My Favourite Things

Over at 320*Sycamore there is a 2010 Favourite Things Party going on.  It is always good to reflect on all the good things in life, so I've come up with a list of some of my favouite things.  

Here are my top favourites (in no particular order):

Spending time with my family:

Some of the offspring still don't want their faces on my blog, so the best I can do is a picture of my charming family's backs at Niagara Falls last year.   Trust me when I tell you that they all have faces and are a smart, funny, charming lot to spend time with.

Chocolate:

I really require at least a little chocolate every day even if that means eating some chocolate chips with my after-dinner tea.  Lindt milk chocolate is probably my all-time favourite and by some stroke of luck there is a Lindt outlet store near where I work.  Are the shopping gods smiling on me or what?

Travelling:

I love to see new places.  I'm inspired and energized by visiting historic homes, museums, and art galleries.  Getting to tour historic homes is the absolute best, but I even love driving by private houses and taking photos (like the gorgeous home, in the photo below, taken last summer on our trip to Prince Edward County).  This summer will be my biggest travelling adventure yet, with my up-coming trip to Bangladesh. 

Taking photos:

It's pretty much my new-found passion since I started blogging.  I take my camera with me everywhere and take a million photos to try and get a few that I like.  These petunias from our front porch, in the photo below, were on their last legs since it was November when I took the photo, but I love how they look against the cement of the stairs.  It reminds me of the weathered and worn look of some old steps you might find in Italy (they actually didn't look quite as charming in real life).

Blogging:

I always tell family and friends who ask why I blog, that it is like having your own magazine of which you have complete editorial control - you choose the topic, take the photos, write the text, and publish it.  It is a creative outlet for me and I'm loving it.  The unexpected by-product of blogging, though, has been meeing so many wonderful people who have become friends over the past eleven months.  

Anthropologie is Decorating with Dead Things Too!

I've done it so why shouldn't Anthropologie do it - decorate with dead things that is, well really more like old things in Anthropolgie's case.  Kate and I were at the Toronto Don Mills store a few weeks ago and I've been meaning to show you the photos.  Who doesn't love some good Anthro store decor.  

The store was decorated in a woodsy theme with items like leaves, stumps, and mushrooms, but all made out of unusual items.   I love seeing how creative they are.  I'm not sure what kind of budget they are given, but they certainly seem to make the most out of found objects.

Let's have a look:

Mushrooms:
The mushrooms along these shelves were just so darn cute.  I think they were made from paper mache with sticks as the trunks.  Whatever they used the mushrooms couldn't have been cuter.

And there was a mushroom identification chart attached to a wooden pallet with a few more mushrooms on top.  I wonder what kind they are - mushroomis anthropologius maybe?

Leaves:
There was a spray of over-sized leaves across the wall made from what looked like tea bags.  How ingenious, eh?

Stumps:
The stumps were made from layers of corrugated cardboard with painted tops.

Isn't this one the cutest, with the cut layers painted on the top of it and the moss tucked around its base.

I think the cluster of stumps was my favourite thing.  I wanted to take one of the stumps home ... but I restrained myself.

Paintbrushes:
They attached the price card to dirty old paintbrushes in this display

and used them as a way to hold up their adorable aprons in this display.

Odd Shapes:
In the window display, they used cardboard circles folded and glued together to form this orange and rust coloured mass that arched up behind the clothing on display.

It wasn't the easiest to get photos of the window display because of the reflection, but you can see what an interesting backdrop these masses made.

They also used circles of metal and cut out pictures linked together to form this eye-catching light fixture.

I'm not sure what these shapes are supposed to be (butterflies maybe?), but they were made from tissue paper clothes patterns.

I always think the art department at Anthropologie does so much with so little to make fantastic wow-inspiring displays. 

These next three photos are just classic Anthro scenes so I couldn't leave them out -

1) rustic vintage furniture

 2) bright and beautiful home decor

 3) adorable mugs used to spell words

Thanks Anthropolgie for your amazing and inspiring store displays.  I always leave the store thinking I should go home and rustle around in the recycling bin and make something gorgeous for my home.

Personalized Lingerie Bags

Did everyone grow up chanting this rhyme?

I see London,

I see France,

I see so-and-so's underpants.

Not too big, 

Not too small,

Just the size of Montreal.

The Montreal reference had me wondering if it is just a Canadian thing (we're just so cultured here).   If you have never heard of this rhyme or don't call what you wear under your pants or skirts, underpants, then the project I just did won't make any sense.   

Now that we have that out of the way, read on... and see what I just made.

I've had the idea to make these lingerie travel bags for several years, but have never got myself organized to do it, until now that is.  It helped that my friend Kim recently gave me an ink jet printer, which is what you need to to use with the specialty paper for transferring an image onto fabric. Thanks Kim!

Here are the steps I did to make the bags (and the things that I did wrong, so you can learn from my mistakes - so good of me isn't it):

The first thing I did was sew the drawstring bag.  I looked for a thin cotton material and happened to find this white one, with little bubbles on it, on clearance, but a fine weave linen-type fabric would be pretty too.  The bags are fairly simple to make, just make sure you pre-wash the fabric and, when you are sewing the top part, leave a space to thread the string through.  (in looking back at the pictures I see that I need to poke the material out at the bottom corners of the bag - oops).

After I wrote the text and added the clipart on the computer, I had to reverse it so that the image would show up the right way round when printed.  This might sound easy, but it took some fiddling around and eventually involved getting my husband to sort it out.  If you are interested in doing the project and can't figure out how to rotate the text, then I can fill you in on what I did.  

Then I printed the image onto special paper designed to transfer an image onto fabric.  This is the one I used:

You can see that I made images for two bags on one sheet of specialty paper - I did this because the bags are not that big and also to save money as the paper is almost $3 a sheet.  I've since slightly enlarged the text (you can see lots of white space around the edges of the paper so there was some room to expand it) so that it fills more of the lingerie bag.

Then I cut as close as I could to the image in a nice neat rectangle.  This is important as you can see the material used to put the image on to the fabric slightly when you are finished.  You need to follow the directions very precisely on how long to iron for.  Although I thought I had timed it correctly, I obviously ironed a little too long because you can see the area is a little bit brown on the finished bag (oops - sorry Jenni).

Then you wait until it is cool and carefully peel off the backing.

And there you have it - your own personalized lingerie travel bag to give as a gift.  Now I just have to make the rest of them.

(I do apologize to all the women in my life as they now know what they are getting for Christmas)

Linked to Thrifty Thursday at Tales from Bloggeritaville
Get your Craft on Thursday at Life as Lori 
Fabric Fun Thursday at Cheap Chic Home
Handmade Holidays Hooplah at Just a Girl 
Inspiration Friday Party at Southern In My Heart 
Frugal Friday at the Shabby Nest 
Air Your Laundry Friday at Freckled Laundry
Tuesday's Treasures at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Christmas Cards

I love Christmas cards, and I wish that I could say that I send out beautifully hand-crafted ones every year, but you know how it is.  Now I know that many of you do make your own cards and boy have I seen some creative ones.  Some of my all-time favourites are by Linda at Restyled Home, which you can see here and here and the amazing Christmas card/tea towels from Adventures in Renovating a Brooklyn Limestone here.  I'd love to be on their Christmas lists! 

Now I have made cards myself, usually photo cards, so when I recently read about an offer from Shutterfly that bloggers could get 50 free Christmas cards if they do a post about them, I was all ears.  If you are interested in doing a post yourself you can find details here.  

I had a look around their website and realized that it will be quite a job to show you their Christmas cards as there are so many to choose from.  Since my kiddos are older, I would likely select a photograph of a nature scene, something like this one taken at our cottage:

My only requirement is that the card actually say "Merry Christmas" - what's up with "Happy Holidays" anyway?

Now if I were to select a photo of my family, it would look something like this (aren't we adorable - and much younger than last time I looked in the mirror - oh, and we seem to be missing a child):

There are 748 Christmas card styles to choose from on Shutterfly, which for me translated into 748 new families to choose from.  That's a lot of people to get to know.  Do you want to see some other members of my new family - isn't our baby adorable?

What about this sweet little girl - (those eyes - and those pudgy cheeks - I want her!)

You can see all the other members of my very, very, very extensive families here at Shutterfly.  In fact, I think we are so good looking we should all be models.

There are also Christmas invitations that you can see here on the Shutterfly website.  I"ll show you our party invitation, but with all 748 family members coming it is a sold-out affair.

While I was poking around the Shutterfly website I noticed they also had photo calendars (here), which is really a great idea since I now appear to have a very large family to keep track of.

I could go on and on about my new family, but that is probably enough.  I'm glad I could introduce them to you - and let me show you a bit about Shutterfly!

The 12 Days of Christmas Gift Box - Pass it On!

I want to share with you a project I did last year.  I'm not showing it to you to get a pat on the back, but rather I'm sharing it in case you know someone who is going through a difficult time right now and could do with a fun surprise this Christmas.

Last Christmas I had a friend that needed cheering up so I decided to give her a box filled with twelve presents that corresponded to the verses in the Christmas carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas.  I had read about doing this on-line (a quick google search will reveal lots of ideas) and thought it would be a fun way to surprise her with some fun at Christmas. I left the box on her doorstep on December 24th in secret, but she figured out it was me in about 2.5 seconds.

Anyway she loved it, and has told me many, many times how that gift was the one bright spark in her holiday that year and brought such comfort and even healing during Christmas, both for her and her children as she let them help her open the gifts.  In fact it was so important to her that she saved every last piece of paper I gave her.  When I was over at her house last week doing a crafting evening she brought down all the pieces for me to see.   I've taken photos of them so you can see what I did.

I brainstormed different possible gifts to go with each of the verses of the carol, so I had some choices depending on what I could find in the stores.  Basically the gifts I used were -

First Day - a pear made of stone that I bought at Ten Thousand Villages

Second Day - chocolate turtles and a bar of Dove soap (see the photo below)

Third Day - a chic scarf compliments of the French hens
 
Fourth Day - four messages from the 4 calling birds (they were all inspirational messages that I found on-line)

Fifth Day - a tin of pineapple rings

Sixth Day - an egg-shaped candle left behind by the six geese-a-laying

Seventh Day - a bottle of Fresh Water hand soap compliments of the swimming swans

Eighth Day -  a box of milk-white narcissus bulbs to plant

Ninth Day -  a pair of socks used by the nine ladies who were out dancing all night

Tenth Day - a shoe Christmas ornament left behind by one of the Lords-a-leaping (see the photo below)

Eleventh Day - a piping hot drink (hot chocolate mix)

Twelfth Day - I drummed up some cookies (you can see the tin in the photo below that was made to look like a drum)

I also included two versions of the twelve days of Christmas that I found on-line.  The sublime one included the real meaning of all the gifts (I found it here)  and the ridiculous one was a funny series of letters from someone who receives all the gifts mentioned in the carol (I found it here).  The letters starts off all sweet and thankful and by the end she is a wreck because her house is full of geese and cows and people dancing etc.

It was a lot of fun being creative and thinking of little gifts that matched the verses in the carol, making the little notes that went on each of the gifts, and then planning how I was going to deliver the presents.  I have to say, though, by far the best part was that I brought some happiness to my friend.  I'm passing on this idea just in case you have a friend in need.  It is a really fun way to brighten someone's Christmas.

Update:  For a more recent post with lots of tips and more gift ideas for each of the twelve days see this post.

Linked to Strut Your Stuff link party at Somewhat Simple