Saturday, December 31, 2011

Projects I never posted in 2011

I have been noticing that all my favorite craft blogs have been posting year end reflections on their favorite projects of the year.  I suppose if I want to claim my rightful place in the craft-blog-dom I should do the same. Since I have only really been posting consistently for half of 2011, I thought I would take a different route.

Projects I didn't post.

There are various reasons I didn't post things, but the main reason is that I haven't gotten into the habit of taking photographs along the way.  Here are some photos I took of projects I finished, but didn't do step by step process photos of to do a tutorial (like my tutorials are any good anyway!)

 
The cuddly quilt

 I bought this quilt set to make a quilt for my cousin's baby. A year later I decided that now that I was FINALLY getting around to making the quilt, I should do a product review. Well... these are the pictures I took..... yeah, totally review worthy. What I can tell you is that my ability to guess how large something is when the size is written in centimeters is really poor, this was way smaller then I expected. Also I don't know why they used this plush fabric that you can't iron in a quilt. especially when the directions specifically say to iron all the seams. I singed the plush, then got a facing cloth to use. Did the directions say to use a facing cloth? Maybe, who can remember, but why even include fabric that can't be ironed?
Singed cloth
Oops, apparently I took less photos then I realized.... as this is the only project I can find where I took any!

Crafting related New years resolutions.

1. Remember to take photos of projects. (I've gotten better in the past weeks)
2. Update you on wedding crafts.
3. learn an easy way to watermark photos, since I should be doing that I hear.
4. Create a sign off name, because I love it when the rebel crafter signs her posts. I feel like i was just smacked in the face with a project. 
5. Update more frequently.

Have a happy new year!

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Wedding Stress Resolved(ish)

Remember that time when I said I got engaged? You know how I promised to share wedding stuff?
Yeah, sorry about that.

Since getting engaged I relized something about myself.......   Planning weddings is not my thing. 

I don't think it's my fault. I am just not a details person. I can throw a kick ass party, but things like decorations? Come on, I'm surprised I remember that I have things like serving dishes to put food out on. There is also the fact that my mom is not that kind of person either. You know how much planning she put into her own wedding? She went with her mom to the bridal salon to pick the dress out.  And by pick the dress out I mean she was the body it was on. (Okay, exaggeration? Maybe, but my point is its not her thing either.)

Now, this lack of caring about details would not be that big of a deal if I had people around me that were willing to help in a way that was actually helpful.  Or if I wasn't getting conflicting stuff from both sides about my levels of enthusiasm.

Examples? Okay:

My family knows this isn't my thing, so the way they deal with it is by asking me NOTING for months, then jumping down my throat when I don't know about something I should have planned months ago. Oh, was that important for me to do by now? Maybe you should have said something. All the wedding guides say send save the dates at 6 months, but 2 months in I was getting emails wondering if I was EVER planning on letting anyone know when the wedding was going to happen. Shesh. OK sorry I am delaying your planning of your trip to Cabo in 14 months.

M's family, sweet and interested as they are are constantly asking me how things are going with the planning, and then are disappointed that I have no updates, because I... you know.... still have a non-wedding life that I deal with most days, and don't wedding it up every day. They then precede to tell me about their wedding, or so and so's wedding and how beautiful the monogrammed napkins were.... wait, I have to monogram napkins? huh? and I leave feeling very flustered about what it is I need to be doing.

Also, what is the deal about keeping every detail a secret? I have never tried on wedding dresses before, so needing help knowing what looked good on me I posted a picture of a wedding dress on facebook to get an opinion. Within an hour I get a phone call from my grandmother who doesn't even have facebook saying that the family is in an uproar that I am ruining all the surprises. I asked who it was, and it was all people who I don't know well enough to put on the guest list. And I wasn't even considering buying that dress. 

How do you balance that with people wanting to know every last detail of how I decided on which color was my accent color?

I was starting to feel like I must be the only person who feels this way, especially after reading blog posts about what exactly you should do with yourself now that you no longer have a wedding to plan. (sleep? catch up on paperwork from your job?)

Then something magical happened. I got an email from amazon thanking me for my order. I didn't remember that I ordered anything, so I logged on, to see what it was, and sure enough, A Practical Wedding the book, which I had pre-orderd for my Kindle came out, and downloaded to my e-reader.

This book is EXACTLY what I needed. I am not even half way through it, and I feel like I have already reached my wedding zen. None of it matters. With this new found OK-ness about my non wedding minded-ness I can now sit down and look at the wedding things that I have frantically shoved in the corners of my life.  I have booked everything I needed to book, because I had to, but now I can sit down and really think about how it all works together. Now that I know that I wont remember the details so it is -dare I say it- OK that I am not obsessed with them I can look at table cloths and centerpiece vases without that impending sense of doom that I had which said "this will not be perfect and everyone will think you failed as a bride."

So now I am going to go into my back room, and see if I can get all my info in one place, so I can start telling you what I am doing, even though planning a wedding is so not my thing. And now I know that is OK.

Until next time.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Yellow rose of Texas

So, this weekend (Nov. 4)  I went to the Settlement house garage sale at the event center. Yes, today is Christmas. I know that. I am writing this post on the 7th and scheduling it, because of the sensitive nature of my purchase. 

 OMG! YESSS!!!! CHINA!
 Why is this so sensitive you might be wondering? You buy china all the time you might be thinking. Well, these are special because my soon to be sister-in-law saw these at the garage sale, went gaga over them, and then walked off. Naturally I had to buy them.

OK, let me explain.

My family is not very into the whole "Christmas presents are a surprise" thing. In fact, we basically just tell each other what we want. I have even gone so far as to go into my Dad's amazon account and order my gift for myself (with permission, and now I have a kindle.) Why did my parents instill this in me? NO IDEA! I really have no issue with the status-quot in my family. We always get what we want, and we always know the other person will like what we bought them.

Last year I tried getting my dad a totally thoughtful gift, that he didn't ask for. I identified a need (he didn't know how to get back to the TV when my brother left his Xbox on.)  Researched products and found a solution in the form of the Logitic Harmony remote. I even read reviews to pick the model that he would like best. It took THREE weeks for him to bother figuring out how to set it up, and then it still took him TWO months to admit he liked it and it improved his life. Why? He didn't ask for it.

M's family thinks the whole point of Christmas is the excitement of picking out a gift and not knowing if the person will like it. Or even want it. I guess they keep track of receipts.  Not only is that so NOT how I operate but even after all this time, I still don't know some of them very well. I'm basically just guessing here. I know his sister pretty well, but when she said OOOOH look, I had to pounce. I created a huge diversion, then told her that the contents of my brown bag was the decanter M had been eying, and not to tell him (you would have bought that too.) I think she even went back for it, a little after we first saw it she said she thought she might go buy it.  It was gone.

I wanted to get some info for you about this set, but I really could find nothing! Here is the back stamp......

As you can see this set is really funny, with different sized cups, saucers, and even a handle-less cup. This is all the info I could find online:

Windsor was produced by the Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd Crown Windsor Pottery, Longton.  Staffordshire Potteries with different printed marks from 1946 to early 1960's. They also produced Clarence bone china.

Have a swell Solstice! 

UPDATE
Afew days before christmas we found this:


A buffet? Who cares?
This is the thing Max's sister wanted more then anything! we found it for $50.00. Need more hints?


OH, a Hi Fi!
Yes, we found a beautiful functioning stereo Hi Fi at an estate sale the weekend before christmas for $50.00 and it even had the original warranty in it. So we loaded it up with christmas records and gave the best gift ever. Now we need to find one of our own.