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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Ornaments with sentiments

When I was 7 years old, my family moved to England for a year and half. I have amazing memories of my time there: a little foggy (both in clarity and weather), but great. (Funny fact: the town we lived in was called Crapstone. No joke. Here is where we lived.)

Every December, I remember our one Christmas spent there. We sat around the dining room table and cut out felt stockings and bells. We stuffed them with cotton balls and stitched them shut using a blanket stitch. The top of the stockings were further detailed with cotton, and the bells got a pretty little bow. Dustin has a similar story with popcorn garland.

The reason I remember this particular Christmas craft session in England is because we still have the ornaments. When I moved to Toronto, I inherited all the old Christmas ornaments, including the (very old) Christmas tree (with built-in tinsel!)

Every year when we put up the tree (and listen to 98 degrees Christmas album) we have a laugh at all the old Christmas ornaments, contemplate replacing them with nicer, newer ornaments and then decide that there are just too many memories to be replaced.

Here are some of my other favourites:

1. Ziggy (does anyone remember Ziggy?!)

2. Sequin Snowman/Clown (I think this looks more like a clown, but a Christmas clown just doesn't make sense, so it must actually be a snowman, non? but snowmen don't wear clothes or a party hat... thoughts?)

3. Indian Canoe Boy (who just chopped down his own tree and is bringing it home to decorate with homemade stockings and bells.)

We also went to my in-laws to decorate their Christmas tree. Quite a bit more sophisticated, with several really beautiful ornaments such as this hand-painted ornament from Budapest:

But every tree has its less beautiful ornaments that share an equal spot on the tree due to years of sentimental value. These are my two favourites:

1. Elf-headed Pine Cone

2. ...??... I dont even know how to describe this one. But I love putting him/her on the tree every year.

I dedicate this post to all the less-beautiful ornaments out there that still hang with pride next to the newer, dazzling ornaments. May they teach the New Ornaments a thing or two about fostering Christmas memories so that one day, when the new become old, they, too, will hang with pride and remind us of all the great memories during this wonderful time of year!

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The Party Dress Book

Over the past three years, we've attended 19 weddings. (Probably over 25 if you count the year before that, but my memory doesn't go that far.) What can I say? I love weddings, and if I can make it, I'm there!

The difficult part about attending so many weddings is figuring out my attire. It's an opportunity to get beautiful and buy a fancy new dress, but since it's completely illogical to buy a new dress for every occasion, I am faced with a complex riddle to figure out the minimum number of dresses I will allow myself to buy so that (almost) no one will see me wear a dress twice.

A woman's life is tough. Dustin just changes out his tie or his dress shirt. The permutations are almost endless.

For this year's office-Christmas-Gala, I promised myself that I would not buy another dress. Surely, I would figure something out with my wardrobe of dresses, right? No. But a promise is a promise. So instead of buying a new dress, I made one!!!

I didn't know I had it in me! (Which is why I had told very few people about this project in the likely event that I had to abandon ship...)

The secret to my success? Mary Adams' new book: The Party Dress Book, how to sew the best dress in the room. The book is incredible. It not only had full size patterns, detailed instructions on fitting, and tips and techniques, but the majority of the book was page after page of inspiration in colours, details, shapes, and fabric. There are sewing instructions for three types of dresses, but most of the dresses in the book are based on the same silhouette.

As I was pressed for time (and lack the skill to sew with silk) I opted to sew a cotton dress using a piecing technique with French seams.

One of the first images in this book is Mary's "Bo Peep" dress. The vertical piecing in the skirt was just so cute!

I chose some beautiful charcoal cotton fabric from the workroom and decided to "fancy up" the dress with some plum organza.

And without further ado, I unveil to you my plum party dress!

(And since none of Dustin's friends from U of T attended the Christmas Gala, I can wear this dress to our last wedding of the 2010 season on New Year's Eve! Hooray!)

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Zippidy Doo Dah!

The zippered pouch: a great way to use up some leftover fabric scraps!

Our church had a craft sale last week and I decided that I should try and use some of the scraps leftover from birdie sling bags and other projects.

There are so many tutorials online for making zippered pouches; I started with this one and then made my own adjustments (like a small rounded gusset so the pouches weren't so flat.) They turn out so great and take under and hour from start to finish!

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