Photo silhouettes and other goodies from this week

I made a couple more mushrooms and started the purple ninja for my friend this weekend. Sorry, no pictures yet. They will come soon enough.

So since I don't have pictures of many projects that I've done this weekend, I thought I'd mix in some cool things that I've come across this week.

First, here's a project that I did this weekend. It has changed a little bit since I took the pictures, but I wanted to share.

Inspired in part by Katie Sokoler at Color Me Katie (again!), I cut out some pictures of my family and taped them to our front door. Here is a close up of me:

The kids:
And what kind of show and tell would this be if I didn't share the whole window of the door?:

Now some things from my week...


Let's see, on Monday, I captured the elusive Super Keys.





To our right, you will notice an excerpt from a note that I left for my husband this week. What can I say? I love him...

...And I'm a little bit dorky...but it works for us.


On our left, we have a stamp from a letter that I received on Friday. It's Maggie Simpson! I'm impressed that the post office didn't stamp it. They must have known how awesome this stamp is or something.



That is what I made in my free time this week! How about you?

Keep your eyes open!

As I was pulling out of the coffee shop on my way to work this morning, I had to stop and wait for traffic. Being the constant day dreamer that I am, I looked up into the sky for a moment and saw something wonderful.

It was a rainbow peeking out of a hole in the clouds.

Sneaky little rainbow...

Thanks for making me smile.

Have you seen anything unexpected that made you smile lately?

We all have to start somewhere

Last night, I was looking at my very neglected Myspace account and found some buried treasure!

Dog, octopus, and turtle

The dog stands alone

A couple of pictures of my very first amigurumi! I used the book, Amigurumi World, to teach me the art of crocheting amigurumi. I remember being really surprised at how fast I was able to complete the animals. I think that's what hooked me (ahahahaha no pun intended--it just happened!) along with being able to make stuff for my kids other than blankets and sweaters. Blankets and sweaters are awesome, but if you're going for that eyes-light-up-when-they-see-it look then usually toys are a better option for kids.

What an awesome find!

More mushrooms and half an octopus

I made 3 little mushrooms for a friend's baby and started an Amigurumi World style octopus for my son this weekend.

When I first started making amigurumi again I made a mushroom for this baby, but I stashed it away instead of mailing it as soon as it was ready. I'm kind of glad I did now because a month later after MANY mushrooms made, I would be embarrassed to send it now.

For a beginner, it's not too bad. The stitches are loose and I hadn't quite perfected the pattern or art of the color change yet, so it's just a mess by my standards today.

What's a crafter to do?

Why, make 3 more mushrooms to replace it, of course!


I'm quite pleased with how they came out. I got to play around with some of my bright colored yarns some more which is always fun. And I decided to do a sort of counting theme with the spots on the mushrooms. So you will notice each mushroom has a different number of spots for counting and are different colors for color identification.

The baby's only 3 months old, but we're starting her early. :)

What have you made in your free time?

Project Completion - Crochet

I finally finished the mushroom bag!!


<--Head banger mushroom here is supposed to represent how happy I am right now.


Actually, the whole family is pretty excited and that even includes my husband. I'm excited because it's done and pretty much what I thought it would look like. My kids are excited because it's for them. And my husband's excited because he thought it was "a cool idea." And because I was so excited about this last night that I took pictures so I could share the completed project with you.

With that I present to you--in all of it's glory--the mushroom bag!!

This is the bag all closed up:

And this is the bag open with some of the contents pulled out:

And here is a view from above:

Now I have received a request to make dragons for at least two people. And I still need to make a purple ninja for L and a pair of ninja heads for my mom's mother's day present. (Yeah...she's that kind of mom.) So it looks like I will be posting more crochet projects that I made in my free time very soon! Hopefully some more patterns and tutorials, too.