Pintester Movement: Ho Ho Ho Edition

Here we go again!!!  I almost didn't take part in this Movement, but they're so much fun.  In case you weren't here the last time, Pintester is a hilarious blogger that tests pins from Pinterest.  Sometimes she asks the rest of us to test some pins and blog about it.  The last time, I did a boring broccoli, egg, cheese bake thing that I was less than impressed with.  But this Movement isn't about baking, it's about ornaments.  Pintester asked that we make ornaments for Jodee from The Cheeseblarg.  This year will be her first Christmas tree, so we make the ornaments and send them to her.  She made a list of what she likes and I read through some of her posts and looked over her board on Pinterest.

I thought about it for a couple of weeks and just couldn't think of anything.  The list of ornament things was pretty good so I should have thought of something, but was super unmotivated because of school work and real work.  Seriously, I'm already over Christmas decor...and who buys their tree in October? Right, customers at my work.  But I kept on the search for something to make.  Finally I found this: Little Dinosaurs.  

The pin takes you to an Etsy shop, where you can buy the pattern.  The best part is that I've bought another pattern there recently and wanted to get others.  Plus it's dinosaurs, everyone loves dinosaurs.  I'd just have to figure out a way to make it an ornament.

Step One was assembling all the bits to work one of these up.  I'll admit to having a ton of yarn (I do work in a craft store), let's not talk real numbers as The Husband may read this and do the math...then I can't buy any more yarn until he forgets how much I already have.  I don't have cute pastel colors like in the pictures though...but I just so happened to have some green and brown set aside for some Ninja Turtles that I haven't even started yet...perfect dinosaur colors.

Also there's Vera, my laptop...both mine and The Husband's laptops are named after geeky guns.

I failed at taking pictures throughout the actual crochet process, but I got a couple.  You do the body first and after the first few rounds, I stuck the eyes on.  These safety eyes were a bitch too and I was lucky someone stronger than me was still up and helped push the washers on.

The pattern is blurred out as best as I could because it's not my pattern to share.

The face looks like a little piggy, which would work since I got some weird pinkish color yarn on clearance last month.  About an hour after the eye debacle, I had all the parts...except for the spikes, which again I fail at taking pictures.

I thought the tiny feet were super adorable.

The pattern said to leave tails on the feet to sew them on.  But once I flipped my little pigg--uh, dinosaur over, there wasn't much room to get a big yarn needle in there too.  So I glued them...not hot glue because I didn't want to get all the way up and go to the other room, plug in the glue gun, wait forevvver for it to warm up (cheap glue guns from Michaels work....sort of)...  Nope, I had Tacky glue in my sewing basket next to the couch, so I glued them feet on real good.

I sewed the tail on...and then he looked like a tadpole.  Also had some pretzels...I swear I'll get better at taking pictures someday.

After only about an hour or two of crocheting, I had a pretty good start to a dinosaur.  The spikes were super easy.  It said to make two sets and sew them together and then sew them onto the little guy.  The sewing together took longer than making the two sets....sigh...  Either way, made them and sewed them on...after considering if I could glue them on too.

I call him Piggy the Stegosaurus.

He's about 3-4 inches long and pretty damn cute.  I've got some hot pink yarn and I think my step-daughter (who is ten and really into this neon trend) will enjoy a T-Rex to hang on the tree.

There Piggy is done and another Pintester Movement down.  The link to the Movement here and at the top of this post won't actually work until the 15th of November, but click through then and see some awesome stuff other people have done.  And now I can get back to making snowmen for family Christmas gifts....I've got a bag of them already.

Thanks for reading and hang out here for a bit!  Hope to see you back again soon!

Work Project and WIPs

I've always been someone that starts projects and doesn't finish them before starting another.  I'll get back around and finish them all up...eventually.  Right now I'm working on an adorable little crochet witch that I found in a Halloween craft book last year.  I finished up her head this past weekend at a Yarn Night at work.  I finally got off work early enough to spend some time crocheting with other ladies.

The next day at work, we had a demo for Lion Brand's birthday.  We'd gotten in some little Bonbon yarn (which I am not being paid to talk about here) packages a few months ago.  Of course, it's new yarn so I want it, but I don't have an idea for it yet, so I can't buy it.  For the demo, we had an extra package of the Bonbon yarn left over.  I volunteered to take it home, work something up and bring it for display in the store's classroom.

I have eight colors at about 100 yards each:

So I went to the Lion Brand's website.  First off, let me say, I hate this website because I can't ever remember my login for it so I get frustrated and never get to see their free patterns.  However, I guess I figured it out and saved it the last time, so I got it!  And they had quite a few patterns for these little things.  I decided on a garland pattern.

So far I got one little star done:

It was super hard since it's light weight yarn and they want you to use a G-hook.  It's a big hook for such little yarn.  But one down, only 15 to go.

And I have suddenly become aware it's almost October.  I blame work for already having Halloween stuff on clearance and Christmas stuff everywhere.  I had a project I wanted to do for Christmas gifts for everyone at work and the Husband's family.  I have not started one little snowman.

I wanted to find a cute little pumpkin pattern to crochet up for Fall too.  I bought the yarn the other night but haven't hunted down the magazine from last year for the pattern yet.  Hopefully I can get that started and done before it snows.

That's what I've got working right now.  A little witch that needs some hair real bad, a pretty sparkly garland for work, a bunch of snowmen, and hopefully a pumpkin or two for our mantle.

Pintester Movement

I'm writing this at 8:30 and I'm supposed to submit it by 9.  Yikes!

I've had a busy weekend.  One of the things on my list was to test a pin for the Pintester Movement.  Which you can read about here: Pintester Movement  I went through my Yummy Stuff board on Pinterest.  I figured it would be the most rewarding board to make something from.  I've made quite a few things already from different boards, mostly my Crochet one.  With food, at least I could eat it after blogging about it.  So I found this broccoli, ham, cheese, and egg bake from Kalyn's Kitchen.  The picture's look super good and it had all things that I like, so I figured it'd have to be good.  Plus the recipe directions were super simple.

Here's a picture of the website's finished product:

How good does that look?

So last night, about an hour before I was supposed to meet up with some girls from work, I started this.  First off, I halved the recipe, because if it sucked, I didn't want to have to eat it all week.  I gathered all my stuff:

I chopped the broccoli up first and realized how much like tiny little trees it looked:

And of course I had help:

Then diced up the ham steaks and steamed the broccoli (I had  a good action shot of me dicing the ham but turns out my husband takes all pics upside down and I don't have time to figure out how to flip them in my phone camera folder):

The recipe doesn't say to steam the broccoli but I didn't even know how to do that until last night.  Then I tossed it all in a pan and poured a bunch of eggs over it:

I also didn't measure anything...or spray the pan before putting anything in it.  I did get the non-stick spray out but then didn't notice it again until I had already put it in the oven.  Pintester forgets to spray stuff so I can forget to spray stuff.

I shoved it in the oven and waited.  The recipe says half an hour but my oven isn't very smart so it takes a long time to cook stuff.  I had to leave it to go meet my friends, making my husband promise to take it out in a few more minutes.  I got home and it looked okay but I just plastic-wrapped it and in the fridge it went.

This afternoon I took a piece for lunch at work.  It was very blah.  Nothing special.  Tasted kind of like ham and eggs with lots of broccoli.  Maybe I should have measured  the broccoli, instead of cutting up all of it and using all of it.  So I guess it was a decent test, I'll keep eating it for breaks at work, but mostly because it's not Easy Mac.

Finished product, this afternoon after I took my lunch out: 

Busy Like A Beaver

I think it's time to take my little blog here seriously.  I do a ton of different crafts all the time.  I am constantly coming up with new ideas for things to do...and of course I'm still obsessed with Pinterest.

So the first step to being a real blog is to actually blog.  Who knew, huh?  Right now I work and am going to school for my business degree which leaves very little time to actually make anything crafty.  However I've found plenty of time to build a little town on Facebook and acquire a LOT of new pins on Pinterest.  That says I probably have time to sit and type up a blog every few days.

I plan to post about various crafts I do while I'm doing them.  Along with some pins I try out.  I tend to try more food pins than anything else, which is weird since I am a horrible cook...unless it's grilled cheese and then I'm awesome.

My big hobby is crochet.  I taught myself after I saw some adorable hearts on Pinterest almost two years ago.  After I mastered those hearts and some flowers thanks to videos on YouTube and random Google searches, I moved on to bigger and better.  I made an afghan and then a oddly shaped (and a little scary--as far as I'm concerned) doll for my niece.  The doll was not good so I set to learning more.  After a few cute little ninjas, I tried a cat pattern from Crochet Today.  And it worked!  I've been leveling up regularly since.

A bit about me: I'm Shauna.  I work at a craft store as a nights and weekend manager.  Living in Ohio but grew up in Michigan.  I'm married to great man that can sometimes be a bit strange, but is always good for a laugh.  And he puts up with me so he must not be too bad.  He has a daughter that lives most of the time with her mother.  She's just getting into helping me with crafts...but she'd rather do the food stuff.  We have a little kitty that I inherited when my grandmother passed away earlier this year.  She's super crazy and so much fun.  Her name is Harvey, although Gramma had named her Lilly.  But she's a tortoise-shell and her face is split so I couldn't resist naming her after my favorite Batman villain.

Later this weekend, I will be making a blog post with a pin-test that hopefully doesn't fail too hard.  It'll be an entry in The Pintester Movement put on by The Pintester.  She's super funny and makes failing look like fun.  So I figured I'd give it all a try.  I have tried many pins before and haven't had too much trouble with them so I'm hoping for another win.

Pinterest: The New Boyfriend

I will just say it, Pinterest has been a huge part of my life in the last few months.  There, that's out and now I feel better.  I seem to be on it so much that my husband has started to call it my Boyfriend.  I've pinned all kinds of things onto my 14 boards.  Most of my pins are crafts.  And I do honestly believe that every time I repin something, I will do it.  In fact, I make a little promise to myself that even though I wasted an hour on the site, I will make at least two things the next day.  I don't make two things the next day, or even one thing most days.  But I do make things off there, not just crafts but the recipes too.

Just last week, I found this: http://pinterest.com/pin/245868460877958591/  A few nights later, I was at the grocery store hunting down chicken.  The nearest Kroger (and I say that because there are at least three within a ten minute radius from our home), has been very short on chicken lately.  I have no idea who's coming in and buying all the chicken, but I wish it was me.  Anyway, found some chicken and loaded up my basket with the other bits I needed for what I hoped would be the greatest dinner EVER.  Yes, I realize that was probably a big idea since it's my husband that usually does all the dinner cooking that isn't just boiling hot dogs or frying some hamburgers.  Back at home, I explained my plan to said husband, showing him the pin.  I think he gets a little leery when I say, "Let me show you what I'm going to make!"  And then run over to the computer and pull up Pinterest.  He was slightly unimpressed with the picture, as he usually is, so I left him in the living room while I chopped potatoes and broccoli and shoved it with chicken, shredded cheese and some ranch dressed into some tin foil, make it into a packet and slid it into the oven.  In an hour, we'd have great dinner...or at least we'd have some chicken.

An hour later, I carefully pulled my little foil pouches out and opened them to find the most beautiful dinner I had ever made...yes, EVER.  I called him in to look and he seemed happy, but it may have been the wait as it was getting late in the evening and we were both pretty hungry.  We sat down to eat and after half an hour of silence, I looked over to see his foil pouch was empty.  "Did you like it?" I asked.  "That may have been the best thing I have ever eaten...and that includes Applebees."  He replied.  Success!  We had it again a few nights later to use up the rest of the broccoli and because as I mentioned before my talents in the kitchen are pretty limited.

And the point of my story, my boyfriend taught me to cook great dinners for my husband.

Two Go Together

Day 8: Favorite Object

I love this crochet hook.  I made my first afghan with it and I'm making my second with it too.  It's my go to hook for all my tiny little crochet projects.  I had a regular H hook that I was using but my hands are a little achy from so much that I've done with them.  Saw these beautiful bamboo handle hooks and had to get one.  So glad I have it!

Day 9: Something I made

This little guy was not made with my wonderful bamboo hook but he's still pretty cute.  I'm learning crochet bits and pieces at a time.  I finished him up tonight just so I could take a picture of him for this.  Looking at the picture I'm so surprised that I managed to make it...and it actually looks like a sheep.  I will name him Wooly.

Three At Once

 

 

 

 

 

Day 5: A Shape

Day five, I knew right away I wanted to do my steering wheel.  I drove a lot that day so I thought it'd be a good picture.  And let me just say, it's hard to take a picture of your steering wheel while sitting in a parking lot with a child in the backseat watching The Chipmunks.

Day 6: From A High Angle

I had so many great ideas for this one and in the end I just stood on my desk chair and took a picture of my bed.  Not happy with it but it was about 11:30 at night by then so my choices were limited.  :(

Day 7: Trees

This one was pretty easy.  This is just the backyard at my grandma's house, which is where I'm staying right now.  She has a huge backyard, filled with trees.

A week down now and I'm actually sticking with it.  I've made sure to take a picture everyday even if I didn't get a chance to blog about it.  This week has been busy but pretty fun.  I really can't wait to see what this month is going to bring for this challenge.