Blue Monday #14

It is time for Blue Monday again! Thank you to Sally at Smiling Sally for hosting Blue Monday for us once again. Be sure to visit others who are posting for Blue Monday. This time it is the last one for 2009. Today I am sharing with you gifts I made for family members for Christmas.

First up even though it has no BLUE, I am showing you the book I got the two recipes from for these gifts. This is Book 4. I also have Book 3 and now I am wishing had the other books too.

Here is the Onion Soup Mix recipe. I made 3 of these for 3 families. I doubled the original recipe. You can see here the Blue bowl I was using to stir these up before dumping it into the containers I had gotten at our local Dollar Tree store.

The other recipe I used was Cake in a Cup recipe. Sounds yummy! I made these for my nieces and nephew and also for one of my brothers.

After mixing up the cake mix part, I had to divide them into baggies. I also made labels for the baggies, so the recipients would know which was the cake mix and which was the glaze for the cake. Behind the baggies you can see my finished Onion Soup Mix gifts.

Then I moved on to make the recipe cards. There are 3 different recipes for using the Onion Soup Mix. You can see here that they are: Roasted Potatoes, Onion Dip and Onion Soup. The recipes were printed in the book. I used our copier to make a page to check it out first. Then I recopied onto card stock. I colored in the little stars and then I mounted them onto more card stock. You can see some of the card stock is a light blue.

Here they are! The recipes are tied together with ribbon. I didn't have any blue ribbon, and that made me blue. So the next best thing was to use green ribbon. I stuck labels on the containers too.

When I started to type up the recipe for Cake Mix in a Cup, the monitor went blank. The computer is fine, just our monitor is going cuckoo. That is going to be our gift to each other this year, a new monitor. A flat screen one. But we have to wait until next payday to get one. Hope we can find a good one on sale. Anyway, on with Blue Monday. So I put a sheet of paper on top of lined paper and wrote the recipe by hand. Using the lined paper really helped to keep it straight and neat looking. Then I had to make copies onto card stock which is what you see above.

Then I rummaged around in my scrapbook papers and found some blue and some red paper to use to mount the recipe cards on. They need to know what to do to make the Cake Mix in a Cup.

Then I mounted it again on solid blue paper creating a matted look. I am pleased with how that turned out! Here are the cups I used to put in the cake mix and glaze baggies. I found them at Ross!! Yay! Oh and look at all the BLUE in them there cups. Heehee.

My next dilemma.....how was I going to wrap these? We have been using fabric bags that my aunt or I have made. Those bags get passed around every year it seems. But none of the fabric bags I had worked for these gifts. So I checked my fabric stash and found this Christmas fabric. And look, very carefully, there is even (gasp) BLUE in them (another gasp). Yes there is! Click on the picture and you can see it. It is the little packages on there. Perfect for what I need and plenty of it too. I should note that I did all this on Christmas morning after hubby and I opened presents while on the phone with our daughter. Talk about waiting until the last minute. But then again , that is typical of me. I was putting the buttons on the sleeves of my wedding dress the night before the wedding, after the rehearsal and dinner. Crazy! Story of my life. But that is not what this post is about. Back to the subject at hand here! I need to stop getting distracted.

And here we are! The finished bags with the gifts. I made bags for the Onion Soup Mix things too. So how many bags did I make on Christmas morning? Eight! Yes, eight bags. Whew!! Then with hubby's help I put together the Green Bean casserole. Remembered to get dressed, grab all the gifts, the green bean casserole, my camera, my purse, and I think that was it. But when we got to my mom's house after a 1/2 hour drive, I walked in the door and realized I forgot the salad fixings. No way were we going to drive all the way back home to get that. We made do without the salad. Just as well, there was plenty of food anyway. And I even had left over green bean casserole to bring back home. Yummy!

I will probably see those bags with something else in them next year. A great way to go GREEN and not use as much paper.

Happy Blue Monday everyone!!!

Three or More Thursday #7-B

Thank you to Tam at the The Gypsy Corner for hosting Three or More Thursdays for us. When what I want to share is made my me or someone else I like to post it on my craft blog. So as some of you will have noticed by now, I post things on both blogs sometimes for special things. Here is more angels, but these are handmade angels. My husband's sister made these for us one year. It was originally one for each of us when she made them. I don't remember whose is whose anymore. I keep them out all year usually and I hope my kids don't mind if I keep these little precious angels together.
These angels are crocheted with crochet cotton. And underneath are clothespins. The tops of those clothespins make perfect little heads. You will notice each one is a different color. I think the purply pink is my favorite. My daughter would probably say that one is hers. :-)

If you look closely, the pattern on each skirt is different. I did not realize that until I was taking the pictures. Silly me to not notice the patterns for all these years, after all I do know how to crochet. I should have seen that each one was different. Besides the color that is. Duh!

I love these little angels. I can never decide on their permanent home. I keep moving them around. That is okay, maybe I am being guided as where I need them to watch over me.

Happy Three or More Thursday and Happy Holidays to everyone.

Three or More Thursday #6

This week for Three or More Thursday I am going to show you some ornaments I made while I was pregnant with my son. He turns 28 this month, so that means these ornaments are 28 years old. These are snowflake ornaments that I crocheted with crochet cotton. After I finished them I starched them with liquid starch and let them dry. That gave them their shape. They have held up well over the years.

There are several different versions of the snowflakes as you can tell by the pictures I have here.

Also in the some of the pictures you can see the icicles made with clear beads and pipe cleaners. Those I made with my kids help when they were growing up. We had gotten a few as a Christmas gift and we added to the collection by making more.

These ornaments are on a small tree we bought last year that came with lights already on them. Last year was our first year to use a fake tree, but last we year did not put any ornaments on it. This year I decided to add my snowflake ornaments.

I have pictures of the tree and the decor items I set around the tree on my main blog. Go on over there to see how those look. Thank you to Tam at The Gypsy Corner for hosting Three or More Thursdays. Go visit Tam and see who else has posted for Three or More Thursday. Happy Thursday!

Whatcha Working on Wednesday

My daughter had posted on her blog about working on some sewing this week. I thought I better get my act in gear get back to my sewing too. So I finished one of those unfinished projects I had sitting around. Yay! That project was my bean bags from work. They originally had pinto beans in them. I wanted them to be washable so after some research online I found some washable polypellts to use to fill the bags. The first part of the project for this batch was done. That was to cut the bags open, empty them, wash them in a bleach load (which is usually my whites load), iron them and finally add iron-on letters. The letters are to help us keep track which batch we need to wash at work. The first batch was the "A" batch. These are the second batch with the letter "B". However I was disappointed at the quality of the iron-on letters. They will probably fall off eventually. Oh well. First I was trying to fill the bean bags directly from the bag the pellet came in. That was not working out very well. I kept dropping some. So I found an emtpy tupperware container and poured the pellets in there. That worked great. I had just enough to fill my set of 10 bean bags. Now I will need to order some more since I plan to do probably two more sets of 10 for work. We use these bags for various activities with our rehab patients at work.

Yay! I finished the bean bags. Now I can take them to work and bring home the ones that still have beans in them. And do the process all over again.

Blue Monday #11-B

I am doing Blue Monday on my craft blog again (obviously), because the first picture is something I made. The fabric is a Christmas print with snowmen on a blue background. It is a different print than what I used on my tablerunner in the last Blue Monday. I simple serged the edges in matching thread to make a simple table runner. I originally made it for the dining table to add color. But I decided to use it on top of the linen press this time. It totally fits with the theme I have going there this year. More pics of my decorating will be coming soon.

This next picture is a Scandavian plate with lots of blue in the costumes. I don't remember where I got this one. I have had it for a number of years now. Probably 15 years or more.
This next one is part of my collection of tins. These have blue(obviously). I don't know why I am stating the obvious. Anyway, the top one is a sewing tin. See that fits for this blog too. It advertises O. N. T. Thread. To tell you the truth, I am not familiar with that brand.
The bottom one had cookies in it. Shortbread I think, but I am not sure. Someone else gave it to me when they were trying to get rid of it. I said I would take it since I collect tins. The one on the right at Hersey's kisses in it when I bought it. They these different candy tins available for a few years. I managed to get a different one each year. I don't really find these kind of tins anymore. I keep looking whenever I see tin type stuff in stores. I look to see if any are the old timey looking ones that have candy in them.

I was able to get to my mother's house yesterday and I got a picture of her knitting bowl. It is a different design than the one I have. In the chair you can see the two blue pillows she wove on a weaving loom.

This next picture is of the loom in my old room. My old bedroom growing up has become my mother's sewing room. This loom is in the area where my bed used to be located. The loom used to belong to my Godmother who was also my grandmother's sister. Which made her my great-aunt as well. She did lots of weaving over the years and I have a few things she made. You will be seeing a couple of them when I get my Christmas decorations up and pictures posted.

The next picture is a close up of what is currently on the loom. It is a shade of blue. Sort of a aqua blue. I am not sure what this is going to be. Placemats maybe. Perhaps I should learn how to weave while my mother can still teach me how to do it. She learned from my Godmother. Time to pass on the skill and keep the loom in the family. Thank you to Smiling Sally for hosting Blue Monday for us. Be sure to visit her here and check out other Blue Monday posts. Happy Blue Monday!!

Blue Monday #10-B

More blue things I have made in the past. I tend to use a lot of blue in the things I make. Sometimes I have to actually force myself to use other colors.
This mini quilt pattern is called Courthouse Steps. I think I made it a couple of years ago. I am not real pleased with how the machine quilting part went. Kind of crooked. So using this tatted doily on top works well for me. The tatted doily was given to us my one of my hubby's grandmothers. At first I could not remember where this one came from, but when we visited hubby's brother recently, I noticed they have the same doily. So that reminded me that we had gotten it from his grandmother. She used to do tatting.
I normally keep it on my coffee table, but I moved it to the back of the couch on top of the afghan knitted by my mother. The coffee table is being used for seasonal displays right now. I have put away the Thanksgiving stuff and now have Christmas there. My header picture shows how I have my coffee table right now. Using that goose again like I did for Thanksgiving.
This table runner is currently on my coffee table. The coffee table used to be my grandmother's. The same one who had the knitting bowl. I am realizing just how many things I have that were handed down to me or made for me or made by me. Anyway, I have this table runner that I made one year posted twice. I wanted to show the difference of using the flash on the camera or not using the flash. The one above I used the flash. You can see the blue Christmas fabric I used better.
But in this picture without the flash, it has a softer look which sometime I like better. It was already dark out when I took this picture, but there was enough light in the room to still have the picture come out decent. I enjoy putting this table runner out every year. I have always wanted to make more to go with other seasons. Maybe this will be the year I get to doing that.

Thank you to Smiling Sally for hosting Blue Monday! To see more, just click on the Blue Jay in my side bar. Happy Blue Monday!

Blue Monday #9

The first picture is done in cross stitch. The scarf part of her outfit is in blue so I decided to save it for a Blue Monday post. This was made by my mother-in-law and it hangs in my sister-in-law's house. The one we stayed a on our recent trip down there. And yes the ones who had to evacuate during the Sylmar fires. Their house was spared fortunately. So I am sure this beautiful cross stitch is still hanging in its place of honor.
I made this cat more than 6 years ago. It was before we moved to this house and we have been here nearly 6 years. The squares were pieced together and then the cat pattern was cut out. I had more than I needed and used the rest for a mini quilt for my daughter. Maybe she will post a picture of that quilt on her blog. I will have to ask her to do that. The cat is sitting guard over my couch in the living room. My mother made that blue afghan for me. It is a knitted one. I don't do knitting.
At the other end of the couch sits this pillow from Susan Winget fabric. I made this pillow. I lined the top part with batting and did quilting along some of the lines in the design. Like around the house, the door, the windows and so on. The phrase on there is "Be Kind of Heart". It says that all the way around the edge.
I have had some one ask me what a knitting bowl is. Picture above is the knitting bowl that used to be my grandmothers. It is designed to hold your yarn and you current project so you can easily pick it up to work on when you are in your favorite chair, or where ever. I have the yarn for current crochet project in there right now. In the background you can see the linen press my father made. The fall decor on there is the one in my header in my other blog.

Happy Blue Monday!! Thank you to Smiling Sally for hosting Blue Monday for us! Go to the Blue Jay link on my side bar to see others participating in Blue Monday.

Three or More Thursdays #4

I'm using my sewing blog for the Three or More Thursday this week, because I am posting about something I made for my Three or More post. I made these pumpkins several years ago. Because of where we lived when I made them, it had to be between 1991 and 1994. So I have had these pumpkins quite awhile. I still have the pattern that I made them from that year. It was McCall's 2628. The pattern envelope says it was copyright in 1986. I am thinking of adding to what I have and make some more for next year. But I am not going to tackle that project right away. I have plenty of other things to do first.



Thank you to Tam at The Gypsy's Corner for hosting Three or More Thursdays. Go check it out to see who else is participating or to participate yourself!

My Turkey Wall Hanging

I now have my Turkey wall hanging up for Thanksgiving. You can see it in my header picture. I made this a few years ago. I think it was in 2003 that I made this one. I had found the pattern on the internet somewhere. I think it was from the Better Homes and Gardens website. I have always wanted to make a wall hanging for each season. Thanksgiving was as far as I got. I have a book to make a hanging for each month using the rag edge style. I just need to get busy on that have one made for each month. Hmmm...maybe I should try to make that a goal for 2009.

My Finished Outfit

Some of you wanted to see how the outfit I made turned out for the wedding I went to last weekend. Here it is. My daughter took the picture of me at the reception. I was surprised at how comfortable it was to wear it nearly all day. I am inspired to make myself another one in a different color scheme. I will probably first find a print I really like for the jacket, then choose the fabric for the skirt and top.

Have a good week!