Ummmmmm..... Oops?

I've been a bad bad girl....

Has it really been *3 YEARS* since something was last posted??

I really have to get better about posting, of course my brain is like Dug from Up: I really must post something..... oooooo look at this new project/shiny thing/show on TV......

Shucks, even finding time to sit down and write a post is difficult a lot of the time, and time management has never been my strong suit. Not to mention that, like all parents with school aged kids, my now teenager has been home with me since March when North Carolina schools shut down. My days have been full of cleaning, teenager wrangling, and lots of mask making.

Case in point for my not being able to focus, it has (to this point) taken four days just to type this.

I need to learn to manage my time better....

*Tap* *tap* Is this thing on?

Guess who just remembered what her user name and password? That's right! This girl! It's been a long day, hell, it's been a long week! Rebecca and I have been at a multi-day event here that finished up today. Did some sales, made some money, had some fun, lost my wedding ring...........
Yeah... my husband is less than thrilled about that one. Sad part is that the one missing is a replacement for my original ring. I still have the original ring, I just can't wear it because the band has worn down to the base metals and I'm allergic to the base metals. Hopefully it will turn up, I really don't want to have to come up with another $300. Anyway, Rebecca was there doing her Scentsy thing, I was there with my usual mixture of bat shit craziness as Mystik Dragons. We had a great time hanging out with Barbi from Wicked Cauldron   and Deanna from Ma Dukes Gym Bags & More.
Hoping to get everything back on track here, been working on some new things, got a few new toys to play with. We'll just have to see what happens.


Also, I typed the first part up yesterday but forgot to publish it, so it's been sitting on my laptop open all night and day, I found my ring so at least that's one thing less to worry about!

I'm still alive! I promise!

So I totally realize the amount of flak I will more than likely get for the almost year since one of us last posted. We promise, we're still alive. I admit that the last year has not be easy, for either of us. Those that know both Rebecca and I know the crap that we've dealt with. And to be honest, while none of it has been life or death (despite feeling like it when you throw Depression in) it has been a real bitch. As I've said in the past I'm attempting to complete an Associates Degree to be a Paralegal, if it had been for both the Federal Government and the wonderful government (yes, that comment is dripping as much sarcasm as it appears) of the state of North Carolina, I would be graduating right about now, barring any problems. Due to the tomfoolery, I lost my Pell Grant for a year (who would have thought that one income and the pittance that is unemployment would equal up to be to much money? especially after qualifying before with my husband's income, six months of working full time and two months of unemployment the year before. Can you see my frustration now?) However a year after losing both my Pell and my unemployment, I should get my Pell back and hopefully finish next May.

Now, down to why I logged into Blogger =) Pagan Pride Day is coming back up! It was a hoot last year, complete with protesters!

We had both private security (more than likely city employees, and police officers from the City of Belmont there. 

I never got close to the person myself, my cousin Lynn was with me. However I did get a good view from where I was done the hill and this lady camped out for a good three hours in the chair peeking through the bush!

This is part of whats up for PPD this year. I'm actually upgrading my booth to one with power for these. Some words of wisdom on these however, Not As Easy As They Look! I've drilled the holes in I want to say seven bottles. I'm about to have to replace my drill bit, Again! For the second time! It took an hour to drill two bottles earlier, 45 minutes from one and almost 15 for the other. The name of the game here seems to be 1) Good drill bits are a MUST! 2) Bottle thickness. It's the thickness of the bottles that is killing me! 3) Lights! The lights are proving to be a royal bitch to find right now! The only place I've been able to locate them so far is Hobby Lobby, it's the sets that they have for the glass blocks. You can get them online fairly inexpensively, IF your willing to pay through the nose for shipping! I have a Strawberry Margarita Bacardi bottle that I'm determined to put pink lights in. I've found one company that has a set that will work for the size of the bottle. The lights themselves are about $4.50, but the shipping is almost $20! No thanks! I'll take my chances and wait until closer to Christmas!

Rebecca's Crafty Moment This Week

I have decided that I love quilting, I have also decided that I have a ton of fabric but very few pieces that go well together. In the mix I have odd and end pieces but while I was digging through my stash, I found a really cute strip pack that I had picked up at Hancock Fabrics several months ago. My mind says 'it would be so cute as a quilt' while in reality, you need more than one strip pack to make a quilt top. I wanted to make something Fall related this week to spruce up our house. We already have the Bath and Body Works candles in Sweater Weather and Autumn. 

I don't know how many of you have ever joined Craftsy but it is pretty cool. You can find patterns, classes, tutorials, network with other crafty people, and supplies. My favorite part? I've gotten a TON of FREE patterns. I have a favorite saying, if it's free, it's for me. I love free stuff. Now if we could just get free fabric, that would be awesome. 

I was looking around the other night and I found a pattern for a table runner that I thought was really simple (best part- it was free) and that fabric I found would be perfect as well for a fall table runner. The pattern can be found here. For this pattern, you need (24) 4 1/2 inch squares, 1/3 to 1/2 of a yard of fabric for the backing, Binding material unless you choose to use the backing fabric, Crib size batting (I cut mine to be 16x36 I believe), a sewing machine, rotary cutter and mat, and an iron. (A camera will also be helpful because we would LOVE to see your creations :) ) 

With the strip pack I had found I took two strips from each design and sewed them together right sides together, pressed the seams to one side and used my 4 1/2 inch square ruler to cut the squares out I was able to get 9 squares out of each piece. I used 6 of each and laid them out into a pattern that I wanted to use, I have become very fond of the diagonal pattern. 

 Next, I took the columns of three and sewed them together, starting on the left and moving to the right. When you are piecing them together, always sew with right sides together. 

 Afterwards, I took the first two columns having a total of six squares laid right sides together and sewed a 1/4 inch seam longways. I found it was easiest to sew two rows at a time and then once you have two sections with 4 rows sewing them together rather than doing row by row. 

 Once you have the top sewn together, you can trip any sides that are not even to give it a nice rectangle shape. Remember to clip any long thread ends. Remember to press the seams flat to one side so it will lay flat. Now it's time to move onto the quilt sandwich. 

Cut your backing and batting a few inches bigger than the quilt top. 

Baste however you prefer to normally do it. At this point you can quilt however you would like. I just used the stitch-in-the-ditch method. Once I finished quilting, I trimmed the batting, folded over the backing a pressed a hem into it so I could use that as the binding. Once the hem was pressed, I continued to fold over the backing to make it the size I wanted for binding, pinned it in place and used a zigzag stitch to finish it off. 

 Here is the finished product, in it's permanent home on my coffee table. 

I am really happy with how it turned out, I am still learning how to do binding. The pattern on Craftsy is free, I would love to see what you guys come up with! 

Stay Crafty,
Rebecca

Newton's Law of Crafting

Photo found on jgoode, edited with PicMonkey

As I am here sitting at my desk browsing through Pinterest trying to figure out ways to save my business and gain more fans, I realize that everything I need is here until I actually need it and then at that point the Gremlins have run away with whatever it is. 

So, I have decided to come up with Newton's Laws of Crafting. Here is a brief intro on Sir Issac Newton to bring everyone up to speed. Bet you didn't expect this post to be educational!  

Photo found on Department of History, University of California Irvine

Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727) was a Natural Philosopher and Physicist, he came up with three laws during his lifetime. 

Newton's First Law (Inertia) says that an object at rest, stays at rest as well as an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by a external force.

Newton's Second Law says that a force that is applied on an object equals the rate of change of its momentum with time. Force equals mass times acceleration.
Newton's Third Law says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Newton also came up with the theory of gravitation.


Now, onto the regularly scheduled post :)
Newton's Laws of Crafting:
First Law- Everything is there until you actually need it and then it is nowhere to be found.
Second Law- You will run out of thread either on the spool or bobbin 3/4 the way through a project. Which will also be right after you come back from a trip to the store.
Third Law- When working on a quilt, Wal-Mart will run out of the scrap pack you need to finish. (Mine has been out of the same one for six months)
Fourth Law- You will realize that what you needed to purchase at the craft store was on sale last week, for 50 percent off, and will not go back on sale in the near future.
Fifth Law- The craft show you really wanted to do quit taking applications a few days ago.
Sixth Law- When you are trying to finish items the night before a festival, all sewing machines in your presence will go on a hiatus and refuse to work.
Seventh Law- No matter what the forecast is, if you plan to do a festival in the summer you will encounter a monsoon with hurricane force winds.
Eighth Law- When you sit down to work on a project, or find one you want to do, you will have all the materials except one.

That is all I can think of for now. Let us know in the comments if you have any to add.

Stay Crafty,
Becka

Washing away the memories...

Well my husband and I separated for around nine months, during that time new memories were created and we are now trying to wipe them away. Things have changed by leaps and bounds for sure and we recently realized that we needed to wipe away memories and start things fresh. When you have been married for two years, it is hard to start completely over but rearranging your home and getting new furniture is a good start!

We moved into our house in May of 2012 when my husband lost his job, he had this house with his first wife but moved and let a friend rent it, the house ended up in foreclosure and with the lost income, we decided to ride it out as long as we could while trying to get our house back on track.
Note: Home loan re-modification with Bank of America is no walk in the park.

We realized that the furniture being in the same spot, having the same furniture and being in the same routine was going to do nothing but bring us back down after we managed to get our house back. What was the first step? Moving furniture, you have no idea how much it will brighten your mood to just simply move things around. Second step? Acquire new furniture, even if it isn't brand new "new to you" is perfectly acceptable. My brother in law is also trying to 'wash away the memories' so we become the lucky owners of all his old furniture.

All of this has brought out a lot of DIY projects, I have two stepdaughters and they love quotes just about as much as I do. You can find a FREE website where you can print quote pages to color HERE.

 

We have decided to print a bunch of them out, frame them, and decorate our house with them. 

 If you are artistic, you can create your own! They also have a lot of cool pages to color at Doodle Art Alley. 

I love to color so if I can incorporate coloring into a DIY project and make my house prettier, it is a winner for me. 

What DIY's have you done lately to spruce up your house or to try and wash away memories?

Stay Crafty,

Becka

Bloglovin!

So I have found this new thing called Bloglovin, it's really neat (no, that wasn't meant as a shameless plug by the way, I really do think it's neat). My favorites is full of blogs that I really love and want to keep up with, however and to be perfectly honest, I have a terrible memory! This is where Bloglovin helps me. It has a button similar to the Pinterest "Pin It" button, this one however shows when the blogs you follow update (Yay!). Rebecca and I are also talking about starting an Instagram account for Crafting for Sanity, we both already have Instagrams and you guys are more then welcome to follow us on there. Fair warning though, some of the stuff really has no rhyme or reason, I shared one picture the other night I took on my Ipod that is from my College Criminal Law book

I still can't believe that this in the book, it probably shouldn't surprise me. 12 years of retail and customer service with 7 in management you would think that I had pretty much seen it all! Not a chance! The inherent stupidity of mankind assures that!

Just wanted to pop in, say Hi! Make sure everyone knew that we hadn't fallen off the world somewhere. Hopefully I'll be updating more since my semester ends after my Ethics final tomorrow.


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