Leaf Pins and Sandwich Bread

For the last few months I have been on the hunt for a great sandwich bread recipe...and I think I finally found one!  It is from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.  And it is delicious.  I think the hardest thing about making homemade bread is finding a place to let it rise.  Luckily, our apartment has huge old radiators that provide the perfect warm environment for rising bread dough...who knows what I'll do once summer hits!

This is the resulting golden brown loaf of bread.  Mmmmmm.  My favorite way to eat it is toasted with hazelnut spread.

Well, baking bread is not the only thing I did this weekend.  I also did some crafting with a few things from my "leftovers" box.  After finding these fabric leaves I tried making months ago (the original project didn't work out...but oh well, it happens!), I thought they would make great bases for some new pins.

The first one I made using a crochet chain stitched flower, some buttons, and two of the green leaves.

The second one I tried using an orange leaf as the base for some beautiful buttons.

I love digging into my scrap bucket and figuring out fun things to make from things I didn't think were much use anymore!


Do you have a "leftovers" pile that you create from?

Project Baby Cat Bed

A few months ago all this snow in Connecticut caused the roof to collapse on the carriage house next to our aparment building.  Long story short, when this happened the bedroom window broke and shattered glass embedded itself in the cat bed under the window, thus began Project Baby Cat Bed.

I searched around for a cat bed pattern and found this one at Moda Bake Shop.  They have some pretty adorable patterns on their website.  I tweeked the pattern to be a bit smaller and becauseI wanted to do something different with the top. 

Jessica picked out the browns and pinks and we added the green for a bit of pinache.

The baby cats are still a little unsure of it and didn't pay much attention until enticed with a bit of cat nip...but eventually Annie came over to check it out.

Only time will tell how much they really like it.


Have you ever made something special for your little furry (or non-furry) friend?

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

After making some creative valentine's, I decided that there needed to be a little something special in everyone's envelope.  I have been working on making different felt pins, so I thought some valentine themed pins would be appropriate :-)

For my adorable little niece, I made something special.  I got this new book from my sister and brother-in-law for Christmas called Softies: Simple Instructions for 25 Plush Pals by Theresa Laskey.  Since my niece is potty training at the moment and enthralled by everything that involves, I made her "Lonely Dollop" designed by Shawnimals.

I added a special note just for Mary to make her Valentine's Day complete!

I hope you all have a fantastic Valentine's Day!!!!!!

Valentines for my Valentines

Last year I made my parents a Valentine at our family program at work.  It was not my best card, to say the least.  But, as parents always do....they loved it!  I was reminded of this funny Valentine when I was home for Christmas and saw it proudly displayed on the refrigerator.  So, this year I decided I had better make it a good one.

I ventured forth to make Valentines for my parents, and both of my sisters...but I cannot tell you whose is whose because I still want them to be surprised when they arrive in the mail.  First I had to gather up supplies: paper flowers, doilies, stamps, and some cute little birds I cut from a scrap of fabric.

Each Valentine got a super special touch.  One recieved a carefully crocheted garland of flowers using embroidery floss.  It was hard to do it so small, but since I just used a simple chain stitch, it did not take too long.

The end result could not have been more adorable.

I used a combination of bits and pieces for the next one: a snippet from an old button paper, embroidery floss, and a couple of buttons...

(Don't tell the others, but I think it turned out to be my favorite)

The final Valentine got decorated with a bit of stitching, pieces of a paper doily and two little love birds.

I think they all turned out pretty cute!  Any one of these would make a nice addition to the refrigerator. 

I hope the recipients enjoy getting them as much as I enjoyed making them!


Are you making anything special for Valentine's Day?

There once was a napkin...

When I got married back in October, my spouse and I decided to do a lot of the wedding DIY...(which you will see pieces of throughout the life of this blog)...including the napkins.  Since we were only using them once, we did not hem the napkins, just washed the fabric and cut them with pinking shears.  Now, we have these random squares of green and orange fabric.  Today, two of those napkins turned into something else.

The first thing on the agenda was to make this awesome Rummikub bag. Now we won't have to pass the big box around when it is time to draw tiles, we can just pass this cute little orange bag!

I still had a little bit of orange left, so I combined it with some green and made a simple ruched flower pin.  I started out with a strip of fabric and sewed a zig-zag line to create the basis of the ruched flower.

After pulling the thread tightly to create the ruched line...

I sewed the strip into a circle making one layer of the flower.

I repeated the steps with a strip of green.  Then created a green yo-yo for the center and finished it all off with a now un-smelly button! 

It isn't perfect, but it's cute. 


In what kind of creative ways have you reused bits of fabric?