Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! Since today is all about love, I thought I'd share a little bit about me and my love.

1. How long have you and your significant other been together?

We've been together for about 4 1/2 years. 

(We had been dating only a few weeks at this point. Hence the lack of wedding ring.)

2. How did you meet? {What's your "love" story?}

Heehee, we were both flying out to school and he stalked me in the airport and wouldn't leave me alone. Creepy, I know. The whole story is {here}. 

3. If married, how long have you been married? If not, is this the guy you hope to marry? {do tell}

We just had our three year anniversary in December! 

(We went to Dave and Busters this year!)

4. If you are married, where did you get married at? Big or small wedding?  If not, where would you like to get married? And will it be big or small?

We got married in the truly stunning Washington D.C. temple for time and all eternity! It was an average sized wedding. Since we got married six days before Christmas, we went for a non-traditional reception. Finger foods, no DJ or dancing, people could come and go as they pleased. It was wonderful. 

(This is my favorite pic from the reception. :)

5. Do you have any nick-names that you call one another? Do share!

Um...we mostly just call each other honey. I call him honey bunches of oats when I'm feeling silly, and he returns the favor with honey bunny. 

6. Name 3 things you love most about your honey.

He's very sweet to everyone, he tries to make everyone happy. He is smart and ambitious. He's ridiculously handsome. 

7. Tell us how he proposed? Or your ideal proposal?

Haha, I had come back from a week away at my out of state nannying job. I had to came home to pack up my apartment because my lease ended the next day! It was about 11:30 (PM, that is) and he texted me and said "Hey can I come over?" When almost an hour had passed and he still wasn't there, I knew something was up. It's not like it takes an hour to walk two blocks to my apartment from his. When he finally showed up he had a blanket and his computer and told me we should take a break from packing and watch the stars. We went to our favorite spot and he opened his computer and played me a video he made of pictures of us set to our song. By this point I knew what was going on. He pulled out a shapeless mass and handed it to me. I unwrapped a toy airplane from one of his t shirts and inside the cockpit was a sweet poem he had written. Underneath that was the ring. :) He got on one knee and told me "we should get hitched."

It was well past 1am at this point, and I had to go back to my apartment and pack and clean my brains out before I got kicked out at noon. Good timing honey, good timing. 

8. Is he a flowers and teddy bear kind of guy for v-day, or strawberries, champagne, and rose petals?

He's a "let me play video games for a few hours without nagging me" kinda guy. Oh, wait, what would he get me? Flowers, my favorite, lilies and peach roses. 

9. Are you a sunset dinner on the beach kind of girl, or pop a movie in and relax on the couch?

Most of the time I like to pop in a movie and relax, but I love going out and doing something different on special occasions.

10. Tell us one thing you'd like to do with your significant one day. If you could do anything? Go anywhere?

Hmm...I'd like to go to some exotic island and spend a week alone with him. He's never left the country before, so it would be fun to get our passports renewed and just escape. Or go on a cruise, I'd be ok with that. One day I'd like to start our family, that's something I look forward to. 

11. Tell us what you plan on doing on this Valentine's Day.

This year it happens to fall on a Tuesday, which just so happens to be our regular "date night." We got a really nice gift card for Christmas so we are going to use it to go to a special dinner or some kind. We might wait until later, since it'll probably be ridiculous tonight. 

12. Are you asking for anything this Valentine's day?

Nope, we are on a very tight budget (which is why we are so happy to have a gift card for dinner!) so I told him to make me something. I made him something, see the bottom of the post. :)

13. Give us one piece of advice of keeping a relationship strong and full of love.

Make sure you have lives without each other. Pursue your own interests, hang out with your own friends, keep your own identity. But that doesn't mean stop doing things together!

14.  Show us a picture of what love means to you.

David took this with his phone the other day. Dumb cats, the basket is hardly big enough for one of them!

Wanna see what I made the hubs for Valentine's Day??

Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains, means "I love you" in zombie.

I absolutely and completely, 100% stole the idea from {this} Etsy listing. I was thiiiis (imagine be pinching my thumb and pointer close together) close to buying it, but it just wasn't in the budget. So I improvised. I think it makes him look like he's sucking out my brains. :D

May your day be filled with chocolate. 

Quilted Valentine's Day table runner (a mini tutorial)

You know you've been away from blogging for a while when your dad calls you and says, "Hey, how come you haven't posted a tutorial in a while? I miss seeing your tutorials."

Yikes. I guess it's been longer than I thought since I really posted something crafty huh? I promise I'm being crafty, not nearly as much as I was, but I am! I've been crafting a ton with {Caroline} and {Meg} which means that tutorials are much less likely to happen. Who remembers to take pictures of every little step when you're busy laughing about the funny things your husband does?

I sure don't. In fact, I'm lucky if I remember to take a single picture at all! :) You know how it gets, right?

Sooo...wanna see my almost quilted Valentine's Day table runner?

Yay! I sewed something! Meg let me dip into her fat quarter stash to make this cute runner. Since I didn't take pictures, maybe a play by play will suffice? (Please nod in agreement.)

1) Cut fat quarters into strips. I cut some of them into 4 strips and some into 2 strips. Since they are already the same width everything will line up nicely! I think we used 8 or so fat quarters between the two of us.
2) Sew all the strips together with a 1/4" seam, right sides together. You'll end up with a really long runner, we both cut ours in half since neither of us had a table even close to long enough to hold the runner!
3) Even out your edges with a rotary cutter so everything is nice and straight.
4) Cut out a piece of thin batting and a piece for the backing.
5) Sandwich the batting in between the backing and the top.
6) Baste around the edges. Trim any excess fabric and make sure it's still nice and square.
7) Use decorative stitching (we used a fancy zig zag that makes it look like it's hand stitched) in between each strip.
8) Round your corners with a bowl (I only did this because I didn't have quite enough binding...it sort of give it the appearance of a changing pad so you might want to skip this step.)
9) Apply quilt binding around the unfinished edges.
10) Admire your work.

Um...tada?

We threw in some yellow so the runner could transition into spring nicely. Score one for the lazy crafter! :)

What have you been working on lately?

PS: I am having a facebook exclusive Valentine's Day sale on a whole bunch of jewelry. The sale ends tomorrow so get the deals while you can! {here}

The 4th

If you're a fan of my facebook page, you might have seen that I have declared that 4th of July might be my new favorite holiday. I love Halloween, but I've never had a disappointing Independence Day. What's not to love about grilling, fireworks, and family?

We played with sparklers, and tried out making shapes in the camera. Only my baby sister was successful. 

I tried out some taking pictures of fireworks tips, and some pictures turned out fantastically. MUCH better than they have in the past! I captured colors and not all the pictures are terribly blurry, epic win for me. This was the first time I'd really ever been able to have fireworks in the yard, since growing up, all forms of at home fireworks were illegal. LAME. 

I felt good about it the whole time, but then when I was going through pictures I saw this. David with firework in his mouth, and a lighter in his hand. Husbands.

Our attempts at a nice family picture. Fail. We can't be taken seriously. Ever.

What to expect this week:
Giveaway tomorrow.
Handmade gift exchange post.
Crafty contest details.
Tutorial {food related, you excited?}

Trading Posts round...5? With paint!

Ready for another round of trading posts? In case you are new to KC&A, Trading Posts is when Caroline {of Artfully Caroline} get together and craft and spend all of our husband's money! After blowing a paycheck or two, we busted out the acrylics.

I'm an oil painter, and lemme tell you, acrylics are not oils. Though they are funner, and slightly more forgiving.

Know a chatterbox? Hand her some paints, a brush, and a canvas, it'll shut her up. Caroline and I were so absorbed in our paintings we barely spoke at all! Very unusual for us. This is Caroline's interpretation of the flag, cuz you know, Independence Day is quickly approaching.

And this is mine, with chevron stripes. It crosses painting something AND doing a project with chevron off my list! Hot dang, I'm on a freaking role.

Even Caroline's little Bug joined in the creativity. She calls this Cinderella, she didn't get the memo that we had a fourth of July theme.

Originally I thought of distressing it with stain, but then I got too lazy didn't have the time and decided to frame it instead. I just took an old, glasses frame and painted it black to hang around the canvas.

I'm no decorator {obviously!!} but I think it works. Let freedom ring!

Tutorial Tuesday- Valentine's day treat bag

Confession: I'm totally sick of Valentine's Day decor. I think it's just a little weird to have hearts and pink and sticky sweet lovey-ness plastered all over the house. But that doesn't stop me from oogling over beautiful decor though, but it does stop me from making a lot of decor myself. However, I loooove cute Valentine's Day accessories, like treat bags filled with sugary goodness.

Yummy. Bright colors, drawstring closure, and oh so festive! Only problem? A felt bag can't be filled with Sour Patch Kids. :( Wanna make one yourself? You will need:

• One sheet of felt for the main bag
• Coordinating scrap felt for embellishments
• A yard of coordinating ribbon
• Scissors
• Pinking shears
• Embroidery scissors
• Safety pin
• Cup
• Disappearing ink pen
• Regular sewing notions: sewing machine, thread, pins, etc.

Cut your sheet of felt in half hamburger style so you end up with two rectangles.

Place a cup on the corners of your rectangles, then trace around the cup with your disappearing ink pen. Cut around your lines to round out the corners.

For embellishments I decided to cut out a bunch of hearts from pink and magenta felt. I didn't use a pattern or anything, I liked the wonky-ness of them! I arranged them in a pattern I liked, then pinned them down.

Then I sewed down the middle of the hearts with pretty lilac thread.

Place your two bag pieces right sides together and pin around the sides and bottom. At the last minute I decided to use the pinking shears at the top to imitate a paper bag.

Sew around the sides and bottom using 1/4" seam and a straight stitch. Turn right side out. If you'd like, you can stop here and still end up with a cute treat bag! If you want the drawstring closure, keep reading.

Use embroidery scissors to cut small slits on the top of your bag. Cut them about an inch apart and 1/4" to a 1/2" wide, depending on how thick your ribbon is. Make sure you cut through both layers of bag (that's what I'm trying to show with the picture.)

Hard to see, I know, but squint real hard! This is a general idea of what your slits should look like.

Take a length of ribbon (I used about two feet because I wanted to be able to wrap the ribbon around the bag a few times) and heat sealed the ends. Pin a safety pin to the end, and thread the ribbon through your slits, up and down and up and down.

Just like this! Since the ribbon is so slick when you pull on it, the bag will scrunch up and close! Nifty right?

Fill it up with treats, for this kind of bag it's best to use treats that are either wrapped or candy coated (Think Starbursts, M&Ms, Skittles, and the like. Steer away from cookies, Sour Patch Kids, or any other treat that could make a mess.)

Don't forget to share. ;)

When it's filled just pull on the ribbons, tie a cute bow...

And you're ready to go! This is a quick project (30 minutes or less) so you can whip up several of these for classroom parties, neighbor gifts, or your kids' lunches!

Don't forget to check out where I'm partying! Click on my "parties" tab.

Holiday Gift Ideas

Well, it's finally that time of year again! I say that because I am completely and totally against anything Christmas before Thanksgiving (don't even get me started on Christmas before Halloween!!) But now that Thanksgiving is behind us I am ready to dive into the holidays! Now, I know a lot of you are super woman and already have all of your holiday shopping done, but there are some slackers like me who are a bit behind. :) For this reason I have decided to host my very first linky party for handmade holiday gift ideas!

RULES:

1. Your link must include a tutorial or some kind of "how to" for you item.
2. This is not a place to link up something you want to sell, so please, no Etsy shops. I will be rude and delete them.
3. You link must be something that is appropriate to give as a gift! So no printables or anything like that.

That's it! Poke around, leave some comments, and get creating for the holidays. :)  The linky will be open until Christmas Eve for all of you procrastinators. I will feature some of my favorites on the three Sundays leading up to Christmas. Now I'm ready...hit me with your best gift ideas!!

Grab the button and spread the word!

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Oh, and for a bit of blogkeeping. With it being Black Friday and all, I am offering a special coupon for my favorite readers! (That's you, by the way.) Use coupon code blackfriday20 to receive 20% off of any order from my shop! It is only good until midnight, so make sure to use it while you still can!!
This coupon has now expired.