I know, I know....

Bad Sarah.

No blog posts in quite a while, and Google Reader says I have 91 blogs to read! Shame on me!

But I have been spending some awesome times with Mom and my younger brother... and I was in the Christmas Eve service at church, which seems to be becoming a bit of a tradition...

On the crafting front, I have an awesome skirt in progress for a cousin... She got the pieces in a box for Christmas and before I did a 5 or 6-tiered gathered skirt, I wanted to know she'd like the colors.

I also have some other presents up my sleeve... more on them later.

Right now I have to go wash up after helping my mom in the calf barn feeding her 4-legged babies... She takes care of the milk cow's calves so that they can drink milk replacer and we can drink their milk. I bottle-fed 3 today, and did buckets and watered lots...

Pictures soon! Food now....

I am enjoying my family and crafting LOTS... Pictures to come, so sorry I have neglected you guys but family first. We are playing Taboo and I am typing between turns, but this is a REALLY fun game. Here we are earlier. Even the littlest ones.

Done!!!!

I am interrupting my regularly-scheduled posting to inform you, dear reader, that I am DONE!!!

As in no more, that is all.... And I am oh-so-happy about it. And pulling out the sewing machine while I stay with Boy's family for a weekend or so and making a frenzy of Christmas presents and reclaiming some awesome garments.

So post with pictures to come. For now imagine me doing a giant happy dance in my pajamas because I slept WAY in after not sleeping for 40 hours... In my defense, I was up by noon...

Family Traditions

Nicki, over at Mimi's Room, posted about Christmas traditions today, and challenged her readers to do the same. So I did. And now I wanna hear about yours. Write a whole post if you like, but here's my challenge: Comment on this post with your favorite element of your family tradition, pretty please...

Every Christmas, there are certain things we as a family get together to do... In my extended family on my mom's side, we draw names from a hat, and have a Secret Santa... More often than not that side of the family ALL gathers for Thanksgiving, and so we have Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. It's quite a feat to get everyone together, as my mom is the youngest of 5, and there are 17 grandchildren and 3 great-grands... The catch is that half of the grandkids are grown. I am in the middle and 20... And it is an adventure to get us all together and feed us all out of one kitchen... Thank goodness for double ovens.
This is just grandchildren and great-grandchildren... There were 7 adults and a few friends too... One family was missing last year. And everyone in this picture went to the movies after dinner and we saw Enchanted.
The adults cleaned up and hung out while all of us were gone, minus the baby I am holding... btw, not mine. Her proud daddy is standing right next to me... And the third great-grand was born about a month after this was taken.

We do have one really awesome tradition on a smaller scale... In my family, we put Jesus in the manger on Christmas Eve after a candlelight service, and we get to open one present each... Then we put on PJs, wait up for Santa, and have latkes and Pancakes Christmas morning.

my attempt at a tutiorial

As it is finals week, the last thing I want to do is learn something. But if you scrapbook, this might help you as much as it helped me! This page needed some help so I made a kind of woven paper to fill up spaces in my cousin's graduation... Pen just wouldn't cut it. I used a rotary cutter to make strips no smaller than 1/8 of an inch, and no larger than 3/8, and this AMAZING glue roller-ball pen... We're talking amazing. I wove the paper like we wove placemats for grade school... Over under over under! It was a bit tedious, but the impact is nice. The open weave in Naval Academy colors is exactly what this page needed.
Glue keeps pieces together after cuts.

SWAPping has a purpose.

I havn't done much at all to follow along in SWAP land. If I am being honest, I didn't think about how it could have purpose other than adding some cute stuff to my wardrobe and teaching me things.

Then I realized I have a lot of clothing, thanks in no small part to pictures if my closet, and this article but I didn't have many good staple pieces that I would feel comforable wearing all of the time and being the woman in the airport with the tiny bag.

So now my SWAP has more of a purpose at the moment... I am going to make the pieces I need to coordinate and travel well and fill in gaps in my wardrobe. The bottoms don't all have to go with each other, and if the tops don't go with every bottom it won't be the end of the world. I'm not an official entrant because I'm playing with some of the rules to meet my needs, and I may not make all of the pieces. Just what time and money allow. My jacket is going to be red, so that won't be a big deal to pair with black or brown.

• I will use black and grey in bottoms with my browns
• I will make a black skirt on the casual side that still has structure
  
• I'll make a brown dress that won't wrinkle all to hell and that I can wear dressed up and down
• I'll make attempts to make tops, but won't stress over them. It'll be okay

Okay, off to think some more... maybe find some inspiration. I really need to study though. A storyboard will have to come later.

Small Spaces....

Lots of STUFF to put in them!!!

I, as y'all have doubtless figured out, am a college student. And as such, I have learned that you have to squeeze everything you can out of your closet space...

My closet is about 3 feet wide, and goes floor to ceiling. The bar to hang things on has a shelf, but is on the low side...

And I know, I know, I should probably get rid of some of those clothes to make everything fit.... But I went through after I saw just how crowded things look in the pictures, and really, the only things I don't wear in all of that are the ones that are too big because what they say about someone who sews for themselves getting to stuff for themselves is SO true.

Some key things...

-Tap nails will hold scarves and have them ready to go
matching hangers are your friends.... BUT not if they are all wires... I am rid of all wire hangers! It was an accomplishment, trust me. The stick-ums with the Command stuff by 3M are also VERY friendly to all kinds of paint finishes. I put them in every graduation/housewarming present I give to people living in space that isn't permanently theirs. That's what's holding purses and stuff.

-A shoe rack is also your friend... and the best ones aren't always meant for shoes. It keeps all 10 pairs that are my favorites handy, and the rest go in an inexpensive bin on the floor. These organizers come in different widths, and it is SOOO worth it to buy the canvas ones for a few extra dollars. The one in the photo has held up through LOTS... 5 moves.

-A system that I follow EVERY time I put things away. Even if it looks crowded, I know where everything is, and what I have. My clothes are mostly organized by type of clothing: light jackets/blazers, then long-sleeve shirts, then medium-sleeves, then sleeveless, then skirts, skirt suits, pants, pant suits, formalwear, and winter-weight coats.

-A separate place for sweaters and sweatshirts. They are in bins, taking care of vertical space! Using the space above the rack where everything hangs is crucial. My closet was a mess before I got those bins. If my sweaters were on hangers, they would take up space AND get deformed! Sweaters are sorted by sleeve length and hoodies are on top. That vertical space also holds emergency supplies like a first aid kit and my asthma stuff. Laundry supplies also have a home. So do extra hangers.

Okay. That was this week's small space. There are a few to do... But it's finals week, so everything is SUCH a mess!

I am about to go work on Christmas presents but I wanted to share this with you first...

There's a great giveaway going on at Momma MC...
Check it out!

Milestone!

Sometime Thursday, my little number of times people have seen this page count hit 1000!

I feel like that might just be a beginner's blog milestone...

And another possible milestone... I might start a mini series of posts... About making small spaces do big things... I live in a dorm room so I have kinda mastered the art in some ways. I have too much stuff and it has to fit somehow... I was thinking about that while putting my clothes away. Wouldn't that be fun??

But I have a crafty post, a theater post, and a camera with legs before that'll happen.

Happy weekend!

I am an idiot.

That is all. Just felt the need to share my complete and total stupidity with y'all out there in blogland.
Now I have class and a paper due 5 hours before I thought it was. bah.

Craft Addict Christmas!!!

Mary at Confesssions of a Craft Addict is giving away this amazing package to any of you in the lower 48 who are all-around crafters.... check it out and hope I win!

yay! Picture time!

It fits.
On my body.
Whew!

Not gonna lie, there are fitting problems... like those ripples on the bodice. I don't think that's just because I used a relatively cheap muslin, so boo...
The dress is as fitted as I want for it to be, meaning it is not too tight or too loose. And that's on the first shot at drafting, so I am pretty pleased with myself. But there are things I need to fix on the muslin...

• those ripples! urgh...
• A lining. The pictures you see are unlined. I will have to take the dress apart for a lining pattern, so yeah....
• room for cups maybe? The back means no conventional bra, strapless or otherwise, so I am trying to decide if I want to mess with an unconventional one... Right now I am leaning towards no. If I already had one I'd do it...
• the straps

See anything else?

Thanksgiving pictures

I drove 12 hours one-way to spend Thanksgiving with my Grandma! It was amazing... The stories alone, about my aunt and uncle and dad, my grandparents growing up, would have been well worth the trip. We've talked about doing it on the other side of the family, but I thought about it again tonight. We need to record these stories. I don't know if any of you out there are tech savvy, but I can't help but think it would be an amazing thing to sit down with wedding pictures or baby pictures or no pictures and just tell stories... pass the voices and the experiences on to generations to come.

I had a white Thanksgiving...
I slept in. I went shopping for scrapbooking supplies, and pajamas, and I slept in. I spent time chilling out with my grandma, and scrapbpooked and cooked and ate and talked and just enjoyed it. I also got to see my aunt Dalene and Uncle Gerry, and look at all of Aunt Dalene's scrapbooks... She has quite a few! Hers are pretty! Okay. Off to the study place. But I will leave you with a teaser: Pictures now exist of me in the muslin of the red dress! You'll just have to come back and see.

mind block...

I hate those. Don't you hate those? This one needs to end SOON! I have to finish this before 1:20!

Had to vent. Real post about Thanksgiving tonight. With Pictures.

December?

It has felt something like winter here for quite some time, but for some reason I still thought of December as being in the distant future... Wintery weather has been going on all around, and snow started a while back... But snow means playtime in my head. One of my favorite songs around this time of year is by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra, and it's called Winter Weather, and I love it. I do. But I assocoate it with snow, not December...

I had to write 12/1/2008 on a paper today.... and I am going to take a moment to protest. It's not allowed to be December yet. Because December means the end of the term. And the end of the term means the end of the year. And the end of the year means Christmas... And I'm not ready for Christmas yet. The boyfriend was talking about how he has half of his Christmas shopping done... grr... He has finished with me, and I've barely started on him. (On that note, if anyone knows where to find sweater knit that is indestructable, let me know.)
The end of the year also means this year has flown by... holy cow... So much to do before the end of the year. That list...
Okay, now for me to quit with the psyching myself out and go find sources for a rocking presentation...