Knit Heart
I’m a bit behind, it’s true, but I couldn’t not post about the valentine I gave my sweetheart Shawn for Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s day? Yes it may seem like ages ago, I know, but the truth is I’m not as late in my writing as much as belated in finishing the project itself (oops!).
Luckily, I have a very understanding valentine who put up with me banishing him from the living room while I worked in secret and was still appreciative when I gave it to him a week late. Yikes, that’s pretty bad, I probably shouldn’t admit that…and I just did…
I got the pattern from the always awesome knitty.com. For some reason I always get the urge to knit when it’s getting warmer, and knitting in the summer just doesn’t have the same appeal. In other words, I better get knitting while there’s still some rainy days about. Luckily I have a few other things started. Perhaps I’ll finish something green for St. Patty’s early instead of late!
Work in progress
In between copious amounts of baking and projects, we’ve been trying to renovate and reorganize our apartment. One of the ideas that I’m in the middle of is updating the large book case in our living room. It has always been filled with stuff, masks, bike gear and various odds and ends. I wanted to make it a little more presentable and hide some of the storage aspects. I embarked on a crazy mission to not only fill it with our books that were placed randomly around the house, but also to cover them all in colored paper.
First of all, I had no idea how many books we had hidden away in various drawers and closets that now had a place to be. Second, covering books takes quite a bit longer than I thought. Third, nice colored paper is expensive and doesn’t cover nearly as many books as I would like. It seemed like a good idea in the first place, but now it seems like a daunting task to finish.
As you can see, I’m about half way done. I’ve covered the storage boxes with mat board as well. Soon hopefully we’ll get some handles for them so they actually open without the use of a fork or some other implement.
before
In any case, I think it is much improved from before. Please excuse all the strange things hanging out in our place. You accumulate a great deal of oddities when you make movies. Hopefully I’ll have a finished update soon enough, along with some other cool renovations in the apartment.
Happy New Year!
Hope everyone started their year off right and had a lovely holiday season. I’ve got a bit of catching up to do here at cute and delicious but I’ve got a few treats in store. First, I wanted to travel back in time, not too far back, just to the end of December, and finally let you all in on those gifts hidden in the bags. You remember, right?
Yeah those ones…Now I filled them with all sorts of things but I tried to make a good portion of the gifts that I put in them. This ended up being mostly for the girls I gave gifts to, as well, it’s just easier to make stuff for girls sometimes. Since I only had a few weeks to get all my gifts in order, I decided to make aprons from A is for Apron. The designs were cute and not overly complicated. I picked a few designs and made six different aprons in total.
This one you see my mom wearing is probably my favorite as it has a completely different feel than most aprons you see. It’s a full apron with a smocky design that is still elegant. My mom’s only complaint was that she wouldn’t want to get it dirty, which is pretty good coming from an apron connoisseur like her.
My other favorite was this super cute design that you see on Amy, Shawn’s sister. I loved all the trim on this one and the fun combination of fabric patterns. Overall, A is for Apron was great in that most of the designs are really great and it has a lot of tips and apron history. On the other hand, the directions are, unfortunately, written pretty poorly. It took a lot of re-reading and just plain ignoring the directions and go with my own sewing knowledge to make them all come out correctly.
Like I said, I didn’t make every gift, there were definitely a bunch of books, blu-rays, stainless steel water bottles and the like handed out as well. After last year’s christmas cookie disaster, I stayed away from baking gifts this year. I did, on the other hand, have to bring something to share at my family christmas party.
I decided on vegan rice krispie pops dipped in chocolate, thinking their cuteness would make up for their simplicity. Last year I made peppermint cookies and cream cupcakes and they were hardly touched (obviously they didn’t know what they were missing).
This year all the krispie pops were snatched up before dessert was even served, mainly by small children, who gobbled them up off their sticks. Thanks to dandies, no one had any clue these treats were vegan.
Soon after this, Shawn and I left for a cross country road trip for two weeks. I can’t wait to show you all some of the awesome places we visited all across the country.
Hodge-podge
I have so much to tell you! I’ve been completely consumed with crafting for holiday presents. I’m attempting to wrap all my gifts in reusable gift bags this year. That means that even for the gifts I’m not making, there’s still a bit of work put in to each one. The worst part is, I can’t even show off the gifts I’ve made yet in case any of the recipients read this blog. Don’t worry though, I’ll have some recaps after the holidays with some reviews and such.
Besides the hours devoted to sewing and the like, I do have some exciting news. Cupcakes from Vegan Bake Sale are now available at Meet Market in Silverlake. I just delivered the first order of Cookies & Cream, Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Spice cupcakes. Go get some! It will probably be your last chance before the holidays.
This year is going to be my cats’ first Christmas living with us. They’re loving all the boxes they get to play with (and a few catnip treats). It’s like cardboard box heaven for them. We adopted Meeme and Mochi on January 3rd of this year and they make me happy every single day. Seriously. I love them so much. Part of the reason I want to bring this up is that LA animal services is offering 50% off adoption fees for the holidays. Not that the fees are even very high to begin with, but it’s just that much more incentive to open your home and heart to one of these animals in need. If you’re considering getting an animal this year, I urge you to turn to the public animal shelters as these are usually the animals at highest risk of being put down. Not to mention they make it extremely easy for you to adopt.
Oh there’s so much more to say, but it will have to wait a little while still. Till then…
zombies are out to get you
This Halloween Shawn and I participated in the Zombiethon run/walk around the Silverlake reservoir. We dressed up like zombies, terrorized a few Silverlake residents and had a lovely time walking around the reservoir on a beautiful October afternoon. Of course it was all for a good cause of raising awareness about brain cancer.
Since we’re pros in the zombie transformation department, Shawn won first place in the costume contest! He got a gift bag with a bunch of cool stuff, including an awesome limited edition zombiethon tee shirt, some gift certificates and of course a zombie craft kit. Of course, I completely hijacked the craft kit. It as put together by Home Ec and included everything you need to make some awesome zombie embroidery.
I stitched this zombie boy and girl on kitchen towels following the pattern from Sublime Stitching. The iron on patterns were super easy to follow, even for a first time stitcher like myself. Not to mention they look scary and awesome. It is kind of addicting too. I suddenly have the urge to stitch creepy little faces on fabric, sweatshirts, tees, towels, anything. Best of all, I finally get to use all that embroidery floss I’ve been holding on to from my friendship bracelet days (yeah we’re talking pre-teens).
You can check out Shawn’s photos from the event here and see more of the zombie madness. Also, check out our Halloween costumes (and a lot more)!
