Psst....

I moved! Please visit me over here www.momomushy.blogspot.ca

Coming soon...

Under construction...
 I'll be back!

Why?...WHY?

Can someone PLEASE explain to me why I often do this, PLEASE! This weekend I went to Edmonton for a friend's birthday and to get some fabric and sewing supplies. I was looking at the wall of sewing tools at the fabric store, saw a tailor's awl and thought to myself, "Hey I don't have a tailor's awl and I really need it!" Bought it, came home and, lo and behold, I already had a tailor's awl in my sewing tool box. Yee-haw! Ugh!

And guess what?! What I really needed was a new pencil sharpener and AA batteries for my computer mouse which of course I completely forgot.

In the meantime please excuse the really blurry photo above and the extreme boringness of my blog. I'm still in the middle of sewing a madness a sewing madness.

Sew need a break

The last couple of days I've been taking a break from this

and this.

To do this

and this

looking at this

and making some of these.
Egg tarts, 蛋撻 (dan tat) . YUM!

Don't you hate when this happens. The little Lego heads gets stuck in the little helmets, and you know what works really well to get that head out. Just drop them on a hard surface...FYI.

I am Iron Man

Lately everyday is Halloween at my house thanks to my parents. You should have seen their faces when they opened up these Christmas presents. I'm beginning to think that my boys were born wanting to be superheros.

Cracks me up every time they parade around the house with this huge Iron Man mask compared to their tiny bodies. They look like bobble heads.

Holidays were officially over on Monday with Darcy going back to teach. So back to routine and back to lots of sewing. If I don't update my blog for a while it's because of the big pile of fabric on my sewing table below.

I can't believe I'm posting a photo of my craft/work room on the www. It's such a mess. I thought about tidying it up and making it look magazine like before I took this photo but I thought the Where's Waldo like feeling of it was so much better. *cough..cough*

Happy New Year

A new year, a new beginning.
Wishing everyone a happy new year full of laughter, joy, hope, and dreams.

("2011"- watercolor)

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

..too many emails to reply. Which is very flattering because it means people are reading this crazy blog of mine. Go figure. I'm honestly not trying to be a jerk. I will get to you soon?!!

Check out the crazy amount of snow we've been getting here.

We actually had a snow day because the school buses weren't running except teachers still had to go to school. Thankfully Darcy made it out of the driveway.

This is what I've been up to lately. Working hard in the kitchen.

Melting chocolate,

baking, tasting. O.k., the tasting part wasn't really that hard.

I'm a huge biscotti fan. And I find this almond biscotti recipe from Joy of Baking to be one of the best. I already ate all the ones I didn't package. Did you know that Biscotti is the plural of Biscotto? Ha! Now you do.

This the season...

...to make snowflakes...

snip snip snip snip snip.. snip snip.. snip.. snip.

It snowed so much today. Thought I would bring a little bit of the snow indoors too.

Nov...Dec

It's December?! When did this happen. Every year when December comes by I feel like I'm that guy in those movies where he's sitting in that office cubicle and the boss comes by and throws down a stack full of urgent to do files. The boss being December and the urgent to do files such as sending out cards, gift shopping, gift making, etc, etc, and on top of that projects for others. I don't know why I don't learn my lesson and do many of those things pre-December.

Procrastination...I don't like you very much.

At least I managed to work on this this weekend,

a nativity scene for Lucius' preschool.

and got a chance to take some photos of the boys having some outdoor winter fun on the snowmobile and sled.

O.k... back to finishing up the nativity scene...bad blog bad.

The reusable t-shirt bag tutorial

I've been wanting to post this tutorial for a while now. I made these instructions for my reusable t-shirt bag eco-craft class a while back and I really wanted to share them on my blog. I thought this would be the perfect time with the holidays coming up. Instead of wrapping your gifts with wrapping paper, get a bunch of old t-shirts, have a sewing party, and use these bags instead. The gift recipient and the trees would be oh so very happy.

Go here for the Reusable T-Shirt Bag Tutorial.

Go here for the T-Shirt Sleeve Pouch Tutorial.

Enjoy!!

Frozen

You know it's winter when...

it's -28°c,

There's snow on the ground,

The lake is frozen,

dry, itchy, eczema hands,

a tornado went through your entrance way.

Thankfully it's warming up by the end of the week. Warming up in Albertan winter lingo means around -15°c. Still cold, but not cold enough that your lungs feels bitter when you breathe the air.

So am I typing this on a new computer? No. Is my old computer dead? No. Surprisingly something magical happened. My computer stopped shutting down on me. Not sure if it was a virus, if it fixed itself. I don't know. It's quite a mystery.

Blank screens

My computer is kaput. On it's last leg. I'm crossing my fingers that it's not going to shut down on me as I write this. Been trying to save everything on it before I do lose everything. So it's time to search for a new computer. A sign to take a break from the internet. Read lots of good books and enjoy real human company. Answer your emails when I get back and enjoy this in the meantime.

Printable Halloween origami box

It's been a while hasn't it? So just in time for Halloween, printable spider origami boxes for treats or tricks. If you know how to fill tricks in there, let me know! There is some crazy origami folding involved, but you'll get the hang of it after one or two attempts. If you can fold, you can do this.


Use letter size (8½"x11") white or colored paper. Construction paper or light card stock works well too. Just something not too stiff because you need to do a lot of folding.

Print the box top sheet from here and the box bottom sheet from here. *You don't really need to print the bottom sheet really. Just cut two rectangles 6½"x 5¼"(16.5cm x 13.3cm).

Cut along the lines to get the two rectangle sheets for the top of the box

and cut the bottom box rectangle sheets either from the print out or without(see * above).

With one of the top box rectangle sheet, have it face towards you upside down as shown in the photo.

Flip the sheet over and make sure the print is still upside down.

Fold the sheet in half

and in half again.

Unfold and you get three vertical lines as shown in the above photo.

This is a little tricky. Fold the right bottom corner towards the third vertical line with it's corner ending with the middle vertical line. Hmmff....look at the photo...

like so.

Fold the top edge down horizontally to meet up with the bottom right corner.

Fold the top again horizontally along where the top edge and the corner meet.

You should have something that looks like this.

Unfold everything. "Say what?" I know... just do it.

Now fold a line from the bottom of the third vertical line to the top folded line corner.

Like so. Then unfold.

Now do the same with the middle vertical line bottom to the corner where the third vertical line and top line meets.

Like so. Unfold

Again same thing, first vertical line bottom to the corner where the middle vertical line and top line meets.

Like so. Unfold.

And fold along the bottom left corner to the corner where the first vertical line and top line meets.

Like so. And yes, unfold

So your sheet should have these folded creased lines which we will use for our final folds.

Fold the top down once.

Fold the bottom right corner fold.

Fold the third vertical line up as you are folding the next diagonal line in.

To look like this.

Repeat with folds of the next vertical line and diagonal line.

To look like this.

And finally fold the last vertical and diagonal lines..

so it looks like this.
Repeat all the same origami folding steps with the other top rectangle sheet.

When you have both sheets folded, you are ready to assemble the top of the box.

Slide the two pieces together like so.

It should look like this.

At the top, slide the right edge under the left.

Shove it in.

In the bottom the left edge should slide under the right.

After a few shoving and adjustment here and there it should look like this.

Turn it over and you have the top of the box.

Repeat all the exact same steps, folding, and combining with the two bottom rectangular sheets.

Cut out that little printed spider.

Glue it on top of the box. I used these styrofoam 3D dots to make it stand out.
I think those plastic spiders would be fun too.

Add some googly eyes or other ghouly decorations.

Place the top over the bottom.
Don't forget to fill it with your favorite Halloween treats.

and Voila, enjoy!!

*All printables are for personal, non-commercial use only.*