I've been lost in photography. I think of it almost constantly. I am seeing everything with new eyes. Suddenly, all the things I see in my everyday life have the potential to be beautiful and exciting. I find myself cocking my head sideways at things like my toothbrush, or a simple piece of barbed wire, and seeing a whole new picture manifest inside my minds' eye.

I carry my camera whenever I can, stopping along the roads on the way home from work when I can't bypass the need to photograph a certain object I may have passed by the day before. I have the bug, and I have it bad. I can't go more than two days without picking up my camera before feeling like an addict jonesin for a fix.

I still like my sewing, scrap booking, cooking, crafting and all the other things this blog was supposed to be about. I'm just in LOVE with something else right now.

So dear readers, if I still have any of you left, this is my plea for forgiveness for abandoning you for the past few months. Please don't give up on me, I will have some good things coming for you, I promise. They just may be more in the form of pictures!

Tell me, what things have you been passionate about lately? Do you have an art or craft that is holding you hostage? Or are other things in your life taking charge? Tell me what's got you excited and busy!

What have I been up to?

I've been a major slacker on here, but that's because I've not been a major slacker in real life.
I've blew the New Year's resolution of updating the blog at least once a week haven't I?! But, I am able to scratch off "learn to crochet" (although I'm not that good) and practice photography, because I've been doing quite a bit of that lately!

I think I'm getting better, at photography, but it's so frustrating when the photos don't quite look how I pictured they should. I am still a little dumb with the camera too. Sometimes I get playing around with my settings so much I can't remember what I did! I really need to take a class, or hire someone to mentor me. Some classes, workshops or mentor ships could run over $1000! I just want to get good at my "hobby", I don't necessarily want to do it for a living. If I ever got to where I wanted to be with it then maybe, but that is doubtful, because I am my own worst critic.

Anyhow, enough whining already!
Because I don't have much to share with you as far as crafts go, then I will share with you some pictures today. They count as art, right?!
Be sure to click on the photo if it appears small & out of focus. Blogger isn't the best place to display photos!













Thanks, friends, for not giving up on me!
I hope you are all making your own dreams a reality!
**kisses**
~ Rey

Baby Shower

So many things keeping me busy lately-
Here was one of them:

Invites


Wishing tree (For triplets!)



Treat bags & Candy buffet





Decorations






This was about three weeks ago, so now you know how behind I am!

Hope all of you are well!

A new student

Ms. G and I haven't had a sewing lesson in three weeks, due to the the nasty flu virus deciding to attack my little family.
But all is well now and we're back on track!
Not only did my girls decide to join the lesson today (when they heard what we were making) but so did my cousin's daughter (we'll call her Sassy D). Sassy D got a Singer Simple for Christmas from her grandma, as well as a very cute sewing kit and goodies that we were all drooling over. She brought them along when she came to visit my daughter who is almost the same age, and joined in on the fun.
We made these-


I found the tutorial and pattern here.
I just printed out the pattern so each girl had a sheet of their own to practice cutting out a pattern with. It was a nice, easy shape for beginners and even my six year old was able to do it without any problems.
I think next time we'll at least triple the size as they were fairly small and only a little bigger than a baseball.

I think these would make cute toddler gifts as well, especially in a larger size or a variety of sizes. It took us an hour and a half to sew them. That is, five girls taking turns between two machines and me running around trying to help everyone with each step. So I'm pretty sure for those of you who sew, you could whip a couple of these out in no time!
Sassy D. did a beautiful job, especially for her first time. She caught right on and I only had to show her once how to operate the machine before she was taking off on her own!
Here she is one last time-
(Click on pictures to enlarge)

Isn't she such a cutie patootie?!
Oh, and that fabric ball ain't too shabby either!

Valentine's Surprises

I had to wait a whole week to share these with you because I promised Ms. G I wouldn't ruin her Valentine's Day surprises for her parents.
But today is the day after Valentine's, and so I can show you the cute little things she made for them.

For her momma, she made this pretty little check book cover.



For her daddy, well, daddies can be hard to sew for. So she made something the two of them could enjoy together. A travel tic tac toe game.


I call it a "travel" game because it has this little pocket for the pieces.


And it folds up so you can take it with you.

I highly recommend felt for learning to sew on. It holds nice and still and is easy to manipulate around the machine. Great for practicing straight lines.
And boy are her lines getting straighter! And other than wanting to be a speed racer on the big machine (because it goes much faster than her little one) she's gaining much more control over the pedal and feeding the machine. She continues to impress me.
However, the most impressive thing so far...

The fact that she can wait a WHOLE WEEK to surprise her parents! Girl is stronger than I!!!

Ms. G and the Valentine's day skirt

Little Ms. G comes to me every Sunday with so many sewing ideas and projects in her pretty little head. There's some BIG ambition in that tiny package that is Ms. G. I offered my girls a private lesson later on, so I could devote the full two hours to Ms. G. They didn't get their feelings hurt. The little time we spend at home on Sundays are their relaxing and video game time. So while they were having a Donkey Kong marathon in the other room, Ms. G and I had the sewing machine all to ourselves.
I've been somewhat busy planning a baby shower for my sister and neglected to think out a proper sewing lesson for this week. But when I was looking through my fabric closet for baby shower linens, I found some red cotton fabric I had left over from a party I did a year ago. Valentine's Day is coming up, and I wondered if we could put it to use. Well, since "skirt" was on Ms. G's list of things to make, I asked her if she already had an outfit for Valentine's Day, when she said she didn't, we agreed a Valentine's skirt was a great idea for this weeks project.
So, a remnant piece of red fabric and a couple of coordinating scraps later-


oh, and a whole lotta wonderful STRAIGHT lines later-


on the BIG sewing machine no less-


Voila! We have a cute little Valentine's Day skirt!


Add some tights and a white shirt and she'll be Valentine chic!

Good job Ms. G. I'm very proud of how well you are doing!

2nd sewing lesson and Snuggies

Yesterday was the second sewing lesson for Ms. G. I'm quite impressed with how well she is catching on. It helps that she is not too intimidated and is very willing to jump right in and try new things.
She arrived at my house with two yards of fabric and a request to make PJ pants. She even had her mom wash the fabric ahead of time, just like she was supposed to! (Wish my kids listened as good as she does!)
Sewing PJ pants was the perfect opportunity to introduce her to patterns. We went through some of the basic pattern instructions and what some of the symbols meant and how to read, cut, and pin the pattern.

After showing her how to fold her fabric and place the pattern, I pretty much just let her pin and cut it herself.




She's got quite the attention span for an eight year old and I was sure to commend her for it.
Because I wanted to make sure the stitch was nice and tight and would last more than a few washings, I decided to let her use the big machine. She was a little intimidated at first, but after a couple trial runs on some scrap fabric, she was confident enough to sew the actual PJs.
I didn't get a picture of her on the big machine (sorry Ms. G's mom) because I didn't want to leave her on the bigger, faster machine unsupervised.


Perfect fit!
I promised that since we had enough fabric left over, next week we'll make some matching PJ's for her baby doll!


Another easy to sew project that I made for Christmas presents are Snuggies. I don't know what my kids' obsession with these things are all about. They haven't watched regular TV in ages, so I can't blame the commercials. They did, however see the "As seen on TV" aisle at Wal-mart where they stock all the weird infomercial items you see on late night television. There between the Pillow Pets and the Pedi-Eggs were the slim selection of Snuggies available only in their signature color of Royal Blue. Twenty bucks for an ugly piece of fleece with arm holes?! It wasn't even anti-pill fleece!
I tried discouraging them by pointing out all the flaws the Snuggies had, but it didn't stop them from adding them to their Christmas lists.
A few weeks later when I made my JoAnn's list I added some yards of fleece and prepared myself to create a Snuggie pattern from scratch. To my surprise, I found a pattern at JoAnn's!
I also lucked out and got the fleece for 40% off- good day all around!


If your kids beg you for one of these silly things, I recommend making one yourself. Not only will they look cuter, but I'm pretty sure they'll last longer too!