Nativity Silhouette

I just finished this project today. I have seen this done on various craft blogs and have been wanting to make something similar for a long time. I chose to etch the glass so you can't see the light bulb inside which I think makes it more elegant. I also chose a different silhouette that I purchased on istockphoto. I love how Mary is facing the baby. Since I don't have a vinyl cutter, I taped this image onto the back of the Cricut vinyl that I purchased at JoAnn's and cut it with an x-acto knife. This project was pretty easy and took me only about an hour from start to finish. I love it and look forward to making more as gifts.

Advent Calendar

I am putting together a craft day for the ladies at church and thought an advent calendar would be fun to offer. This calendar is so easy. It is made using the Wilton favor tins that you can buy from many craft stores in the wedding section. There are so many neat versions of this craft online, here is one of my favorites. It can be put on anything that a magent will stick too such as metal message board, a refrigerator which we will do, or on the back of a cookie sheet.

The paper I used ( K&Company Peppermint Twist paper pad) made this craft so much quicker to complete because it already has a lot of glitter and embossing on the cardstock. A 2" hole punch made cutting out the circles super simple. A glitter snowflake, mini tag circles, dymo label makers, rub on numbers from old Making Memories stuff, and number stamps were also used. This is a great craft to use up a lot of the papercrafting/scrapbooking supplies many of us have stashed away.

The kids loved it when the saw it and I look forward to using it this Christmas. I plan to put activities (read a Christmas story, make cookies, cut snowflakes, etc) in this one as we have one that we use for candy.

My first sewing project

I finally was able to pull out my sewing machine and play. Here is what I made:



I love purses but I am so picky about colors, so it was so much fun to be able to pick my fabric. The pattern is one that I drew myself but I was inspired by this one hour purse tutorial. post here. During the process I made tons of mistakes and I learned so much (i.e. pins are a must with so many layers, pay attention to which side is getting the pretty topstitching, and check the tension!) but hey it is the very first sewing project that I have ever finished. I am just so excited that I made something.

I just bought a new sewing machine!

When I visited a friend this past month, she took the time to teach me to sew. I loved it. I was able to make a cute outfit for Ella in a few hours. Now that I am back home, I am itching to sew again. I have plans for so many things. . . belts, purses, aprons, quilts and another dress for Ella. The only problem is I don't have a working sewing machine. After much debate, Andrew and I decided to purchase a new one. It took some time for me to make sure which one I wanted but I finally settled on one. It is the Brother CS-6000i. This is actually the same machine I used at my friend's home and I really enjoyed sewing on it. Now I have to wait for it to get here.

To LIVE Well you must LOVE Much, and CRAFT Often

I cannot believe how long it took me to come up with a name for my blog. Many have already been taken, and for the good ones, I hope the blog owners use the name wisely, lol! So the name of this little adventure of mine is Live, Love, Craft. I would have named it "To LIVE Well you must LOVE Much, and CRAFT Often" but that is just too much to type in. Yet what does it really matter when in the end I only have one reader at the moment and that is me. For those who discover this blog later, I hope you enjoy the title and the hours it took for me to find one that was halfway decent.