Shared at Our Family Table I think it must be true of all families, that some of the warmest memories involve cooking (and eating!) Special dinners, birthday cakes, holiday cookies… And perhaps most of all, heartfelt conversations around the kitchen table.  At a bookstore several years ago, I remember seeing the book Kitchen Table Wisdom, and […]

Imprinting messages on homemade treats Instead of enclosing a greeting card with your baked goods, how about embossing your message right on the sweets themselves? I love this technique! It produces very professional-looking results, even for those of us whose handwriting is sketchy when using a frosting piping bag. You need to use fondant and […]

Moore Teesha-style! So I am totally addicted to swapping these little Teesha-Moore-style patches. If you haven’t seen some of my prior posts, you can learn more about the technique by clicking this link. Here are a few more examples: As I do more of these, I am starting to experiment with different techniques, for example […]

Ballerina warrior princess! In a recent craft-swap email, my swap partner referred to herself as a “ballerina warrior princess”! I don’t know exactly what it means, but the turn of phrase lodged in my imagination, and I had to create something for her, using that as a theme. This is a vintage photo that I printed […]

Smiles you can count on! I made these Sesame Street cupcakes several years ago for a birthday party. They were such a hit, that I thought I’d post them here. I don’t have a tutorial, but here are some tips: Many of the mouths are Oreo cookies, cut in half. The large eyes are marshmallows, […]

Cute as a button! Just a quick post to show you some  button cookies I made recently, using directions and templates I found over at E.A.T. (Emily and Amy’s Treats). Their version is way cuter — the buttons are bright and colorful. I did make a few changes in my version. For one thing, I covered […]

Teesha Moore Patch Swaps Today’s blog entry was supposed to be just a quick post to share a few Teesha Moore-style patches I’d made recently for a craft swap. But then I got to thinking about patchwork quilting in general, and then about quilting bees. And I began wondering whether these patch swaps are like […]

Cuppa pins! I participated in a “Fabric Lover’s” swap recently, where the participants were challenged to create a variety of items related to fabric crafts. There were seven themes; one of them was TINY, meaning items were supposed to be two inches or smaller. My swap partner had expressed a great fondness for tea, so I came up with […]

Carpe diem! Words are powerful things. They can inspire us, or touch our hearts. For most of my adult life, I have collected quotations and posted them where I will see them daily, in an effort to absorb their messages. Typically, I jot them on wipe-off boards, or print them via my computer’s inkjet printer and then tape them […]

Sharp looking pins These bejeweled sewing pins are pretty, but also practical — they sparle, making them easier to find in the folds of fabric, or if dropped on the floor. They make a great gift for anyone who enjoys sewing. To me, they look like fancy, antique hatpins. You can create a set by […]

Gamer fancies! Yes, I am posting yet more items that I made for a craft swap! This swap’s theme was the game Dragon Age. We sent our package in early April. Like the Hunger Games swap, I participated in tandem with my son Will, who came up with the ideas for the swap items we sent, […]

May the odds be ever in your favor! Have you read or seen the Hunger Games? My son, Will, was actually the person who got me started on the book series, and then the whole family saw the movie when it came out. As I so often do, I participated in a craft swap on the […]

Colorful translucent pendant You know those metal-rimmed string tags? Recently, I picked up a whole box of them, second-hand. Those tags always remind me of Martha Stewart. She seems to like them a lot… I picture her writing on them very neatly (in ink of course), with all of the tiny words correctly spelled, beautifully […]

Pencils take a stand! In my last post, I told you about the Big Bang Theory swap I participated in recently. In most swaps I’ve done, you exchange more than one item, using a points system so that the swaps will be fairly equitable. For the “big” BBT item, I sent this hand-sewn pencil holder, featuring the […]

Bazinga! On the Internet a few weeks ago, I ran across Gavin Worth’s wonderful wire sculptures. They are beautiful art pieces, like contour drawings pulled off the page into the three-dimensional world.   I knew I was eventually going to have to try the technique myself. As a fan of the television show Big Bang Theory, I recently joined […]

So today, I put away my sewing stuff and craft glue, and decorated a cake. A friend’s daughter is turning 16, and the theme of her “Sweet 16” party is flamingos. So I made a pink flamingo cake. I had intended to take lots of detailed pictures as I went along, to show you the […]

Love on deck  I ran across this idea on the Craftster web site last year, and instantly fell in love with it. (The artist of that “52 Reasons I Love You” card-deck book said the idea had been around a long time, but I’d never seen it before.) What a great way to make someone […]

Spiraling swirls of hearts and flowers My husband, Bill, and I have been married many years, and he is not only my True Love, he is also my dearest friend. The other day, I was reminiscing about our romantic courtship and the early years of our marriage. We didn’t have much money back then, but we […]