Wowzers! It's been a year since I've posted! A lot has changed in a year. Boyfriend became Fiancé, he proposed to me on Valentine's day! We are planning a wedding for next fall! We also bought our first place! I am very proud of us that we bought and paid for it and that we own it. We put a lot of work into it going in, so we did pretty well for ourselves. Anyway, we've been living in our new place since April, and I've been doing lots of crafty little things, but I made something a few days ago that I thought would be super cute to post pictures of, but I'll get to that in a minute.
Last week I put up my Christmas decorations! I know, it's not even Thanksgiving yet, what was I thinking? But, I wanted my house to be pretty for Thanksgiving, and Fiancé's family was going to come over the weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving with us early so that we could go to my family's on Thursday. So, I put up my $5 tree that I thrifted last year and a few cute decorations, I didn't want my place to be over the top Christmas-y.
I've taken up Pen Pal-ing! I hand write letters to four girls in the U.S. and I have an email buddy from the UK. It's so much fun writing on pretty stationery and putting in stickers or just something special for the reader. And I love going to the mail box and finding a letter from a pen pal. I would much rather find a letter than a bill! It just amazes me how cultures are so different, even with my pals in the U.S. sometimes I have to explain certain things, which, of course, is no problem. And I have to say, when I started pen pal-ing I was very into writing letters and sending them through mail and I wasn't sure if I could afford international shipping, cause lets face it, just sending a letter internationally is EXPENSIVE, not to mention the amount of time it would take to get the letter to it's destination. So, when I got an email asking if I was still looking for pen pals from my (now) friend in the UK, we agreed to email each other instead, and I have to say, I love that too. Don't get me wrong, I still love the handwritten letters and the excitement of seeing one in my mail box, but I also love that the emails are so much faster, I can get a response in a few days rather than a week or longer. So, I guess, to sum up, shout out to my pen pals! You're all wonderful!
Anyway, a few of my pen pals and I are doing a package exchange for Christmas. Just a few things, nothing expensive, to send to a pal to let them know you were thinking of them. Here are the packages I put together:
- a NC post card
- a NC key chain
- a hand sewn (by me!) pouch, it's small enough for a key chain or purse and has plenty of room on the inside to hold money or lip gloss
- a pair of hand made (by me, again!) earrings
- a Santa hair clip (also made by me!) ^^This is what I'm going to show you how to do
- and a few cutesy little pens!
I love these little pouches. They're so cute, and easy to make! It only took about an hour to put each one together, and that's with cutting out the shapes and pinning things and the sewing. I had the zippers already, but I got the fabric from Wal*Mart. They have, in the craft section, these large rectangular fabric swatches that are about 10-12 times the size of the pouches I made. I got four different patterned fabrics and cut out two squares (the whole piece of fabric was folded down to the pouch size, so when laid out flat it has all of the folds indented, so I cut out two of those squares) for the outside of the pouch, and two squares of a different fabric for the inside to line it. I also attached a little piece of fabric to attach to a key ring.
The hair clips are also super easy. Made from felt, which you can get at any craft store, and attached to a hair pin, which you can also get at any craft store. I just cut out the shapes, put in a few stitches to hold it all together, and hot glued to a hair pin. I've already made all of my Santa faces, but I thought I could show you a few pictures of the process while I made a turkey one:
I cut out the shapes I was going to use, and I sewed them on. For the Santa face I just used four basic colors, white for the beard and hat lining, red for the nose and hat, black for the eyes and tan for the face. The turkey had a dark brown body, a rainbow color of feathers- red, green, purple, and yellow- and I cut out the same kind of shape that I used for the feathers to make wings on the front, then a little white and black for eyes, a yellow beak and a bit of red for that little dangly thing (what's that called?). These are super easy in that it only took me about 20 minutes to put each together. I sewed on the pieces and then glued the whole thing to the hair pin, you could probably glue all of the pieces on if you wanted, instead of sewing them, but the hot glue gets really messy, and I felt like sewing them on really anchored them.
That's all for now! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
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