Sneaky me.

I am a terrible gift-giver.  I put a tremendous amount of thought into choosing a present.  Then I wrap it with care and, on a good day, a little ingenuity.  And then I am overwhelmed by the NEED to give the gift RightThatVerySecond.  Which leaves me giftless and kind of dumb-looking when the actual occasion for gift-giving rolls around.  (And in the unlikely event that I manage to restrain myself from hurling the gift at the gift-ee in the fifteen minutes after the last strip of cellotape is stuck onto the package, then I simply burst at the seams with wanting to tell them about it.)

So when I decided to send Jess a sneaky little present, I was in agony.  Because Jess, for all of her other wonderful, redeeming, downright endearing qualities, lives in AUSTRALIA.  And packages take for-freaking-ever to get to The Land Down Under.  (Right, Mel? Beck?) Which means that I've been on tenterhooks---or shpilkes, if you want to be all Yiddish about it---since the postman took the package from my (already twitchy) hands.  First there was the agony of Week One---the "No, it's not possible it's there yet, so there's no point in thinking about it," line of reasoning.  Then we progressed to Week Two and the "What if it's gotten lost in the mail?" blues.  (This actually happened to one of my packages about a month ago.  So not fun.) 

Last night, though, I was up late (and I mean craaaaazy late) with a migraine, and after hours of insomnia and useless attempts at derailing the pain, I gave up and pulled out my laptop.  And lo! it had arrived.  All the way from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA to Jess' kitchen table---which is really quite lovely---and she liked it.  Which didn't make my headache go away, exactly, but made me so happy and goofy (which could have been aided and abetted by the combination of sleeplessness, Excedrin, and Pepsi) that I kept giggling.  Loudly.  As a matter of fact, I may have woken up a couple of smalls with my shenanigans.
 

A Very Potter Present

I was trying to think of something cute to give Esti, my eldest, for Chanukah.  She's completely Potter-obsessed, so here's what I came up with.

Which spawned this:

And this:

And this, which is a spin-off of the first attempt at "Team Harry" that had too much space between the e and the a. 

I crack myself up.  Some of these will probably make their way into the shop tonight...and there's a free shipping code you can use till midnight, if you're keen to take advantage of Cyber Monday.  (The code is CYBERMON.  I'm clever like that.)

My Creative Space: Whoa.

Something bizarre happened today.  I made myself a present, something expressly intended NOT to be put in the shop.  Then I blogged about it.  And lots and lots of people asked me to make them one.  Which is surprising.  And flattering.  And,really, kind of wonderful.  Isn't it?

For the Gal Who Has Everything...

I'm impossible to buy for.  I hate cut flowers, have an antipathy for tchotchkes, and don't use drugstore bath and body products.  I get my books from the library, my confections from my Kitchen Aid, and I'm very, very picky.  Once my poor husband ordered me three beautiful skirts that he'd overheard me admire on my (hip-less, 20 year old) neighbor.  Being that I was 10 years older and 60 pounds heavier than she, I didn't get a whole lot of wear out of them.  But I digress...the point here is that Mother's Day is fast approaching, and I want a gift.

So I scrounged up a handful of pennies with my kids' birth years on them,

(which actually necessitated a mad piggy-bank-raid and a trip to the bank, thank you very much...)

and I set about making myself a bracelet.  Except that I have small-ish wrists and six kids, so I ended up with a necklace.

I am wearing it right now.  Which may well be against the rules, but I'm so crazy in love with it that it's just not coming off anytime soon.  

(Insert segue here.  I have to go pick up carpool.   I can't be all writer-ly with time constraints like these.)

I'm participating in an auction to benefit a local 11-year-old boy who lost part of his leg in a train accident last weekend.  His cousin is a fellow Estian and member of Team WIST, and is coordinating the auction to help defray the costs of his medical care.  Pop over and see what goodies are up for grabs...

Also, I have lots of buttons.  Aren't they cool?

Wine Bag Frenzy

I have to admit, I have a love-hate relationship with wine bags.  First of all, they don't so much fall into the "useful/necessary" category.  And once you give a wine bag, there's not a whole lot your host can do with it--other than pass it along to their next wine-deserving host.  That being said, we've been lucky to have been invited out for a boatload of meals since we arrived in Milwaukee, and good little guesties that we are, we arrive bearing gifts.   After a good wade through my stash last week, I decided to put together a bunch of wine bags to have on hand to keep those ubiquitous wine bottles looking sharp.  No fancypants stitchery here; just a slight variation on my regular "straight lines" theme.  Pick a pretty, medium-weight fabric, measure and cut to suit the wine bottle at hand and make a long, tall tote bag. Embellish as you see fit---or don't.  I'm thinking of adding a narrow pocket to hold a gift card on the front of the next batch---I'll put up pictures when I do. 

What to do when it's all too much: Blow it off!

The dishes in the sink were chanting my name. The mountain of clean laundry on the dining room table was making fun of me. The overdue library books on the entry table (already!?) spoke volumes.

I knew it was time to bring out the big guns: I plugged in the sewing machine and made a new tote out of the Sheets of Utter Fabulousness. This one is for a friend, so I was tickled pink when it came out well. And in case you were worried, the dishes, the laundry, and the library books were still waiting for me when I was through.

My Creative Space: Oh, Baby!

A whole lotta onesie-embellishment going on! There's been a rash of birth-giving in my circle of friends in the past couple of weeks, so I had me a little stenciling/applique session late last night. Since most everything in the Haven o' Craft is packed (did I mention we're moving in a few weeks?) I had to keep things relatively simple. (And I appreciate the two friends who had the good grace to give their daughters the same name ---hence the same initial---and minimized the amount of applique creating I needed to do.) Still have a couple more to crank out, but that's it for now...

Swing by Kirsty's place to see what the rest of the world is creating this week!