When I clean, I find things...

Miniature pot by Jon Almeda. Purchased the same weekend I went to the Sewing & Stitchery Expo the year I was pregnant with now toddler (2006). My mom and I went to a miniature show in the Seattle area (my mom is into miniatures, I grew up exposed to the fabulous world of miniatures). Jon Almeda was there...his pottery is just mind blowing amazing!! At the time I had a budget that allowed me to appreciate artists and support them with a purchase. Below is a pic showing how big it really is (about 1-1/2 inches tall) nestled among my favorite second hand store pottery finds. I LOVE this green, it's now hard to find. I have about four other pieces not shown in the pic, all different shapes but same green

A week of good stuff in the mail...

I received three packages in the mail this week...woohoo!!! My first one being from Missy over at FairyChildHeirlooms for my A Fairy Went A Marketing swap...what wonderful goodies!! I sent in a pixie pouch and ten similar items (I blogged about them here.) and this is what I received...
In my new pixie pouch, I got a fairy fireplace, a fairy carpet, a fairy walking stick, a butterfly wand, a glittery lollipop, a jar of unicorn dust, a felted mushroom, a strawberry lavender sashe, a felted acorn and a lovely booklet explaining it all!! Speaking of strawberry lavender...have you ever had that combination in a jelly?? I have!! It's actually pretty good. :) Especially on a cracker...mmm-MM!
Here is my fairy enjoying her goodies. She doesn't like to smile for the camera, so she turned her head away at the last minute...naughty little fairy!
Over at Phat Fiber Sample Box I won a skein of yarn from one of her weekly drawings! YAY!! I LOVE YARN!! That was the second item I received in the mail this week. And the third one was...
My March ornament for A Year of Enchantment hosted by YarniGras!! Sherry sent me two felted mushrooms, eight paper mushrooms, some mushroom tags, a chicken with her chick and hidden Easter egg and two energy bars. So fun! I also blogged about my ornament at the SwapperSpot here...it shows more pics.

And the weather outside is NO-LONGER frightful...but has become so delightful!! The temps been in the high 50's and 60's...so nice and warm. We've been spending a few days out in the yard cleaning and searching for garnets. Garnets!! you say?? Well, check back and we'll post about it in due time. :) What a wonderful week!!

I Spy Friday...

I'd like to start a weekly post called I Spy Friday. I got the idea from an I Spy mini quilt the boys got from last months ornament swap. I thought it would make me blog more regularly, since I'm pretty lazy about the downloading pictures part. And, I thought it would be fun for you all to try and find what I'm spying in the pic. Therefore...I spy with my little eye...a bear on a baby's bum. Happy Friday!

Current projects...

I thought I'd show off some of my up and coming projects that have fabrics already pulled together. All of them were in my stash that I've combined with others OR were purchased that way (years ago).
A pirate quilt kit I purchased for my toddler....when he was an infant!!

A Skinny Bunny pattern by Carol's Zoo using the leftover green fabric from last Halloweens dragon costume. I'm waiting to purchase the right size eyes...just have to get out of the house to purchase them. I bought the pattern at the Sewing & Stitchery Expo in Puyallup when I was pregnant with now toddler (oh, say...2006)! I swore to never go back to that AMAZING and WONDERFUL expo until I completed at least one of the four patterns I purchased there that year. haha **bashful grin**
For my baby boy (and many of my friends babies and maybe babies to come), I found this WONDERFUL baby shoe pattern and tutorial over at Stardust Shoes. I recently learned about her blog (and now follow it), she creates a lot of fun stuff and has some really great tutorials. I'm curious about her current venture of Circle Happy.
And finally...my European Cat Quilt fabrics which I've changed on the project progress side bar to say London Cat Quilt. A while back I visited a new quilt store in town with my mother-in-law, and I mean a while back, like...maybe over a year ago?? I came across these fabrics and fell in LOVE! That led to splurging....yeah, there are nine different fabrics there ranging from 1/4 to 1 yard in size. The lady cutting my fabric also managed to talk me into a quilt book to create a quilt with them called Turning Twenty...Again. I'm either going to use that book or a tutorial I found online here that's called the Disappearing Nine Patch.

Pillowcase Crochet Along

I finally got around to uploading my yarn and fabric choice for my On The Edge pillowcase crochet along put on by Cassie over at You Go Girl. Cassie did an AWESOME four week tutorial on sewing a pillowcase and adding a crocheted edge. Week one starts here and week four, the final installment, was posted today here. She even provided a cute little button for people to add to their blog...and it's orange!! I love orange!! I had so much fun learning how to make her "posh" pillowcase (as she calls it) and now the crochet edge. Since it was just posted today, I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the week. YAY! Then I can post final pics. Oh, and I ended up going with the pinker fabric on the left, it's not that pink, and it has a green it in that matches the yarn perfect. Since everything was from my stash, I can count this project as a 100% Destash Along project. Another big YAY!! Thank you Cassie for sharing such a GREAT tutorial!

Ridding of the Sicklies

I've been absent for two weeks, I think, (If I'm doing my math right!). We've all been sick in our neck of the woods, first me a week ago with a little cold I couldn't shake. Now I've graciously shared it my two little boys who are experiencing the symptoms a heck of a lot more than I did. I don't buy boxes of tissue, so we're going through toilet paper twice as fast with three runny noses in this house! Their poor little immune systems...they just aren't as strong as mine yet, I guess. I'm going to have to sterilize the whole house once it's all gone because of all the snot and hacking and weezing that's infected our house air. Bleagh!!!

We're all now on the mend and I hope to be adding some new photos of what we've been up to soon. Several destashing projects, several in-progress projects and a new ornament. Yay! In the mean time, here's a pic from my parents back deck I took back in February. You can see Mt. Adams peaking over that hillside in the distance. One of my favorite things about my parents house is the view they have of the valley facing west. On a clear day you can see both Mt. Ranier and Mt. Adams AND the Yakima valley all the way to Yakima (maybe, never really checked the accuracy). Check back soon!

A Fairy Went A Marketing

Originally uploaded by Ruhammie

I joined A Fairy Went a Marketing swap a month or so ago. It was all due by March 1st. Each person was to create a pixie pouch using MissyFae's tutorial and create ten of the same items that a fairy would like/use/want. Here's one side of my pixie pouch, the other side has two more suede patches with beads and buttons too. All items were from my stash. It's a really cute little bag...I may make more for gifts or something, they are a perfect size for many, many things. I also made ten tiny blue silk market bags that a fairy needs to keep her fairy "cash" in. Each bag included an energy crystal, four Idaho star garnets (yes, real ones actually from Idaho that I dug out of the ground) and a copper key on an ID bracelet to the Rainbow Bank (cuz fairy's keep their gold at the end of the rainbow). As soon as I recieve my pouch that someone else made, with ten different items in it made by ten different people, I'll share with you all. :)

On a technical side note...I CANNOT for the life of me figure out how to get more than one pic from my Flickr page to a blog post. Is this possible?? Is there a way? I linked the pics but I'd rather bring them over to this blog. Anyone have any suggestions?

Craft Room

Last December we bought a new work table for my upstairs craft room from Ikea. We JUST put it together last night. It looks a little something like this right now:When I'm crafting, it may look like this:
Or it may be open fully on both sides like this:
However I have it, I don't think I could ever actually show you my craft table in my craft room after reading a blog (that I once again happened upon) that toured a relatives craft space that was SO AMAZING! I want my craft space to look like this and be as organized and this space is. You HAVE to go over and look at all the beautiful pictures she took of this fun, fun space!! I have all the same stuff, just not as much of it. It has some really great ideas on how to store stash items...I just don't have the space. So, my dear reader...until I have ample enough room and/or organization (whichever comes first), the look of my craft room will remain a mystery (and super tiny!).

Toddler times

The past couple of nights we've been reading a Richard Scarry book to our toddler that we got from the library (not the one in the pic, that one is the cover of the one I got when I was four back in 1981!!) The library book has about 15 different easy to read stories in it. Last night after my husband read him one or two, he decided it was his turn to read to daddy. So CUTE!! He flips through the story explaining what's going on in the pictures. He starts out with "One day.." and as he's turning the pages he'll say "And then..." Good times!