Tuesday, December 23, 2014

2014 Ornament Swap


My co-workers are so creative! Here are this year's holiday ornament swap ornaments. I saved some room on my tree for these new guys. It's hard to choose which ornaments to put on my tree as my collection is growing bigger each year!

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Peppermint Christmas Tree Garland



After I made all my glittery hot air balloon ornaments, I had a LOT of scraps left behind. 
It would've been a waste to just throw them away. So I used a big hole puncher and punched out some circles.
Then, I sewed them together side by side to make a lovely peppermint garland for my tree.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Hot Air Balloon Ornament

I found this tutorial online to make paper hot air balloons. I used glittery paper to give them a holiday sparkle. They were relatively easy to make. The only hard part was cutting out the pieces. The tutorial video shows a fancy paper cutting machine. My paper cutting machine consisted of an X-acto blade and a rather sore index finger.

Monday, December 01, 2014

Snowflake Stamp Gift Wrap


I had received a package the other day. The box was stuffed with kraft paper to protect the contents. Instead of throwing the kraft paper out, I decided to reuse it and make some pretty holiday gift wrap! I bought this snowflake stamp at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse during my last trip to San Francisco. It's one of my favorite spots to visit if I'm in the Bay Area. 

I also got to find gems like these to decorate my holiday cards:


I learned Christmas seals were bought as an extra charitable stamp for the holidays in order to raise money for tuberculosis and lung disease.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Starbucks drink & barista costume for Amelie & Faith

This year, Amelie and her cousin, Faith, had a rather interesting idea for their Halloween costumes.
Amelie wanted to be a Starbucks drink.
Faith wanted to be a barista.
I was able to make a cup with white felt. 
To add some structure for the rim, I used 1/4" PVC tubing I bought from Home Depot.
Believe me, I wasn't the only one looking for costume ingredients that day.
I saw a lotta dads with their kids on the search for bits and pieces to make costumes.
I used iron on transfer paper to make the logos.
I even misspelled Amelie's name as many baristas tend to do!
For the hat, I used three yards of white tulle sewed onto a felt helmet type hat.
The straw is made with a cardboard tube from wrapping paper covered with green construction paper.
It is secured in place with a lot of hot glue.
Faith's barista costume was easy peasy!
I bought a green visor and apron on Amazon.com for under $10.
Again, I used iron on transfer paper to make the logos.
They look ready for their school's Halloween party, right?

I'll be spending this Halloween giving out candy to the kids in my building. 
I've never done it before! 
So I prepared and bought a big big bag of candy and proceeded to sort the poisonous from the nonpoisonous.
("Poisonous" = for Gina to consume) 

H A P P Y  H A L L O W E E N !

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Peanut Butter Ice Cream.

I made peanut butter ice cream!
This is the recipe I used, however, I used 1 cup milk.
I had also bought a king size Reese's peanut butter cup when I was PMS-ing a few weeks ago. 
I never ate it so they were chopped up and stirred into the ice cream mixture.
It turned out delicious!

Sunday, August 03, 2014

Wild blueberry scones.


Helen's mom picked these wild blueberries while on a hiking trip. 
"Give these to Gina," she told Helen, "She'll know what to do with them."


Eh... okay.

What to do... what to do...
I had bought clotted cream on a whim the other day.
Might as well make some wild blueberry scones!


I used Ina Garten's recipe as a basis.
They look pretty good!
I'm about ready for some tea.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Toy donuts for Clementine.


 For some reason, I was itching to make felt donuts.
There are so many cute ones on Pinterest!

So what do I do now that I've made half a dozen toy donuts?
I certainly can't keep them for myself so I'm giving them to a little someone across the pond who I'm sure will play with them well!


These were so fun to make.
Perhaps I'll move on to make other pastries?

Nah~ I have too many half finished projects to complete first.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Green Tea Ice Cream


Last year, I tried to make green tea ice cream. It didn't turn out that great because it was more icy, less creamy. This time, I tried to make the texture better and added dark chocolate bits. I used this green tea ice cream recipe, except added more heavy cream to get the texture more creamy and soft. Green tea is bitter so I also made brownies to accompany the ice cream.

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Postcard from the Bay Area.


For my annual vacation, I went to Berkeley to visit some very good friends!
I did the very artsy thing and took my vacation photos on film.
I put my handy dandy 35mm Holga to good use.









I did most of my shopping at Daiso...
-________-

I wanna go back there again!

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Shiba Baby Quilt - START!

An artist blog I follow posted this super cute shiba inu desktop wall paper. I left the artist a comment saying this would look awesome as a fabric print. I never think people actually pay attention to comments but this artist certainly did! Boy, was I pleased to see this listing on Spoonflower:
Shiba and Owl

I ordered a yard in organic cotton sateen. When it finally arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to sew it up into a quilt. I went to Jo-Ann's to buy some white flannel with blue polka dots for the back side. It 's a little contrast to the little blue pillow the Shiba in the print has on its head!


I had planned on just quilting on the machine like I've done before using Martha Stewart's tutorial. But I didn't want to stitch over the cute Shiba Inus. So I decided to try hand quilting circles around the doggies. 



This will bound to take me forever! But I need a quiet project to work on. More progress to come!
 
Check out Elda The's blog: http://thousandskies.com/

Monday, March 10, 2014

Apron for Amelie.


My cousin, Amelie, called me the other day:
"Hi unni. Could you get me an apron?"
"What for?" I asked.
"I wanna bake," she said.

I got a feeling she's been heavily influenced by a book series I had gotten for her birthday called "Cupcake Diaries".

So instead of buying her an apron, I made one.  I refuse to be a fabric hoarder and had to make a bit of a dent in my stock.  I had bought this candy patterned cotton/linen fabric from Spoon Flower awhile back:

Sorry, but it appears this particular print doesn't exist anymore!
I went to Purl Soho to buy some fabric remnants and cotton twill. I needed just a little more fabric to make the apron. Remnants were the perfect amount and very inexpensive.

Luckily, Amelie's favorite color is purple so I was glad the color was already incorporated into the fabric print. 

It took me just a couple hours to construct and finish it! Sur le Table had some essential baking tools on sale so I picked up a purple spatula. Now, Amelie is prepared to start baking!

Monday, February 10, 2014

I Heart Oreos.


I baked homemade Oreos last night. I used the same recipe for festive Oreos, except this time, I used a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out fun shapes. I had found some heart shaped sprinkles at the supermarket and used them to decorate. Also added some red food coloring to make a pink cream filling.

Saturday, January 04, 2014

Hot Water Bottle Cozy.



The temperature high yesterday was 16 degrees.  I'd like to think the office was closed in observance of my birthday. Really, it was because of the bad weather. I spent the afternoon making a cozy for my hot water bottle.
They get rather hot on their own. If you're not careful, you can even burn yourself! It's good to have a layer between your skin and the water bottle. Less burning, more toasty~
I made a simple drawstring pouch with a terry lining. It was a lot easier than I thought to line the interior of the pouch. It gave the pouch a some structure and padding to prevent any burning.

Hope everyone is staying warm!

Friday, January 03, 2014

Celebration cookies for me.


I'm celebrating a birthday today. Party will be on Saturday. I made festive Oreos as a giveaway for my party guests using THIS recipe. I think next time I will roll the dough out and cut out shapes with a cookie cutter instead of slicing a log. Makes for prettier looking cookies.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
^___________^