Etsy Favorites Wedne ... errr ... Monday!!

Oh no! I missed Etsy Favorites Wednesday this last week! Oh my goodness! With the holiday excitement last week I didn't even realize it. So, here's last week's list!


Snowman coasters - how adorable are these?! I love how their little heads poke out from the cup, teehee!


Handmade buttons - I love these dainty little declarations! I wish they said "Buy Handmade" ... oooo, I should see if I can find some that say that. Snap! I did!! I am going to have to buy those!


Folkdance pillow - I adore Scandinavian-type design. Adore it. I loooove this artist's work. I've also got my eye on this print.


Flower necklace - How unique and cute! Another Scandi item. The flowers can be worn as brooches or together as a pendant. I love the versatility!

Doll clothes patterns - For Christmas this year the girls are getting American Dolls. I know. What in the heck am I getting myself into? They've been interested in the dolls for awhile now and I've been hesitant because of the price of them and their accessories. But then, slap-on-forehead DUH, I thought to check Etsy for clothes patterns that I can make for their dolls, and hit the mother load! There are so many cute, cute, cute patterns for sale. I don't think I can do the fabric ones, I've already got my mom interested in helping me out with those, but I'm pretty confident I can figure out the crochet patterns. I'm going to get the one pictured above and also this one to start, and see how they go!

Decorations, up!

The Christmas tree is up! The kiddos get all excited about Christmas which is totally fun. They helped me to decorate the tree and did a really excellent job. Here's a few pictures!

Notice the cute table cloth? I love it, yes I do! It's got a bit of a sewing theme going on with rick-rack and stitches.

Close up of the tree ... we had to weed out some ornaments and didn't end up putting up even half of what we own. It's crazy how quickly they accumulate over the years!

My simple wreath - I bought a wreath and added a bow to it. Got both on sale, just $6 for the pair!

Top of the bookcase in the living room ... I found those awesome apothecary jars (on the right) for a steal and filled them with candies. The far right is filled with peppermints. There's two big bags of mints in the thing - I couldn't believe how many it held! The girls helped me to upwrap them. The other jar is filled with Lifesavers. The candlestick and candle is from IKEA; so is the little red bowl, which has packages of chocolate in it.

Shop update, complete!

Yay, I have stock back in my Etsy shop! 25 regular dolls, five baby-safe dolls and two big dolls! (I had a third big dollie, but she sold earlier this week, yay!) I was having trouble with my pictures before (see previous post) but I like these new pictures better. Not perfect, but much clearer than the previous ones. Check out my new stock and tell me, which is your favorite?

I hate being such a perfectionist

*Sigh* On Sunday I spent an hour photographing my doll stock to put into my Etsy shop. I was sort of pleased with how the pictures turned out; I had used a new backdrop and it seemed to work good. I started to download and upload the pictures Sunday night and got more into it Monday night, spending about five hours between both nights. It takes awhile to crop the photos and make them just perfect. I have about 30 things to add to Etsy, five photos for each thing. So anyway, I worked and worked on the photos, and last night I uploaded some stuff to my shop. But then I had to stop because I ended up hating how the photos looked once I saw them in my shop. They look grainy and dark! UGGGGG. The photos are just not as crisp and bright as I like them to be and it's going to drive me insane until I get them fixed. I'm going to rephotograph everything. Darn me and my perfectionism. Darn it all. This is what I'm talking about:

Most recent photos. The backdrop was a pink gauze type of material.

In the past I've photographed the dolls in my lightbox ... I like the detail.

The best way to photograph them is outside, but, obviously our grass isn't this green anymore, and the sun isn't out that much this time of year.

Sigh. I think I'll do light-box photos for all of them.

A cute little trio

Baby-safe doll, BIG doll and regular doll - going into the shop soon!

A kind craft show

I was in a really large craft show Saturday. It was at a local high school and the booths were spread out in the lunch room, in the gym, and in the hallways. It was crazy big. There were a ton of people coming through; the crowd was awesome. Unfortunately I only sold three dolls, but I received a multitude of compliments on my work and handed out dozens of business cards, so it was a positive experience. I have been in five shows in the past year and I thought that the kindness of the people walking through this show was remarkable. I got a lot of really nice compliments about the quality of my work (which pleased me immensely!) and lots and lots of people said the dolls were cute. People didn't seem to be walking around with bags so I think they just weren't purchasing much, just browsing. I'm thinking I made some contacts with people that took my business cards and hopefully they'll visit my Etsy shop and consider purchasing. I'll be stocking up my shop tonight or tomorrow with all of the show's leftovers!

I made up a batch of fabric magnets and hair clips. I priced them at $1 each and surprisingly only sold three.

This shelf includes some of my favorite dolls from my stock.

I also took four teacup pin cushions (bottom left) just to see how they'd do. I got a lot of "that's interesting" comments but no takers. I brought my Jack Skellington Halloween doll and sort of hid her in the back (she's in between the shelves and the pink gauze) and she got lots of compliments, mainly from teenage girls, haha! I had priced her high at $30, pretty much because I didn't want to sell her but I would if someone was willing to pay that price. No one did, so she's still mine, yay!

Hooray for New Moon!

Well, I'm pretty sleepy today. Because last night we went to a midnight showing of New Moon! We went with a group of friends and I tell you what, it was F-U-N. It was just a fun night and it was fun to be caught up in the excitement of a movie on opening night. The movie itself was fantastic and the crowd was great. I was quite worried about having to endure screaming girls, but we had a good group in our theater. Everyone was there to see the movie, not to make a spectacle. People cheered and oooh'd and ahhh'd, but it was at appropriate moments and it wasn't obnoxious. The movie wasn't Oscar worthy, it wasn't the best movie ever made, but it was good. It was funny, it was sad, it was a good story. It was true to the book, the soundtrack was absolutely wonderful, and Rob Pattinson was quite good looking throughout. It was just a really fun night, sharing a good movie with friends and fellow fans! The movie hit an all-time midnight box office record, taking in 26 million last night - holy moly!

Santa is the outdoorsy type

(Click to make larger) Santa was at the mall last night. Kinda early if you ask me, but I guess he's just getting a head start on things. Lydia was eager to get her picture taken with him. Arlene, not so much. Check out the elf with the present - looks a wee bit shifty!

Etsy Favorites Wednesday - the felt edition

Etsy Favorites Wednesday, the felt edition. I've always been drawn to felt as a medium for making crafts and sewing projects. I'm not sure why; I think it's because felt has a playful, youthful vibe to it. And I like youthful and playful. But felt can also be quite sophisticated and used to make detailed designs. For some reason working with felt seems easy to me because whenever I see something made of felt I automatically think, that's easy, I can do that! So here's this week's list!

Felt Thanksgiving Dinner - appropriate. The drum sticks are detachable. Ha!

Numbers and Letters Mobile - Felt letters are awesome. I love them. I have yet to make a set but I want to.

Felt treats - Those cinnamon rolls look real!


Pillow cushion cover - That design makes quite a statement!


Monster case - this dude is made out of fleece, not felt - same thing, sort of. His expression cracks me up! And his hair!

A fashionista, I am not

I am so not a fashionista, but sometimes I wish that I were. (I have a love/hate relationship with that term, fashionista.) I have never been one to follow clothing trends and I've never once worn an expensive, name brand of clothing. I could just care less. Instead, I wear nicely priced, quality clothing that I think is in style and hip, and comfort is always key. But in the last week I've been really hating my wardrobe. I've been feeling drab and blah about my outfits. I don't want to spend money on new clothes, but I think I might have to. I just always feel guilty for spending money on clothes; I'm not really sure why and I think I just need to get over it and get some new stuff to get myself out of this funk I'm in!

I'm thinking I want to buy a pair of high boots and a couple of new skirts and then some new tights (I loooove tights. I don't know why, I'm way too old to wear them, but I love it when the weather turns just chilly enough to where its okay to sport a nice pair of tights!), and some new cardigans. I also love cardigans. Love love love cardigans. At one time in college I owned 54 cardigans, all but two from the thirft store. True story. Ask around, people can verify. (And those Old Navy "Party Cardi" commercials? Delightful!)

Fall fun!

Appropriate for today, I thought

It's Friday the 13th. And while I generally don't believe in superstitious stuff about today's date, I did think that today was an appropriate day to write about my house, and how I do believe the house is cursed, or at the very least, we are very unlucky living in it. You see, we've been trying to sell our house for the past three years. We're taking a sanity break right now, but we'll have it back on the market in 2010. We've had many blessings in the house, many happy times. The house is warm and dry and its our home. But we want to move. We want to get off the too-busy street, we want to get the girls into a better school district, we need more room, and we want to get out of our neighborhood. We just haven't had any luck selling; we've had three different realtors and no substantial offers. It's frustrating because we owe more on the house than it's worth, thanks to the tanking economy and our depreciating neighborhood.

We've had a string of bad luck lately, and every time something happens it's like a sucker punch to the gut.

Beginning in June, here's what's happened so far:

• The freezer quit working, needed a service call and a new part.


• The toilet overflowed, two inches of water in the bathroom which then dripped through the floor and into our basement.


• The kitchen sink backed up the day after the toilet overflowed; had to call Mr. Roto Rooter to save the day.


• While we were outside one day, talking about the frustrations about selling our house, our air conditioner popped and sizzled and stopped working. Had to buy a replacement part. (the coincidence of that happening still freaks me out, and it just so happened that the subsequent days after that were the HOTTEST DAYS OF THE SUMMER!) I wrote about it here.


• Our dryer wouldn't heat ... the fix for that took four weeks because we couldn't figure it out. The problem ended up being bad wiring. Four weeks without a dryer. Family of four. Not fun.


• We had electrical problems when trying to install new light fixtures. Basically, the person that owned the house before us wasn't a very good handyperson. But he thought he was because he tinkered with everything. If you looked into the dictionary for "jerry rigged" he'd be the smiling face spokesperson.


• Whilst heating up frozen bread the oven's coil's caught fire. It was a spectacularly scary event. The coil was like a firecracker with little bursts of flames here and there. The entire coil burned. We had to buy a brand new oven/stove.


• And this week, the hot water heater stopped working. Just stopped working. Had to buy an entire new water heater. Not cheap, not cheap at all.

And I said so far at the beginning of that list, because I know something else will break down. There's really only a few things that could break, and I fully expect they will before we get out of the house. Our garage door is gonna break, our microwave is gonna break, and our furnace is going to crap out. I know it.

I don't want to sound like Moaning Myrtle here, but doesn't that list seem a bit excessive? I can see having to replace one or two things, but to replace that many, and in that short of time is a bit ridiculous. Never mind the fact that we're paying for all of these fixes, money that we will never recoup. We are trying our best to save money to put toward the house so that we can list it for less and get it sold, but we can't exactly sock money away when we keep having to pay for expensive fixes. The money we've had to use for the fixes has completely negated the progress we made in savings.

We want out, but we can't get out. I think the house is cursed, or we're just really unlucky. I don't know which it is, I just know that I'm tired of having to foot the bill for things that I don't think should all be breaking down at pretty much the same time. Our house is not that old, and almost everything was replaced before we moved in. (However, see bullet number 6 up there.)

What I am encouraged about, what I try to focus on instead of all of the money we're throwing at the house, is that the housing tax credit for new homebuyers was extended into 2010 and also now includes existing homeowners. I'm hoping 2010 is our year to turn our bad luck around and to GET. OUT.

DIY Holiday Gift Guide, Vol. 1

I'm always featuring clever little crafty ideas that I've found from crafty blogs and I decided to do so now, for the holiday season, in a more organized fashion. From time to time I'll post a guide to some DIY gifts for the holidays. I hope to be able to get to making these ideas as gifts this year, but there's always that issue of time. I need A Couple More Hours in each and every day. It's so true.

I present to you, the first DIY Gift Guide! {If you end up making one of these things, please let me know! And likewise for me too - I'll let you know if I get around to making any of these things!} This year, pledge to go HANDMADE! Either make gifts yourself, or buy gifts from crafty types! Do it!


Plush gnomes! Perfect for your holiday decor! I want to make a gnome that looks like Arlene. Turns out my brother was a gnome for Halloween too. I'm thinking he needs a stuffed gnome for Christmas, yes indeed.


Memory Game Tutorial - how absolutely cute, and it sounds like it couldn't be easier. I'm thinking it would work with fabric too!


Fabric door stop - Now, when you think Christmas gift ideas, you think, doorstop! don't you? Yeah, me neither. But think about it for a minute - we all could use a door stop! And a clever little fabric doorstop?! Even better! Perhaps someone on your gift list could use a door stop. If so, make them one!


Fabric Bracelet Tutorial - Another really simple idea, from the same craftster of the memory game above.

Etsy Favorites Wednesday - The Winter of Scarves

It has been unseasonably warm in Cincinnati lately but that hasn't stopped me from thinking about cold weather and the upcoming holiday season. I've decided that this winter will be The Winter Of Scarves for me. Handmade scarves. Now, I'm not outside much in the winter, so I don't really have a use for a really warm, functional scarf. But I do have a use for a cute, decorative scarf, and just check out all of these cute patterns I found on Etsy this week! I've never been one to wear a scarf inside, as an accessory, but I just may after I make myself one, or all, of these!

Lariat of Roses - I bought this pattern already! It says it can be made up in 45 minutes, which is great! I love spirals, just the shape and look of spirals, which is what drew me to this pattern. The spirals are actually suppoesd to be roses, but to me, they look like spirals. The pattern's creator, Hectanooga, has a bunch of other neat looking patterns in her shop, such as this curly design.

Callista - For this pattern you can either make a skinny scarf or a wide scarf. It would be hard to decide which to do. I also like this leafy pattern from the same seller.

Tomato - haha, that's not what the pattern maker calls this scarf, but when I first saw it I thought it looked like a tomato slice. I really can't decide if I like this or not. I think it's unusual and clever, but I don't know if it's something I would wear. I'm on the fence.

Neck warmer - how cute is this little neck warmer? Very.

Floral - I like the flower design of this scarf a lot.


While I found those hip patterns on my search, I also found some not-so-hip patterns, and a few are just too funny not to share. I seriously thought this one was a joke. But it's not. You have to read the whole listing and see all of the pictures, it's hilarious. And I'm thinking the girls need Santa scarves, right? Or better yet, just plain weird ice skate scarves!

This is SO me!

Aaack, what is WRONG with me?! Another Christmas-y thing! This is so unlike me, to be thinking and planning for Christmas before Thanksgiving. But I'm all gung ho this year! Check out this button wreath tutorial that I found online, it is SO ME. I'm definetely making one. Or two. Or three. After my craft show next weekend, that is.

And! Stained-glass cookies! I think the girls would love to make (and eat!) them!

Stocking up

This weekend the Two Stars shophand was very busy! I'm working on dolls for a craft show next weekend, for an order, and also to stock my shop. I'm really liking the way the current stock is turning out, I'll show more pictures soon of the finished work.

I'm making some baby-safe stamped-eye dolls for the show to see how they'll do.

As always, my little assistants. They're drawing pictures for me.

Click to zoom in and see her picture, it's so cute!

I experimented with my button-eye stamp and made some colorful button fabric which will be a doll's dress.

15 days to go!

Yes indeed, the countdown has begun. Just 15 days until New Moon! Mike and I are going with a group of friends to the midnight showing. I've NEVER gone to a midnight showing of a movie. Soooooo excited!

Etsy Favs Wednesday - Thinking of Christmas!

So obviously, I love Halloween. It's my favorite holiday. Any reader of this 'ol blog knows that. But I'm starting to like Christmas. A lot. And this year, I've begun thinking about it, waaay earlier than I ever have. I thought about Christmas before Halloween, gasp! It's true. (I even purchased my mother-in-law's gift online last week!) In year's past I've handmade a bunch of gifts and I think I'll continue that this year, but I don't really have any solid ideas in place yet. But I do have ideas for making decorations. I found some inspiration on Etsy this week, and I wanted to share. Enjoy!


Mary Jane Stocking - Oh my goodness I can't get over how cute this is! I need to remake the girls' stockings this year and I think I can figure out how to make a shoe stocking like this.


Embroidery ornament - I'm stealing this idea. FOR SURE! I already have some tiny embroidery hoops, and I'm thinking what would be even cuter than this little snowflake (which is pretty cute, and so is its companion monogram piece - look into the listing to see it) would be to have the girls draw up some Christmas designs and to embroider them!


Fabric covered tree - I see those foam tree forms in the stores and I always want to buy them and cover them with stuff. These are covered with fabric. I saw an idea in a magazine last year where they had covered the trees with gumdrops and peppermint candies. Buttons would be cute too.


Felt garland - Looooooooove this! I'm going to make a fabric or felt garland for Christmas similar to my Halloween garland that I made. I'm going to try this idea too - I think the felt garland would be cute on the tree.


Gingerbread house - last year I became enamored with gingerbread men. I had the idea of making the girls a collection of gingerbread plush and a house, but ran out of time to do it. I'm going to try to make it this year. I like this house too. I'm going to use both as inspiration.

This year I want to decorate in reds, whites and pinks. I have ideas, ideas! How are you going to decorate this year?