Baby Quilt

It's finished! And just in the nick of time!  I started this quilt for my best friend 6 1/2 months ago.  She is having her first baby, due on February 16th!

I made the quilt using flannel fabric.  I made little felt animals and embroidered them to the cream colored blocks.  The backing wraps around to the front of the quilt.  I lined the front with an eyelet lace and with the help of my Mom, 'stitched in the ditch' to attach it to the backing.  The fabric and batting layers are tied in place with embroidery floss.   I was inspired by blogger Lime Riot who wrote a tutorial on felt embroidery.  I altered the elephant in her tutorial a bit so that I wasn't directly copying another artist's work.  Here are close ups of the animals. 

 

                       

I can't wait to meet the baby and give this to her!  Any day now!

Terrariums

Here are three of four apothecary jars that I ordered. Two with succulents and one filled with oddities from the sea.

Leftover succulents from the baby shower. I took cuttings from each variety.

I'm just starting to dip my toe in the world of succulents, so I naively pulled a petal from each of the plants, let them scab up for two days, took a deep breath and stuck them in some cactus soil to grow.


Apothecary jars from www.save-on-crafts.com.

Layers of sand, pebbles mixed with activated charcoal, and succulent soil make up the base. I dug a small hole in the soil for each plant, popped them in, tamped the soil down well and then added another layer of pebbles or sand to cover. I stuck in some geodes and a polished stone egg for decoration. I'm going to play around with them more before I settle on the accessories.




You can see the water droplets on the plants that have built up since I watered and capped the jar. That means I put in too much water, so I will leave the lid off until most of the moisture evaporates.



Sea curiosities that my Dad collected and let me put to use.



I planted these three succulents in this pot while I was doing the terrariums, so I figured I'd put in a picture. The tiny pink cluster under the shell is a cutting that I took from one of the other plants. I hope it takes off because it is so different from the rest.

It's a Baby Party!

One of my closest friends is having a baby! In less than a month and a half, in fact! And I had the honor of throwing her a baby shower. But not just any baby shower. She already had a shower just for family and wanted to include her friends. As we all know, showers can be a bit stressful and uncomfortable.  She wanted more of a celebration with her friends than a traditional shower.

She loves trees, and since there were only 10 people coming, I decided to make the invitations. I drew the image of a tree and had my (more tech-savvy than me) Mom scan it into the computer, refine the lines and print enough for all of the guests. I cut out fabric for the leaves and baby blanket and glued it onto the cover of the card. I also took a pink colored pencil and ever so lightly colored the baby's little cheeks.

For the decorations, My sister, Laura and I folded tissue paper into big pom poms. I found the idea on Pinterest from SewSweetStitches' blog. They turned out really cute.

 For the favors, I ordered succulents from The Succulent Garden on Etsy.  I thought their prices were very reasonable.  They shipped the succulents safely all the way from California with no trouble at all! Laura and I hot glued ribbons around the pots.  Everyone seemed to love them!

As a gift for the Mom-to-be I had my Mom print out a large version of the tree that was used for the invitation cover.  I've seen this idea several other places before and thought it was cute.  Everyone who attended the shower put their thumb print on the tree using an ink pad and then initialed it. (We all put two prints each to fill it in).  I  purchased a frame for the print and will frame it for the baby's nursery. 

I made two cakes.  My friend is waiting to find out what she is having so I made a "boy" cake and a "girl" cake.  Basically, I found two cakes on Pinterest that I wanted to make and couldn't decide between them.  The blue cake is a buttermilk cake with Arnold Palmer filling and frosting.  It has a lemon cream filling and a butter cream frosting with sweat tea that I cooked down for flavor.  I got that recipe from  Pink Parsley.  The pink cake is a pink lemonade cake from Sugar Baby Aprons.

I had a hot chocolate bar set up with homemade hot chocolate from CDKitchen and also a non-alcoholic punch from Tidy Mom.  Everything turned out really cute!

Finally, for our activity, I set up a photo booth.  This was so much fun!  A friend of mine is a photographer, so she was able to bring lighting and her photography knowledge with her. I have another friend who performs in a burlesque group and has a wonderful collection of costumes and accessories.  Everyone had fun dressing up and taking silly pictures.

I think everyone had a great time.  It was a lot of fun to do and I was so excited to put this together for such a good friend.  My sister helped a considerable amount and I couldn't have pulled it off without her.  

Katie See Katie Do!

It's been quite a while since I last blogged.  A lot has happened between now and then.  My life has taken a 180 degree turn and I'm seeing things in a much different, much happier light.  I decided it was time to get back to blogging- but this time I'm focusing on new interests.  My old blog was mainly about silversmithing and the jewelry I made.  This blog will contain a wider variety of things that I love including recipes I try, crafting, sewing, needlework, interior design and decorating, gardening, etc.  My dog, Milo will most certainly saturate these pages as well.  Life is too short to sit around and do nothing!  This Katie do!