The joy of saving....

Giving, Saving and Spending Tags from mamaroots's shop

We have some pretty major expenses coming up next year and therefore have been under extreme save mode for some time. I have been keeping my money in a saving account and it is fun to watch that amount grow as we add to it each pay period.

We are fast approaching that time of year when we end up shelling out all of our hard earned cash on gifts for others. I love giving presents but all to often in the past couple of years I feel like we have given quite expensive gifts that were not necessarily wanted by the recipient, not that they were not thankful for the gift but they never really used it or wanted it in the first place. This year the extended family (on my side) have decided to do a secret Santa, I love this as Christmas has become increasingly more expensive as cousins have added spouses and children into the mix. Now all the adults are put into a hat and only have to buy 1 gift each. Children will still get gifts from everyone.

Fifteens from google images.

Today at my work my team are having a bake sale for our "Adopt a Family" I have made Fifteens and Hollywood Cakes, 2 recipes that my Nana gave me. Fifteens are a Northern Ireland favourite and Hollywood Cakes I have never heard of outside my family but they are yummy!

My husbands family were not up for the Secret Santa so we have to figure out something different. Inspired by the bake sale I am making the men in the family a tin of homemade tray bakes each. I ran this idea past the hubby yesterday and he is all for it. Now I just have to figure out what to get/make the women! Oh yeah, since we will not be visiting them at Christmas time this year we will do all of this at Thanksgiving (under 2 weeks).

Piggy Bank with Ladybug from lindaneubauer's shop

Flea Market Finds

While my parents were here I took them to the Royal Oak Flea Market. It is on every Sunday at the Royal Oak Farmers Market. we went both Sundays that they were here and we found some treats. I found this huge plastic peacock, which is painted to look like metal. The crest from his head is missing but i love him anyway. I wonder what he was originally used for.

Close up of the peacocks neck, you can tell he is plastic from this view point and you can see that there used to be some sort of crest on his head. He is now hanging in my sewing room.

The second major find was this fantastic piece of embroidery it is a very large panel made up of three lengths of cloth sewn together and hand embroidered. This was priced way over my budget but my Dad haggled and talked the vendor down to $90 this is still way more than I could have afforded but I think it is worth more - you would have to pay me a lot more than that for so much work.

Detail shot, the flash on the camera makes the red look a bit florescent it is a deeper shade in reality. The most lovely thing about this is that my Dad gave it to me to hang in my guest room, I guess they were tired at looking at nothing.

So I know nothing about the origins of this piece - if you have any idea about where this could be from I would be very interested to find out.

A quick google image search this evening has brought me these pictures of the big plastic peacock with intact crest from design boner blog. Look at that delicious bling! It completely makes sense that this piece is missing, I wonder if it became necklace or a brooch?

I also wonder since this particular peacock is all gold whether my crystals may have been green. I am interested to know. Also by by the 2 comments on the blog I found this it seems to be a particular favourite of grandmas for hanging over their bed (a fact that made me chuckle).

Detroit Eastern Market

I had a great time with my parents while they were here. I had no time to blog so I felt a bit like I had abandoned it . I am back now. My Mum and Dad are fantastic and helped me get so much done around the house, including revamping my sewing room/studio I will post pictures of that soon.

One of the things we did when they were here was take a trip to the Eastern Market in Detroit. I had never been before and wanted someone to go with me and my parents happily obliged.

An amazing pile of gourds .

Indian corn.
Indian corn on top of gourds.

Beautifully displayed Chrysanthemums as I was taking this shot the market vendor posed for the pic and I felt obliged to take one of him as well.

Sunflower heads, I imagine people use these for displays? They were huge like great big pillows.

We came away with a load of veggies at extremely reasonable prices. I will definitely be going again.

Too Early?

I bought supplies to make Christmas cards last year and never got round to it, so friends and family got boring old shop bought cards (if i even sent out any - I can't remember!) I had the cards and a quick trip to the dollar store found some cheapo snowflake ornaments in the right colours and voila! Christmas cards.

This is actually good timing because now I can send my U.K. cards home with my parents when they come to visit next week, which will save on international postage!

BTW - Yay! my parents are visiting next week! I am very excited and am madly trying to clean up the house a bit and finish up a few art projects.

Day 30 OADCC

Today is day 30, the official last day of my one a day craft challenge. I am ashamed to admit that even though I made this challenge I haven't quite been able to keep up with it. I had a very hard week at work, 4 5am starts, that led to lots of falling asleep on the couch in the afternoon, my most productive time of day usually (because I have the house to myself). The mistake was not blogging every day, when I did that it was essential that I have a complete item to photograph. When I let that slip it was easy to fall behind. :(

With that said I am determined to get 30 items done, even if they are mostly brooches.
I went to take some pictures of some of the items I have made and the battery in my camrea was not charged.
I couldn't let this post go by without 1 picture so here are the postcards that I sent off for my postcard swap. Of course the scribble heart is my favourite. So much so that I have made it my new icon. I promise some pictures of more One A Day Challenge items tomorrow.


Please check out some of my friends who have been very good about joining me in this challenge

juanitatortilla
sara at soap rehab
TiLT
topknots
Julie of Musings of a Northern Girl
Anjeanette of Roots and Wings Co

Juliann of The Sick Chick

Jen D of The Silver Lining


I am going to have to declare TiLT the absolute champion of this challenge she definitely rose to the occasion and produced some wonderful items.

Big thanks to everyone who participated. Look out for the rest of my items to appear here in the next few days!

Day 21 (OADCC)

Hi everyone, I know I haven't blogged for a few days but it doesn't mean that I haven't been making. Day 17, 18 and 19 I made more flower brooches, I decided it wasn't really necessary to write about each one of these as you have seen the idea a few times now. The flower is easy for me to do on those very rushed days and I still feel like I am getting something done. Anyway today is another day and I made a different kind of flower necklace. I made 3 rosettes out over layers of silvery fabric. and then sewed them onto a ruched length of ribbon. The sheer fabric is actually a silver check on a black background which makes a great pattern when layered over each other (detail below).



On Day 20 (yesterday) I quickly sewed up some cushions. I have had this fabric for years. Another great thing about this challenge, it has got me completing those little projects which I have been meaning to do for the longest time.


And due to Floss' suggestion I took a picture of one of my butterflies in amongst the flowers to see what that would be like. I think he looks quite charming perched on the Hydrangea.

Day 16 (OADCC)

Today I made this little fellow. It is a french beaded butterfly. I love french beading but it takes a long long time. In addition to this guy I also made the bodies to all of the little ones below. I have had the wings done for a long time now just waiting to get put together. Funny enough the wings are by far the easier part. Anyway It was good to get a production line of bodies going.

You can still see the wires behind the butterflies, I will need these to attach the butterflies to their final destination.

I was originally going to make these into hair sticks like the one below, I made him earlier in the year, I have modified the wing shape and the body since then. I am now thinking that I will make some hair clips/barrettes too! Any other suggestions of things I could do with my butterflies! The big problem with them is that they takes so much time to make If I charged by the hour they would cost a fortune.

Why are my butterflies fellows and hims ??