Christmas Stocking & Sewing Goals for January

I know the Christmas season is now well and truly over but I just wanted to share with you all these mini Christmas stockings I made for the Christmas stocking swap I did with Alicia from So Pauve, with all the seasonal craziness I ended up sending off these stockings late so Alicia has only just received them, which means I can now post pictures.
I've decided that this year will be my year for sewing, I did start to get into it this year, but to be honest I still found sewing hard and a little uninspiring at times.

However, the book "Sew La Tea Do" which I bought as a Christmas present to myself has helped to inspire me A LOT. Plus the instructions are so simple, I have to admit I've bought some patterns and then I've been put off making them as the instructions seemed like a total mystery to me. I guess that when these things are drafted there is an assumption that the person who will ultimately end up sewing them will have a certain degree of pre-existing sewing knowledge - which isn't the case with me.

So here is my list of sewing projects for January 2012 - I'll have to admit I am being pretty ambitious seem as I am going overseas for two and a half weeks on January 19th!

1. Make a Maxi Dress

I thought I'd start with this one as I have already completed the project - I was evening planning on taking some photos so I could do a post about it today but the weather is just horrible! I can tell you that I made the dress with a pattern I bought from this website. It was a pain to have to print out all the pattern pieces on A4, stick them together and cut then out and then cut the pattern out. But on the upside the instructions on how to put the dress together were really simple. I made this dress for my trip as I imagine its going to be REALLY hot so a thin cotton dress will be really useful. I may even make a second one if I have time.

2. Dress for my cousin's wedding

I am planning on making a dress for my cousins wedding and I am starting to cut it out today. I think its going to take up quite a lot of my free time over the next week and weekend but hopefully it will be worth it. I am planning on using the same pattern which I used for my very first dress which I blogged about here. However, seem as the wedding is in Phuket I am planning on making a more "tropical" version and there may even be heart shaped buttons involved if I can pull it off!

3. Capelet

This is something else I have wanted for a while and I think will be especially useful for my trip. Once Rich and I went to Hanoi and whilst there we decided to visit the tomb of Ho Chi Min. We were lined up outside in the EXTREMELY hot Vietnam weather waiting to enter the tomb when one of the guards told me I couldn't go in because my shoulders were showing. He also told me I was lucky because there was a store around the corner which sold tee shirts and scarves and if I went and bought one I could go into the tomb. I am pretty sure I was scammed (at least it wasn't just me - about half of the women in the line were told they weren't wearing enough clothes and had to buy a scarf/tee shirt to cover their legs or shoulders or both) so this trip I thought it would be a good idea to take a capelet to avoid repeating the situation. I've found a wee capelet pattern on burda style for free, so I will try and make that.

4. Tunic Dress

I am also planning on making the final dress from the Sew La Tea Do dress I haven't make yet - its a cute tunic dress and I have shark fabric to make it from. That's right people - fabric covered in sharks!!

I also have a few other things I would like to make this month, I think I could pull all of these projects off if I wasn't going away. But seen as I am only here for half the month I realise I must limit myself! The other projects include a pair of boxer shorts for Rich, two bibs for impending babies (Rich needs to cross-stitch them first though) and a movie blanket.

What's your January crafting plans?

Happy Christmas!

Hello Everyone - I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas! This year Rich and I decided to spend Christmas at home in Wellington. We started off our celebrations on Christmas Eve by checking out the Christmas Tree at the waterfront. It's a little trippy - but pretty too.

On Christmas morning Rich made us French Toast for brunch and it was AMAZING. I love summer berries.
After breakfast we opened our presents, I got to open my Christmas Stocking from Alicia at So Pauvre

Alicia fed my Hello Kitty obsession with a whole bunch of kitty cuteness!

We also opened the presents from my parents, which included this cute cupcake painting.

After brunch and presents we decided to head out for a walk as it was an absolute stunner of a day in Wellington.

I love that someone dressed this guy up as Father Christmas!

You have to love these Santas enjoying the beach at Oriental Parade, complete with Christmas tree.

I was pretty happy to find a yarn bomb on Christmas Day.

Finally a photo of our Christmas dinner, Nandos Chicken, eaten under the shade of a tree on the waterfront.

The rest of our day was spent hanging out, reading and watching "Bad Santa" - hope you all had a great day too!

All I want for Christmas

A really LONG time ago Olivia from Wait Until Sunset tagged me in her "All I want for Christmas...my top 5" post. I have been meaning for some time to write a list of my top five Christmas items, but I just didn't seem to get around to doing it!

It is now Christmas Eve, so it really is now or never, here are my top five for Christmas:

1) My eyes back to normal

I went to the optician yesterday and my eyes still aren't better, I am now on three different types of eye drops including a steroid eye drop! I really want my eyes to be better so I can go back to wearing my contacts and having a normal life again. Fingers crossed my life will FINALLY return to normal next Friday (30 December), I am due to see the optician again then and I am hoping she will tell me that the eye virus is finally gone.

2) More time to craft and sew

I really, really, really want to spend more time crafting and sewing. I do love to craft and sew and my job is pretty technical so I do need my creative time, but I need more of it dammit! Not sure where I will find it.

3) Some decent gym gear

If you follow my blog regularly you may or may not have noticed I have shrunk a bit recently, I've lost about 8kg (17.6 lbs) and I have also lost 14 cm from my waist (5.5 inches) and 6 cm from my thigh (2.4 inches). My gym clothes are all pretty naff, just old t-shirts and shorts I picked up from The Warehouse for about $15. Whilst my gym is not a posers gym it would be nice to have some decent gym gear - it might ever encourage me to go to the gym more!

4) No more earthquakes in Christchurch!

If you look at a map of New Zealand which show the tectonic plates, you will see that we are split between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates. Earthquakes are just part of life in New Zealand, I've experienced them my whole life and Wellington has them relatively frequently.

However, the earthquakes which have happened in Christchurch over the past year are something else. There were at least two more decent shakes yesterday when we thought everything was settling down and life was returning to normal for people in Canterbury.

If Santa could work out some way to make the earthquakes to stop so people in Christchurch can get on with their lives, that would be pretty rad.

5) New togs!

Which you may know as swimwear, a cossie or bathers depending where in the world you're from. Here in New Zealand we call them togs! I had the most fabulous pair of togs but they got lost somewhere in-between Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and New Zealand. I really like these togs by Broad Minded Clothing and also these ones from Mod Cloth.

But I don't want to spend too much on my togs until I reach my goal weight, so perhaps I'll get these ones from Glassons for this summer and invest in a better pair next summer.

Happy Christmas Eve!!

Christmas Hairbows

I nearly forgot to post a picture of these bows! Since I learn to make bows I really can't get enough of them, they make a great simple gift an you can turn them into all kinds of things.

These three are all the classic "hair bow" I made one for Alice for the swap we just did at Crafty Foxes, on for Ria and the middle one is for me to wear tomorrow.

Happy Crafting xoxox

Crafty Christmas Goodies from Ria

Earlier this week I met up with my friend Ria one final time before she heads home to Adelaide for Christmas.

I knew Ria had made me something for Christmas - but I didn't know just how amazing my present would be! I love skulls and all things Mexican, so Ria made me this Mexican Day of the Dead style bag. Isn't it amazing? I LOVE this trim!

If you want to know more about how she made this beauty you can check out some more of the details on her blog here.

She also made me some traditional German Christmas Cake called "Stollen" - I have never heard of it before, but it looks amazing and I really DON'T like the traditional English style Christmas Fruitcake with almond icing. I am saving this for Christmas Day - it looks amazing.

If you want to learn more about how to make stollen, or see how Ria's kitchen exploded when she made this stollen, check out this post.

Finally, Ria very generously bought me "Make!" by Cath Kidston - I have wanted this book FOREVER but I could just never bring myself to buy it, I have looked at it at book stores a lot though.

Believe it or not, this book even comes with supplies so you can start crafting straight away! No need to make a mad dash to the fabric or craft store.I just thought I'd share one of the projects in the book - they are all so pretty, I love the vintage style and all the pretty pictures.

First Day of Holidays

Yesterday was my first day of Christmas holidays, I've officially off work until early January.

Yesterday Rich and I decided to go out to Upper Hutt to Swish Dish to pick up the ceramics we painted a few weekends ago. We were both really happy with the results of our work after firing - the firing process made the colours so much more vibrant.

Here's the cupcake trinket box that I painted - I think it looks really great, I especially like the purple on the inside.Rich painted a "blokes mug" as a city scape - the colours look so good now its been fired. This mug is huge - you could fit a days worth of tea in this mug.

After some sushi in the sun, we decided to head to The New Dowse Gallery and see what exhibitions were on display. There were are few different things happening but my favourite was "Bedazzled" which is an exhibition of costumes worn by the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

There were costumes on display from a number of different ballets - I really liked the "White Swan" and "Black Swan" costumes. I also loved the "Ghost of Christmas Past" costume from A Christmas Carol. There were lots of sketches around the walls of all the costumes as well. I have actually never seen a ballet performance - but I did love these costumes - so much exquisite detail.

Crafty Foxes Christmas Swap

On Tuesday my craft group the "Crafty Foxes" had our hand over night for our last craft swap for 2011. The theme for the swap was of course Christmas. For my partner Alice I made a wee wreath. I guess it's not a wreath in the true sense of the word, but I think it's pretty rad. I have seen a load of crafts around the internet which make use of embroidery hoops and this is my attempt to use an embroidery hoop as part of a completed project. I even included a piece of ribbon to hang the wreath on a door (or anywhere you want to hang it).

This is what I received from my swap partner Hilliare - confused? So was I at first. Until I unwrapped everything.

The blue thing wrapped around is a vintage scarf (I can never have enough scarves) and the heart shaped things are luggage tags and finally the book is a travel journal. Some of you who have been following my blog for a while will know that I am going away for a few weeks in January/February to Phuket (for my cousins wedding), KL and Singapore - Hilliare made me some goodies to help me on my trip. She also reminded me I REALLY need to sort out the final stages of planning - including my hotel in Singapore.

Has anyone else out there been busy with Christmas crafting?

Sunday Baking

I am usually a pretty happy person, but on Sunday wearing glasses was really getting to me. I could bitch about it here, but I figure why relive the whole day again - it wasn't the best.

But I did get around to making some truffles for Christmas presents for a few close friends, they are very rich truffles. But they were fully endorsed by my team at work today when I took some along to share for morning tea. Also they look super cute in these little jars.

I hope your Sunday was better than mine - I can't believe that next Sunday is Christmas *eek*