I love EVERYTHING personalized

Since 2012 was the year of the homemade Christmas gifts I made my nephew matching pillowcases for  him and his dad.  They are big University of Kentucky fans so I ordered UK fabric from Hancock fabrics online and used my (new) Silhouette to cut letters out of the fabric.  To cut the fabric using the Silhouette, I first cut a 12 x 12 piece of fabric and 12 x 12 piece of double sided fusible interfacing that I got from Wal-mart.  (I used this size to fit my cutting mat.)  I ironed the interfacing to the underside of the fabric and placed on the cutting mat.  Then, I cut the fabric with the Silhouette by picking the setting for fabric and changing my blade to what the design studio told me to-I think it was 8.

Once the machine had cut out the letters, I ironed them on to pillowcases that I had found at Dollar Tree for $1.00 each-I 'heart' the Dollar Tree.  I then used Pellon fusible sheer weight interfacing on the inside of the pillow cases (cut to cover the letters on the reverse side of the pillow cases) before I stitched the letters.  Being a new 'sewist' my stitching is crooked here and there but I think it turned out pretty good.

 

Teaching Myself to Sew

I have been trying to teach myself to sew.  I love fabrics and all the wonderful things that sewers can create.  Plus, I have always wanted to learn to sew!!

It took me about two months to open my sewing machine box after I order it and another two months to look at the different accessories.

The machine I ordered came with 17 different feet...whew!  I finally set down tonight to figure out what all of those feet can do.   The first step was labeling the feet.  If you are like me you aren't even sure of the names of all these different little contraptions.  Using the singer website and googling 'images' I think I correctly labeled the feet.

Click HERE for a downloadable document from Google Docs

Christmas 2012-'Semi-homemade'

I decided that 2012 would be the year of the homemade gifts.  In typical 'me' fashion, I hadn't really starting making my gifts until the week before Christmas.  I had all these grand plans for gifts and was able to pull off most of them.  My children and husband didn't get their homemade gifts but that's ok because they had plenty of other gifts to open on Christmas morning.

I just started sewing about two months ago, but I have been crafting for a long time.

I like to work with fleece and these are the blankets and pillows I made, the Minnie Mouse for my niece and the UVA blanket and pillow for my nephew.
  

Lights at the Beach

Something that I love to do is visit Virginia Beach to look at the Christmas lights.  You pay around $10.00 per car to drive your car down the board walk and there are tons of animated lights.  In 2012, we visited for a long weekend.  This was my husband and kids second year seeing the lights and my third.  I would love to make this an annual family tradition.  You can find out more about it here: http://www.beachstreetusa.com/festivals/mcdonalds-holiday-lights-beach

All of the pictures below were taken from my van.  The lights are on both sides of the boardwalk and many are on the sand.  An animated Santa is always on the pier and it looks like his reindeer are taking off into flight.

Confessions of a "Pin" Star

In a sense I have been 'pinning' since way back..well sort of...I have had a page on the website I Keep Bookmarks for a long time.  I also went through a phase when I would cut out things I liked from magazines (that didn't last long and my stacks of clippings ended up in the trash).    Needless to say I LOVE Pinterest.  It took me a while to get on board but when I finally got the invite to sign up, I was hooked.  You can follow me at Follow me on Pinterest HERE

Thanksgiving

Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  My thankful list:

1) God and His forgiveness
2) My family
3) My friends
4) My health
5) My God-given talents
6) My home
7) My job
This list is on-going.

For Thanksgiving, I made my two little ones and several of my nieces and newphews Turkey t-shirts.

The ribbon shirt was tough, so I made this shirt for the nieces:

And my crafty momma made this neat turkey out of fruit:

Why Lima Beans?

Ok, now that we have my deep thoughts out of the way-lets jump right in... (anybody remember Deep Thoughts from Saturday Night Live?)

So why Lima Beans?  Well to be perfectly honest, I was trying to think of a name from my blog that would represent me.  Some of the things that I could think of that described me were already names in blogs- glue guns, digital diva, organized chaos, craftiness, and on and on and on.  So for some reason it hit me to combine a few of my favorite things- Lima beans and clearance shopping.

Not only do I love the taste of Lima beans but one of my favorite children's authors is David Shannon and he wrote A Bad Case of Stripes. 

Check this out on Amazon or see below to hear it being read and see the illustrations

The girl in the story, Camilla, loves Lima beans but won't eat them because no one else in her school likes them and because Camilla is not true to what she likes she gets A Bad Case of Stripes.

If you want to see an online version of this story you can go to this awesome website called Story Line Online and listen to the book being read by an actor-click HERE .

Another one of my favorite is bargain shopping.  I have great plans to create a Shopping Bucket List on this blog...stay tuned...