From the monthly archives: December 2011
Have you all seen the site Handmade Ryan Gosling? A few bloggers are taking pictures of The Notebook star and are then adding pick up lines on them. But not just normal are-your-feet-tired?-because-you’ve-been-running-through-my-mind-ALL-day kind of pick up lines … lines that appeal to crafters.
I’m not a Ryan Gosling fan (have you seen my handsome husband?! Yowza.), but these just crack me up so much.
(all photos from Handmade Ryan Gosling)
I die. These made my day.
~Whitney
There’s nothing like a photo dump to get back into the spirit of blogging, right? Timothy still has to do something to all the Christmas pictures that he took, so this is a little iPhone photo recap of our past few weeks.
I attempted fair isle mittens once again as a Christmas present. These ones actually worked out! Kinda.
I found out that my sewing machine has hidden talents. Seriously. You just press a few buttons, keep your foot on the pedal, and then drink some green tea and post some Instagram pics while it does its magic. Genius.
We rocked out some McDonald’s eggnog shakes. Yum to the eeee.
My mom hosted a hot chocolate bar for our church’s praise team complete with chocolate spoons and marshmallow candy cane stir sticks. I think I’ve gained five pounds alone from all her desserts!
We had some Christmas Eve Indian deliciousness. Timothy’s family sold their Indian restaurant and the new owner’s wife asked if I was Timothy’s Russian sister. No joke. I’m still trying to figure that one out.
We got to see his lovely Indian family and I got to squeeze his adorable little cousin. I mean seriously, look at that face!
Oh talk about heart melting. I know this is crazy blurry, but Timothy never holds babies and I had to capture this rare moment!
And yeah, that happened. Timothy and I were out Christmas shopping when his car blew up. Well, more like stopped working. The shifter cable thingamabob broke and the car wouldn’t shift to anything. No park, reverse, or neutral. Pretty scary!
I had visions of our entire bank account going towards fixing it, but we serve a mighty God!!! The shifter problem was a defect in the car and GM fixed it completely for free. We even got a free oil change. A very Merry Christmas miracle indeed.
And I leave you with the sweetest little boy. Those lips! Those eyelashes! He’s my sweet little cousin from North Carolina. They just came in to celebrate Christmas and he already has my heart, along with my other sweet cousins. I’ll post more pics as soon as I get them from Timothy.
So that’s a little taste of what we’ve been up to. What about you guys?
~Whitney
I hope you all had the merriest of merry Christmas season! I woke up this morning sad that Christmas was over, but then I remembered that I have another family Christmas on Wednesday – well hark the herald!
I’m sorry for all the non-blogging recently. I didn’t think anyone would notice but after a few texts and e-mails, I learned otherwise. So thank you to those who made my day! Ha!
I have been as busy as a bee working on Christmas projects. I literally had zero extra minutes of the day to blog. But I think I’m back now, we’ll see!
So what about you all? Please tell me someone else way overestimated their skills and time and ended up Christmas crafting until 6 in the morning every night last week? Or is anyone kind of bummed that Christmas is over? I’m trying to pull a birthday week miracle over here and pretend that Christmas isn’t over. These decorations are staying up until spring!
Merry, merry, merry!
~Whitney
My original name for this was Yarn Eating Crochet Chain Link Christmas Garland That Takes Longer Than It First Seems. But that’s not too catchy.
I was searching on Pinterest for random inspiration when I came across this pin. And for some unknown reason it called out to me. Not the ghetto graffiti gangster vibe, but the amazing crochet chain vibe. I figured I could recreate it in knit, but that would take ages. Crochet is a lot quicker (although it sucks up the yarn!), so I searched around until I found a pattern I could use as a starting point.
Enter: Shara Lambeth Designs and her amazing crochet chain necklace tutorial! Be sure and check her site out – it looks like she has some awesome crochet ideas! I studied her tutorial and then modified it a bit to make a larger garland. I’ll share with you my version.
I started with an H hook and one skein of my new favorite yarn – Vanna’s Choice in Honey. Loverly. I ended up using two and a half skeins and plan on at least doubling that to get the length I want. It takes up so much yarn!
I chained 30 stitches and then connected them together with a slip stitch. It helps if you chain loosely.
Then single crochet in every stitch. I went around six times to get the height I wanted.
After you’re done with that, you crochet the two sides together to form a ring. This is where the chaining loosely in the beginning really helps out.
I had difficulty with this part for awhile until I learned to just stick my hook through the right side of the “v” of each stitch as shown. If you put your hook under the whole stitch it makes it look bulky and weird.
So you insert your hook through the top of each stitch and then through a stitch directly below it. Pull the yarn through to close up the gap, and then repeat for the rest of the ring.
When you’ve gone all the way around, pull the yarn tails through the last loop and tie a tight knot.
Weave the ends in like so and you’re done with your first ring!
Then you can repeat the process, except this time loop the chain through the ring before you join it. Keep on looping and ringing until you reach your desired length and you’re done!
All credit to the basis of this pattern goes to Shara Lambeth – thank you so much for sharing your creations with us!
I love how it turned out! I had to stop crocheting before I reached my desired length, so I’ll probably be finishing it up shortly after Christmas. I want to keep it up in our house long after we take down all our Christmas stuff. Any suggestions on how to use it year round?
~Whitney
I found tons of inspiration on Pinterest for felt ornaments. I had planned on making version of all my pins, but one night I just started crafting and went a totally new direction.
These were inspired by this pin. I cut out the smallest shape and then cut out the larger shapes to compliment it. I borrowed my mom’s amazing embroidery floss collection and kind of winged it. And, yeah. I think I love embroidery!
I think I would like it even more if I tried it on regular material and with a pattern. My stitches are a little crazy. But I still like the way these turned out! I made a few other ornaments that turned out quite a bit less than spectacular.
After playing around with my own creations, I turned to my favorite craft site, The Purl Bee, and used an amazing tutorial for “snow ball ornaments.”
These are my favorite ornaments ever! They were a breeze to make and very repetitive and soothing to the mind.
The longest part of the process was cutting out all the circles and ironing them. I cut all the circles and ironed them in one night and then took all the pieces on a road trip with me. A few hours of sewing was all it took to make some cute ornaments!
The only thing I changed from the original tutorial was making a larger template for my circles. I wanted these to really fill in the tree. I took these pictures at night so the color is kind of wacky, but the black looking ornaments are really navy blue.
The next felt decoration I made was a tree topper. I was going to make smaller ones to use as ornaments, but my poor fingers and brain couldn’t take it. Again, I got the tutorial from The Purl Bee. I had such high hopes for this guy.
Actually, he doesn’t look horrible in these pictures. But in real life? Timothy says it looks like a star made of bunny ears and I say that it looks like two dying starfish clinging together.
For one thing, it’s HUGE. Like 18 inches across huge. And my hand sewing lacks a little finesse … and talent.
The seams are really wavy and it just screams handmade, but not in a good way. It’s proudly displayed on our tree, however. I told Timothy that I didn’t care how much we laughed at it, the crazy thing took three whole nights to make. We WERE going to use it and we WERE going to be happy about it. Dying starfish or not.
So that almost sums up the ornament DIYs of the year. I’ve got one other DIY up my sleeve! And for a little hint, it was inspired by this ghetto fabulous pin.
~Whitney
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I'm honored that you took time to stop by my blog! My name is Whitney, and I'm a diy loving, piano playing, sewing obsessed, thrifty, non-house cleaning, crafty newlywed. I love God, my husband, and life as a wife. If you'd like to know more, just check out my About Me page. Much love!
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