Crafts quilting sewing: bird quilt birds gifts paper-pieced paper-piecing quilt patterns quilts
by Blabby
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Just in time!
Here’s my little birds. Just to recap, my father-in-law is a bird-watcher, and this is a house warming gift for him. Overall, I’m happy. On the first bird I did (yellow border), I kind of cut off his neck because I hadn’t figured out the importance of lining up the lines on the paper when joining two pieces of a block. He’s okay, though. The other birds came out much better. I particularly like the humming bird.
The pattern came from abcpatterns.com, and there are a bunch of different birds in packet.
The border was just all my scraps sewn together haphazardly. I like how it came out - it probably could have benefited from more quilting, but I’m out of time. I’m attaching two little loops to the back for hanging - I hope that works out okay.
That’s it! Thanks for checking out my crafts :)
power tools
Each year at Christmas, Father’s Day and my dad’s birthday, I wander the aisles of Lowes and Home Depot, looking at all the power tools and wondering if my dad already has them. This year, I got him this funny little wrist magnet that straps on his wrist and has a little magnet tray for nails and screws. This gift idea was inspired by my wrist pin cushion, which effectively keeps pins out of my mouth during sewing. I thought it would be handy, but who knows? Then I see fancy stuff like the Ingersoll Rand air tools, and I wonder if that’s what he really needs? Honestly, I’m pretty handy with my Black and Decker screw-driver/drill set, but I wouldn’t know the difference between a air gun and an air ratchet. I fear that my dad is destined to get gift cards for eternity.
Gold Medal Wine
I was considering getting my sister a wine of the month wine clubs subscription for Christmas, but then she stopped drinking! Who would of thought! So, I decided to try it for myself. I am not a wine connoisseur by any stretch, but I’d like to know more, and so I thought this would be cool.
I picked Gold Medal Wine because they ship their monthly wines from small vinyards in California. Now I get to feel like I’m supporting local farmers while I get my drink on! Awesome. My first selection came from a small winery called Madrona - securely packaged in form fitting styrofoam were two bottles. One of Merlot and one of Cabernet Sauvignon. Now, normally, I’m not a red wine kind of girl. If I do drink red, I pour it into a sprite and make it a spritzer. (All the wine drinkers just gasped!) But I drank the cab in a wine glass like an adult - sans soda. And you know what? It was great. We grilled steaks for dinner, and it went very nicely.
Enough about my bad wine reviews. The best part of my package of wine was the newsletter - The Wine Press - chocked full of info about the vinyard, recipes that the wine would pair with, and other factoids about wine. EXACTLY what I need to further my education.
Sommeliers, watch out. Here I come - one month at a time!
yummy recipes
Sometimes I post things that seem like a sponsored post, but they actually aren’t. Like this one - I love the container store (like, obsessively). Look at this cool link they sent me:
http://www.containerstore.com/experthelp/recipes/index.jhtml
It’s all stuff you make and stuff into containers for gifts. My favorites are the easy play clay and the all-natural dog biscuits. I’m totally making those this year.
Now I have a reason to go to the container store :) As if I needed one.
Wedding gifts…
My aunt is getting married this Saturday. The wedding was originally scheduled for Nov., and I was super excited about going, but life happened, and they moved the date to Aug. 4, making it impossible for me to get an affordable ticket and for my husband to take off work. SO, I don’t get to go. My sister is one of the bridesmaids and my nephews are the Bible bearer and ring bearer - I’m so sad to miss the whole thing.
But in addition to going, I had a few jobs - to make the guest book, ring pillow and the programs - obviously on a super-accelerated time table.
So here’s what I made over the last two days. I think everything came out great - I hope she likes this stuff. You’ll notice the Fall colors - no time to change the bridesmaids dresses, so the Summer wedding gets Fall colors. I love brown and orange, so I think they’re great for any season.
forest friendly: buy mom a sheep gifts mom mother's day mother's day gift ideas OxFam America Unwrapped OxFam International
by Blabby
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Mother’s Day gifts at Oxfam Unwrapped
A few weeks ago, I listed some Mother’s Day gift ideas at Oxfam in a post called “Give Mom a Sheep.” Yesterday, I went on both the Oxfam America Unwrapped and the Oxfam Great Britain Unwrapped sites to order my Mother’s Day gifts. My mother-in-law lives in France, so I needed to use one of Oxfam’s European sites in order for the card to get to her for Mother’s Day.
It turns out that the European site is much cooler. They have a lot more items and the recipient gets a cool fridge magnet. They also give the option to add a small gift for a few more euros to go along with the magnet, so that the recipient gets an actual gift - like fair trade chocolate or a nice calendar.
Anyway, I had fun shopping, and I hope these mothers enjoy their gifts - I’ll keep you posted on how well they are received. I ended up getting Plant 50 Trees, Peace Books for Kids, and 21 Mango Saplings.
