Whitniffic Whatnots

The time is drawing near for my co-worker's baby to arrive! We decided to have a pizza party to celebrate at work, and I volunteered to make dessert and come up with a few fun games and decorations. The baby's gender is going to be a surprise to mom and dad (see my gender neutral shower gift here !), so we wanted to pick a theme that made sense for either. Since her husband drives a race car that's yellow and black, we thought a bumble bee theme would be really cute. I'm short. The ceiling is high. This was a struggle. Let's do dessert first. I had a bunch of leftover ice cream cones from a cookout a few weeks back, and decided to try making cupcakes in them. I topped each of the cupcakes (cone cakes?) with a cute ice cream-like swirl of fluffy yellow frosting, and adorned them with some edible sugar bees and flowers. For funsies, I hid a plastic baby inside one of the cones before baking. Whoever finds it gets to be the "honorary...

Our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore is hosting a really cool fundraiser, and I think I want in! They're allowing artists (or whoever) to come in to the store, pick an item for free, and "flip it" to auction off at an event in November. It's like Flea Market Flip in real life! I stopped in at the store on my way home from work today, and I was eyeing up lots of fun pieces... These two lamps remind me a little bit of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie Style. I thought about doing some stained glass shades for them, but I haven't done any glass work in forever and don't really have the tools or materials anymore. Plus, the lamps were a little bit wobbly and I thought maybe the glass tops would be too heavy for them. I really liked this weird steel colored 3-light chandelier. Some of the little pieces were textured almost like corrugated galvanized sheeting, which makes me think of farmhouses and industrial stuff- both super popular decorating tre...

There are definite benefits to organizing a craft room. Obviously, there's improved functionality, it's easier to find things, the floor is actually visible again (in my case...), but there are also "benefits" that come hidden as overwhelming amounts of unfinished objects. Howie likes his new "cave".   I unearthed a LOT of UFOs while sorting through both the dining room (which had kind of turned into the "formal crafting room" for a while) and my upstairs craft room. I made an effort to fold them all neatly and assign due dates to each one with a little sticky note. I tend to work best under pressure, and if I have a deadline for something I'm more likely to get it done. Little stacks of UFOs. The infamous IKEA LACK shelf, full of UFOs. Painting the patched walls is also on my list. My list ended up being divided into two sections; time-sensitive projects for others and whenever-I-feel-like-it projects for myself. Among th...

So, I've had my new (used) Husqvarna Designer Topaz 30 since March, and I had yet to try the embroidery functions on it. Until last night...   A friend on Facebook posted a picture of a cute little round patch featuring a UFO abducting a bull (or perhaps a triceratops?). It looked like a Girl Scout patch and it make me laugh, so I Googled how to make iron-on patches... which led me to Urban Threads . They have such an amazing selection of modern, cool and stylish embroidery patterns that I really like. I've only had experience so far with my mother-in-law's collection, and let's just say that she has much more traditional taste than I do. BUT... I don't really see the point in having an embroidery machine if I can't design my own stuff, so of course, I also did some searching for digitizing software. I ended up downloading a free trial of SewArt64, which is kind of old-school and cheesy, but it seems to work well for simple designs.   With the hel...