Busy Bee

We hope you enjoyed a peaceful and family filled Christmas, filled with those you love, celebrating the birth of our King. We enjoyed our Christmas, with each other and family nearby and far-away. Let me tell you skype is a beautiful thing!

For Christmas we like to make presents, but we don't always succeed. Our brothers aren't really the crafty type...but this year Nathania and I had the opportunity to make a Christmas present for our brother, Aaron who sells honey. Currently he only sells honey to his friends and coworkers, and he is working on expanding his hive, but we thought a little marketing wouldn't hurt.

So what did we do? We made him labels to put onto the lids of his jars. He calls his hive the Innes Street Honey Farm...and he only puts the harvest date on to determine a batch...no naming. Andy took a picture of Aaron and was able to edit it until it was more of a black outline. Aaron is very recognizable as he has a very large beard, and we wanted to include that in his label.

I went to Office Depot and got a set of Avery labels that would fit on the top of a four ounce mason jar--the size Aaron uses--and then went to the Avery website to create the design.  It was super easy to use. I was able to fit the writing to the circular label and download the picture we wanted to use very easily.

These were two versions I came up with before I decided on one. But it only took a little bit of time to come up with a couple of versions. 

The printing was a bit trickier. I would print out a couple of trials on a scratch piece of paper if you don't want to waste any labels--it doesn't always line up with the labels and you may have to adjust the settings a bit.

This was our final product:

We hope Aaron likes them and uses them as well.

Sarah

Craft Fairs 2013

To date, we have done two of the three craft fairs we signed up for this year. We've really enjoyed them and due to us not being as big of procrastinators as we have been in the past, our stress level is significantly lower.  We'll figure it out one of these years:)

Our first show was at Anchorage City Church...and let me tell you it was busy. So busy we didn't get a picture of our booth. The only picture I have it from the day before when we weren't completely set up.

We made a wooden fence like display again this year, but made it significantly bigger.  It allowed us to use the vertical more effectively. The only down side to a display like this is that it is a pain in the rear to set up and take down.

Our second show was a two-day show in Seward. We do this even because it's fun. We get to get out of town for a bit of a girls weekend and in general who doesn't like to do that? Now for us this means driving 2 hours south, but its still fun to spend a weekend with your best friend right? We have some pictures but the sister won't put them in here...ahem...we may update later:)

We used the same display, but forgot part of our tree display. Not able to drive back home--too long of a drive and the highway was closed, we rigged it with a pair of Aria's socks and some twine. It was a make it work moment.


Our third and final show is this coming Saturday at Cornerstone Church here in Anchorage.  We would love to see you there!

Christmas Ornaments on the Cheap

As my husband likes to say...I'm a little bit of a hoarder. I buy things thinking about the future, especially when the price is right. Things may have gotten a little bit out of hand, but in reality I have made lots of headway in the stuff department. I'm actually using the things I bought and not buying more.

So all of that was to say that last year after Christmas, Nathania and I found these ornaments at Target for less than 10 cents a piece. I bought a whole bunch in them with plans of using them with my students at school. Which I'm still planning on doing, but recently the girls from my small group at church came over to make some ornaments for a service project we are doing.

(I don't know how to flip it...)

Before they came over I looked through my crap craft room and found Christmas fabric scraps, yarn and ribbon, pulled out some felt scraps and of course a glue gun. Some of the other ladies brought in yarn and some little odds and ends to decorate as well. Let me tell you...I have a ridiculous amount of fabric and crafty things...but they came in handy for a project like this.

There were no rules in decorating these ornaments, which was really cool because everyone came up with a different decoration for the ornaments. All similar but still each one unique. Love it.

The overall cost of each of these ornaments was 10 cents. If you had to buy some fabric or paint or such they may be more, but its kinda fun to see what you can find around the house to decorate something like this.

Anyone else doing cheap crafty things lately? Love to hear about them!

Forest through the trees...

We have had a gorgeous fall so far...

The colors were amazing! Probably the best colors I've ever seen since being up here. 

Now, all you people in the midwest and out east, I know you have better colors...reds and oranges...which I miss, but for Alaska, this years colors were phenomenal!

And then you know what happened?

Wind.

Lots and lots of wind.

House shuddering, gusty, loud, obnoxious wind.

It stripped all of the trees of their colors and this is what we now have to look at...

So we've been making trees of our own.

Happy colorful trees

Special trees for your tree...your Christmas tree that is:)

Here birdie, birdie...

We've been busily crafting away on mittens, slippers, Christmas trees and such to get ready for the craft fair season.

But I thought we needed to add something to the repertoire.

A little bird perhaps?

Yup, I think a couple of bird ornaments were just what was needed.

Love birds or Turtle Doves...whichever you prefer.

 

Like them so much you want one for your mantel?

 

Yup...we got those too.

 

Our little birds will be making their debut at the Alaskan Christmas Bazaar on the 9th of November.

 

Sarah and Nathania

Recycling center...

I'm about to show you a mess...no cleaning up before this post:)

This shelf has housed our recycling before it goes outside into the big recycling bin for the last two years. As you can see...it has also become the dumping grounds for everything else as well. Bottles and paper were always falling off and it was getting really annoying.

So one day I was in the garage and saw a can of stain left over from doing our headboard. Not one to want to waste anything, I got the brush out and decided to stain the shelf that held our recycling...so at least it would look nicer!

Thinking I needed to do something to organize the chaos that was the shelf...I moseyed on over to Joann's and got two unstained crates.  Which I then proceeded to spray paint with the purple spray paint that I had in the garage...we're going for low cost here...but what happened?

 

Not enough spray paint. So I got a black can of spray paint out and it became a hodge-podge paint job of what was in the garage. And then I loaded it all back into the house...

 

Doesn't it look better? I'm not super sold on the purple, but I think it's kinda funky and am gonna work with it for now. It has made recycling so much easier! All we have to do is take the crate down and dump it in, instead of awkwardly carrying as much as you could, dropping something every two seconds!

 

You know what's even better? It only cost about 14 bucks. (crates were on sale).

Woohoo!

 

What do you think?

Sarah

Newest project: Wool Skirts

As promised we have done some new projects...hopefully you saw the hats!

The other new product we're working on is wool skirts for little girls. These skirts fit a three year old... Aria. They have a 21 in. waist and go to her knees.

We can make smaller ones and possibly adult ones, but we wanted to know what the general consensus was.

Without further ado:

Rosy Ruffle

Twirly Christmas Skirt

Asymmetrical Flowers

 

Please let us know what you think! We want to know if they would be worth selling at the craft fairs this year or not.

 

Sarah and Nathania