I've gotten into machine embroidery lately and am loving it! I love digitizing my designs and watching them stitch out. So much fun.

Halloween Minis

I haven't posted in awhile. I went through a few months of not feeling creative. Lately I've been working on some new projects though. Here's one of them.



Since Halloween is my favorite holiday, I decided to give my ponies some Halloween accessories! (I'd love it if we ever got an actual MLP Halloween playset). If I ever find one of the G3 buildings at a thrift store again, I'm going to pick it up and repaint it to look like a haunted house; I could kick myself for not having picked one up at Salvation Army a few weeks ago. Round-n-round kindly volunteered to pose for the picture.



Some of the sculpted items were made from Crayola air dry clay (I don't like using this stuff at all but for the uncomplicated stuff like the pumpkins it worked okay). The crayola clay was used for the pumpkins, gourd, candy corn, and bone. I used air dry polymer clay (much easier to work with!) for the cauldron, wand, mortar and pestle, fortune cookies, and chocolate chip cookie.



The two orange cylinder-shaped beads are going to be candle holders once I can get to the store and pick up some birthday candles; I didn't make the beads though. I used wet herbal tea bags to dye the paper for the scrolls and book pages. The broom is made from a twig that I whittled the bark off, then painted and sealed; the bottom part is made from pine needles. For the leaves, I used a scrapbooking punch. I'd like to find a punch for maple leaves.

This is soooooo cute. I was at Hobby Lobby the other day and towards the front, they had little Japanese food erasers...and I found a My Little Pony sized Bento box!

Ponies in Wonderland

I made a little hat (I tend to think of them as mad hatter hats, but I guess they're really Dr. Suess hats) and a little set of bunny ears for my chibi ponies. ^_^

Someone mentioned Bento lunches on another site I'm on...and I looked it up. Boy, am I glad I did! These are soooo cute and awesome! They're box lunches, originally from Japan. Sometimes the food is made to look like cartoon characters. So here is my very first attempt at Bento...






I've been feeling creative lately...putting up Christmas stuff I found a couple of ornaments--the type that's foam balls covered in string-- and decided to make a snitch from the Harry Potter books after seeing someone make a snitch antennae topper on The Leaky Cauldron webpage. I was pleased with the result.

Diet and Exercise, Bah Humbug

All right, so I'm doing the new year's resolution thing. You know, eat right and exercise. Fun. Joy. Crapola. Me and some people I know are doing this Biggest Loser contest, and the winner gets a bunch of money. Money motivates me. A lot. So far, I feel like I've half-starved myself and almost killed myself working out at the gym (you try doing an hour on a stairclimber thingy and then a 45 minute boxing class and see if you don't feel half-dead too!) Yup, boxing class. I went to my second one tonight. It is intense. I couldn't move hardly for two days afterward (and then Thursday, it was back to the gym for an hour and a half on the stair-climber thingy. I think they call it an AMT or ATM or something. And then 10 minutes of weight lifting. And then Friday I did an hour on the AMT, 15 minutes on the treadmill, and 15 minutes weight lifting.)

Then I'm doing the low carb thing. I haven't really been able to keep it under 20 grams of carbs like you're supposed to on the first two weeks of South Beach, but I have (mostly) kept it under 80 grams. I'm getting really tired of eating dead animal. I bought a ton of veggies and even a couple pieces of fruit as a treat today. So this week will be (mostly) veggie week.

Okay, okay, so, after all of this, I must've lost a ton of weight, right? Right? Hah! I lost a measly 2 pounds. Two. Pounds. @_@ The week before I spent sleeping and eating nothing but junk food--snack cakes, chips, candy, chocolate, McDonald's, etc--because I knew it'd be awhile before I'd have them again. And guess what? I lost six pounds THAT week! I laze around and stuff myself full of junk food and lose six pounds, then the next week I bust my butt at the gym and half starve myself and only lose two pounds.

Sigh.

I'll give it another week. If it doesn't work, I think I'll go on the junk food diet.

'Tis the Season to be Jolly...Bah humbug!

I've been sooooo busy lately. Hopefully things will settle down soon and I'll be able to post more.

I made a pair of mittens for my mom for Christmas and forgot to take a pic of them. I'm going to make myself a pair too, so I'll post a pic once they're done.

I have a new addition to the family--a dog! I rescued him just as the pound was picking him up. He looks just like a brown keeshond.

I've been neglecting my blog this month...

Here is part of my Halloween costume...I was a goth fairy! The wings are huge (downside: people kept bumping into them). But I won 1st place in a costume contest!


I'm working on a novel for Nanowrimo right now...I'm a little over 40,000 words behind though. But it's a fanfic based on The Secret of the Unicorn Queen books for girls from the late 1980s. I made a banner for it, which I'm pretty pleased with. My graphic art skills have come a looooong way.




I made a great graphic for my Christmas cards this year...unfortunately, my printer has died.

Garden Results

Well, I had had big big plans for the garden this year. Sadly, almost nothing worked out. With my potted plants, the leaves kept turning yellow and there were little white spots on them. I'm not sure what it was. Some sort of pest probably. It happened with my morning glories (though I did see a very few flowers on them), my lettuce last winter, and my sugar snap peas. Leaf miners got hold of my nasturtiums, though they did manage quite a few flowers for awhile.

I planted about 10 tomato plants, which did do fairly well. They did have a few hornworms at one point but the wasps took care of the hornworms, so there wasn't a whole lot of damage. I do think there might have been some two-legged critters that got some of my tomatoes (even had one person admit she had been eyeing my green tomatoes). ARgh!

Next year I want to plant some corn, some pumpkins (I want pumpkins for Halloween and for seeds, but they're so expensive!!!), some sugar snap peas (in the regular garden, instead of the containers). I will probably have tomatoes again, but I need to get some cages or stakes or something, so I don't end up with tomatoes on the ground rotting.

No picture, but I highly recommend this recipe! It's based off the recipe my mom uses, except I reduced the amount of butter.

Easy easy cobbler:

1/2 stick butter or margarine
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 can peaches, cherry pie filling, or other fruit

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Put margarine or butter in glass baking dish and put into the oven until melted, then remove from oven.

Mix flour, sugar, egg, and milk together. Pour into the butter in the baking dish.

Drain any excess juice from fruit. Add fruit in spoonfuls to batter.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until edges begin to brown and cobbler is done.

From my Holiday Thrifter zine:

Picture of Bug Bites recipe featured in the Halloween edition of my Holiday Thrifter zine:
Halloween Zine

The baby sweet pickles make great slugs. The ladybugs are made of grape tomatoes, black olives, and black decorating gel for the spots. You can find more thrifty Halloween-themed recipes in the zine, along with thrifty crafts, decorating and party ideas.

Free graphics

These are slightly larger than 1 inch, great for scrapbooking, journaling, collage, or making scrabble tile jewelry. These are from a set I made that are on my etsy site: Hiddendoors

Another free cross stitch pattern

Completed pattern of TP and Pumpkin (based off a drawing I did in high school).






Pumpkin Head #1

Free Cross Stitch Pattern

Free Halloween cross stitch pattern! It's a roll of toilet paper. :D Ah, the joys of rolling yards. Not that I ever did that. *shifty eyes*

I've been thinking about moving. I hate moving. Muy mucho. But! The place I'm looking at has access to a pool and gym and would have at least twice the space I have now. A pool! The drawbacks are that there wouldn't be much if any yard, it would be in the city, and there's a rather large non-refundable pet deposit.

Still, I'm thinking about it. I'll probably decide in the next month or two.

First post! I'll come up with something more later...