craft-a-thon

so, my friend Lindsay and i recently started a 24-hour-crafting session we like to call a craft-a-thon. we set up camp in her dining room, put a movie on the computer and begin crafting away. this time around, i needed to finish a couple projects for a craft swap i'm doing through this site.

we watched Away We Go (my new favorite movie!) and began sewing away. i can't post pics of the craft swap items, so as not to spoil the surprise for my partner.

but i did get antsy this morning, as all my crafts were done, and began playing with some scrap fabric Lindsay had. this is a wrist pincushion, using all repurposed materials--scrap fabric, and the filler is hole-punches from the machine at work. i love the birds!!

garden planning

a coworker and i got to talking about fresh produce over lunch, which brought me around to thinking about our (my roommate/mom/my) garden and planning and such. i'm creating a wish list and looking up heirloom seed companies.

our goal is to make enough to can/stock for next winter, so i think planning should start there. i also want to buy meat from the farmer's market over the summer and store it away, since we will not be growing our own. step by step we move toward being locavores (those who eat only what can be grown or gotten locally)...

rereading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. great read! that and my new Urban Farm mag!!!

adoring God in the meantime

i heard this quote from the worship leader this morning. he explained how we often get distracted/consumed with the object we are praying and waiting for, when we could really be focusing on "adoring God in the meantime." such a beautiful concept. in a world so focused on doing, our Father invites us into a period of being. and not just being, but being with Him! i find this both overwhelming and comforting at the same time.

the New Year has begun without much

hoorah in my own life, except a bitterly cold 5K on New Year's Day. In case

you can't read that, it says 7 degrees. BRRR! A good group of us will be training for a half-marathon in May.

i

just got my partner for the craft swap mentioned earlier, and so am d

ebating some ideas for her. i would love to

design a make-up bag,

as she said she is looking for bags of all kinds. it's a frugal-living swap so everything is made from items you already have to help facilitate easier frugal living for your partner. so fun!

here are some items that were Christmas gifts. the quilt was for my beautiful 4-mo-old nephew, the art portfolio for my sister, Lauryn 2, and the bag for my cousin Esther. the bag, if you can't tell, was made from an old pair of corduray pants that had a hole in them. so fun to design and create all those things!! soon, i will be creating a t-shirt quilt that i auctioned to help my old church, The Mercy House, in Anderson.

oh, and got a crap-ton of fabric using Freecycle.org. great resource if, like me, you're looking to repurpose items and/or avoid supporting the sweatshop industry. :)