It’s My Anniversary!

My husband and I are celebrating 13 years of marriage today! Well, we aren’t actually celebrating because he isn’t here, #militarylife. He’s on a trip and won’t be back until tomorrow. But that’s cool. We’ll see each other tomorrow and celebrate.

The last 2 days have been spent revamping the blog, yet again. I sat and went through every single post I’ve made since the beginning in 2012. It was time consuming but actually really awesome. I may not have blogged as often as I kept saying I wanted to, but I do have some pretty good ones in there and a lot of great projects I forgot about. It inspired me to get back into crafty blogging. Which is what this post is about.

Last year we celebrated 12 years of marriage and being the cheeseball that I am, I like to try to do traditional gifts. Let me rephrase… after our 10 year anniversary when I made a really super awesome gift encompassing 10 years worth of traditional gifts (that I really need to blog about because I never did), I decided to try to stick to traditional each year. 12 years is linens. I did not want to go out and buy new bedsheets or something, so I made my husband a quilt with old tshirts.

The bottom right corner is a white tshirt where I wrote a special message (pictured on the corner). Fun right?

Because we are a 1-car family and I didn’t really think about this gift ahead of time, I had to work with whatever I had in the house. I didn’t have felt or batting for the inside and I didn’t have enough tshirts for a backside, so I found an old blanket that we weren’t using. I cut it to size and used that as the backing. It worked out well. I only broke 2 sewing needles in the process of trying to sew the super thick edges. I think I remember having to hand-sew one or two of the edges because I ended up not having more sewing needles. Good times!! But it’s an awesome, and warm, blanket!

This year the traditional gift is lace. I am not buying my husband lace so I went nontraditional and painted him a picture. You guys have seen the Pixar short called Lava right? Go ahead, click the link and watch it real quick…..Super adorable right? Well, again, we are cheeseballs and totally love it so I painted it. But shhhhh….don’t tell him. I’ll give him the canvas tomorrow. 😉

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Yoga & Art: When Passions Meet #NamasteTuesday

When we first moved here to Virginia, my husband wanted me to have my own space for yoga. He knew, before me really, how much it meant to me and how having my own space was going to make me happy. The house we moved in to was rather small but I had my own space. I had a section of our bedroom just for yoga. It was great. I decorated it how I wanted and it was MY space.

When we moved into the current house (we had to move because the owner of the first one wanted to move back in his house) I was going to have a craft/yoga room! Both of my passions inside one big room. Woohoo!!! Once I started unpacking and figuring out where everything was going to go I realized that my space was getting smaller and smaller. My husband said, “Why don’t you just have a craft room AND a yoga room?” Seriously, could I love him any more? Two rooms just for me? And that was the end of that and the beginning of the west side of the house being all for me.

When I first started practicing yoga I never thought it would become a passion and consume a lot of my life. Maybe I just needed my own room. I spend more time in this room than any other in the house. And it’s decorated with things that mean the most to me. Race paraphernalia, a poster of The Rock, and art.

Along that far wall are all art pieces done by myself or my friends. Before I ditched cable I used to watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Yolanda had a wall of canvases in her house and each one was painted by someone in her family or friends. She even had a painting party when her daughter was moving so that she could make her her own wall. I fell in love with this idea. For my birthday in 2015 I had a painting party! I had my closest girlfriends over and we spent the day painting. Their paintings were my gifts (those are all the small ones). The top and bottom canvases were done at Wine Nights in Arizona, the ones where everyone drinks and paints the same picture. And then I have these…

My daughter spent the summer in San Diego with my parents and I had a lot of free time. Since painting is my first passion, I thought I’d spend some time painting for me. I don’t usually do that. When thinking about what to paint of course my first thought was yoga. But what to do. I started by drawing an outline of someone doing Warrior 2. The ideas started flowing from there. I decided to look up the chakras and see which one coincided with that pose. Then I had to try more poses. I picked two more of my favorites; dancer and king cobra.

While I was researching chakras I learned that wheel, also known as bridge, upward facing bow, or a backbend, is thought to align all 7 chakras. If you don’t know already, a basic backbend is by far my most favorite pose and learning it’s chakra alignment made me extremely excited. I searched around the craft room for more canvas and found a big one. SCORE! And then I needed a model.

Who better to model than myself? I’ve never done any sort of self-portrait work. This isn’t exactly a portrait, but it’s based on me and I think I did pretty good.

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At the end of my last yoga blog I talked about my Instagram backbend challenges. I just finished a two-week long one and I am going to post about that next week! I had such a wonderful time.

But to finish this post, I’ll leave you with this photo. My bff, Isis, and I doing scorpion pose. This is part of a series we do that we call “long distance yoga bffs.”

A Bit of Fabric and a Splash of Paint

I was pretty busy this last week. I finally sat down and did some stuff just for me; I did a couple projects I keep saying I’m going to and just haven’t got around to yet. Well, I got around to them, I finished them, and I am happy. That’s what important right?

Project numero uno… I have a friend who is about to become a daddy. His baby’s theme is Monsters Inc (soooo cute) so I made him a changing pad, wipe holder and some burp cloths.

Isn’t the eyeball ribbon a super cute addition? I also found some fleece and had a piece cut for him to use as a blanket (not pictured). There are so many cute fabrics at Joann Fabrics right now, I could go insane. SEW ALL THE THINGS!!!

Sticking with the sewing theme, I finally finished my Day of the Dead quilt. I have SO much fabric in this theme. I make a point to always check for something new whenever I go to the fabric store. Plus, whenever my mom goes to the fabric store in San Diego she always checks their DOTD section there and grabs me something. So what to do with all this fabric? I can continue to make things for my kitchen like place mats and pot holders, or I can let the kitchen theme spill into other parts of the house. That sounds like more fun to me. But before I finished the quilt I decided to give some pillows a makeover.

I have two pillows that are old and kind of funky. You know, the stuffing is weird from being washed and they don’t have a great shape anymore. I decided that it was either the trash or a makeover. Makeover won and they look awesome.

Even Tony approves 🙂

And now for the quilt. This is my first time making a full-size, big enough to cover up with size quilt. It has a couple measuring flaws because I eyeball measure, but it’s still 100% pure awesomesauce. The front is big squares, a couple rows of smaller solid color squares, and the back is Loteria (Mexican Bingo) fabric. It’s big enough to cover the bottom part of my queen size bed. But I use it on the couch to cover up with when I’m snugglin’ with the hub and watching TV.

Great right? I think so!! And I’ve never taken a class on quilting or anything.

When I finished my sewing projects I moved onto painting. My daughter’s school is getting a little makeover. The biggest part of the revamp is a new teachers lounge. New paint, new furniture and new cabinets. The principal wanted to make it a place where teachers may actually want to go and lounge, not just eat lunch and stare at the ugly walls. Sorry, but the school is old and has never been updated so yes, it was ugly in there. Anyway, since I am on the PTO now I decided to add my flair to the lounge. I wanted to put something on the walls that would just be a nice touch, something fun to look at. Off to Pinterest for ideas!! I searched “teacher quotes” and copied some ideas I found.

This one has a side story. I was finished painting this one and then I immediately had to update my Facebook status. It said, “That moment you are painting something having to do with education and you misspell a word.” Yep, I was just so in the groove that I wasn’t paying attention and forgot the “N” in learning. Ugh! Instead of this one being white with blue letters, it turned out blue with white letters. Still cute.

I think the teachers will appreciate them.

The Mud Run and Then Some

It seems I always start blog posts out the same way…”I need to blog more.” But this time I am just going to forget that I suck at keeping up with these and get right to it.

Since my last post I have done a couple paintings that I would like to share first. The first one is Sea Filly, a seahorse from the HBO show, Rainbow Fish. She is my brother’s favorite character so I painted her on a canvas for his room.

The next is one character some of you may be tired of seeing. I haven’t had enough of Frozen yet and neither had my daughter’s kindergarten teacher. She gave me an awesome gift (a replica Padres jersey) so I painted for her in return.

I have a couple projects in the works right now. I am finally doing something with my day of the dead fabric I’ve been hoarding, lol. Every time I go to the fabric store I check to see if they have anything new even if I have never done anything with the fabric. So I am finally making a quilt. I have the whole squared top done and now I just have to put it all together with the batting and back. It’s coming along great; I just have to sit and finish it. I also have plans to make a quilt with some old Harley shirts my husband wants to save. I made some burp cloths last week and those are to go with a baby gift set I am making for an old friend who is about to become a daddy. His soon-to-be son’s room is going to be Monsters Inc theme and I just happened to find a couple different fabric options. Pretty awesome and soooo adorable!! So hopefully I’ll update with those sooner than all this.

Onto the Mud Run. Here‘s my recap of last years first if you want to read that first. Go ahead, I’ll wait. 😉
So this year was definitely harder. I run a ton more regularly than I did last year, but it was still tough. First off, they had a couple new obstacles or challenges. Dad and I ran together again and were off to an awesome start.

We ran the first mile in just under 8 minutes. Then it happened. The first challenge. They had us do lunges for about 100 feet. And I didn’t half-ass those puppies either. But that was my mistake. I don’t do lunges normally so my legs were on fire the next 5 miles. So after that there is only one actual obstacle (the steeplechase) for the next 2ish miles. But those next 2 miles are an obstacle alone; hills. Nothing but uphill running. I heard someone say they call it the “Suicide Mile” or something really ominous like that. Well, I ran as much as could, walked some, but still made it the first 4 miles in about 44 minutes I think. Not terrible. Then the obstacles came. Tons of mud!! Fun of course, but remember those lunges? Oh yes, my legs sure did. Trudging through mud pits with sore thighs was no bueno. I slowed down a ton. Then we got to the slippery hill. Now this is not just a hill with mud and water coming down. This is a hill that is, no joke, straight up. Sprinklers are going and there are guys at the top with fire hoses. Saying it is slippery is an understatement. So of course the legs were giving out, so I told my dad I needed help. He grabbed my hand and pretty much pulled me up the hill while the guys at the top kept that fire hose pointed directly at me the ENTIRE time! Dad said, “No one left behind.” The guy responded with something like, “NO dry people allowed.” All I heard was, “I’m an asshole and I’m not going to stop spraying your daughter!” HAHA!! It’s all downhill running after that, maybe one or two more obstacles and then the home stretch. Here we are right before the last mud pit making a last effort to pass up those other runners.

And then the mud pit. This year we literally had to swim through it.

And then we had to do pushups. I did girly ones.

We finished in about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Last year we ran it in about 1 hour and 12 minutes. I had a mental goal to try to run it better than last year, but seriously, those lunges just set the tone for the entire race. But of course it was incredibly fun and I can’t wait for the next one.

Actually, dad and I have both talked about trying a regular race, not one of these “fun” ones, to see our potential. But my dad can just shut his mouth because he ran the same race the next weekend and killed it of course. He finished it in 59 minutes, 33 seconds, 1st in his age group and 12th overall. You read that right, 12. Out of a couple thousand people. He’s a beast!

The best part of the Mud Run? Watching my daughter run the 1K Kids Run after we were done. She is so awesome!!

This was right after she blew her daddy a kiss.

She looked so confused! So proud of that girl!!

Gwen’s Birthday and More

Let’s just get all this out of the way…

First, Happy New Year to everyone! I hope the first month of the year has been a great start for everyone. Second, I cannot, repeat CANNOT, believe that it’s been 3 months since I wrote a blog entry. I am so slacking. I have so much to talk about but I don’t want to put it all in one blog post so….

The title, Gwen’s Birthday. If you didn’t know, Gwen is my daughter and she just turned 6. Holy moley! Where did the time go? And you probably won’t believe what my sassy thing wanted for her 6th birthday; her ears pierced, for the second time. Of course she’s my child. I have mine pierced all the way up and have stretched ears. But when she asked me I about had a heart attack. After a good week of thinking it over my husband and I decided it was okay. But I wanted to give her something to unwrap at her party so of course I painted something for her.

Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony, the Equestria Girl and the Pony. She LOVED it!! And now I have some of my art hanging in her room. It was also my first time that I signed the bottom of a piece with MOM rather than Chrissy.

So after I posted this on my Facebook page I got two requests for more painting! YEAH BUSINESS!! So next week I am going to be painting Draculaura (Monster High) and some other basic canvases (shapes, stripes, names) for a playroom. So exciting!!

Okay, the MORE part of the title. I have done a couple other projects since last year that I want to share in another post and I also want to post about my guest speaker thing I did with some Boy Scouts. So, I am going to finish doing some other important “wife and mom” things and get to those hopefully in the next couple days.

Mugs, Bracelets and Girls Oh My!

Even though I spent a good two whole days doing pretty much nothing, I feel like I have been going 100 miles an hour the past month. My daughter is in school now, my husband is on a month long trip, I took a trip to the east coast and next week I’m having one of my toenails removed. Sounds like loads of fun, huh? Here’s all the crafty things I’ve done in the past few weeks.

First on the list, my bestest customer is getting married soon. You guys have seen lots of the things I have made for her, the most recent was the Bridesmaids hangers for her wedding party. Since I live on the other coast and won’t be able to attend her wedding, I did some digging using my intel skills and found out when her bridal shower was and sent her a surprise.

The earrings say BRIDE and the bracelet says MRS with two green beads on the sides (green is her favorite color).

Let’s just roll with the gift giving theme. Next on the list is something I have been dying to do for my best friend but I was waiting for a reason. Well, she just had a birthday and I was going to be able to see her so I finally made these.

I saw the idea on Pinterest of course. Just like I’ve done in the past, I drew the shapes of our respective states (where we currently live) with pencil and then painted over it with acrylic paint specifically for glass. I baked the mugs per the instructions and voila. She isn’t much of a coffee or tea drinker but they are perfect for the top of a shelf.

Another friend I saw during my east coast trip was Shari. You guys know her from her photography business that I’ve plugged before. (Stay tuned soon because we are going to collaborate again) She is going to have a baby soon and asked me to paint her something to go with her Elephant theme.

Because I can’t just give her that, I also made her these.

A set of super soft burp cloths. I made these different from what I’ve done in the past and I think I’m definitely sticking to this way. I was using one piece of flannel and hemming the edges. This time I used two pieces of felt, sewed the pieces together as if making a pillow, left a small opening so I could turn them right side out and sewed the bottom. They are twice as thick and super soft. And easier to sew this way. I also owed Shari something FREE from my last Free Friday giveaway so she requested this.

Still on my trip (I was only gone for 4 days but it seems I did so much), I met a customer/friend in person for the first time. Totally NOT awkward seeing as how I have made her things in the past, talked to her on the phone and conversed via Facebook. It was just like seeing an old friend. She asked me to make her a jewelry set to represent her fight against fibromyalgia. So I made her a purple beaded bracelet with a dangling support ribbon.

She also wanted me to make her a necklace but I couldn’t find exactly what she wanted from the craft stores here in Yuma. So she went out and bought exactly what she wanted and we discussed what I’m going to do. Pictures of that coming once I’m done. But this leads me to talk about how easy it is for me to work with you. I couldn’t find what she wanted so she found it and gave me the supplies. Of course I am deducting the price of supplies from her final cost, but how easy is that? Then I know for sure that she is getting exactly what she wants. I just want everyone to know that is available to everyone.

Because I love them all and I want to post about it, here’s a photo of myself with all my east coast girlfriends.
I hadn’t seen these girls (minus my bff on the left side) in almost 3 years. I miss them so much. We all were able to get together one night, kids and all, and just have an awesome dinner. The best part? It was like I just saw them the week before. We are all that close that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, we just picked up where we left off. Here’s to seeing them more often!!

Okay, last on my list of updates. Did I mention that I’m a Daisy Girl Scout leader now? Oh my. Something I honestly never thought I’d do, but I’m so excited to do it. I mean, I am the craft master, this is going to be AWESOME!! I was online buying my daughter her Daisy uniform and looking for me something to wear to meetings. There isn’t a whole lot of cute stuff available. So what is a crafty mom to do? Make her own of course.

Light blue shirt, a few patches and puffy paint later and I have a super cute, one of a kind t-shirt.

And, since I was a brownie and junior in my younger days, I had my mom find my old uniforms.

They still fit!! But I can’t wear my old stuff to meetings (I mean, I guess I could but I’m not going to) so I am going to take all the patches off and make a new shirt. I have a white button up shirt that is going to be my new uniform. I am going to work on that this week so stay tuned.

Hope everyone had a safe Labor Day weekend. Have a great week!

Mom and Dad’s Christmas

I can’t believe it, but I kept forgetting to take photos of my gifts. So I am going to show you a couple and then tell you about a couple.

First up…..

You know I am into Day of the Dead, and my parents are into the sun and moon symbol, so how cool is it to merge the two! This was hand drawn with colored pencils and framed. I think my dad may burn this into wood in the future also. That would look so incredibly awesome.

A gift I made just for my dad was a camera strap cover because he just got a new camera. Of course that is something I didn’t take a photo of. But…I do have a couple listed on my Facebook page if you want to see. I sell them for only $10. They just velcro around your existing strap so you can change them whenever you want.

I made my mom a few rings…I think I sent her a LOVE one and then one with my dad’s name, FRED. If you haven’t seen my other rings, check them out here. The big gift I made for my mom was another Pinterest find. I actually pinned it a while ago and made one for myself, but never shared it with you guys or my mom because I didn’t want her to make one for herself. So here goes…

This is the original pin if you’d like to see it. It’s a calendar but with a scrapbook twist. The main idea is that you have a box with 366 pieces of paper in it, each with a day of the year…no days of the week and no years. Each paper just says, Jan 1, Jan 2…Dec 31. Each day, you write the year and something that happened on that day. You do this every year and you can look back to see what you did each day. The day I saw it, I made myself one. I had some cute rectangles of scrapbook paper but not enough and when I want to do a project really bad, I sort of stop at nothing to do it and get it done. So for mine, I used some of the cool paper but for the rest of the days, I cut up old manilla folders in rectangle shapes. So mine doesn’t look quite as cute as my moms.

Here’s moms. I wrapped a shoebox in cute paper also.

On special days, my bday (pictured), family bdays, anniversaries, I put photos and special paper.

And here was day one. I had my mom open it to this day where I already got her started. If you can’t read it, it says “2012 I received this calendar as s gift from Chrissy.”

This was a super fun project. It was a little expensive (I don’t work so expensive for me may be different than what you expect) to make because those pre-cut, super cute scrapbook papers are a little pricey. About $8 per 100 sheets and I needed almost 400. But you figure, $30 for this and some elbow grease, or $12 for a calendar that you use for only one year and throw away. I choose this one, hands down.

The last project for my parents (and all the other grandparents and a few friends) was a hand print Christmas tree that my daughter painted. Again, don’t know why I didn’t have a photo of the finished project, but here is a work in progress one and you can get the jist of it. She did 6 green hand prints on a canvas to make the tree and then used other colors to make the decorations. Great gift because you can take it out every year to enjoy. And it’s fun for the kids to make and great to teach them that gifts don’t always have to be store-bought. It’s the thought that counts.

Dr. Seuss Project

I was sitting here for the last couple minutes trying to think of a clever title for this blog and for the life  of me I could not think of one. I think I need to go on a run after this to clear my mind. It is NOT normal for me to not be able to think of something cute and possibly rhyming. Maybe it was the lack of sleep last night since my sick husband was coughing and laying on top of my legs all night. Okay, that’s a whole other blog post. LOL. On to the main focus here, enough rambling.

A customer commissioned me to paint 4 Dr. Seuss themed canvases for her classroom. She told me she wanted one with Horton, Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 &2, and Yertle the Turtle. She sent me a picture of the fabric she was using as curtains so I could get an idea of the colors she wanted and I was off to find samples. I looked online, pinned a couple photos, she looked, she loved, I got started.

(Click the photos to see them bigger. Large just didn’t work out as well)

Here is the drawing of Yertle. All hand-drawn of course.

The Cat in the Hat.

I have photos of the other drawings but I just wanted to give you an idea of my progress so you just get these two. Onto the finale.

Thing 1 & Thing 2. So adorable

The Cat in the Hat

Horton. Don’t you just want to give him a giant hug? So cute.

I’m saving the best for last. There is something about this one that just blows my mind. And as I told my customer, “I don’t like to toot my own horn, but TOOT TOOT!!” Something about this one just makes it pop off the canvas and to me, it doesn’t look painted. It looks like a print. The pictures don’t even show the pure awesomeness. (Okay, enough boasting)

It seems like these projects keep getting more and more fun to do. Anything cartoon is just so fun. My customer came home late last night to her package on the couch. She text me late and said, “OH MY GOD THESE ARE SO MUCH BETTER IN PERSON!!!!” Yes, all caps. Love that reaction I get from people.

Stay tuned in the next week or two…I sent off the wedding project I did for a friend and she is going to give out the gifts this weekend. After that, I can post pictures. They turned out awesome.

Your Own Personal Designer

One of the best parts of my little home business is the return customer. Of course I appreciate that my mom and in-laws are return customers, but I am talking about everyone else. I have had a couple return customers with jewelry items, but I have two people that are my favorite.

My first fave customer is Miss Sarah. She first became a fan when I made her a pair of green earrings.

Then she was addicted. She was my best jewelry customer.

Later, she wanted some of my famous place mats. She asked me to make them in a fall theme and kind of dark to match her kitchen.

And Voila. On display on her table. Not displayed are some matching coasters and pot holders.

To go along with this order, she wanted some custom art for her kitchen. She told me that 1) it had to include her favorite quote, 2) she loved coffee, and 3) she loved to read. I also knew that she enjoyed wine, so I came up with my idea. To make it really personal, I asked her what her 10 favorite books were.

Throughout the bookshelf there are 8 of her favorite book spines. I went online to find out what they looked like and painted them into the bookcase. 2 more are pictured on the bottom right.

So far, her kitchen and ears are happily adorned with Chrissy’s Creations. But it was about time to move the creations to the outdoors as well. So she just recently commissioned me to make place mats for her patio table. She already had seat cushions and wanted me to find fabric to match. Piece of cake. She also requested that I make the place mats a little smaller than usual to fit on her table. She sent me measurements and I got started. She had originally wanted me to make my picnic place mats, which have a pocket on them to hold your silverware, but after checking out measurements, that wouldn’t have worked out so well. So we decided on napkins instead.

Here they are all set up on her patio table. I also had extra fabric so I made her a larger place mat to use as a centerpiece when she wasn’t using all the place mats. I made it the same as the other place mats but appliqued some of the flowers on it to make it special. Below is a picture of that with her seat cushions. You can see how perfectly they match.

The day she received these she sent me a text……

“Look how perfect they are!! And I love the centerpiece. It’ll be perfect for when we’re just munching on chips and beer. You can def keep decorating my apartment. We make an awesome team. I tell you what I want and you make it.”

If that isn’t some of the best feedback ever, I don’t know what is.

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And then to my next favorite customer, Shari. A few years ago when I was just starting to be asked to paint for people, a friend of mine told me she was redoing her son’s room. He was getting a bit older and was getting a big boy bed so it was time for a theme that wasn’t baby-like. Wall-E was very popular and he had received a Wall-E comforter for Christmas, so she decided to do it a space theme. She asked if I could paint some canvases for the walls. She didn’t really have an idea of what to paint, so it was really neat to just have fun and paint whatever I could think of.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.149512121094.139420.149191351094&type=3

If you follow the link, you can see the entire album of photos from his room. But below is my absolute favorite one. I try to do something special for each canvas I make, whether it’s adding a poem or painting a specific name in the neat way. Since the underlining theme was Wall-E, I couldn’t resist.

And here are the cuties up close.

I completely free-handed these drawings and I personally think that they are some of the best I’ve done to date. I just love them to death.

Anyhoo, the reason to bring up Shari and all these old photos is because she has asked me to help her redo her son’s room again. He is again, growing up, and space isn’t so cool anymore. Now his favorite theme is the Avengers. She asked if I would be interested in painting some Avengers themed canvases and I replied, “OMG OMG OMG! I would absolutely love to!!!” She has been searching on Pinterest and looking for ideas so she sent me a few for me to replicate. I cannot wait! So stay tuned for those! I am so excited!!!