Category Archives: Creative side

Beary fun, but I need your help!

Beary fun, but I need your help!
Beary fun, but I need your help!

So, this weekend I finished the bear.

So, for some reason, I keep wanting to refering to the bear as a HE. But that’s not fair to the bear for me to just ASSUME like that. So, to help choose between if the bear will be a HE or a SHE, I decided to add some other touches to the bear.

If we have a Missy Bear:

 

If we have a Mr. Bear:

I think they are both cute and can’t decide!!! So, I need my friends and family’s help with this.

What do you all think? Do we have a male or female bear? And what are some good names for Evelyn’s newest woodland buddy?

Evie’s little buddies

Evie’s little buddies
Evie’s little buddies

Remember this guy?

He has some new friends!

I couldn’t post them all before, because Mr. Yellow bird was a present for some friends’ new arrival, and so he was a secret! (Or is he actually a she? Hmm…) Back to the point- they had their baby shower this past weekend, and the secret is out! The eyes on the yellow bird are crocheted with black yarn just because I wanted the gift to be 100% safer for their new baby, even if the normal eyes have a killer post and washer to keep them attached in the back.

So I guess we actually down to to little birds for Evie to play with now.

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. (Anyone get that reference?)

I am working on making Evie a bear, but I keep on getting distracted by side projects like booties.

The bear and birds are just single crochet stitches in circles, and it gets kinda boring. Throwing in some new stitches makes it all that much more enjoyable. Soon I might be able to show off the new hat I am working to help test a pattern for somebody.

My new hobby is becoming an addiction. You know you’re in trouble when you are choosing between crocheting JUST ONE MORE ROW, and going to bed.

Paying it forward!

Paying it forward!

So, those of you on Facebook may have noticed that at the beginning of January, there was the “Pay it forward 2013” going on. Initially, I was concerned about my ability to do anything homemade for it, but I decided to join in on it anyway.

Well, my friend Carie sent me HER “Pay it forward” to me recently, and I got it in the mail. (By the way, kudos! That was super fast. My recipients may have to wait a little longer… there’s still 11 months left in 2013!) Carie was my mentor teacher the my first year of teaching, and her patience for putting up with my many questions, especially as we were all dealing with a difficult transition to a new grading system) will always make her have a special place in my heart. She also has a great eclectic style. So when she posted that she was involved in the 2013 Pay it forward… well, I had to get involved in that!

Drumroll, please….

My very own Mystic Black Cat Fortune-Telling Journal!

Then there are 100 pages of awesomeness like this:

It’s kinda like a Magic 8 Ball, but on steroids. So it’s pretty dang cool.

Happy Friday, y’all. If you have a question and you need a fortune teller, you know where to find me.

 

Baby Boots!

Baby Boots!

Have I mentioned before my addiction to all things Pinterest? Only a few times? Here, I’ll mention it again. I LOVE THIS WEBSITE. Now that I’m excited about all things crochet, Pinterest is an unending source of free, cute patterns.

Enter this pattern that I immediately had to have for Evelyn. A PATTERN THAT I COULD FOLLOW WITH PICTURES. Thank you, kind people of the world. Diagrams + pictures + instructions, I can handle that. And Youtube. Thank you all you people who post simple videos for those of us who want to know how to do a half-double crochet and have no clue what that means. You make my day. Or at least the 5 minutes afterwards when I can replicate your video.

Anyways, since Evelyn has tiny feet, but definitely isn’t a newborn anymore, I did the “newborn” pattern, but with a 5.5 hook and thicker yarn. It turned out perfectly- even slightly large for her cute little feet. The hardest decision was what buttons to put on the side of her booties!

I ended up choosing the brown from the first photo, but don’t all of these look so cute? I could make these boots in brown, or white, or black… Evelyn’s going to have all the colors of the rainbow in shoes before she’s 1! Good girl.

Here are some photos of the boots in action! Evelyn seems to like them. 🙂

Scrapbook Elephants

Scrapbook Elephants

Pinterest is my new weakness, y’all. I see so many neat things on there daily, and there is not enough time, energy, or money in my world to do all the things I see on there that I would love to do.

Oh well.

Anyways, I saw this idea on Pinterest as well, and of course had to try it.

What you will need:

– Various scrapbook paper pages

– yarn or string of your color preference

– scissors

– tape

– some sort of stencil/outline of the animal of your choice

– a pencil to trace with

Fortunately, I have plenty of scrapbook paper left from my teaching days. I used to have my students use it to cover/personalize their writer’s notebooks for the class. All ready I’ve used this stuff for several things… except actual scrapbooking.

For your animal, you can really choose whatever you want. Evie’s room is a jungle/safari theme, so originally, I was going to include lions, giraffes, and monkeys too, but quickly changed my mind when I thought about tracing and cutting them all out to hang on a string. Elephants were big, sturdy, and less complicated to cut out, so they won the competition this time.

Instruction wise, this is pretty straight forward.

1. Get your stencil, get your chosen scrapbook paper, and start tracing. (I don’t have the sturdiest hands, so if you are like me and would be bothered by seeing some of the tracing line, trace it on the back!)

2. Cut out your shapes.

3. Attach to yarn/string. I used tape. I suppose you could use glue or something fancier, but considering today was a no-nap day for Evelyn and she’s been a major grump, I didn’t have the time or energy to think up anything more complicated.

4. Hang it wherever the heck you want to.

I will say that this project took me a lot longer than I thought it would. Evelyn didn’t really help with that, but it turned out okay in the end.

One of the scrapbook pages I came across has ABCs on it, so I used it to cut out the letters of her name and put it between the elephants.

(As you can see, this paper was only slightly injured by its skirmish with the seventh graders. Most of the piece I used had not been as lucky.)

 

I am hoping to put this lovely cross-stitched piece that Evelyn’s Great-Nana made for her up between the two pieces above the crib to help finish the look. We’ll see how it looks when Jared is able to help me put holes in the wall. 😉

Evelyn’s room is on its way to being stylin’!