A Snuggy for My Wine

It's no secret that I love fabric.  Beautiful colors or kitchy prints get me every time, and I'm always looking for something to do with the little scraps of fabric I have left over from a project. At the same time, when I entertain, I'm also always looking for a way for our guests to identify their drink.  So I put those two things together and whipped up this little craft which might come in handy during the onslaught of holiday drinking.

I'm calling it "A Snuggy For My Wine".  The finished product looks like this:

It's a combination coaster AND wine identifier.  Brilliant, or as tacky as wearing a Snuggy in public?  Hard to say but at least I won't have to chase my guests with coasters!  I switched up the fabric:

So hopefully everyone will have a unique color combo for their glass.

This is the simplest of all crafts.  You melt some fusible interfacing onto the back side of your fabric.  Then trace your wine glass onto the fusible interfacing.  Add a slightly larger circle to make room for the seam allowance.  Cut one circle for the bottom and one for the top.  The one for the top should be cut totally in half, and then cut again at right angles right down to the seam allowance (otherwise you won't get it on the glass.)  The top pieces can be seen in the bottom half of the photo below:

 Then put the top pieces and the bottom piece together and whipstitch along the the edge.  I tried using metallic thread which was snazzy but made the stitches uneven.  Oh well.  One must sacrifice for beauty, right? 

Check out all the other DIY: Dare to Entertain projects here.

Happy Thanksgiving tout le monde!  On towards Christmas!

Dare to DIY: Being Thankful

I joined the "Dare to DIY" challenge from fellow blogger NewlyWoodwards.  A little creativity always eases the change in seasons for me.  Four themed crafting challenges spread out over the season?  Perfect.  Sign me up and hand me some glitter!  Glue guns: ready, aim, fire!

That said, this week's craft got stuck in a five-hour airport snafu.  Yeah.  So suddenly I wound up crafting at the airport.  Aside from the bad lighting, it was great.  Five hours to let creativity run wild.  And with limited supplies at hand, it got a little weird, but hey, I don't think I would file it under SWHW (something went horribly wrong), so let's just call it a success!

This project was inspired by a post I saw last year at Young House Love (see it here.) This project is all about notes of thankfulness shared with your family (or in my case, husband).  I bought some cute letterpress thankfulness cards from PaperSource.  In the future, I could totally print or press these myself (or lasercut them, yay engineering employer!) but this year, easy is my favorite word.  I got two kinds:

I filled them out.  I'm keeping the actual deets of the thankfulness private, but writing 12 notes of thankfulness was pretty easy.  My life partner is rad and funny.  I'm a lucky lady.

Once the notes were done, I wanted to make a cute container.  I had all sorts of earlier notions but once stuck at the airport I had watercolor supplies and a sewing kit.  Envelope?  Yeah sure!  It's slightly nostalgic of the elementary school valentines-in-a-folder thing, right?  I've been taking a watercolor class and although I kinda still suck at it, I love the dreamy colors.  So for this project I went with a house and love motif:

Hey not bad for an airport craft, right?

I sewed the edges closed with my travel sewing kit.  While this isn't the most amazing thing, it's done, it's sweet and hopefully the hubs will at least appreciate a little hilarious creativity in his life.

Check out the other crafts here:

Fall and Friends

I think I post every year about the same dang trips, but we have lots of wonderful annual traditions!  Harvest Fest is one of my childhood throwback favorites.  This year was pretty much the same as every year, but we got some added time with my high school friends thrown in.  I love these girls:

I know, we're ridiculous.  But fun!  We did a little craft bazaar hopping (yes!) and then we went to do some pumpkin picking:

Que-Sara and I and our pumpkins:

The husband takes the pumpkin ferrying VERY seriously:

Every year the pumpkin patch puts on "Pumpkin Funland", an extended pumpkin diorama, and it's always themed.  This year was "London Olympics" themed.

Very clever really, here the hubs and I in front of the Beatles!

And just because no post is complete without a pic of my husband being adorable and hilarious:

I think he's amazed by the gourds.

But best of all was the weather.  I went for a run one day and the road looked like this:

The views looked like this:

Why don't I live here all the time?

At my parents' house I got my annual muse on with the media of leaves and gourds:

And appropriately enough, we saw this while leaving:

The most vibrant double rainbow I've ever seen in my life.  This is what the whole weekend felt like.  Thanks ladies, pumpkins, Hood River and fall!  We'll see you next year!

Fall Camping

Brunhilda (our VW Vanagon) is enabling all sorts of camping that previously would not have been attempted.  Exhibit A: fall camping on the Olympic Peninsula!  We wanted to go visit my parents while they were working in Forks and we agreed to meet at Lake Crescent. 

We had a slight adventure to start out our trip, wherein a campground that we had thought was open turned out to be closed, so in the middle of the night we fetched up in a lovely lakeside parking spot...only to be woken up at 8am by a park ranger pounding on the door of the van.  Oops.  Nothing like a run-in with the law to get vacation started right.  But she was perfectly friendly, asked us nicely to get a real campsite next time, and left us to get out of our jammies before setting off. 

Run-in with the law aside, the campsite was spectacular.  The view from the van looked just like this:

Totally worth it.

We met my parents at the Lake Crescent Lodge for lunch on the sunporch.  The Lake Crescent Lodge looks like someone went back to the 1920's and pulled every adorable summer-camp trick they could find.

   

My mom is recovering from a horseback riding accident, but luckily my mother-in-law knit her this adorable cast cover, so she's still fashion forward, non?

 After lunch, the husband and I rented a canoe and went across the lake.  Canoeing is a new sport for me and I LOVE it.  Love it.  Look at this face:

That's exactly how i feel on the inside when I'm canoeing.  Something about the old-timeyness of the craft and being so close to the water yet not as scary-close as a kayak really does it for me.  Love it. 

 It's my new favorite adventure.  Maybe Santa will bring me a canoe?  But how would I haul it on my trusty Beetle??  Hmmm.

Till next time, mon amour Monsieur Canoe!