A Major Award

Mr. Parker: It's a Major Award!
Swede : Shucks, I wouldn't know that. It looks like a lamp.
Mr. Parker : What is a lamp, you nincompoop? It's a Major Award. I won it!
Swede : Damn, hell, you say won it?
Mr. Parker : Yeah, mind power, Swede; mind power.

On Saturday night we went to a friend's Second Annual Ugly Sweater party. Last year, I helped her host and these were our awesome entries:

This year, a different friend helped host the party and they chose the holiday classic movie "A Christmas Story" as the theme. Watching that movie on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day is one of my favorite Christmas traditions, and I couldn't help think of these funny costumes I ran across at Halloween:

I decided that if I could find a yellow dress or skirt at the thrift store, I'd go as the leg lamp instead of wearing an ugly sweater, as much as I love me a heinous sweater. I got lucky and on one of my regular vintage-Christmas-seeking thrift runs, I found a large mustardy-gold knit skirt. Two coat hangers, two yards of black fringe and a hot glue gun later, and I had this:

I wore black fishnet stockings and black patent pumps, of course! It wasn't an exact match to the other costume, but you definitely got the effect and everyone at the party knew exactly what I was supposed to be! If I'd had more time last week, I would have thrifted a cardigan so that The Mister could have dressed as Ralphie's Old Man and he could have legitimately rubbed his hands up and down my leg all night. :D

I even won a Major Award for Most Creative costume. And in a funny fluke, Quin won a random drawing for the big door prize: an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle and a box of BBs!

It was such a fun party--we had an "Oh, Fuuuuuddddggge" fudge-making contest (my entry was fudge with bacon on top), darts in the basement (the "you'll shoot your eye out" activity) and a game called "I triple-dog dare you" involving sticking your tongue to pieces of frozen metal tubing. I love a theme party, and this one was no exception. I hope I can talk them into hosting it next year too! I think I'll hang onto my lamp costume, just in case. ;)

Tutorial: Christmas Reverse Applique shirt

One of the great classes that I got to take at SPARK 3 was learning how to make reverse applique shirts from Amy Tangerine. The technique was so fun and so easy that I knew I wanted to use it to make a Christmas shirt for Maren. I purchased a red shirt from Target, and the fabric is scraps leftover from a vintage tablecloth that I cut apart a few years ago for another project.

For the shape, I knew that I wanted to trace a Christmas tree-shaped cookie cutter that we have. For reverse applique, basic bold shapes are easiest to work with. I also used a disappearing ink pen and some matching green embroidery floss.

The first step is to find the center of your shirt and mark it with a few straight pins. I actually ruined my first shirt when I 1) tried to just eyeball the center and 2) used a ballpoint pen instead of a disappearing ink pen. Let's just say that I'll be making for Maren a reverse applique Valentine's Day shirt with a BIG pink heart shape in the middle! So trust me, take the one minute needed and mark the center--you don't even need to use a ruler, simply fold the shirt in half, armpit to armpit.

Next, you'll trace your shape. In Amy Tangerine's class we used ballpoint pens, which will generally wash out if you spray them with a bit of hairspray or rubbing alcohol. I don't know what happened with the pen I used on that first red shirt, but it would NOT come out even though I treated it multiple times with hairspray, alcohol, stain pre-treater and even Carbona wipes. Head to JoAnn's with your 40% off coupon and buy a disappearing ink pen made for sewing.

Next, you'll need to flip your shirt inside out. You want your fabric scrap to be larger than your design, because it's hard to get it pinned precisely into place if it's too small. Secure the fabric scrap to the shirt using straight pins, taking care to only pin it to one layer.

 Now you'll turn the shirt back right side out and begin to sew. In Amy's class we used embroidery floss (all 6 strands), but for her shirts that she sells, she actually uses pearl cotton. I have lots of colors of floss so it's easier for me to just use that. Thread your needle with no more than a yard of thread and tie a knot in the end. Start coming up from the bottom so that your knot will be hidden on the back. Here is the CRITICAL part: you are NOT sewing on the lines you drew. Let me repeat that--you are NOT sewing on the lines you drew! You are actually making your stitches about 1/4" OUTSIDE of your pen line. Your pen line will later become your cut line. Continue sewing around the entire design. How long your stitches and how far apart they are is up to you. Once you come back to the starting place, make another knot and cut your thread.

Turn the shirt inside out again. Now you're going to trim your fabric about 1/2" outside your stitches.

Turn the shirt right side out again. You'll be able to see your stitches and your drawn shape. Now is the fun part--you're going to reveal the fabric!

Very carefully pinch ONLY the top layer of t-shirt fabric and snip it with your scissors, then follow your drawn line and cut all the way around. Sometimes, my stitches weren't exactly 1/4" inch from my drawn line, so I just take care to make my cuts evenly spaced from the stitches. Remember, any ink lines that show will disappear when you wash the shirt.

And...ta-da! Admire your cute reverse applique shirt! Maren wore this yesterday to her class Christmas party and program. When I dug through my cookie cutters to find the tree, I found a few others that would make really cute reverse applique designs:

I definitely think Maren will be sporting a bunny shirt for Easter, and Porter needs a shirt with that cool airplane shape! The best part about this craft is that you only need a tiny bit of fabric, so you can be creative. You don't even have to do a shirt--you can do a bag, apron, hat, or anything made out of fabric. This is definitely a craft I'll be doing again and again!

Weekend Junk Finds: Vintage Christmas

Now, to be honest--I didn't find this stuff this past weekend. Another weekend, yes, but this weekend I was too busy for junking! Saturday night I had some friends come over to craft and enjoy brownie & peppermint ice cream sundaes, which meant that I spent the entire day finally getting the tree and the rest of the house decorated. It took literally hours and started to feel like work rather than pleasure at about Hour 4, but the upside is that my house looks beautiful and at least I got it all done in one day! Usually, I have the mess and Christmas boxes strewn about for half a week while I decide, a little at a time, where everything will go. This year I had a deadline, so it forced me to make quicker decisions and just get it done!

I do love opening up my boxes and reacquainting myself with all of my pretties, and adding each year's thrifted finds to the mix. I've been hitting the thrifts regularly, searching for treasures! Here are a few things I've found this year:

Lots of pretty, bright ornaments in primary colors.

Lovely pale pinks and aquas too, as well as a vintage green swirly plate.

A bagful of random Christmas stuff that turned out to be much better than it looked on first glance! There's a plastic Shiny Brite nativity, a handful of sugared bells, a few spun heads, a tiny Christmas stocking, a hard plastic angel, and a few yards of really neat colored aluminum garland, which is now residing on my Christmas tree!

Handmade jeweled ornaments, the second such set that I've found. The base is satin ball ornaments, and then somebody used straight pins to affix ribbon, sequins, and pieces of broken costume jewelry to the balls. I found a set like this last year as well, so it must have been a common craft. I'm generally in the "more is better" camp when it comes to vintage Christmas, but even these are over the line for me. So thirty minutes later I had this:

 A nice little pile of vintage sequins, pearls and jewels to repurpose in my crafting. It did give me pause to wonder what crafts I've made that will show up in a thrift store in 30 years, that someone might buy and take apart to use for scraps!

Did you do anything fun and festive this weekend?

PS--I'm linking up with Thrift Share Monday over at Apron Thrift Girl!

Red and white striped straw wreath

When I flew to Arizona last month for The Mister's Ironman race, the woman sitting behind me on the airplane was looking at the December Women's Day magazine with this cover, which caught my eye:

And then what I realized that the darling wreath was made of red and white striped straws, I practically snatched it out of her hands to get a closer look! Then I spent the rest of our vacation searching for a copy of the magazine of my own, but didn't find one until we were at the airport for our return flight to Colorado!

On Wednesday, even though the decorations weren't out, I still have loads of gifts to buy and the tree is laying in pieces in the front room, I decided I was making that darn wreath! I already had the straws, purchased by the gross from Orson Gygi this summer. I bought them in-store, but they are definitely the most economical source from whom to buy the straws that I've seen yet. They also carry blue and gray striped straws.

If you don't have the December Women's Day magazine, you can find the instructions for this wreath and 5 other cute wreaths here. I was able to find the 6" flat floral and craft ring at Michael's in the aisle with the other wreath forms and floral wires. I simply used a piece of white computer paper glued it onto the form with a glue stick. From there, I proceeded following the instructions as written.

When I got to the final ring, I very carefully applied just a small amount of glue to each straw before sticking it down. I wanted to make sure that no excess hot glue would squeeze out and show since it was the top layer, but for the previous two rings, I just put the glue down and then placed the straw on top of it.

It really was easy, and I love how cheery it turned out! It took me almost two hours to mark and cut all the straws, then glue them one at a time, but the time went quickly since I was catching up on the final two installments of "Downton Abbey."

And now I have a bowl of leftover straw bits to repurpose--you had better believe I'm not just throwing those away! I have some red beads and white yarn and I think I'll have Maren make a garland with those and the straw pieces.

This was such a fun project! I know those striped paper straws come in all sorts of colors, and you could make a wreath out of any of them--black and orange and gray for Halloween would be neat, pink for a baby or bridal shower, or rainbow colors would be really fun as well! And if you can't find the striped straws, check out this clever paper 'pixie stick' sunburst wreath at Sassy Style Redesign.

Vintage Christmas books by Susan Waggoner

There's the $1 store, and then there's the $100 store. You may know it by another name: Costco. I'll tell you, I cannot seem to get out of that store without dropping one hundred bones on something or other, and it's usually not anything very interesting: diapers, wipes, TP, OJ, string cheese, butter. Knowing how easy it is to part with Benjamins, I usually steer clear of the books and movies section of the store to keep temptation at bay. This last trip, I was not so successful and it took me about 5 seconds to put these three books in my cart.

Each one was $11.99, which is a bit lower than the Amazon price. All three books are by the same author, Susan Waggoner, who has written several books with cute vintage illustrations on the cover. Waggoner has four vintage Christmas books:

Christmas Memories: Gifts, Activities, Fads and Fancies 1920s-1960s
 

It's a Wonderful Christmas: The Best of the Holidays 1940-1965

Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas: Crafts, Decorating Tips and Recipes, 1920s-1960s

Under the Tree: The Toys and Treats That Made Christmas Special, 1930-1970

Costco only had the first three on the list, but I've seen the last one in the stores. I've made it through It's a Wonderful Christmas, and am reading about the 1930s in Christmas Memories. So far there is a little bit of overlap of information between the two books, but not so much that I wish I'd only bought one or the other--I'll update when I finish Christmas Memories. The Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas book is new for this year, and it contains craft instructions in addition to the historical information. I haven't read that one yet either, so I'll come back and add a review when I finish.

In all, they're cute books; easy to read and they have good information about the history of some Christmas traditions we enjoy today (such as decorated store windows, sending Christmas cards, etc.) I'd definitely recommend them if you are a fan of vintage Christmas style!

Nutter Butter Christmas treats

Three cute, easy Christmas treats you can make using Nutter Butter cookies and dipping chocolate:

Chocolate-dipped reindeer with pretzel antlers! From laceyreimann.com, but I can't seem to find the original source post on that website.

http://myprettypurse.blogspot.com/2009/01/snowman-cookies.html

Snowmen sporting M&M buttons and TicTac noses. From My Pretty Purse.

Santas with white chocolate beards and red sugar hats. Love the white chocolate chip used as a pom-pom! From Penguin Stamper, via Brown Paper Packages.

I do believe I'll be putting Nutter Butters on the ol' grocery list this week!

Yardstick Christmas tree

Still no Christmas tree up around here--in fact, the Thanksgiving junk is STILL up! Ack. I brought the bin up from the basement and I started taking things down, but just haven't managed to devote the measly hour it will take to get it all done. The high temperature for today is forecast to be a lovely 10 degrees above zero, so I think it will be an ideal day for staying inside and getting rid of the turkeys and pilgrims once and for all! It's time to get Shiny & Brite all up in here!

In the meantime, I do have one small tree displayed:

I bought this darling yardstick tree at a craft fair from the girls who run this Etsy shop. The truth is, I have enough vintage yardsticks saved up in my garage that I could make a forest of my own trees, but the instant gratification of this one won out over my DIY sensibilities.

The star on the top is made from yardsticks broken in half down the width. I think it would also be cute to make a star out of folding ruler pieces. I have a couple that my kids have broken that would be perfect, in fact.

I love projects made from yardsticks! I bought a cute frame in Arizona made from a blue yardstick that I can't wait to put up in Porter's bedroom, and I bought an awesome $3 table at the thrift store this summer that's just begging for a yardstick makeover (which will have to wait until it's more than 10 degrees out). I even have a whole Pinterest board devoted to things made from yardsticks and rulers.

What's the coolest repurposing craft that you've seen using old rulers and yardsticks?

Ironman Arizona & Meeting a blog buddy!

Today it's snowy and cold and icy here in Denver, but just two weeks ago we were looking at palm trees in Arizona when when we traveled for The Mister's Ironman race!

If you're unacquainted with the insanity that is an Ironman Triathlon, let me break it down for you:

• 2.4-mile swim
• 112-mile bike ride
• 26.2-mile run

For a total of 140.6 miles

So you get to run a marathon, but before that, you get to swim and bike for a million hours. And THEN you get the pleasure of running a marathon. Crazy, no? Athletes start at 7:00 am and have to be finished by midnight, and in both the swim and bike stages there are time cut-offs as well. I think I'm putting it mildly that it's not for the faint of heart.

The Mister had done a half-Ironman triathlon (70.3 miles) last summer and decided he wanted to try for the Big Daddy Ironman this year. He has been training literally all year long, putting in hundreds of hours at the gym, in the pool, on his bike, working with a trainer, a nutritionist, and a coach. He is a good example to me of goal-setting and working hard!

The race was scheduled for November 20 in Tempe, Arizona, so we decided to take the whole family down south to cheer him on. We stayed at a Courtyard Marriott just 10 minutes' walk from the race site, which was extremely convenient. However, as a tradeoff--we were all squished into one small room, and we had the pleasure of hearing the freight train across the street roll by, horns BLARING, at ALL hours of the day and night. Porter has a hard time going to sleep when he's not in his own bed, and since it was imperative that The Mister get some sleep before his race--I got to drive Porter around on his own personal tour of Tempe & Phoenix each night to get him to fall asleep, then had to haul his sleeping body inside and up to the third floor and pray he'd stay asleep the whole time. Oh, and due to our schedule, 3 of the 5 nights I started this little routine at later than 10:30 pm.

The race with the swim started at 7:00 am and I didn't get to see that part--just couldn't handle dragging two kids up and getting them fed, dressed, and down to the race site that early in the morning, especially since I'd been up all darn night long listening to that stupid train! We did get to go and see The Mister when he came back to start his second bike loop.

We also got to see him when he finished his bike ride and started his run.

He looks pretty good for having been going for 9 hours already, right? After that, we didn't get to see him again until he came to the finish line at 10:21 pm. At that point Maren was freezing cold and whiny and exhausted, so much that she fell asleep in Porter's stroller. Porter was beyond wired and insisted upon being held (since sister was in his spot), and I pretty much felt like I had run a marathon of my own in trying to keep track of everybody, keep the kids patient and fed and dry-diapered, and stress over my phone's battery dying and being terrified of missing The Mister at the finish line.

But he did it, and I couldn't be prouder of him! It's an incredible accomplishment that few people are able to claim. He says he wants to do another one in a few years. It may be that long before I'm rested enough to consider it. Ha!

On Monday morning after the race, The Mister's agenda consisted mostly of laying on the hotel room bed, so I stole away for a few hours.

I got to meet the lovely Linda from Reminisce..and this and that! I've 'known' Linda through blogging since at least 2007. She is just as warm and sweet and friendly in person as you would imagine if you've ever read her blog! And let me tell you that her kitchen is even cuter in person than in the photos you see on her blog!

We had lunch and then Linda took me shopping to a few of her favorite thrifty haunts in her neighborhood. We visited SAS fabrics by the pound (amazing place..wish we had one in Denver!) and a couple of thrift stores. At the last store, we both found treasures! Linda found the darling glass cake plate shown here and a few other great things (including vintage Pyrex) and I found these:

which had to be hand-carried home on the airplane, but happily, made it all intact!

It was a busy and exhausting but fun weekend for us all. It was exciting to cheer for The Mister and see the results of all of his hard work, and an absolute pleasure to finally make a blog friend into a 'real life' friend!

And this is why I can never get anything done around here...

Alternate post title: Why has nobody invented boarding schools for 2-year-olds?

This is what happened in my bathroom this morning, in the time it took me to scrub half the baseboards in the stairs and run to the basement to switch the laundry.

He works fast, I'll give him that.

I read other blogs and always wonder how the authors manage to get so many projects done and cute crafts made.

They must not have two-year-olds in their houses.

Or maybe they have one of those mythical creatures of whom I've only heard about and dreamed of: a non-destructive, well-behaved toddler.

We don't have one of those in our house. He starts first grade when?