Secret Santa Score

This year, at work, we decided to do a Secret Santa via Elfster.  The great thing about Elfter is you can add a wish list to let your Secret Santa know what you like.  Only a few people added to their wish list and I am pretty sure I had the most on my list :D  I just wanted to give my Santa choices.

I think I got the best Santa of the bunch.  Here is what I got (the limit was $25--but I think she spent a little more!)

My Secret Santa happened to be the co-worker I made the minion hats for in October (and I also made 5 other hats and an infinity scarf for her before Christmas).  I think she spent a little more than the budgeted amount because I only charge her for supplies and not my time :D

I have been wanting the Page Maps 2 book (yes, I still scrapbook) since it came out in 2010, but never pulled the trigger to buy it.  I seen the Crochet Boutique book in a review by Gleeful Things and I had actually checked the book out of the library, but again I didn't buy it because I have a hard time buying myself books…but if others buy them, I love them! :D

I already made the Cuddle Cowl from the Crochet Boutique book for my Goddaughter.

Previously, when I had checked it out of the library, I had made the Bonnie Beret and 2 Headwraps.

I rarely made anything for myself, but the headbands were for me :)  The orange one is worn to San Francisco Giants games and I scaled back on the number of rows :D  I plan on making another in black.

I really think this will be my go to book for a long while :D

From Scarf to Infinity

In March 2011, I made this scarf.

I made it with the intention of either selling it or giving it away.  Even though I liked the color combination, something just didn't look right.  Maybe it was the fringe…I don't know what it was, but it sat in my container waiting for me to do something with it.

Then yesterday, we were going to another Christmas celebration and I remembered I hadn't found anything for my Godmother.  So I pulled out the scarf, but still wasn't thrilled with it when it dawned on me to make it into an infinity scarf!

Ta-da!!!  I just removed the fringe and sewed the ends together…it took me about 5 minutes to transform it!!!  I loved it.  Funny thing is we did a white elephant gift exchange and my mom had made one similar to this (almost exact colors too!) and had put it into the exchange!

Edited to add pattern free from Red Heart.  The pattern had hearts and pom-poms attached, but I didn't add those, just added fringe originally.

I cannot for the life of me find the pattern, but it is just hdc stitch 18 rows alternating colors--I used Vanna's Choice in White, Silver Blue (looking grey in the picture), and Dusty Blue.

Thanks for looking :)

An Elf on the Shelf Alternative

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  (can I say that?)  I hope everyone had a wonderful [insert the Holiday you celebrate here] :D

It has been a while since I have blogged, but I wanted to share my Tinkerbell on the Shelf with those that do not follow me on Instagram.

For the past few years, Elf on the Shelf has been all the craze at Christmas time.  I really enjoyed seeing people post their elf doing crazy things, but my kids are teenagers, so I never thought I would do it.

This year, my daughter went off to college and I wanted her to feel our Christmas spirit at home, so I thought 'hey…I want to do something like the Elf'.  I searched for either a Grinch doll or Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas, but when I saw this Tinkerbell in an elf-like dress, I knew I had to get her!

The first two days of December, my daughter was still at home for the Thanksgiving holiday, so Tinkerbell stayed in the bathroom.

Day 1: It says "I [mustache] you when are you leaving so I can sleep in your room?"

Day 2:  She made snowflakes from Q-tips

Day 3:  She decorated the small tree my daughter has in her room.

Day 4:  A few of the Holiday Barbies joined her to reenact the "Call Me Maybe" Harvard baseball YouTube video.  This video was popular last year, but it holds a funny memory to us from when we visited Miami in 2012.

Day 5:  Tinkerbell made a paper chain to count the days until my daughter came home from school.

Day 6:  Tinkerbell glittered the poinsettias in her room

Day 7:  Saturday--she spent the day watching all the seasons of Jersey Shore--she is doing the fist pump here :D

Day 8:  She got a couple Holiday Barbies to do a Photo Booth shoot

Day 9:  My daughter LOVES A Christmas Story movie…so Tink was Triple Dogged Dared to stick her tongue on the frozen pole.

Day 10:  My daughter (although 18) has a Bucket-O-Soldiers--Tink opened the tub and they attacked her :D

Day 11:  The only show that my whole family watches together is Survivor.  We have had a ton of conversations of who would be voted out first of the 4 of us…Tinkerbell agrees it would be me.  It is really on my daughter's bucket list to be on Survivor :)

Day 12:  One of my favorite Christmas movies is Elf.  "We elves like to stick to the four main food groups…Candy, Candy Canes, Candy Corn, and Syrup" ~ Buddy the Elf.  I tried looking for candy corn because I know they come out with pastel ones during Easter, but didn't find any at Target.  But a few weeks after this picture, I seen that Walmart had some :/

Day 13:  This happened to be Friday the 13th and I am a big horror movie fan.  My photo had the Spice Girls…a Jason mask and knife…red ribbon…a broken head of one of the dolls…but I was told I couldn't post it because it was too demented--ha ha ha…so Instagram (and the blogosphere) could only see Tinkerbell's horror face.

Day 14:  Tinkerbell stole my phone to help me on Candy Crush.

Day 15:  All our M&M figurines took a photo with Tink.

Day 16:  Like me, Tinkerbell loves to crochet and made herself a stocking.

Day 17:  She was trying to help my daughter study for her finals

Day 18:  Wishing my daughter luck on her finals 

Day 19:  We had to kick Tinkerbell out of my daughter's room, she wasn't happy and tried to keep my daughter out :)

Day 20:  She made some tiny snowmen from marshmallows to decorate my snowman tree

Day 21:  She found the copy machine and copied herself

Day 22:  She made a "Tink's last weekend party" flyer from the previous day and since we weren't home that night, she had a party with some Peppermint Schnapps and the Holiday Barbies.

Day 23:  The Holiday Barbies made her an honorary Holiday Barbie and she fit right in my display posing.

Day 24:  She sat on Santa's lap and sang "Santa Baby"

Day 25:  Merry Christmas!  She crossed out Santa's name and let the kids think she brought them all their gifts!

I have to say this was fun, but it is A LOT OF WORK!!!  I don't know how parents do this every single year!  

Because my daughter was away and we were actually gone one of the weekends, some of the photos were taken days in advance.  Pinterest gave me lots of ideas.  I think the only thing I had to buy was the candy for the Elf shoot.  Other than that, I had everything from my craft room.  

My favorite (well besides the Friday the 13th one--ha ha ha) was the Survivor photo.  I was so excited to make the buff, torch, and immunity idol--all with stuff in my craft room (and the printer).

Thanks for reading…

Hope you have a safe and fun New Year!

I am a crochet Minion :)

Early in October, my co-worker told me her daughter wanted them to all dress up as Minions from the movie Despicable Me (and Despicable Me 2).  I told her to look on Pinterest for all the cool ideas.  As we were browsing, I mentioned I could totally make the crochet hats we seen.  So I was "hired" to do the job (hired as in I only charge for materials--hey I am already just sitting there watching tv, might as well be crocheting something :D then she surprised me with a Starbucks gift card and lunch--woo hoo!).

I made 2 children's hats with detachable goggles (patterns are linked).  I only use the goggles pattern as a guide though.  I actually used pipecleaners as the base of the eye part to make it a bit sturdier.  Also, I used elastic in the back so that they would be a little less prone to fall off their heads.

They looked exactly the same--so I won't post them both :)

Then I made this adult hat with arms for my co-worker.  When I showed my son the pattern, he told me that I would not be able to do it--Challenged Accepted (totally got that phrase from How I Met Your Mother).  In the end she opted to not have the mouth, but still wanted the arms.

Then I made a men's hat and small teen hat out of the same pattern.  I used a combination of patterns to put this one together.

And finally, I made a slouchy hats for the teen.  I used a pattern I found via Ravelry.  

Edited to add:  But then she wanted it a bit more slouchier and the eyes connected, so I changed the above to this

My co-worker wanted me to make the eyes to be "rolled" eyes like most teens do on a daily basis :)

All the "hair" is made from black pipecleaners.  I could have used yarn, but my co-worker gave me this better alternative idea.

They were a hit!  They got compliments all night and both of the kids teachers wanted one.  Since I had extra yellow yarn, I made her two more hats for the teachers :D  (A total of 8 minion hats!--that is more than 1/2 the kids that came to my house for candy this year--ha ha ha...we got 13 trick-or-treaters.)

I have only watched the first movie...maybe when I am not tired of looking at minions anymore I will watch the second movie :)

Ikea Raskog Cart and Organization

As promised, I am sharing my filled up Raskog cart.

But first I have to show the "before" storage pictures.

This picture doesn't even do justice the amount of stickers I had.  They used to be housed in a 3 inch binder that was quite full (kicking myself for not taking a picture of it before).

I went through them all and below is the give away pile.  I'll let my daughter go through them first, then the rest will be donated to a Girl Scout troop.

Next up was my "junk" drawer.  Embellishments used to pour out of this drawer.  I didn't get rid of too much from here.

Both my huge binder of stickers and my "junk" drawer fit nicely in my top basket.  The binder will be recycled and the drawer will now house only Christmas embellishments.  (and I still have some room in this top basket!)

You will notice two of the storage cups are full.  One with my "bling" and the other is just a mishmash of items--we'll call it my "junk" cup :D

The next basket was for my scrap papers.  They used to be housed in this accordion storage.

Now I can easily flip through all my small pieces of paper...I do keep too many small scraps--someday I'll fix that.  I also placed my 4.5 x 6.5 paper pads in this basket.

You will see another cup filled with my wood veneer items :)

At first, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the bottom basket, but I was pulling out my Halloween mini album (hopefully to be posted about on Halloween) and I noticed because where it was stored, some of the letters fell off as well as a flower.  So I figured if I stored them in their own basket they wouldn't be smashed again--hopefully.

 I don't have too many mini albums...the majority in the basket are Christmas cards from previous years that I had bound together years ago.  Hopefully seeing them will remind me to look through them more often.

So far, I love being able to just roll the cart up next to my desk and flip through items to find the right embellishment or paper without having to dig through the drawer and put everything back or flip through the heavy binder of stickers.  Totally worth the investment :D

Fleur de Lis Mini Album (surprise winner!)

My kids and husband laugh at me because sometimes I "heart" every single photo on my Instagram feed.  I like the pictures because they are always awesome!  Sometimes I don't even read what the photo is about.

So a few weeks ago, I did my normal...'I will like this photo without reading the caption' and the next day I see that I am tagged in this photo:

What???  I didn't even remember entering a contest.  Normally, on Instagram, you have to tag people to win stuff or repost the picture and hashtag and tag the contest coordinator.  So this time I had to look to see what I won.  It was a cute Fleur de Lis wood mini album from Genuinely Jane Studios.

Luckily, my kids went to a high school where the fleur de lis was their emblem--otherwise I would have felt bad for taking the prize. :/

I knew right away that I would decorate it and put their first day of school for each year they were in high school.  I could have just used the book as it was, but I decided to take it apart and only use 2 of the "pages" as the cover and the back.  Then I traced them to make inside pages in the school colors (orange and blue).

After, I painted one wood cover blue and the other orange.  My local scrapbook store, Scrapbook Island, carries 12 x 12 paper with the local high school names and logos and coordinating paper. So I covered the front and back with that. 

After all the work of tracing, cutting the odd shape, painting, and using an exacto knife to trim around the paper I covered the front and back with...I was pretty much done...I was at the point where I just wanted to finish it.

So here is my pretty plain mini album...maybe someday I will go back and embellish a bit more...maybe.

I can't believe it is ending soon!  My daughter was a sport and took a selfie on her first day of college for me, but I am sure my son will "forget" if I ask him.