Looks Like We Made It: Year End Making

I’ve been stockpiling ideas lately: things I want to make, things I want to write about. I’m saving them up for the New Year when it’s fresh and holiday time restores to everyday time. This last post of 2012, my seventieth, incidentally, takes care of a little house keeping. There’s a few projects I completed in the last months that need documentation before the year is out. No year end recap to be found here, but rather a hurried show-and-tell of last minute crafting before we’re pushed into 2013.

You may remember that I was commissioned to make a special hush-hush birthday crown for a friend here in Berlin. Her husband turned forty-five in November and she threw him a Moustache themed birthday party (sound familiar?) I had heaps of fun making this crown. I collected a few bits of inspiration that I shared with my friend before the build to make sure I was on the right track. She assured me I was.

It also gave me a chance to use my new HP DeskJet 1000 color inkjet printer and printable cotton fabric. I’ve often seen printable fabric used in quilting and fabric book making to transfer photos onto fabric and have coveted the technology. Once I realized how inexpensive these printers actually were—they get you on the toner cartridges—I splurged. Since we have a laser printer for documents, the color printer would only be used infrequently for crafting. I’m seriously hooked, though, and keep trying to find things to print out on fabric. My latest obsession: labels for everything. The photo below is of the keepsake label I printed for the outfit Lennon wore to his first birthday party. The printer is a stop-gap measure until I can afford an embroidery machine—an expense that can't truly be justified when I currently sew on a borrowed machine.

Just before I was finished with the crown, I looked over my friend’s original email request which explained that the color theme for the party was Tiffany blue and black and asked that I incorporate these somehow. Oops! The black was taken care of but I had to get creative in bringing in the blue, which, in the end, added a surprising twist to the color story.

Onto my Christmas making! I made stockings for all four members of my family. Though one of them won’t join us until summer, we’ve already chosen his name and it has been printed on fabric and attached to his stocking. All four hung in our living room but L.I.B.’s (Little Inside Baby) stocking included a piece of paper covering the name. The stockings are made from white burlap, natural linen, and white cotton rick-rack. I lined them with market stall unbleached cotton.

Each year I make an ornament for our tree. Last year, I allowed Paloma’s Nest to do so as it was Lennon’s first Christmas and required something extra special. Next year, L.I.B. will also receive a Paloma’s Nest ornament. This year, there seemed no better way to mark these Holidays than with a picture of what is to come in 2013. I scanned L.I.B.’s photo from the amazing 3-D ultrasound we received when he was eleven weeks in gestation and printed it out in color on the printable cotton. From there, I made a simple pillow with blue rick-rack trim. I love how chunky it is on the tree, just as the previous year’s ornaments are. I can’t wait for our tree to be overwhelmed by big, homemade ornaments from so many happy Christmases.

Weight

Right. As you may have noted in my last post, I gained 57 lbs during my pregnancy last year. The good news is that I lost nearly 30 lbs during the labor and the few weeks following. This still puts me nearly 30 lbs overweight. My husband was also a victim of pregnancy weight gain, though at over 6’ tall, it doesn’t show as much on his frame. Nonetheless, we are determined to get cute again this year. Not to mention that we would like to get pregnant again this year (much later this year) and need to be healthy. I have always had success with the Weight Watchers program and that’s the path we’re taking. It’s not as sexy as more drastic approaches like going gluten free or cutting sugar or eating raw, but frankly, after caring for an infant all day, I’ll require a bit of chocolate and my husband surely deserves at least a beer nightly. Of course exercise will play a large role. We were competitive runners prior to our journey to parenthood and can’t wait to literally dust off our running shoes and move again. For your information, this blog will not be solely about weight loss, though many great ones are, including my sister’s (more to come on that if she chooses to make her journey public,) but you may hear me occasionally bespeak my triumphs and disappointments along the way. Today, I sit down, with infant on my lap, to plan some meals, a shopping list, and a strategy.

By the way: Lennon’s ornament (January 1, 2012) was made by one of my favorite artisans, Paloma’s Nest