Lily's color book

It was a homemade Christmas at the Crafty home. And, yes, I am JUST posting about this in mid-March. Nothing wrong with that right? I started making Christmas gifts in October but my sewing machine had to make a visit to the ER in early December. That really put a crimp in the homemade Christmas plans.

And because I was desperately sewing to get projects done in time to mail or gift them (my brother and sis-in-law's quilt is still not done), I forgot to photograph most of the projects.

For my niece Alex and my cousins Hayley & Lindsey, I made crayon rolls (see tutorial here). I made Christmas ornaments for each family but I didn't take a single photo of them. And now those are packed away with Christmas decorations and won't see the light of day until after Thanksgiving.

One of the gifts I made was a fabric color book for our niece Lily. She turns 1 next month. I found the tutorial as part of Sew Mama Sew's Scrap Buster contest. It can be found on Stitch/Craft's blog here. I tweaked it a bit, adding a spread of each color instead of just an individual page. This presented a problem later since the entire book was too big to fit in my sewing machine to make the binding. But I improvised.

Last weekend, we went to southern California for my friend Asma's wedding. Asma, I miss you, come back! Anyway, we had dinner with Mr. Crafty's brother and family and I got to visit with Lily's book. Here are the photos I snapped before we headed back to our hotel for the night:

Winner, winner! Chicken dinner!

Confession: I have no idea where I heard that saying but I like it.

I got an email this morning from Jen at Little Scraps of Happiness letting me know I won her "The Kitchen Linens Book" giveaway. I have been wanting to try hand embroidery and this is the kick in the pants I needed!

Also, this weekend while we were in LA for my friend Asma's wedding (beautiful bride, I'll post pics later), I got Jenny Hart's Sublime Stitching newsletter. She just got a few final copies of the Stitch-It Kit and the publisher will not be making anymore. I wanted to get this last year and the last time I tried to find it, I could only find expensive used copies on Amazon. So as Mr. Crafty slept in our oh-so-comfy (cough, cough) hotel bed, I ordered one. Shhh, I'll tell him soon. But not after spending money on gas, food & stuff in California.

Oh, and in other news, I got my sewing machine back from the doctor! Yippee! Now I just need to get my classwork done so I can sew some this week :-)

Giveaway at Sew-Fantastic!

There's a great giveaway going on over at Sew-Fantastic. She's giving away 25 fat quarters of the most popular Kona cotton solids!

Head over and check it out! (photo from Sew-Fantastic blog)

Nothing crafty to report...

My trusty Singer is still visiting the doc so not much crafty has gone on this past week.

Mom & Dad came to Tucson yesterday to go to the Diamondbacks Spring Training game with me & Mr. Crafty, their Christmas present from us. Storms were moving into the area from California but we were hoping they would hold.

Dad was ready to protect us from any fly balls!

I managed to score some awesome seats! Mom & Dad have a partial season ticket package so Dad emailed me a link to order tickets before they went on sale to the general public. I had to try a couple times to get tickets on the 3rd baseline but I managed to score some awesome seats!

Mom's favorite, Stephen Drew

3rd row, next to the Diamondbacks dugout!

My fav, Connor Jackson - rounding the bases after his homerun!

Unfortunately, the rain didn't stay away. We got rained on during periods of the game and it was called due to the rain after the 5th or 6th inning.

We were up 9-3 at that point and we had enjoyed ourselves so we were OK not seeing an entire game.

Rest of the photos can be found here. You can see how it got sunny for about 10-15 minutes as you flip through them

Prognosis: not great

I called yesterday to see how my lil sewing machine was doing at the doctor. She needs a gear replaced. Ugh, we just replaced 2 of the 4 gears back at the beginning of December! I forgot to ask how much this repair is going to set me back. And I don't get her back until Monday at the earliest, so no weekend sewing for me :-(

I do have to give a shout-out to Mr. Crafty. He dropped my lil girl off at the repair man for me on Monday since I was busy with my stats final. <3 him!

Giveaway at Little Scraps of Happiness

Little Scraps of Happiness is having a giveaway of Snippets! Make sure you check out her adorable Snippet quilt she made earlier this month while you are there.

In other news, the trusty sewing machine is still at the doctor. I guess I should use this time to clean my house?