Purses! I Love Purses!!

My apologies! I know I said I'd post these pictures sooner rather than later but alas, time got away from me. I've been super busy lately! My mother-in-law's birthday was on Thanksgiving but we celebrated on Wednesday because this year was my family's year in our rotation (We alternate every-other year celebrating Thanksgiving with mine and Mark's families). So Wednesday morning I made a cake for her birthday, then took her to dinner that evening.
I made pecan pie before I headed to bed, as that was my food assignment for Thanksgiving. Then of course, Turkey Day! Part of that includes Kellie and I sitting down to make our shopping lists from the Black Friday ads.
Got home from Mom's at nearly 10 PM and got online browsing the online Black Friday deals. Finally around 2 AM I logged off and went to bed, only to wake up at 3:30 AM to go shopping with Mom and Kellie. YAY! I love Black Friday. We shopped all day. Seriously. 4:45 AM until 7 PM-ish. Exhaustion!! 1 hour of sleep was certainly not enough. So worth it, though.
So ever since then I've been working on getting my Christmas decorations out, which is a chore! I have a ton - I love decorating for Christmas.
Okay okay, onto my promised blog post! In all of the projects I've worked on lately, one of them included sewing a purse. Seriously, that's the hardest thing I've ever sewn. My skills are very limited. But I absolutely LOVE how it turned out!! Check out those pleats - who knew I could pull that off?!

The blurry picture doesn't do it justice. It's darling. Trust me. :) But it was a little too big for my taste, but Mark's mom liked it so it ended up being her birthday present.
I wanted to try making another one but smaller. So - here's my first attempt at altering a pattern. HO-LY cow, I managed that as well!

The only difference between the two is about 3" in the width. Much better!! So can I just tell you how much fun I've had sewing these? I would love to make like 10 more of them. But I've got a huge list of projects to get done, and I ran out of magnetic snaps so I can't make anymore til I make it to Joann's. Plus, I feel guilty making bunches of stuff for myself.

Next up: Little Girly Aprons!

Crafting In Progress - Do Not Disturb!

I'm SO on a roll here. Seriously, I think I'll be done with Christmas gifts before Thanksgiving! Okay not quite, but I've got a great start on it. I would show pictures, but my family reads this so I must refrain. I have taken pictures though so I can share after the holidays...trust me, I will. I'm totally in the Christmas spirit and I've decided to do mostly homemade gifts. Not just because money is tighter this year, but because I completely enjoy giving gifts that I've made myself. It gives me a sense of pride...I'm very humble, right? Haha!
So here are a couple things that I can share with you. I'm a sewing machine these days. Last year for Christmas I made microwaveable rice bags for everyone in my family. I seriously made 10 of them. And neglected to make one for myself, and I've needed a new one for a couple years now. So I splurged for myself:

Nothing terribly exciting or difficult skill-wise, but I'm personally excited about it.
I saw a tutorial for a plastic bag holder made out of a dishtowel. So Haddie and I made a trip to Dollar Tree and got this dishtowel that matches my kitchen.

I would have hemmed it so it wasn't quite so long but I didn't want to cut off the cute stripes on the bottom. So it will suffice, at least until I find another dishtowel that I like better. For now I love it, though!!
I've made some super cute purses and aprons this last week so those will be in my next post! Watch for them - They are darling! There goes my humility again :)

More Pillows

Remember my curtains from this post?

I've now finished my living room pillows to match them! I've had the material forever, and I even had 2 of them done other than closing up the stuffing hole. Then procrastination set in and they sat in my craft room for 2 months. I've had my sewing machine out lately for some projects I've been doing so I finally made myself finish them. Yay, more things to cross of my list!

Decoupage Gifts

I have had these two projects on my To-Do List forever! And they're finally done :)
This is a shelf my mom gave me when I was an early teen. It was plain, unfinished wood. It has sat unused for years because I didn't know what to do with it. I finally decided to finish it for Haddie's room. I spray-painted it white and originally tried sponging pink paint onto the 3 raised hearts. That wasn't working very well so I decided to decoupage scrapbook paper onto them. I followed it with 2 coats of clear acrylic sealer. It is now ready for use!

These letters I originally bought while pregnant with Haddie. They were plain white and I sponged a different color of pastel paint on each one - pink, green and yellow. They matched her Care Bear bedding and decorations. I've decided that they needed to be re-vamped because I plan to re-decorate Haddie's room. I decoupaged the same scrapbook paper used on the shelf onto these letters and sprayed sealer on them as well.
My camera sucks so the color is distorted. The 'a' is beige, 'd' is dark pink and the 'e' is light pink. The stripes and the 'y' are actually brown, not green. (Seriously need a new camera!)

I want to get a Dora The Explorer toddler bedding set for Christmas for li'l miss. She's thisclose to climbing out of her crib, so we'll be moving into a 'big girl bed' soon. So call me tacky (regifter!), but I'm giving these letters and shelf to Haddie for Christmas as well for her new bedroom.