My Week of Photos

What did I capture this week with my DSLR camera?

ISO 400, f/2.0, 1/80 sec with 50mm lens

I love an excuse to bake! One day last week was National Chocolate Cake Day, so I baked a batch of chocolate cupcakes and sold most of them for my Bake for Brazil fundraiser. Pretty excited that I was able to raise $50 last week for Compassion kids in Brazil!

ISO 400, f/2.0, 1/500 sec with 50mm lens

Took advantage of a break in the rain, set up one of my favorite childhood books in the backyard to capture this one. What children's book is your favorite?

ISO 100, f/10, 1/640 sec

After we got home from church on Sunday, my daughter and I drove around a bit, looking for the perfect spot to take photos of the clouds moving in. 

ISO 100, f/5.3, 1/400 sec

This is not a very exciting photo. And I really should have brought all these quart size canning jars in for the winter. But this just shows that we have been receiving a lot of much needed rain out here in California!

ISO 400, f/2.5, 1/80 sec with 50 mm lens

Hard to believe we are in the second month of this new year already! Time to put away the winter decorations and bring out the Valentine decorations. Pages from an old, used copy of Persuasion were used to make this craft which hangs in our windows in February.

ISO 800, f/2.5, 1/80 sec with 50mm lens

A few more handmade Valentine decorations are out. Add a bit of paint to some glue and paint the outside of a couple of canning jars. Attach a paper heart doily and tie it with a bit of ribbon or twine, and you have a cute new candle holder for your tealight candles on these dark winter nights.

What did you capture this week?

Tackle It on Tuesday: Denim Star Garland with Tutorial

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This week, I tackled another fun creative project (Pinterest inspired!) using some scrap pieces of denim, burlap, fabric, buttons, and jute. I tried to take pictures along the way so if you want to try making this at home, you can follow along and make one of these for your own home.

The supplies you will need for this project: denim, fabric, burlap, quilt batting, jute, buttons, embroidery floss, star stencil, scissors, needle, and a disappearing ink pen.

I found a star stencil in my scrapbook supplies and used that to cut a star template out of cardboard for tracing around on the denim. My template was about 4 inches across. The garland has seven stars across and I doubled them up, so be sure to cut out 14 stars from the denim.

Your embellishments for the star are going to be a bit of burlap, a fabric heart, and a button. 

Layer your embellishments on one of the denim stars. Then with some embroidery floss, sew through all layers (denim, burlap, fabric, and button) to attach the button to the denim. You will repeat this step seven times, once for each star that will be along your garland.

Once you have attached all of the embellishments to the stars, you will start attaching the stars to the jute. Take one plain denim back, one quilt batting star (I cut these just a bit smaller than the template, the jute (which you have cut to about six feet or so), and the top denim star. Fold the cut jute in half to find the middle. This will be your starting point for sandwiching the star pieces to the jute.

Pin the star pieces in place, take some embroidery thread, and begin stitching around the outside edges of the star with a running stitch. Once you have finished with the first star, place the next star where you think it will look best (mine are about 3 inches apart).

After you have attached each star to the jute, you will now have a festive garland to decorate your mantle or food table for a summer party or wherever you decide to display it! You can get really creative with this project using a variety of shapes and materials. If you give it a try, be sure to let me know in the comments with a link to your finished project!

My project for this upcoming week? Going through some old Food Network magazines. Next week, I will let you know what I do with them.

Tackle It on Tuesday: Fabric Letters

This past week I tackled - Fabric Letters

I was really excited about starting this new project and had high hopes about this one, that is until I realized how hard it is to machine sew some of the curves on the letters, yikes!

Hard to use purple ink on purple fabric

Plus, purple disappearing ink does not show up very well on purple fabric...

Almost finished...

At this point, I just need to cut around the sewing lines and add a little bit of fray check to keep the fabric from fraying.

So will I be mass producing this project? Um, I think not. As cute as it is, I will finish this one up and keep it in our toy basket for when little people come over to play.

To tackle this week - a surprise

Burlap and fabric project in the works

Working on the fabric letter project over the last week gave me an idea for a new project using burlap and fabric. Be sure to check back next week to see what I come up with!

What project are you tackling this week?

Compassion trip to Colombia

When we first started sponsoring Lina almost four years ago, I never thought about the possibility of ever visiting her. But now that I have been on one Compassion trip, the Compassion travel bug has bitten and I know that if God wants me to go, He will provide the way.

Be sure to 'like' my Facebook page, Gifts from Our Little Corner

To help me earn money to pay for a future trip, I have started posting things for sale again on my Gifts from Our Little Corner Facebook page. All of the items are handmade by me and I am donating ten percent of each sale to Compassion's Unsponsored Child Fund.

Hand knit dish cloths are my favorite!

Knit dish cloths are my favorite to use in the kitchen! I love working on these a little bit at a time, ten rows here, ten rows there. Right now I have at least five of these completed and ready to sell.

Need a baby shower gift?

Flannel baby blankets and wash cloth sets are another thing I like to sew and have on hand. These make wonderful baby shower gifts.

Need a bit of spring color in your home?

I also like to find some fun projects on Pinterest to try, like these Spring Burlap Bunting sets. Most of the time, I have a lot of the supplies around my home. So not only am I able to use up some of my supplies, but I am able to create some items for others to use and/or display around their homes.

So be sure to 'like' my Facebook page so you can see what creations I have for sale to help me earn my way to another Compassion trip. I sure would appreciate it!

Tackle It on Tuesday: Craft Room Clutter

Last week, I shared with you that I was determined to tackle the clutter that had taken over the floor in my craft room:

Craft room clutter!

It is almost embarrassing to show a picture like this from my home, but you know what? We live in our home. It is not a museum, it is not a model home. People live here, and people make messes. And yes, this mess was created by me! There are times when the messes in my home really drive me nuts. But I would rather focus on the relationships with the people in my home than spend a lot of time worrying about the messes in my home. 

But I am happy to say, that with not a lot of effort or time, I can now see the floor in my craft room!

Decluttered craft room floor

One thing that usually happens when I go through a decluttering process like this, I find long lost projects that are just waiting to be finished. This is one of the reasons I started these Tackle It on Tuesday posts.

Some time ago, I started working on an English Paper Piecing project called Grandmother's Flower Garden. When we were going to a lot of Civil War Reenacting events through the year, I loved having projects like this that were portable and could be picked up and worked on between events. Although the Grandmother's Flower Garden pattern is not authentic to the Civil War time period, the art of pieced hexagon quilting goes back to the 18th century.

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, here is what I found this week:

Grandmother's Flower Garden project

Now, if I were making a full quilt with this method, I would be a very long way from being finished! But if I just finish the blue border, then maybe attach this to a square of muslin or other material to be used as a table topper at our Civil War events, I just might be really close to finishing this project. So, that is my Tackle It on Tuesday project for this week!

What project are you working on this week?