Early February Already?!

By the time this posts tomorrow we will know who won the Superbowl.  I'd like to see the Pats win, but really I'm just watching for the commercials.  

There's nothing more endearing than a large dog with a large stuffed animal.  Sagan has always loved to carry around stuffies, much to my delight.  I found this rather large plush dog at Pet Smart, and on sale too, so of course I bought it for him.  Now puppeh has a puppeh.

My friend Ann has been painting rocks and leaving them around town as part of The Kindness Rock Project.  Now, when I tried to get this going in 2012, it was an epic bust.  But now it's really popular. Ann does such a fabulous job and I asked her if I could have her make me a whale rock!  Isn't it ADORBS? 

I took the bull by the horns and worked on each square of the advent calendar project.  It took a few hours of steady work and my craft room looked like a craft store bomb went off.  I really had no choice but to do all 24 in one afternoon.  I'm quite happy with how it came out.

I hand painted the two teddy bears in space 1 because they were just plain wood.  Raided my Christmas paper and altered art supplies to find the rest of the doo dads and backgrounds.

I tried to include as many Christmas symbols as possible.  Joseph was too tall for the square with Mary and Jesus though.  I also had to hand paint the tree in the second to last space, as it was all green.  I wasn't sure paint would work on it but it came out pretty good.

I'm having trouble figuring out how to do the doors.  I've tried and failed twice.  Hoping that third time is the charm.  Or, this might just end up being an altered art project instead of an advent calendar!

January Crafts

Facebook's really becoming a nasty place these days.  I cannot stand all this nonstop bickering about politics.  What's done is done and we're stuck with it for four years.  Honestly I have more going on in my real life and I just don't have time to think about what's going on in the news.  It's better for my mental health anyway.  I spend a lot of time on FB hiding stories, and I'm spending less time on there in my spare time as well.

Back in Dec., I blogged about the 5D Diamond Painting kit I'd gotten off amazon.  This was the design that I chose.  I started it in mid-December but then had to take a break for the holidays.  

I picked it up again after all the decorations were put away and I admit, I was intimidated by what looked to be a very daunting project...one that would likely take six months.  Here is the progress as of January 6th.

However I found that it went very quickly and is really zen when you get into the rhythm of putting the tiles into place.  This is January 14th.

January 18th saw one side done...a little more than half...as the right side was wider than the left.

The second side went much faster and I finished up on January 29th.  I love how it came out.  This was one of the most fun projects I've ever done.  I would love to do more.  It's faster than cross stitching and no counting required.

I'd gotten myself some prickly pear cactus candy in December and god forbid I throw out the box. With 24 spaces, the first thing I thought of was 'advent calendar'.  So I went to my go-to miniature website, Tiny Things Are Cute, and ordered some tiny holiday items.  This is just a prototype layout to see how the stuff would look and I'm really excited to start working on this.  I'm not sure what to do for the doors, but I'll figure that out later.  

Val & I were out shopping and she spied a purple bottle and mentioned how good it'd look with lights inside and frosted.  This took about a half hour.  Drilled the hole, sprayed the bottle, stuffed the lights inside and done!

While in the livingroom, I worked on my second latch hook, a rainbow swirl tie dye.  I tried to do five rows a day, or more.  I can do about 3 rows per hour. It still takes me awhile but I'm getting faster.  

The back looks pretty too.  Probably going to make a pillow out of this once I get some stronger thread and more backing fabric.

I also wanted to make a no sew blanket for our grandson, who just turned a year old.  I couldn't decide on which fabric to buy so Val suggested I do a reversible one.  The colours even matched.  

I was a little concerned that it was going to be way too big.

It got a little smaller once the strips were cut and tied but it's still pretty big.  

Finally, I treated myself to a rather elaborate Grateful Dead dancing bears in a butterfly cross stitch from Valentina's Collectibles, on ebay.  This is the first multipage kit I've ever attempted.  I have to give them a shout out for the awesome way they sorted the floss.  Made it so much easier to jump right in.  I've started it and am sure this will take awhile to do.  

I've pretty much finished all my small kits and designs so now it's time to tackle the more time consuming designs!

Winter Walk

So far we've been enjoying a fairy decent winter for New England.  Hoping it stays that way.  I got out of the habit of taking walks the past couple of years so I decided to take Sagan and blow the cobwebs out.  We'd gotten a lot of rain the two days prior.

It was so windy.  At least the sun was warm cause the wind sure wasn't.

So much to sniff!

I love reflection shots.

I really just want to stay in and do my crafts but I have got to get out more!

Ice Ice Baby!

This icicle must've broken off the mailbox but was still precariously attached at the bottom, to a piece of snow.

Where it attached to the snow

This really fascinated me.

I'm very happy to report that almost all that snow is gone thanks to 2 days of temps in the low 50s and rain.