A cute gift for a cute kid

Several weeks ago we made plans with friends to meet for dinner this weekend. Since we first made plans, I have had something brewing in my mind as a gift for their adorable 2.5 year old daughter, Katie, who would also be coming.

I wanted to do some sort of quiet activity or kit, possibly some sort of felt book with a pocket full of the letters in her name. I also had in mind that I wanted it to be small and help to entertain her while we all visited. The weeks and the days have slipped by and I never got it together.

About two hours before we were going to meet, I pulled out a big box that holds my felt supply and a quick AND cute gift came together in about 20 minutes... a portable felt "board" and shapes.

For this project, I used 35% and 40% wool felt. I think it would work great with other wool blends or acrylic felt. I used Sizzix dies to cut the letters of her name - first and last, as well as a cute little shamrock in green. I cut out other shapes with scissors -- flowers, stems, leaves, lines to make a tic-tac-toe grid and small circles in various colors to be used as playing pieces or polka dots. A yellow circle can be a happy face when a mouth and eyes are added, or a shining sun when little rays are added.

The felt pieces cling to the background felt, so there are lots of possibilities for play and for learning. All of the pieces fit nicely in a slightly oversized gift card tin I had on hand. Two pieces of felt wrapped around the tin and tied with a ribbon completed the kit.

Oh How I Love to Stitch!

I made this little pillow for my dear sweet friend Linda. I started it months ago with the intention of giving it to her for Christmas. That did not happen. Several weeks ago I learned that she was coming to town (from California) and we made plans to have breakfast on Monday, so I was motivated to finish it before we got together.

After finding a font I liked, I printed out her name with the mirror image option selected on my printer. I then used a light table and traced her name with an iron on transfer marker. After ironing the design onto muslin, I thoroughly enjoyed hand stitching an outline in orange and then an outline of that in green. When stitching something for someone, I can't help but think of the recipient while embroidering - especially when their name is the focus of the project! Because she is such a special person and friend, this project brought me a lot of joy.

For the back, I used several fabrics that coordinated with the orange and green threads. When I bought these fabrics at The Old Craft Store in Carrollton, I had no idea what I was going to do with them. I didn't even decide that I would use them for this project until way after I had selected the orange and green thread for the stitching on the front. I machine pieced the back and then machine quilted it on my sewing machine. I sewed the two pieces together and stuffed with dried rosemary and peppermint.

When I put the pillow together (by putting right sides together and then turning it out) I made a couple of mistakes by getting the sewing machine stitches too close to the edge. Trying to cover up the mistakes, I sewed all the way around the edge of the pillow with green embroidery thread. Because of the thickness of the quilted back, it was difficult to stitch around the edge. My finger was quite sore! But, of course, I am ready to start working on another one.

Dryer Repair 101

A few days ago our dryer stopped working and my husband reluctantly took it apart to see if we could figure out what was wrong. We had already purchased a belt hoping it was something simple like that. While at Lowe's to get the belt, we looked at new dryers. Of course, the one that my husband "selected" was over $1000. I saw one for less that $500 that looked good to me but it still did not have a much capacity as the current commercial capacity dryer that I have. I didn't see anything that I wanted more than the dryer that I have.

At one point a year or so ago, my husband was able to fix our dryer by removing a sock that somehow made it's way outside the drum. This time, however there was no sock and the belt looked okay.

I was surprised that the inside of our dryer (Amana Speed Queen Commerical Capacity Dryer) was really simple -- there is a drum, and a motor, several wheels, and a belt.

Once we took the drum out, we discovered a wheel that was broken. Not only did the wheel look like it would be easy to replace, we found out that we could order it online for $4.32 plus shipping. Even better, we found a place in Dallas (Appliance Part Depot) that had the part. When I went to the parts place, I decided to buy other parts that might need to be replaced on the dryer. Tim, the rep that waited on me, gave me good information, and was so helpful. We spent $80 on parts and were able to not only fix our dryer ourselves and save some money, we are feeling sooo green. While the dryer was taken apart, we cleaned it thoroughly. There was a lot of dust and grime and I can't imagine that anyone who we would have called out to repair it, would have taken the time to clean it so well.

My nine year-old dryer is now running so quietly and even has a light inside! I guess the light had been burned out for so long, I forgot that it even had one. There was a squeak I had gotten used to and now I understand where the squeak was coming from. It took us (75% of it was done by my husband) about three hours to do the repair and $80 in parts (9 separate parts were replaced) and even though I would have rather been doing something crafty, it was so gratifying to be able to fix it, learn something, and to be able to save so much money... not to mention the earth.

New Desktop Storage Cabinet

Last month, at the Stamp Scrap Art Tour show in Mesquite, TX, we introduced our new Desktop Storage Cabinet. I have been using a couple of them to do a bit of organizing and love the clear shallow drawers. The cabinet provides easy access to materials and is a great solution for tucking away a project in progress until it is needed again.

The clear shallow drawers are the 8x10 box frames that many stampers already use for organizing wood mounted stamps. You can also purchase the cabinet without the drawers.

Sometimes, when I need a tag, an embellishment or a charm, I don't know exactly what I want, so having the ability to sort through like-items will be great.

To kick off this exciting new storage solution, we are offering the cabinet with 8 clear shallow trays for $29.00. Get it here. You can see more pictures here.