Last Christmas post!
Just a few images from my Instagram.
For the second year running we decided to give handmade goodies to our extended family. This year they received:
Embroidery hoop decorations – a last minute idea after I ran out of time to complete option A, then option B was a big fail. I was really pleased with how they looked.
Peppermint Fudge – a delicious layered fudge; one layer of dark chocolate, one layer of white chocolate and crushed candy canes pressed on top while unset.
Strawberry and vanilla bean jam- I sourced some beautiful jam jars this year from The Redback Trading Company. The picture doesn’t show them well; the glass is quilted and looks gorgeous.
I look forward to choosing things to make next year.
Just some of the decorations around the house. The bunting in the top photos was made from a Spotlight panel. Funny story; when I purchased the panel I felt a bit miffed that the panel was so small. Thinking it wouldn’t go very far I went back the next week and bought another panel. As the lady was cutting it I noticed she was cutting two panels and reminded her I only wanted one. She said it was one. Turns out I’d only received half a panel the week before. I was able to get the other half and of course I then had more bunting panel that one could poke a stick at! I ended up making it double sided so it can hang anywhere and it was still six metres long.
The tree pictured is my woodland tree, the main tree is in another room and didn’t photograph all that well this year.
Top left we have an embroidery from a few years ago, top right are some gorgeous card I purchased from Elisandra Sevenstar and pegged onto plain string, bottom left we have some candelabras a friend gave me for my birthday decked out with faux foliage and pinecones which match the wreath (bottom left) which I put together. I wanted to keep the wreath simple to highlight the cardinal and am really pleased with it.
Now that my blog is up and running again I think it’s well and truly time to show you all some of the things I made and did over the Christmas period.
First off I participated in a Christmas swap which was coordinated by Jodie from The Haby Goddess. The theme for the swap was red and white.
The main part of the gift for my person was this embroidered star and snowflake garland. I was really pleased with how it turned out and I do hope they liked it as it was sad to see it go.
I also dabbled in clay decorations this year. The first batch I made turned out really well which inspired me to make more. Unfortunately the second and third batches were made with two different brands of clay and I wasn’t happy with either of them. If I make more next year I’ll definitely be seeking out the first brand I used. I sent a set of the clay stars along with the garland.
The heart pictured with the ‘E’ on it was a set of three personalised family decorations. I thought they turned out quite sweet.
In return I received a beautiful quilted placemat. I really love it.
A big THANK YOU to Jodie for organising a fantastic swap!
I’ve split my goals up this year into categories. If you’d like to read all my goals for the year visit My Renvironment.
- Set up my Red Wren shop. This one has gone on for far too long. It’s not like I’m trying to set up a business to pay the bills, just a little hobby shop so what is stopping me? I suspect there’s some underlying issues tied to this and by setting it up I’ll be one step closer to overcoming them.
- Use my stash! This year I will be mindful about what I already have when buying more fabric/ribbon/zippers etc. I have a large stash of projects waiting to be made and completing these projects will be far more rewarding than buying more things.
- A project a week. This will be quite challenging given Elijah is at the age where he needs (and quite rightly deserves) a lot of attention. I want to put it out there though because I’m not the only crafter with a baby and it will make me more mindful of how I spend my time.
- Stop worrying about what other people are making. This is a major cause of my unfinished projects. I’ll decide I want to make ‘x’, then so and so will make ‘x’ and because I don’t want to look like a copycat I abandon that project even though I was already making it! As discussed on a previous post; I must stop thinking like this. The only purpose it serves is to prevent me from doing anything.
- Become more proficient with my hobbies; learn new sewing techniques, embroidery, crochet and knitting stitches. Pick up drawing again. I’ve stagnated a lot with my skills.
Let’s see how these progress!
Last year I posted this post with a list of what I wanted to achieve for the year. As last year was a bit of an unknown with the baby on the way I didn’t expect that everything would be done. I’d like to revisit that list and add and remove as appropriate to create some sort of direction for 2012.
Renae’s wonderfully challenging list for 2011
- Don’t let the house become a pig-sty before cleaning it – needs improvement!
- Embrace motherhood. They’ll be hard days, happy days, sad days, wonderful days and scary days. It will all be a wonderful experience – I was right. It is a wonderful experience and there are far more happy/wonderful days than hard and sad days.
- Make the most of my remaining 4 months at work – done.
- Get back on my bike – not done. I was too scared to continue riding once my stomach grew, plus I had issues with dizziness not long after this post. I will be getting back on the bike this year.
- Sew and crochet fabulous quilts and blankets for the baby – not done.
- Sew my quilt – not done.
- Blog more. Blog photos as soon as I can after taking them. – definitely not done! I hardly blogged at all last year and once the mojo was back I had the blog issues.
- Don’t worry about every little thing – working on it!
- Accept some things are out of my control – working on that one too.
- Make lots of soups – done. A pressure cooker is a wonderful invention.
- Enjoy time with my husband – done.
- Don’t forget to exercise – not done.
- Keep in touch with family – done better than previous years.
- See friends more often – not really done. Having a young baby allowed me to isolate myself to some degree.
- Don’t compare myself to others – HA!
- Don’t be intimidated by other people’s creativity – I’ve become better at catching myself when I’m doing this.
- Craft with other people more often – not done.
- Don’t accumulate more clutter – done! I even threw/gave away bags and bags of things.
- Put things away at the time and always sort bills straight away – needs work.
- Get back into the habit of cooking – slowly getting there!
So that was 2011. All in all a pretty good year considering there are big things not on that list like ‘take care of a baby that is completely dependent on you’! I’m not going to put my 2012 list up just yet as I’ve just downloaded this workbook and want to work through that to identify what it really important.
This year has begun well for me with respect to this blog. Long story short – I was able to do some changes in the SQL database that made it much faster and easier to relink all my missing images. There’s still a few things missing (mainly on really old posts where I wasn’t sure what image was there to begin with), and some links to other websites are broken, but all in all things are a lot closer to being fixed than I anticipated! I took the opportunity to delete some completely irrelevant posts and I will be deleting my posts about the hacking as it’s probably better not to advertise these things!
I found going through all of my old posts quite enjoyable as it’s reminded me of some of the things I used to blog about that I no longer do. I hope to rectify that this year. The main change you’ll see on the blog this year is that it will be mainly craft only. If all goes well and I finally launch my online store then I’d like the blog to support that without it being cluttered up with photos from the garden. Those posts now live over at My Renvironment which is also nearly fixed and receiving a facelift.
The main thing I need to accept though on both my blogs is that I don’t have the same time to update that I once did. Editing photos and typing posts sounds easy, but when you have a baby who’s just discovered he can crawl things get a bit trickier. I’m not going to make ‘apology’ posts for not being around this year or my entire blog will be one big apology. If I don’t post for a month then I don’t post for a month. There’s no consequence for that.
Over the coming week I look forward to doing a few Christmas wrap-up posts as I have quite a few photos I’d like to share.
I wish you all a wonderful 2012.
As you know I’ve had an ongoing issue with both wordpress sites for some months now. I tried to remove all the code the hackers had left but it kept coming back. Eventually I decided just to back the sites up, delete the databases and start fresh with new credentials. So far so good.
Yesterday I sat down to pretty both sites up again and put up some post Christmas posts. Halfway through fixing the theme up on My Renvironment I realised the links to all my photos were broken. On closer inspection I discovered the same problem here. It didn’t take long to realise that my backups hadn’t included photos and once I wiped the databases I wiped several years of images. Let’s say that again; several YEARS of images. I now have the overwhelming task ahead of me of uploading and relinking all of those images. Part of me wonders if it’s worth it. Should I just delete the last three years of this blog and start anew, or do I spend hours and hours fixing posts that aren’t looked at all that often. I’m torn….
In the interim I’m going to pretty up the theme again, resume posting and hope that people read this and see why half my blog is broken.
Not entirely.
I’ve spoken over the last few weeks of two little dreams of mine; selling kiddy things I”m working on and selling Christmas Kits. The former is coming along nicely and I’m confident I will have something on my little shop in time for the new year. The latter- not so.
Last night I turned to my husband and said ‘guess what happens in a month?’
He had no idea and I excitedly replied ‘the tree goes up!’. Then I panicked. How has December got so close? How will I fulfill my dream to sell Christmas kits? I have handmade presents to make for family to make, I’m participating in a Christmas swap, I’ve got a demanding 5 month old, I’m addicted to the internet!
Rather than let the stress get to me, I’ve come to the conclusion that this year I probably can’t. By the time I perfect the kits and get them out there it won’t leave much time for people to then use them to make their own decorations in time for Christmas (optimistic that I’ll sell some aren’t I?!)
What I can do is make some extra decorations and things when making ones for the family and myself and pop those in the store and see how they go. It’s a good opportunity to see how my designs actually turn out and to see if anyone actually wants them before I get carried away. Everyone starts somewhere and this year smaller is better! If I don’t sell any then I know not to focus on that next year.
And here’s something to ponder – why is it than whenever you think you’ve found something that ‘not everyone’ is doing after scouring Etsy and the like, the very thing you were thinking of appears on one of the ‘big, popular’ blogs or in a magazine! Fortunately the one I’ve just seen doesn’t look much like mine, but still!
It’s time to say goodbye to another year of Blogtoberfest.
Did I post everyday? No
Did I create my own personal best? Yes!
15 posts all up is definitely my best effort. Combine that with the posts on Renvironment and I’ve achieved more than 31.
A big thanks to tinnie girl for hosting!
I’m hastily typing this on my phone to get it posted before it becomes the first. I’ll pretty it up tomorrow!
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