bandit raccoon & kit fox
Meet Bandit Raccoon and Kit Fox. We made these stuffed animals as one of the rewards for Ashes of a Cowboy backers. There will also be a brown bear and jack rabbit. Shawn chose animals that are found in California since the the main character travels across the state’s desert and mountains.
You only have until Wednesday at 3pm to donate to Ashes of a Cowboy (and get one of these limited edition cuties).
collections
Not quite ready to show a full tour of our home yet, but I couldn’t help but share just a little. It seems we’ve become quite the collectors. Or rather, so many of the little creatures and knick knacks hiding in our closets have come out into the light.
Busy busy days ahead. More to come.
stuffed animals
Possibly the hardest secret to keep about our wedding was these little stuffed animals. These guys were our gifts to our guests, so I couldn’t share without ruining the surprise.
I started making them nearly as soon as we had set our date, spending any spare time I had sewing, embroidering and stuffing them. Not one is alike or from a pattern. While the task was daunting, and took several months, it was never unpleasant. Not to mention, I had a great deal of help from friends. I made them out of eco-felt and a good deal of scrap fabric we had at home. The faux fur is from a film Shawn made years ago. I think they were my favorite.
This is Bebop and Green Bean. We became a little too attached them, so they had to stay with us.
I really wanted to do something exceptional for our favors. I know it’s something that is last on the list for many weddings, but it is one of the few very memorable things for people. It’s the piece of the wedding guests get to take home with them. Ultimately we pinned little name tags on each and they became our escort cards.
With them living and multiplying in our apartment for so long, it was a bit sad to see them all off to the wedding. On the other hand, they were pretty excited to go on a ride in the car.
In the end, we ended up with a few more than we needed so a handful still live with us. The rest found new loving homes with our guests.
2009!
I know it’s a new year (first post of 2009 in fact) but I still have a few things left to share from 2008. For the holidays I tried to create as many gifts as possible instead of buying them. I made a handful of stuffed animals, knit projects and of course holiday cookies. While I started all of these ambitious tasks well in advance, there’s only so early that you can bake cookies without delivering them stale to their recipients. I had decided on snowflake sugar cookies and had even acquired some edible glitter to decorate them. Unfortunately, this cookie baking session was doomed from the start. I burnt whole batches and had other mishaps including dropping an entire sheet on the floor while burning my hand. In the end, the beautiful glittered and iced cookies I had imagined did not come into fruition. I’m pretty sure the end product still tasted good though, even if it wasn’t as pretty as I would have liked.
Immediately following the new year was Shawn’s birthday. To celebrate he got the dessert of his choice, which ended up being peanut butter cup cupcakes. I think my favorite thing about these guys is getting to say “cup cup.” Ha! As you can see, they’re chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling/frosting and peanut butter cups on top. They turned out super good. I think next time I will have to try a different way of frosting them so that they can have an entire peanut butter cup on top (and not look ridiculous). Also, I’d love to make the peanut butter frosting a bit more fluffy. It’s a great consistency for the filling but a little dense on top.
