Hello, Husqvarna!

My favorite time of year for so, so many wonderful reasons...family, friends, gatherings, gifts, and the icing on the cake for me this time of year usually is defined by the two plus week break from work! Yes, I get to completely unplug from it all and have no worries of coming back to chaos because my entire company is on holiday! Love it!

So, you might ask, what does one do with all this extra time on her hands? You guessed it...create! I've been spending the wee hours of the night getting to know my sewing machine and creating all sorts of sweet little gifts to give!

The colors and patterns of fabric are almost as addicting as paper for me and I see as I sew more this could become a whole new addiction...I guess it's good that I have employment to help pay for my hobbies! :)

My friend has a 7 month old so I decided to create a little stuffed giraffe for her and add ribbons for texture and motor skills. I found the pattern on Pinterest and this was such an easy creature to create, aside from the head where you can see my less than perfect sewing skills. Thankfully, I think this little 7 month old is fairly forgiving! 

Next up are the hot/cold rice filled packs. I found a ton of tutorials for this and used a combination of them to come up with my own version. Cotton flannel on one side and patterned cotton fabric on the other, stitch right sides facing together all around long rectangles of fabric and turn right side out, add a few quilting lines, relaxing essential oils in a large bowl of rice and that is pretty much it. You dump the rice in and work it so there's equal amounts in each square of your pack and stitch it closed. Put in microwave for a few minutes or freezer and you have handmade relaxation.

I am having so much fun creating gifts to give! Some of these have already been packaged up and are on their way. Luckily I made a few extras to have on hand for us to relax with, too!

What are you gifting to your friends or neighbors? Hopefully you are enjoying the process and not feeling the stress that so often comes with the season...happy weekend!

Friend, Neighbor, and Hostess Holiday Gifts

Beer bread is a treat in our house that I love to make with soups or stews but more often than not, I don't have any on hand. A friend that I work with informed me of the easiest recipe ever to create it whenever we're craving some and wanted to bag it up for a gift but she isn't a big crafter. We decided to collaborate our efforts and she came over last night to make tags to adorn her bags and in turn, shared the recipe with me!

I saw lots of Pinterest posts so decided it wasn't a secret so it would be safe to share the recipe here as well...

Add 3 cups self rising flour and 1/2 cup sugar to the bags. Here are the remaining directions printed on a label for the treat bags...

We bagged up the mix in Christmas cellophane bags and whipped up a huge batch of tags to jazz them up with some red ribbons...

Papertreyink Ink's penguin stamp in combination with Lawn Fawn's tag it die and stamp set started the process and the envelope die from Studio Calico is what the penguin is holding.

I got the idea for the penguin holding the SC envelope from Julie Campbell here.

So excited to start delivering these tonight!

Friend or Teacher Christmas Treat

While grocery shopping at our local Hyvee, Addison and I came across some sweet gift ideas and decided to recreate one for her teacher's Christmas gift. He loves Mountain Dew and if you haven't looked lately, vintage has even hit the soda aisle! We found a four bottle throwback of his favorite soda, added a few googly eyes, sparkly pom poms, and tinsel covered pipe cleaners to create his own pack of reindeer...

Slip a gift card to Scheels in the crate and her gift is ready to give! I have a certain friend who loves Corona and I'll be gifting her one of these with a beer bread bag that I'll post tomorrow so stop back! This time of year is just so fun! Happy Wednesday!!!

Merry Christmas to Me

Boxes have been arriving daily filled with various holiday gifts for friends and family. Many are already wrapped and under our tree. Tonight when the UPS man rang our doorbell I assumed it would be one of the final arrivals. Imagine my surprise when I opened the box and revealed my very own present...

Merry Christmas to me! Seriously, I was thrilled to get one more shipment of Dexcom supplies after my deductible has been met! Sad but true that there is big joy in this little box! Even more humorous was the response from my daughters at my excitement... "It's just diabetic stuff, Mom. What's fun about that?" Not much, I admit, but having my insurance pay for 90% of a medical resource that allows me to feel in tighter control, priceless! :)

SC Hercules and Sandlot

Cannot get over the fun rose paper from the add on Hercules kit! I made a few more cards using every last one of those flowers fussy cut!

I heat embossed the Happy stamp from the main kit with red Zing and then used a Signo white pen to make it pop! Next up I used up the sequins and placed a tael one in every diamond on the patterned paper to make the background special and then an old die and stamp from Papertreyink with teal Zing embossing powder and white for the sentiment.

Happy Thursday! Where has this week gone?

Christmas Tags

I've beat the rush and am proud to say I'm almost done with my shopping and now that all the decorations are up, I'm in the mood to pretty up some packages. The girls are way too good at guessing their gifts so I've moved to a number system to keep them guessing.

I love Thickers and get plenty in my kits but often have no use for all the numbers but they are too pretty to part with so I thought using them for my Christmas tags would be perfect!

I die cut some tags using the set from Lawn Fawn, got out some bright colors of Distress Ink and had fun blending on some color.

Next up I grabbed one of the matching stamp sets from Lawn Fawn and added images, embossing powder, ribbon, white and gold pens, washi, and various numbers to complete these tags. Simple, fun, and a great way to put my stash to good use!

I guarantee the first thing I hear tomorrow  morning will be, "who's odd and who's even?" Little do they know I put a new spin on things this year... let the guessing begin! :)