30 things for 30 years

My cousin celebrated her 30th birthday last summer.  My sis and I wanted to make her something different and something that stood out from your normal birthday gifts.  Upon browsing pinterest, I saw a pin of 30 gifts for 30 years.  I thought that would be perfect. Here's what we came up with:

We found 30 random things that we thought she would like, and we wrapped it up into a gift basket, with cellophane and a bow on top (we added a bow after the picture... sorry).  We added a card where we wrote inside all 30 gifts.

These were what was inside:

We did face some challenges:

1.  It sounds easy, but after a while it gets hard finding small random gifts.  I think the last 10 were the most difficult.

2.  We used this small sand bucket to hold all the gifts.  Lucky for me, I played a lot of tetris, I was able to get it to all fit, and not be top heavy.  Good luck to her if she ever wanted to take it out and fit it back in tho.

3.  We put small bottles of alcohol in the mix.  Ususally, this would not be an issue, however, when the party was inside a small water park, having alcohol is more than frowned upon.  Not a big deal, the weather was cool enough that I could leave it in our car without worrying about melted chocolate.

I'm happy to say that she loved the gift and all the thoughtfulness that went into it.  :)  

Overall, I'd do a gift like this again.  Hope this gives you an idea for the next birthday gift you give. :)

Woodsy Themed Baby Shower

Early last month, I helped a friend host another friend's baby shower.  We asked her to think of a theme she wanted, of which she decided on a Woodsy Foresty theme with neutral colors.  There were a few of us working on it together, and everyone did a super awesome job.  Here are the results:

Another great party. :)

2013: Our Garden

This year we're finally attempting the garden that we have wanted to setup for a while now.  A few years ago, we had the idea of expanding our garden to cover about 1/3 of our backyard... That's about a 18' x 36' area (I think).  Well, the last few years were quite busy... and we just didn't find the time to do it.  But last fall, we finally put up our new fence (to segregate our garden from our lawn and dogs), and as of earlier this month, we cleaned it up, built some garden beds, put some weedblock down, and filled the beds with dirt.  :)

Here's a look of the garden after we put the garden beds in.  We also completely flattened the back side, and made it into a big flat in ground garden area (wasn't done yet when the picture was taken).

Even with the dangers of frost still here (...yeah, I live dangerously like that), I planted a few of the seeds outside, and also began a few trays of seeds inside.  I still have a few seeds that I recently bought and need to plant outside.

The good news is as of today, I finally saw something start germinating in the garden.  I took a picture of it, but you have to look really close at the first few leaves of my bok choy plants. :)  Exciting isn't it!

The indoor plants aren't doing too bad either.  Most of the first tray are tomatoes, the back tray are an assortment of peppers, which usually take longer to germinate.  I'd like to make a heating mat of some sort to lessen the germination waiting period one day.

Anyway, that's what's going on. :) I can't wait to share some more mature garden pictures and harvest pictures with you guys.

2013 Crafting for Charity: Blanket #2 and #3

I did it!  I took sort of the easy way out and did a couple of quick crochet around fleece blankets, but these are the last two blankets.  They are warm and soft and I hope it gives whoever receives them some comfort.

I'm preparing the package and sending it out soon to Project Linus. :)

Note to self:  Making the Crafting for charity month = to the shortest month of the year??? Maybe not such a good idea!

On to National Craft Month (March).

Happy Crafting everyone!

2013 Crafting for Charity - Blanket #1

Tomorrow is Make a Blanket Day for Project Linus.  I thought it would be a great time to update my status on my goal of 3 blankets.

I first started crocheting a blanket.  It was turning out nice and thick.  Unfortunately, I ran out of the yarn I had planned to use.  I know I could have kept on crocheting with a different yarn, or buy another yarn, but I scratched the blanket as my first and decided on making it a rug instead.  Check it out:

So, as of early this week I was at 0 of 3. :(

Luckily, I had a backup plan of an easy blanket to make using fleece.  Here it is:

It's a super simple method to make the finishing fringe.

1.  Cut the corners (I remove a 4" x 4" square from each corner )
2.  Cut strips.  I used a piece of painters tape 4 inches from the edge as a guide of how far to cut.  In this blanket I cut about 1.5" strips.
3.  After cutting the strips, snip a small hole just above the middle of each strip.  When you get to the corner, don't share the hole for the two corner strips.  IMO, it just doesn't look right.
4.  Fit the strip thru the hole from the bottom of the blanket and pull.  Now do that for each hole.

And there you have it.  Finished and super simple.  1 of 3.  I hope to create another one like this tomorrow for Make a Blanket Day.  How is your charity crafting going?

Crafting for Charity Month 2013

As you may have noticed, I didn't do the "Pledge for Beanies" this past season.  Mostly because I decided that the time of year was too busy for me to make what I could.  Upon evaluating it all, I decided  on a few changes.

1.  I will call it "Crafting for Charities Month" instead of "Pledging for Beanies."   This gives more variety on what I might do each year, as I can do Headhuggers one year and Project Linus the next.  Spread the Love, right?

2.  I decided to change the length of crafting for charities to one month instead of two.  This is more on a trial basis.  I may consider doing two non-consecutive months.

3.  The charity we will support or craft for will change from year to year (reason for name change).

4.  The Crafting for Charity month will be in February (at least this year, we'll see how it goes for next year).

With February off to it's start, I wanted to kick off the 1st Crafting for Charity month of Rad Linc Crafts.     This month, I will craft for Project Linus.  I'll be making various blankets to send to them.  I may look make some similar to the ones I've posted before.  My goal is to make at least three blankets before the month is over (February is kinda a short month).

I encourage you to join in with the crafting.  I'd love to hear who you are crafting for this month.  Feel free to send me a message (f t c a n o n AT g m a i l DOT c o m) (or you can post it on facebook) with what your crafting and I'll mention it on one of my future posts this month.

Happy Crafting for Charities. :)

Beaded Wine Glass Charms

With a few beads, some memory wire and glue, you can make these simple beaded wine glass charms.  I made a lot of these for the wedding and got a lot of complements on them.

What you need:
- Memory Wire
- Seed beads (really small ones for ends)
- other beads for decorations (optional)
- bead glue (I use G S Hypo Cement)
- wire cutters (be warned that the memory wire does damage cutters, so maybe buy some cheap ones that you would use only for this application... at least, that's what I did).

Before you start, you should have a design in mind.  Remember that wine charms should be different from each other so people can use them to know which wine glass is theirs.

Okay so here's what you do:

1.  Cut the memory wire so that you almost complete a circle, minus a quarter inch or so.

2.  Put a small amount of glue to the end of one wire and put a seed bead. Do this to only one end of the wire. The glue should hold the seed bead in place at the end.  Lay the wire and seed bead down to let the glue set (ten or so minutes, I think.  Just check if it appears set.  Full drying time is more like an hour).  In the mean time, you can glue down more seed beads to memory wires.

3.  Once dry, you can put the other beads on as the design you would like.  I like making a big bead the focal point, and the small beads for added color variation.

4.  Time to close it up.  While holding the beads away from the open side of the wire, apply a small amount of glue to the open end of wire and put a seed bead.  Again, put it aside, and let the glue dry (about an hour for full dryness).

5.  Once the glue dries, you have your wine glass charm.  You should now be able to attach it to the stem of a wine glass.

(optional:  you can go back and add a drop of glue at both ends of the wire to give it a little more strength)

Tears of Joy Packets

People cry at weddings.  It's just a fact.  For this reason, for our wedding I created these small packets called Tears of Joy.  It's a super simple packet that adds a personal touch to the wedding with very low cost.

Here's what you need:

- Clear Plastic Treat bags (6" x 4.5")

- Travel size tissue packs

- Sticker or printed label (with double sticky tape -- I used repositionable double sticky scrap booking tape, but regular double sticky should work fine).

Here's how to assemble the packets:

1.  Fill each treat bag with 2 tissues from the travel pack.

2.  Fold down the top end twice so the fold makes it somewhere in the middle of the tissue.

3.  Use a sticker or double sticky tape with label to seal it closed.

So, really that's all there is to it.

For the labels, I printed them on cardstock.  You can also use those Avery sticker labels that can be printed on, or maybe those Hershey Kiss stickers that you can print on.

Christmas 2012

Hi all!  Happy 2013.  Cheers to all on another year of crafty goodness.

First off, I have to apologize for my lack of blogging in the last few months.  The last few months, as with the majority of 2012 were exceptionally busy.  My sister had her baby in October and I had the opportunity to be with her the whole way -- which was an experience in and of itself.  My new nephew was born healthy as can be and both momma and baby did great.  Afterwards, we decided to have thanksgiving away from my home, but E and I still took care of the cooking... that required a lot more planning than we thought.  We also had another gathering at our house with my neighbors.  All in all, it was a lot of fun, a lot of cooking, and a lot of planning.

This year, I have made it my new year's resolution to try to blog more.  And it seems my friends and family have decided to help me out some with some crafty christmas gifts. :)  I love them!

Here are a few of my crafty gifts and in essence a brief look on what might be coming up in the blogs:

First a metal stamping kit with some washers.  Exciting stuff.  I want to look into making some charms with these.

Not technically a christmas gift, but my friend saw this book at a thrift store and bought it for me.  So nice of her.  I can't wait to see what I can learn from it.

I've been wanting these books for a while now. I hope to make some really cute gifts for next christmas.

I'm a True Blood fan. :)  I didn't even know this cookbook existed.  So excited.  And this book on Flowers in Wool just looks amazing.  Seriously awesome stuff.

One of the best gifts this year has to go to this bundle of fabric scraps.  My friend found out that I was getting into quilting and decided to give me this bundle.  So awesome!

I've got lots of post ideas still to come.  And since we didn't do a beanie challenge this past year, I plan to do something with Project Linus.  Stay tuned for that.  Thanks again for reading.  Until next post.