A New Bag!

I saw a nice bag on a pattern that a friend had and thought it would make a good camera bag.  So I borrowed the pattern and sewed up a new bag for myself, now I just have to make an insert to hold all my camera goodies nice and safe.

Here’s how the bag turned out.

Here’s a photo of the bag zipped up and showing the two big pockets on the front.

And on the inside of the bag there’s 2 more big pockets and a little pocket as well.

Now to pick up my felt and foam to make my camera insert.

See you all soon.

Anna

Craft Project!

I’m working on a little project for Kazia, it’s going to be her “Big Sister Kit” for when baby arrives.  I picked up some plain t-shirts and a canvas bag at the craft store, and ironed on some letters and an appliqué that she picked out.

This little kit is going to be filled with a few things to keep Kazia busy for a bit when she’s at the hospital once baby arrives, and also to hopefully make her proud to be a big sister.  Here’s what I have so far ….

The t-shirts I picked up at the craft store were way to big, the smallest size for youth they had was 6-8, so I found a tutorial online on how to resize a t-shirt and it turned out to be pretty easy to do.

Here’s the two shirts together.  How they started out and after my resizing.

Now to find a few things to fill the bag with and it will be all ready for her when she comes to see the new baby.

See you all soon,

Anna

A Woman’s Style!

At the end of May, one of the ladies at work retired and we had a Potluck for her very last day.  I was bringing the cake and cupcakes!

Now this lady loves her shoes and bags, so what better than stiletto cupcakes and a handbag cake (and a “replica” of her very own purse).

First we have the cupcakes, and since I was able to take pictures of the cupcakes during the day, I styled them up a little!

And then we have the handbag cake, unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to try and style the cake as I took the pictures late evening after finishing it up.  And with the cake we have $34, for the 34 years she worked for our employer!

And a little sewing bonus … I made a laptop sleeve for her that was a bit vintage, French inspired as a retirement gift.  I’m so glad I picked up a new sewing machine, when you have something that actually works it makes a world of difference!

Now to decide on what kind of laptop sleeve I want to make for myself, haha!!

Next up, something musical.

See you all soon,

Anna

Our crafty side

Besides all the cakes, I made a couple other little crafty things, and Kazia was my helper.

First I wanted to try and make a stuffed toy, so I found a pattern online and made a Chewbacca stuffed toy.

Here’s how he turned out.

And a little closer up …

And this year I wanted to plant some fruits and veggies in our garden, so to mark what was where we painted some stones.  First Kazia and I had to paint all the stones we found on our walks all white.

After all our stones dried, we painted on our markers for Carrots, Cucumbers, Sugar Snap Peas, Strawberries, Rhubarb and Blueberries.  Here are our finished stone garden markers.

I have a few other things I want to make, hopefully my sewing skills will be enough hehe.

See you soon.

Anna

Christmas is …

Almost here!!!!  Can you believe it?  It’s crazy how fast the time goes by.

Since Christmas will be here in a few weeks, I needed to do something for sending out Christmas Cards on time this year.  My neighbour posted a mini photo shoot she did with her kiddos on her blog, and I thought it was such a cute idea to do some Christmas cards in a similar style.  This morning I attempted to do the Twinkle Lights for some photo cards.

I also decided that I will be putting all the photo challenges on pause for now, and instead of just snapping photos to try and make these challenges in time, I will try to focus more on doing small little photo sessions to practice my photog skills.  I also made myself a light reflector to use for focusing my light better in my photos, and today was the first time I tried using it in these photos.  There are a few shots that I think the reflector was a little bit too far off, it was a little awkward trying to hold steady to take a picture and hold the reflector close to Kazia’s face with my left hand lol.  I will get the hang of using it though.

Here are the photos I ended up with, now to pick out which one(s) I like best to make into photo cards and start sending them out.

In the first one, I snapped so quick to get Kazia smiling, that it ended up a little out of focus, but I still like how it turned out.

Here are the rest that I thought turned out pretty good.

This last one turned out a bit out of focus as well, but I love Kazia’s expression in it.  She was telling me that Hercules wasn’t looking at me for the picture.

As you can see the flower hairband didn’t last very long, but even though it took a while and there were a few fusses, I really enjoyed doing this today, and I was so happy that Kazia cooperated so well.  There were a few “No’s”, but after a little break here and there, and asking Kazia if I could take some photos of her did help instead of just popping her up on the bed to snap away.

Now, which one do you think you will get in the mail as a card? I might have to do a variety of cards, or somehow try to do a “photo collage” card possibly?  Ahh, need to make a decision quick.  No time to waste!

I think I have an idea for another little photo shoot session.

See you soon.

Anna

My Open House!

On October 16, 2011 I decided to take a big leap and become an Independent Consultant for Scentsy.  Now for me, that is a big leap, because I’m not the type of person to put myself out there for everyone.  I’m pretty quiet and no where near outgoing enough to do some of the things that other people do in their own business.  But I did it, and so far I am really enjoying it.

On November 15, 2011, I held a Scentsy Open House.  Put some flyers out, and started putting my name out there.  I had my doors open for 4 hours that night, and had people stop by to check out products and do a bit of shopping.  I didn’t have a lot of people come, but I was absolutely all right with that, because after all, this was just to start getting my name out, and I was happy with how everything went.

Monday, Kazia and I baked some cupcakes and she helped me start getting some things printed and organized for the next day.  That night, after Kazia had gone off to dream land, I decorated all but four of the cupcakes and baked some French style Macaroons.

I left four undecorated cupcakes for Kazia to decorate the next morning.

I think I was making her breakfast when Kazia came over to tell me that she finished decorating the cupcakes for me, so I went over to her little table to check it out, and this is what she came up with 🙂  Nice and neat, don’t you think?

After having breakfast, I finally decided to take out my Scentsy Buddy from it’s little box, the poor thing had been in there for a couple weeks since I knew that as soon as I opened that box, Kazia would claim the buddy for herself.  And I was right!

Watching her morning cartoons with Ollie the Elephant!

And smelling the lovely “Newborn Nursery” scent pak inside ….

And here are all the photos that show my set up for the night.

And all the baked goodies … yummy!

This was my first time ever working with meringue so I ended having to make two batches of the macaroons.  The first ones I tried were Lemon and Lime, but not sure where I went wrong, they were hard to pipe because the batter was so runny, and they didn’t get the little foot rise when baking, but they had what I think is the right texture; light crispy outside and soft inside.  The second batch I made were chocolate, and again, not sure what went wrong, but the batter was thicker so they were easier to pipe, and they got the little foot rise, but they were hard and crispy inside and out, which I don’t think is supposed to happen.  Well, they both tasted good, so all in all it worked out either way.

Here’s the difference between the Chocolate, and the Lemon and Lime.

I had a blast baking, setting everything up and doing the Open House.  I would definitely do it again.

And thank you to everyone that did stop by, I hope you all enjoyed it!  I really do appreciate you coming by.

See you all soon.

Anna

Busy Bee!

Last week was busy, this week is going to be busy, sometimes life moves in such a fast pace I barely remember what I did that day.

Kazia and I did a few small crafts last week, made a cute hair clip, finally got the sewing machine going again and finished up Cosmo’s bed pillows to match Hercules’ pillow.

We also checked out the new Dollar store that opened up near by, and Kazia picked out a container of blue clay-dough so that she could do some “crafting” her way 🙂

And Kazia wanted her Pooh Bear to join in on the clay-dough fun.
I also try to keep up on the challenge of the week for a Facebook page called “Photog52” so that I can think outside of the box on my photo taking.  This week’s challenge was called ‘A Bug’s Perspective’, with the poor weather, it’s been hard to go out and take some pictures when I have a chance, and after trying some indoor bug-like shots I turned to the rain falling outside that day because the lighting indoors was just too poor.  I would have liked to get some bigger raindrops, but I took what I got.

I hope everyone has a good week ahead, I know I’ll be busy; cleaning, organizing, baking, and then after those first two days of the week are over I think I will try to decorate our master bedroom from it’s bland state … before and after pics when it’s all done.

Anna

Cool Autumn weather brings ….

Warmer jackets and indoor craftiness 🙂

A few days ago Kazia and I went for a little walk down to the river.  The fall weather has gotten pretty chilly and I actually had to pull out Kazia’s mittens for our walk to keep her little hands nice and warm.  We didn’t get too far on this walk, but Kazia brought along a little buddy ….

The cool weather has also brought out my craftiness.  I saw a tutorial awhile back on a blog for creating inexpensive canvas photos, so I decided to give it a try.  I put together this picture of Kazia for her room, finally put up a shelf in her empty wall space, and also made the wooden K.  I found the K at Michael’s and covered it in craft paper with some Modge Podge and painted the sides a nice brown.

I have more crafts on my to-do list, now to get them going 🙂

Anna

P.S.  I added a Gallery page to the blog, you can view all the photos I post on there as well, I may sometimes add more to the Gallery then I do in a post.  Enjoy!