Crafter by weekend

For those of you who don't know, I only moonlight as a crafty girl. Most of my day is spent doing Engineering related work. With other Engineers. Mostly men. We make jokes like "that guy is team mu" (mu is the static coefficient of friction. being on team friction refers to causing trouble. team mu is a surprisingly large team.) We're geeks. Root 3s, so to speak.

My crafty cottage getaway last weekend was such a breath of fresh air. (We didn't craft the entiiiiire weekend. There were breaks to catch up on the latest Bieber gossip, double dream hands, and this romantic music video; we found our Mr Darcy; we even spent some time with Harry Potter. I digress.)

My last post was the "thank you" post. This post is about the amazing crafting that was happening.

After Jenn finished the "where my heart belongs" embroidery, she worked on a quilt. Her fabric choices are just fabulous, separated by simple, natural beige to let the colours really pop.

Isabelle is slowly working away on an amazing crochet blanket, inspired by Jenn's find on this blog.

Laura worked on a super cute embroidered wall hanging. It was mostly done after the cottage weekend. Those are two mugs. "Filled with love." So cute.

I worked on a birdie sling (yup! the factory is reopening!) and also a baby quilt. But I can't share yet. Don't want to ruin the surprise. I did have fun sewing opposite Jenn in a "duelling sewing machine"-like setup.

It's so inspiring to spend a weekend with fellow crafters. Engineer by day, crafter by weekend!

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Crafty Cottage Getaway

How was everyone's weekend? I hope you had as lovely a weekend as I did.

I spent the weekend in a gorgeous cottage on Joseph Lake in the Muskoka region, thanks to Jenn and her generous friend Steve (and family!). It has been a dream of mine and Jenn's to devote an entire weekend to crafting, and this venue was a super wicked bonus.

From Crafty

From Crafty

To say our thanks, we ensured a gourmet menu for Steve. For his family, we adorned the cottaged with a couple crafts.

The menu for the weekend included fruit and granola crepes, winter root vegetable soup, quinoa salad, made-to-order eggs, and delicious snacks to boot... But my favourite meal was our dinner on Saturday night. Jenn whipped up an amazing cheese fondue made with gruyere and oka, and served it with an assortment of steamed veggies, nutty bread, cured meats, and crisp fruit. So delish!

For the crafty thank-you gifts, Jenn spent a good chunk of her weekend perfecting this beautifully embroidered wall hanging.

We also whipped up a set of four coasters. Jenn had a log cabin block lying around (don't we all?) so I cut it into four, much like a disappearing nine patch, and zigzag stitched it to layers of muslin. A little stitch-in-the-ditch, and tada! Gorgeous coasters for a gorgeous cottage.

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Wedding cards: I do

I've just returned from a weekend of crafting. I can't wait to tell you all about it. Here's a little crafty appetizer that I've been meaning to post for a while.

I love to keep things. Dustin likes to declutter. Regarding the subject of whether or not it was important to keep all the wedding cards from our friends and family, we were at an impasse. I thought it was a no-brainer. Of course we needed to keep the cards so we could read them over and over until we were old and grey. Dustin felt that we had already read them, enjoyed them, and should then recycle them because they will likely sit in a box in the closet forever.

Our compromise was to re-craft them to become new weddings cards! They're a perfect "personal touch" for the happy couple.

Most of the time, I craft the cards in a mad rush because the wedding is the next (sometimes same) day. I don't usually remember to take a picture to share on my blog.

After about 3 years of these re-crafted cards, I have a few pictures. So now I will share.

So many things are great about making wedding cards from old cards.

Reason #1. I have read and reread the cards so many times. When I'm looking for a card with a good design, I will always pick a few to read through; some of which I can't quite bear to cut up quite yet. My good friend Jenn gave us a beautiful black and white card that was perfect for re-crafting. I've finally brought myself to cut it up.

Reason #2. I can steal the captions. Most of the time, I don't have a page-full of congratulatory remarks for the bride and groom. It's nice when the card says some of it for you, takes up a little space, and gives the inside a punch of colour.

Reason 3. I also love that I can play around with matching colours and patterns. It took me a while to realize that I was a terrible scrapbooker. I bought all the supplies, oooo'ed and ah'ed at all my friends' scrapbooks, and then struggled to finish anything. Making these wedding cards is like micro-scrapbooking. They are small contained projects with all the creative options of scrapbooking.

I think the most time consuming part about making these cards is deciding on matching paper. Since the realization of my failed scrapbooking career, I had a large stack of paper with no future; when I make these cards, I only use paper that I've already got. It was incredibly easy at the beginning, but as the pickings got slim, it was harder to find a nice match. Challenge accepted! I spent one evening earlier this month pairing cards with paper. Hopefully this speeds up the process when I (inevitably) forget about the card until the day before (or of) the wedding.

I have one friend who donated a stack of her wedding cards to us. In return, I gave the couple some of the cards that came from their stack. Hopefully they didn't mind me reading all the lovely congratulatory comments in their cards, too! If you're ever at an impasse about keeping cards, try re-crafting them! Or give them to me and I'll re-craft them for you!

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done well: now in a book!

Dustin totally won the "best Christmas present" award this year.

The judging system consists of up to 10 points for taste, 5 points for presentation, and 5 points for originality. Yes, this is the judging system used by Iron Chef.

My Christmas present to Dustin was a new wallet.

3 points for taste (100% leather plain black-brown non-designer wallet), 4 points for presentation (I wrapped it in a cute green and blue paper with a matching blue bow; bonus marks for double sided tape), 1 point for originality (I bought him a wallet 8 years ago; that wallet was falling apart, so I bought him another one).

Total: 8 points.

Dustin's present to me: MY BLOG IN A BOOK!

Let's break it down.

Taste: 9 points. He chose a hard cover 7"x7" cute, small size; it was printed on high quality paper by Blurb, and he kept the jacket cover simple.

Presentation: 1 point. It didn't arrive in the mail until after Christmas. Packaging was FedEX. 1 point for the easy-open-rip-tab.

Originality: 5 points. I was so surprised and soooo excited about this gift. I've mentioned in passing about backing up my blog in case something happened to blogger.com and perhaps to make it into a book. Super extra bonus marks for doing all the layout designs and personalized dedication on the jacket sleeve.

Total: 15 points. Destroyed me.

I love writing this blog. I wish I had more time to make my posts creative, but flipping through the book brought back so many great memories of adventurous and creative things that have happened in this short time.

Here are some pictures of how great the book turned out:

1. In Honour of my Grandma / My Grandma Initiative: the post that started it all. I had to wipe my tears when writing this post because I could no longer see what I was typing. I miss my grandma.

2. Tomato and Thyme Risotto: I got to write so many great things about my balcony garden and all the fruit and veggies that I made into delicious dishes!

3. Boy, am I ever beet! I went through quite the ordeal trying to find recipes for all those beets that came in our CSA box.

4. My Birdie Sling Factory: the Amy Butler Birdie Sling will always be one of my favourite things to sew.

5. Beautiful BC: my amazing trip to Garibaldi Park and the crazy hike up to the Black Tusk!

6. That's my girl: the back cover of the book was the original picture I used for my blog. My beautiful doggie (with a real knack for making you feel guilty leaving her alone at home).

Thanks so much to all of you for reading my blog! It's so motivating to hear from you through comments and emails. Here's to many more great memories and many more great blog books!

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Bah Hamburger

Happy New Year!!! I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. My Christmas was filled with the usual too-much-delicious-food.

Most of our meals were the usual yummy Christmas foods: turkey, stuffing, roast beef, lobster... We were also spoiled with my parents' amazing home cooking. But this Christmas, the hamburger -- yes: hamburger -- made not one, but two appearances.

In Ottawa, we had lunch with my sister at The Works, a gourmet burger joint with a touch of workshop pizazz. Milkshakes are served in pyrex measuring cups; the salt and pepper shaker are incandescent lightbulbs. And the burgers are huge. Dustin ordered the Hamburger Mary (real mayo, fried egg, ripe red tomato, cheddar cheese & crisp bacon strips) and I ordered the Big Ben Plus (montreal smoked meat, sauerkraut, & swiss...a la Kravitz with mustard) but with a portobello mushroom instead of a beef patty. I ate maybe half of my burger.

In Toronto, we went for a nice dinner at Mildred's Temple Kitchen. From the name, you'd think it was a cozy little rustic restaurant, but it was quite the chic little lofty restaurant. I ordered a seared tuna with grilled eggplant on polenta. Dustin: the hamburger. Usually I would try a nibble or two of burger. This burger was so delicious I took 3 bites.





For dessert we ordered profiteroles. If you wanted to order a "mini dessert burger", the profiterole would be it. The puff pastry "bun" was light and crisp, the ice cream "patty" was sodarn tasty. It's been a good burger holiday. I don't think we'll be making a habit of it, but I just found out that Mildred's Temple Kitchen is participating in Winterlicious. And the burger is on the menu...

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