, happy Monday!  Did you all have a good weekend?  Mine was really good, except for the fact that it was 30 degrees and snowing!  Now I live in a cold area, but that's ridiculous even for us.  Usually this time of year it's in the 50s and I'm getting my garden ready for planting.  I saw yesterday that Home Depot was having their mulch and other garden things on sale, and my first thought was that their sale was WAY too early!  But then I realized, this is when they usually have their sale!  It's just that it's so unusually cold and yucky this year :(  But the good news is that after today the weather is going to start warming up to a more normal temp!  I'm very excited.

Well, it's been several weeks that I've been on hiatus, and I realized yesterday that I'm so ready to get back to designing and blogging again.  It was very nice to have some time off to focus on myself and my home and family, I won't deny that.  I got my house back in order, I spent some time doing fun things with my husband, I did a bunch of sewing, and I'm well on my way on my diet too.  But I realized this weekend that I was starting to get bored, and although I like a peaceful slow paced life, I don't think anyone likes a boring life.  It's time to start being creative again!

I might change things up here at the blog.  I don't think I'm going to post a free pattern every week like I used to, because that's very demanding.  First of all, coming up with a new pattern every week is hard enough, but that's on top of making my paid patterns too.  I think instead, I'm going to make free patterns when an idea strikes my fancy, rather than trying to force it.  I'm always open to requests, by the way, so if you have any good ideas, just send them my way and I'll see what I can do! 

I'm going to start writing more about my life and my creative pursuits, because, well, who doesn't like talking about themselves?  I'm going to try to be open and honest about the things I do well but also the things I totally mess up.  It's so frustrating to me when I see those blogs that make it look like the author's life is perfect and all their projects are master pieces, because my life isn't like that at all.  I want to remind people that everyone messes up, and that's ok.  And I hope by doing so I can connect with other real folks who are also flawed. 

I think that's it for today.  After I finish posting this, I'm going to get back to work on a project I put down a few weeks ago, a very cool rustic fall pumpkin sign.  I think I put it down for so long because there's one thing I really hate doing with my designs, and that's designing the words on a sign.  I'm not bad at fonts, but I don't like doing them because they're really challenging :(  But I just need to push through and get it done, so I can move on to something else! 

I hope you all have a wonderful Monday, everyone!  I'm so glad to be back!

Happy Harvest Wall Hanging

Happy Monday, everyone!  I hope you had an excellent weekend :)  Mine was really good, although this week is going to be even better because it's finally starting to warm up!  The snow is even starting to melt!

Well I got my rear in gear this lovely Monday morning and got my latest pattern finished, my Happy Harvest Wall Hanging!

Happy Harvest Wall Hanging Pattern, $4 on Etsy

It's a little early, of course, but this gives you plenty of time to get it finished for fall! 

That's all for today!  Have a great week!

A Time Out

Happy Monday, everyone!  I hope you have all been well, and that you had a good weekend. 

I'm writing today to say that I need a time out from blogging for a while.  My life has gotten pretty busy lately.  I've been working on some new designs that are large and complicated, and I have a deadline for them even, so they're taking top priority.  But I also have just started my indoor seed starting for my garden, I've started a weight loss journey (aka a diet) and exercising more, and I've been trying to spend more time with my husband.  That leaves me with less time to do everything else in my life, including blogging.  As much as I enjoy working on this blog, it's not a top priority right now.

I can't say when I'll be back, but I do promise I'll be back sometime.  Once life settles down a little, or I manage to find an extra hour in the day, I'll start posting again :)  See you all then!

Life is Sweet Wall Hanging

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  I don't have a What's Up Wednesday this week because, well, life is too busy for me to sit and write about it.  I will however run through some good things that have happened:

• I FOUND MY RING!
• My husband's job is secure!
• My first snowdrop opened yesterday!
• I got an email from Annie's asking for more patterns!

That last one is why I'm so busy.  I need to get some more patterns done to send to Annie's!  That's a good kind of busy though if you ask me.

Anyway, as part of that, I finally got off  my butt and finished my summery watermelon wall hanging!

Life Is Sweet Wall Hanging Pattern, $4 on Etsy

Hopefully you'll be seeing more patterns from me lately.  I'm so ready to get back to a normal life after all the craziness this year! 

Have a great rest of the day, everyone!

Free Friday: Simple Earring Holder

Happy Friday, everyone!  Did you have a good week?  Mine was pretty messy.  We got the water issue taken care of at my mom's house, but I still haven't found my wedding ring :(  I'm sad, but I'm trying not to let it consume me.  I have some charming (ok, not really) obsessive qualities about me, so as you can imagine, that's a very hard feat.  I made a very long and comprehensive list of places to thoroughly check, and once I'm done looking in every single place on the list, then I'll start thinking about getting a new ring. 

But enough about depressing subjects.  This week, I got a comment on my blog from someone who said they'd like to see some earring holder patterns.  In case you weren't aware, I do have a very lovely earring holder pattern up in my Etsy shop.  It's one of my best sellers!

Posy Earring Holder pattern, $4 on Etsy

However, I realize it's a fairly complicated pattern and not everyone wants to do one that fancy.  I ended up giving that earring holder to my Mother-in-law for Christmas the year before last.  She loves it!  I, on the other hand, have a very simple earring holder for myself.  This comes from a terrible disease I have called Lazy-itus.  Yes, that's right friends, I have the lazies.

Simple Earring Holder

Skill Level:

Beginner

Materials:

• Wooden frame
• Plastic Canvas
• Hot glue

Instructions:

1. If your frame came with glass and a backing, remove those.  
2. Carefully cut plastic canvas so that it sits inside the lip on the backside of the frame, but isn't too small to fall through.
3. Lay the plastic canvas inside the frame.  Using the hot glue gun, apply a thick layer of hot glue on top of the plastic canvas.  Use the nose of the got glue gun, or a wooden skewer, to smear the glue around, making sure it sinks into the holes in the plastic canvas and up the sides of the frame lip.  Use lots of glue.  Go over it twice if you need to.  The point is to create a thick layer that is attached to the wood that will hold the plastic canvas in.  

Here's a picture of the back side of my earring holder to give you an idea.

And that's it!  You can prop this up on a dresser, or attach a wire to hang on a nail.  I just hang mine using the frame lip, though that's not very stable.  Again, I have the lazies.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my simple little pattern today!  Have a wonderful weekend!

My Crazy Week

Hey guys.  Happy Tuesday.  I wanted to let you know that I'm not sure if I'll be around this week to post anything interesting.  It's already shaping up to be a crazy week, and will probably only get worse.  For one thing, the plumbing in my mom's house (which hubs and I own and care for) has gone all wonky and it looks like we're going to need to replace the main sewer pipe :(  Big hassle and lots of money, but it needs done.

Second, I lost my wedding ring :( :( :(  I've been tearing up the house since last night, but I just can't find it.  I fear I may have lost it at our local mall, in which case I don't think I'll ever see it again.  I'm so sad and ashamed, especially since we went to all the work to get the new sapphire put in just two months ago.  I'm going to do some seriously deep cleaning in the hope that I'll find it in some crack in the floor or a dusty corner, or maybe under the fridge.  Wish me luck.

Hopefully I'll be able to get some work done on my designs soon, but I can't promise anything this week.  I hope you're all having a good week so far, or at least a better one than me!