Woodland Wreath (paper)

I have spent entirely too  many hours at my desk watching my Silhouette Cameo cut out all these woodland critters and then gluing them together. Too many! But I think it's so cute so therefore worth it.  My machine cut ALL of this out. Every single animal, bird and flower etc. that you see above is available to be downloaded for .99 cents each (50cents if on sale). That is one reason I love this machine. With other cutting machines you have to buy cartridges that have several designs on them and you may not want all of them and they are expensive. When I bought this machine it came with a gift certificate so you can download stuff and start right away.

See the Gnome? He's 6 different colors. That means I have to run paper through the machine in 6 different colors. But I've learned how to do several colors in one run through. Kind of hard to explain but it is easy to use. I was REALLY worried I wouldn't be smart enough to figure this machine out after reading some reviews but right out of the box and with some 12x12 sparkly card stock from Joann's I made a Merry Christmas banner within probably 30 minutes. It was mostly just getting used to the program and figuring out buttons, etc. I also got the Designer program (for 40% off thank you very much!) when I bought the machine so I can make my own designs instead of buying them from the Silhouette online store.

The hedgehog is my favorite. He is 3 layers of card stock.

There's a fox, frog, deer, snail, skunk, owl(s), bird(s), raccoon, squirrel, acorn and I love the tree stump at the top next to the raccoon. It's all glued to a thick cardboard circle.

And here it is on my door. I also made the paper welcome banner on the Silhouette. Jon asked when the party was. It does look party-ish...but he's not invited because he thinks he's funny.

Last week was one of Emily's friends Birthdays. Since her birthday always falls during Fasching week she asks that you come to her party dressed up ( I don't know if I posted last years party). I got both these costumes at a German store. Ava's is a "Bavarian German Beer Girl Fancy Dress Costume" and Emily's is an "ill-fitting fairy costume":). I hate that they both had to wear shirts under the dresses but it has been anywhere from 11-25 degrees here.

ein Weihnachtsbaum ist gut, but 6 are better!

More lovelies from the Fa la la la Felt book. I used wool felt from achildsdream. Oh wait, I didn't, I used the felt I got from a German store ..I went with Corinnea and have no idea where it was. A Childs Dream doesn't have some of the colors. I'm going to try some felt from heather Baily's site. it's wool and bamboo. It sounds nice but I've been fooled before! I used stuffing for most of the tree and then added plastic pellets in the bottom. The tallest is 7" tall and about 4.5 around.



 A "mug rug" from Kelly. isn't it CUUUTE?? I guess these are the big thing right now in blogland. I had  never heard of them until Kelly gave me this then I started noticing them on blogs. genius! Although I can tell you exactly how they came about. Someone was drinking coffee in her sewing room and spilled or left a ring of coffee on a pattern. She looked around and saw a mini quilt and thought " duh!! Finally a use for that tiny quilt!". or something like that.... it's genius either way.

 You know someone likes you when they cut into their much coveted stack (and I really mean yards and yards) of Celebrate Spring by Sandy Gervais for Moda. Heidi made this 1/2 yard bundle for me. She LOVES this line. In fact she bought out Sandy Gervais herself from her blog. I made this quilt, and this quilt and this mini out of the fabric a long time ago. Thank you Heidi:)

*I wish I had a pictures of the quilts Heidi and Mary A. have made using this line...that's a hint to send pictures so I can post them:)

The other night I made some chicken that required me to cook it in a skillet and then put the whole skillet in the oven to cook further. I took the skillet out with an oven mitt but then grabbed it a couple of seconds later without the oven mitt. I burned my hand VERY bad. It was excruciating and my hand was throbbing. I immediately got online and searched for some way to make it better. I found a site that said to wrap it in aluminum foil. WTF? So I did it. Like people said on the site, your burn (in this case my palm and fingers) will get really hot and hurt worse but then it will stop. It didn't stop hurting while I wore my foil mitt but did stop after I took it off, about 15 minutes of wearing it. And since then I've had NO pain, no blisters no nothing but some dry skin where the worst of the burns was. Either my burn was never really that bad or the foil thing actually worked. Anyone ever heard of this???