Finding inspiration

I requested a Toast catalog recently and it arrived promptly a couple days ago. If you're not familiar with Toast, well, you need to migrate away from this post. Their catalogs are filled with lovely photography and printed on great paper. I love nice catalogs. I've been poring over the catalog and filling my head with way too many ideas. The thing that most captivated me and got my wheels turning was, oddly enough, padded hangers. Their version is particularly sweet. I've been hunting for a decent pattern online this morning, but might just try to pick up some hangers and wing it. I'm not sure if single bar hangers are readily available though (might need to raid my mom's hall closet). Anyone know of a decent pattern out there?

Two new dresses

I've had sewing fever lately and managed to finish up a dress that's been sitting waaaay too long and start and finish another. It's been nice to have something nice to wear. I still have 15 baby pounds to shed (which is a feat considering the inordinate number of pounds I put on), so I'm scrambling for some summer things. I've been diving into my mom's stash which I've been housing since December. She recently got a gorgeous craft room face lift, so she'll be reclaiming what's rightfully hers. I gotta run... I want to have a last look at all that fabric!

The first party

I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of my daughter's first birthday party. This was really fun to put together. We just kept it to family and did relatively simple food. I did cupcakes instead of a big fancy cake (they're chocolate and mini cheesecakes). I made a couple heart garlands with miscellaneous pink fabrics I had in my stash, and some pink grosgrain ribbon. I cut the hearts freehand and stitched them onto the ribbon in random order. I also made some big tissue paper flowers to hang from the ceiling. The birthday sign was a quick little craft project too. I grabbed the artwork from a favorite fabric designer and screened it back, then I added big letters and printed, cut and punched. The banner is also strung with grosgrain ribbon. The rest of the decorations came mostly from the Valentines Day clearance at Target.
On a related note... Where did the year go?!?!

Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies

Well, I intended to share a recipe with you today, but alas, 'twas not to be. I purchased a great new GF baking mix recently and tried out the recipe on the box (with a couple mods), but my new box has blueberry muffins in place of the cookies. Ack! So I'll be doing some hunting. In the meantime, aren't they pretty?

A little hiatus (and some reinvented curtains)

I've been up to a host of crafting projects in the last month, but have been much too busy (or sick) to post. I'll try to get caught up in the ensuing days/weeks. We had a first birthday and a bout of intestinal flu and I'm finally getting the house under control again.
I did a bit of surgery to a set of plain cream curtains from Ikea in an effort to "complete" the wee one's room. The curtains were 56 inches wide, so I cut a straight line (about 3 feet long) at 7 inches from the edge, then another 14 inches over for the remaining 3 cuts. I inserted a triangle of fabric to create a pleat and then added some ribbon and vintage buttons to finish them off. I'm super happy with how they turned out, kind of Land-of-Nod in my opinion. I've been wanting to get better pictures, but between nap time and dead batteries it's just not happening.
So what have you reinvented lately?

The great bread experiment

Last week I picked up a few things to try out some gluten free recipes. We've been trying (some harder than others) to go gluten free for the past couple months. My husband has a wheat sensitivity, so we've been mostly wheat-free for a year or so, but finally decided to make the leap and try gluten free. I sort of gave up on baking for a little while, but have decided I'd like to take another crack at it. When we first cut out wheat I did a little baking with rice flour and wasn't very happy with it. Rice flour has a sort of sandy texture, so it really needs to mixed with some other things to have a pleasant texture. This is last week's bread. It's all gone now. I'll post a recipe soon, but I want to give it another go before I put anything up.

We have a quilt top!

I managed to get the last of the quilt top put together yesterday and got a little direction on the next step from my mom. I'm thinking this pattern will work for the quilting. I'm going to attempt to machine quilt it. Gotta get practicing!


I stopped by Blue Sky yesterday to drop off some (top secret) projects, and they so graciously lent me this lovely book. My mom and I pored over it yesterday. It's filled with wonderful, vintage-looking quilts. Maybe quilting is for me after all.


I finished my first birthday garland and I think I'll attempt a second with the sewing machine. I'll share some pictures later. Busy, busy, busy. What have you been up to?