Hey Look a Craft

Aka my job has been taking over my life! I have spent so much time working lately due to various problems and issues at work that I haven't had much of any time for crafting in the last three months. My life has revolved around working, sleeping and maybe just maybe grabbing some food in between. It's coming to an end however and I can finally work on having a real work/life balance for awhile. Or at least until the next problem rolls around, as it undoubtedly will. But all the work has definitely been worth it, both in overtime pay which has helped us save for a house faster and in experience at my job. I've now worked through some of the most challenging situations we're likely to see, and now I will be much better prepared if heaven help us they happen again in the future. I've also gotten a chance to do some networking with managers from other mills as they have come in to help us from time to time.

Now that I've gotten off track talking about work, it's time to focus on the fun weekend activities instead! Ages ago I saw a cute door decoration on pinterest courtesy of Marsh madness and I knew that it would eventually make a great front door decoration. Our last front door decoration which we put up just before Christmas only lasted until about February until Steve declared that it was clearly a winter wreath and couldn't stay up any longer. We ended up going nearly five months without anything pretty on the front door because I just didn't have time to devote to crafting or even buying anything.

With work settling down, I took a trip last weekend to Joann's to see what kind of fun goodies I could find. I ended up with several cute storage boxes to use in our linen closet, tissue paper for another craft (coming soon!), a cute wooden letter and a roll of decorative packing tape just because I thought it looked pretty. I also found a cheap certificate frame at Home Goods that was just what I wanted for this project. Originally I thought I was going to paint the wooden letter, but then I realized how fun it would look with the packing tape wrapped around it!

The frame and partially taped letter. See how well they go together! I never would have guessed that this combination would be exactly what I wanted. I used a razor blade to cut lines in the packing tape so that it would go around the curves smoothly. There were a few places where i should have cut smaller pieces for a better fit around the curves, but it still looks so pretty. I didn't cover the entire back of the letter because it won't really be seen and the packing tape was $7 a roll!

I used some of my free ribbon from Steve's grandmother from my awesome ribbon rack to wrap around the letter and the frame so that I could hang it. It does clatter a bit when we open and close the door, so I might have to find a better way to secure it if the noise ends up bothering me, but if it doesn't then all the better!

A Weekend of First Robotics

Whew it seems like I've been away for far too long. I we'll say that I gave up blogging and snark for lent.  One of those worked much better than the other.  I was ready to come back last week, but then life exploded in a really terrible way.  Now life has settled a bit and that Easter is almost here it's time to get back on the blog train.  And now that work has seemed to settle down over the last few weeks and I'm sleeping better there is finally time for us to catch up on life.

There's so much to share too, but I won't overwhelm you too much today. Over the last several months Steve has been working with a local high school as a mentor for their FIRST robotics team and two weekends ago we got to go to one of their competitions. It was especially exciting because it was hosted by the team Steve's been working with and it was at his old high school. Steve's dad was also the head referee at the competition so we got some high level insight into some interesting fouls and replay situations.

The gym was packed.  It only got more and more challenging to find good seats as the day went on.

Steve's team in the stands watching and supporting their robot.

What is a high school event without awkward group dance moves?

Many of the teams had team number signs as another sign of support and recognition.

I was skeptical at first but after watching a few of the matches I became a huge fan. The game this year is called rebound rumble and focuses on shooting baskets and balancing the robots on teeter-totter type boards. It was really cool to see all the different designs and shooting mechanisms.

The teams had 4 baskets they could use to score.  The white border is a special reflective coating that most teams used to help line up the robots for shooting.

Steve's team had an extendable arm that allowed them to get much closer to the top basket, which was worth more points than the lower baskets. 

Another shot of team 548 in the process of shooting.

Team 703 did a great job playing defense in the final matches, although I'm not sure this was a totally legal move.

Every so often, 548 would struggle to make it over the center line, which had a bit of bump to get over.  In this case, getting stuck was not a concern.

 The qualification matches actually started on Friday but we only went to the Saturday matches. We got to watch Steve's team play 2 of their qualification matches. The team ended up in third place after qualification and they got picked by the first rated team to form an alliance for the elimination matches. During the lunch break we had to rush home so I could change into my glasses because I'd managed to rip a contact and didn't have any spares since I've been wearing my glasses so much lately. We ended up missing the first elimination match because we got back late but all of the other ones were really great. The third team on the alliance was from Dexter where they had tornadoes come through recently. Their group became known for spinning like tornadoes when introduced.

The teams have student drivers that use gaming joysticks or controllers to move the robots.  They also have cute, little netbooks to run some of the software like the camera on the robot.

In the elimination round, balancing three robots on a single board was worth 40 points and in the finals our alliance managed to pull it off several times including both final matches.

Steve's team balancing with two other teams in one of the final matches.  The coveted triple balance isn't always possible because of the varying sizes of the robots.

Balancing on the middle board was only important during the qualification rounds and you had to balance with the opposing team.  Team 67 had a good mechanism to help stay on the board.

Balancing on the boards is tricky and sometimes robots ended up toppling over.  Most robots are stuck then and out for the rest of the match.

I managed to find my way to the top of the bleachers a few times to try and get some photos without blocking other people. Overall I was impressed by the lighting in the gym. Even though I had my ISO up pretty high to compensate it was definitely one of the better lit gyms I've been in.

After the matches were over, and Steve's team came in first I got to take a closer look at their robot.

Most teams used a long board to mount their netbook and controllers; 548 used a briefcase instead.   It was one of my favorite details of the day.

They even made an ethernet connection through the wall so they could hardwire the computer to the robot.

Jersey Knit Headband

To go along with the jersey bracelets I made ages ago, I made a cute 5 strand braided jersey headband to go along with them!

I used the tutorial from make it and love it.  I had to go through the steps to do the 5 strand braiding several times before I got the hang of it, but the pictures in the tutorial make it pretty easy to figure out if, like me, you haven't done it before.

Another tip for anyone who might want to try this out: I found the tucking the top of the braid under my sewing machine helpful because that held it very firmly in place.  I had to tug and poke a bit to get the braid to be even throughout the length, but using my sewing machine as a paper weight meant it didn't pull out at all.

This headband is especially useful now that my hair is so short!

DIY Valentine's Day Felt Garland

You didn't think I'd go past a holiday without doing a little bit of decorating for it did you?  Of course not. Since I didn't have any good ideas in my database, I started by browsing pinterest for some ideas, and found a couple of cute ones!

I wish I knew exactly where these directions came from, but once I hit this chinese website, that was as far as I could trace the source.

Since the picture above was the extent of the directions I had to do some guessing as far as the size of my felt.  I ended up using 4" tall felt and that made really nice shaped hearts, but you could go taller or shorter depending on your heart shape preferences.

This is how I threaded 3-4 on string at a time.  Doing this made the garland assembly move much quicker.

Spread out garland.

I used red, pink, and white felt here, but it's hard to see the difference between the pink and red.

To take the place of my twisted felt garland from christmas, I strung some of the hearts vertically instead of horizontally as above.

And finally hung one last strand over the living room entry way.

I've still got one or two more Valentine's day crafts to show, so stop back soon!

Happy Birthday and my New Job!

Yesterday was a great day.

I was supposed to start my new job last week, but it got pushed back until yesterday.  I wasn't sure how it would go, and of course I had some nerves about it.

I spent the whole day in safety training, and I'll be spending the next five days plus another two after that doing more training and orientation.

Everyone was so genuinely nice.

In my last job, safety training was important but really dull.  Really dull.

It was decidedly awesome and fun.

The safety guy was entertaining and full of crazy random stories.

He reminded me a lot of Ron Stoppable.

I got to use my new frog bento lunchbox.  (my lunch was a bit lame, but I was unprepared)

My birthday cake was argyle and was delicious.

All around a fantastic day.  Probably the best birthday yet.

First Finished Quilt

After I finished my quilt top, I needed to get a walking foot before I could do the quilting step.

That ended up taking about a week, so my quilt spent a lot of time sitting like this in the living room:

After I got a walking foot from Joann's, I had some trouble getting started with quilting.  After a few false starts, I ended up having Steve do a bit of maintenance on my machine.  He took it apart, oiled the spots recommended in the manual and replaced the bobbin winder.  This helped immensely and made quilting much easier.

I drew lines on the quilt top to use as guides.

The back of the quilt.

After quilting came the last step, binding.  I pinned and sewed the binding to the back of the quilt.  The corners are a bit funny looking at this step, but that's so they look nice on the front.

Then the binding gets folded over to the front and pinned before sewing it in place.

The front corners ended up looking pretty good, but in the future I think I'll sew the binding on by hand instead of using the sewing machine.  Having the stitches hidden on the binding would have looked a lot better I think, even though it probably would have taken more time.  I spent more than my fair share of time with the seam ripper while I was working on the binding because the first time I sewed it on the bobbin tension was way too low and it was all scraggly on the back.  I contemplated leaving it a bit scraggly, but I decided that after all the time and effort I had put into it already it was worth the extra time to do the binding right.

The last step is to send it through the washer and dryer.  It helped soften the quilt up as it was quite stiff before washing.  I had to get Shout Color Catchers to go in the wash with it, and I'm really glad that I did because the color catcher cloth came out of the washer a dingy gray, and I did not want that extra dye absorbing into my quilt.

My finished quilt.  It's a bit smaller than our queen size bed and great as a lap blanket!

All of my quilting advice came from the excellent quilting series on Diary of a Quilter.

Thanksgiving

We had a lovely Thanksgiving this year!  Much different than our celebration last year, we spent this year with our family.

I got to make a few appetizers to bring to the party so I chose potato skins, spinach artichoke dip and bruschetta.

The potato skins are another Simply Recipes favorite of mine.

Spinach Artichoke dip made in the crockpot is super simple.  Tip: buy bulk spinach instead of boxed spinach, it's about half the price! 

A nice simple bruschetta via Tasty Kitchen!

The appetizer table.

One carved turkey

Lots of bread and delicious homemade strawberry jelly!

Side dishes galore made by my mom and grandmother

Stuffing straight from the bird!

Brussels sprouts for dinner too, these are fantastic!

Poking around having some fun.

Sitting around watching football and chatting!

There were also lots of pretty decorations up. 

Beautiful chandelier.

Tasty tasty fruit (not really, it's fake)

There were lots of great desserts, but somehow I forgot to take pictures of the desserts; we were probably too busy eating them up!