May day is lei day! I’m sort of in love with fragrant flowers made into lavish garlands to wear around my neck. They are the first thing I’ll gift you when you come to visit me in Hawaii (and you should), and I sort of insist on Mother’s Day that Garth and the kiddos pick one out for me to wear all day. This coming Tuesday is may day and on the mainland that meant placing flowers on your neighbors doorstep but in Hawaii it is a celebration of Hawaiian culture and the lei. I made a gaggle of these leis to send in candy tubes to some neices and nephews and wanted to share how to do it (super duper simple!).

Supplies:
assorted paper
scissors
seed beads (I used a couple of bracelets that had lost their elastic spring)
crochet thread and needle
paper punch and small hole punch

Punch lotsa flowers and then punch little holes in the center of them (my hole punch is 1/16th of an inch). Cut your crochet thread to about 30 inches, string on a seed bead, and knot the string at the bead to secure it. Then string on two flowers. Then string on a bead and knot it about an inch from the last beed. then string on two flowers. Then string on a bead and knot it. Then two flowers and a bead and two flowers and a bead……..

…until you’ve used all of your thread! Finish it off with one last bead and knot, leaving a couple of inches at the end the tie it. It looks pretty cool at this point, but it looks more lei-like if you take each set of flowers and gently fold them away from each other, making them like little bowls. This gives them that va va voom fullness that looks so lovely.

I used a couple of different color combos and tried a few kinds of paper (colored vellum is so great for this!) and I’m sort of itching inside to try a bigger punch (I used a 1 inch punch here)- maybe for mother’s day!

Then I packed them in candy tubes, covered them with stamps, and handed them to my mail carrier who did not seem surprised in the least. I hope that they reach those tiny adorable necks in Spokane before Tuesday!

Happy weekend friends- I’m off to force myself to work outside for a few hours. The end is in sight for the studio!

xoxox
elle

Costume season is in full swing for me which means that I am stitching Sally and Moishe in the car everywhere we go, in my bed before sleep, and at the kitchen table. Little snips of black yarn are everywhere, as are my scissors and pins. But golly do I LOVE making costumes. And, I love that in a few weeks time I’ll be able to buy a new fridge thanks to Halloween.

Dontcha just love the sweet little kiddos modeling for me? If I keep making these for years and years this could be quite a sweet little anthology. Aaaaaaannnnd what are we going to be this year? I have no idea. We are pretty sure that we want to all coordinate since we know in a few years the kids’ll want to be whatevers trendy and Mom & Dad will want to be Mary Poppins and Bert. Any ideas? How are all ya’ll going to dress up?

ecks OH!

elle

Hello there friends. I heard that it was National Hot Cocoa Day (did ya’ll know that there’s a food holiday everyday? I didn’t. but now I’m thinking that a year long celebration is in order!) and by some chance Garth and I were working on our mexican hot cocoa recipe last night (it was a lot of measuring and taste testing). Our love for Abuelita has grown and we wanted to make something similar (since we’re all about making things ourselves). Our masterpiece of a recipe and the way that we made little indivdual servings to send out to our family follows.

First, the recipe. We like it kinda spicy, but sweet, with a touch of cinnamon. It is highly recommended that this cocoa be served with marshmallows or (even better) whipped cream.

elle & gee’s mexican hot cocoa

4 Tablespoons unsweetened baking cocoa
1 Tablespoon Kaffree Roma
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch chipotle chili pepper
dash ground cloves (whole or ground)
smidge nutmeg
3 cups milk

Bring milk to a boil over medium-high heat on the stovetop. Whisk in hot cocoa mix until frothy. MMMMMMmmmmm enjoy!

We made a huge batch last night and wanted to make them into little individual packages to send to our families on the cold half of the country. We filled little treat baggies with 3Tb of the hot cocoa mix, folded them over a few times, and then stapled a folded piece of cardstock over the top (the die-cut floral stuff is from a roll of paper ribbon that I found in the wedding aisle at JoAnn). Then we wrapped a ribbon around to cover the staples and slapped a sticker on the front and back to keep it in place. The front stickers were printed on sticker paper and cut out using a paper punch. The back stickers we printed the same, but cut by hand.

And then we thought that it might be nice (for those so inclined- like Garth and my Mom) to include a little extra kick. So we made little packets of chipotle chili pepper and labled them “for the BRAVE”. We used bits of ribbon left over and the text is handwritten since our printer ink ran out mid-way through the project.

YUUUUUMMMMMmY! This hot cocoa will make you make faces like this:

Happy National Hot Cocoa Day!

yours in all things warm and snuggly,
elle

Happy December! Golly, I look forward to this time all year. There are so many things that I love to do- baking tons of cookies, gingerbread houses, drives (or bikes rides) to look at the holiday lights, shopping, sipping hot cocoa, cuddling in cozy blankets with people I love and watching my favorite holiday movies, and about a gazillion other things. I love counting down the days until Christmas and last year I finally made an advent calendar for the month of December. My plan was to offer this rad tutorial for all ya’ll so that you could make your own but folks, I was lucky to get a shower yesterday and this mama likes to overextend herself so there’s no way I’ll be getting to it in the next week. I thought that I would just share the photos and my process and since you are amazingly smart and creative you can work it out without step-by-step photos.

Materials that I used: 24 sheets of 8 x 8 inch card stock (I had one of those pads of coordinating linen-feel papers), thread, staples, tape, ornament hooks, and felt stickers.
Equipment that I used: Martha Stewart’s punch around the page, sewing machine, stapler.

Things that I did: I used white thread to freehand machine embroider the dates (one through twentyfour) onto each piece of paper, right near one of the corners. I then used my really awesome punch set to create those little loops around that corner. I think those two steps were the hardest part because then I just rolled them into cones, secured then with a piece of tape inside and a staple. Then I used the felt sticker to cover the staple on the outside and used to ornament hook to hang it from a wire in our play room (so situated for just this sort of thing). And then, the best part is filling them- I chose our favorite not-for-everyday candies and put enough for all candy-eating memebers of the household to enjoy one everyday. I also included a note with an activity to do that day. These ranged from the Pensacola Christmas parade to cookie baking to movie watching. It may seem kinda crazy to pre-plan watching a holiday movie, but I wanted to make sure that we paced ourselves and watched all of our favorites and didn’t miss any of the great events happening around our town.

I think that I was really inspired by this tutorial when I was making this last year. It is lovely.

I’m off to get oursout and up before the boys come home!

xo
elle

It’s here! I only discount my items once a year and this is the weekend! Ya’ll have until late Monday night to snag all the bow ties you can handle from the shop at just $25 each. Awesome.

And, if you’re in the Atlanta area the Indie Craft Experience is having a pop-up shop for the holidays that opens today. You can find my bow ties and game board journals there. Yippee!

hello there friends!
I know, it’s been a while. I have a stack of blog posts in my mind to write but have just been so short on time. It is a good thing that life is keeping me so busy that I don’t have time to blog about it- I mean, it’s all about doing and making a being and enjoying, right?

I am just popping in today to mention that I have an e-mail newsletter and it is rad and those who have signed up for it will be getting a very special (better than black friday/cyber monday!) surprise in thier inboxes tomorrow morning. This is your official invitation to sign up for the awesomeness. Just enter your e-mail address and e-mail preference in the little box titled “get quarterly updates” at the bottom of the sidebar, click submit, and you’re set! And, have no fear, I am not one to send out newsletters more than once every few months and I will fill them with interesting and rad things, scouts honor. Oh, and special deals available only to newsletter subscribers will be tucked in each time as well.

Cannot wait for Thanksgiving ya’ll! (you know it’s the grand entryway to Christmas, right?)

loves!
elle

ps. I’m working on making a tutorial for the advent calendar above- it’ll be posted soon (ish).

Have I mentioned yet that I’ll be at the Port City Market in November and December? I will. We’re on the corner of Palafox and Main Saturday mornings from 9am-1pm. I’m starting a clearance bin to try to lighten some of my inventory before my move to Hawaii. The market will be operating (and I’ll be vending!) these dates: Nov 20, Dec 4, 11, 18. Love the market.

And, tonight is gallery night! I’ll be participating by setting up outside of my friend Bia’s brand-new-not-open-yet shop at 208 Alcaniz (it’s just a block away from Seville). Come by and see me (and where Bia’s shop will be opening up in just a few weeks!) and grab some journals for the holidays to gift to the people you love.

I’ve just made dozens of journals and some pretty rad little notebooks too. Here are a few that have made me smile the last few days while working on them:

Operation, Heroes and Hero Worship, FDR (the title was, “When the New Deal was Young and Gay”), and a beatiful German book that I almost didn’t cut up because it’s so stunning (but then Jack ripped some pages out, so that was that). And I finally got around to making another batch of the art journals. They’re the delightful journals that are made entirely of non-blank paper. They’ll all be there this weekend, as will I. If you’re not local, have no fear, I’ll be adding all of these lovelies to the shop early next week.

see some of ya’ll there

much eckses and ohs,

elle

I know that Halloween is long gone and it’s time for Christmas-ie things, but the accident really screwed up my to-do’s and I am just now getting around to finally doing a proper costume post. So, without further excuses, I present to you the fabulous gnome family costumes.

We chose these costumes because we thought that they would be fairly easy to assemble (we chose them less than a week before Halloween) and comfortable enough for the parents as well as the kids- and we were right. We liked wearing them so much that we wore them almost non-stop from Friday afternoon right on through Sunday evening.

Now let’s start with the Papa gnome and make our way down to the baby gnome, shall we?

For Papa gnome we bought some blue corduroy and Garth used one of his long sleeve PT shirts to make a pattern. The sweater tights were purchased at Target. The hat I made using a felted wool sweater. The beard is a piece of fleece in the shape of a beard with lines of wool roving sewn into place by machine and tiny elastic loops for the ears. Garth wore a leather belt and leather shoes that were already in his closet. If we had more time we would have fashioned some sort of boot for him and (ahem…) hemmed his tunic.

For Mama gnome I tweaked a Simplicity pattern slightly to have a sweet peter pan collar. I used a yellow linen/rayon blend (that I dyed a peachier color since when I got it home I didn’t really like the yellow) and a polka dotted quilting cotton for the lining and collar. The hat was fashioned that same as Papa’s out of a red wool sweater. The thigh-high socks I purchased as a ren fair several years ago and that apron is vintage. I braided my hair into two braids at my ears and wore clogs. I really wanted to wear some red chunky mary janes, bust couldn’t find any on the short notice. My dress was (and still is) unhemmed as well and I wanted to make an apron that matched Ginger’s but the little things didn’t quite get done.

Jack gnome was my favorite one I think. He had an orange felted hat, fashioned the same as Mama and Papa’s. His beard, made just like Papa’s but smaller, wasn’t even worn long enough for a photo. I sewed the jacket out of a lovely brown linen from a little boy’s trenchcoat pattern. The leggings we purchased at Target and the shoes were thrifted. We purchased two belts from the thrift store and put the best parts together for his belt. I had a pair of snow boots that I had purchased at the thrift store meaning to spray paint them- but I’m sort of glad that I didn’t- those little suede velcro shoes were great. Jack loved wearing this and kept his hat on most of the time. He looked so so so adorable.

I made Ginger gnome’s dress out of a lovely plum linen/rayon blend. I used mustard wool felt for the peter pan collar and scalloped strips of it to also add to the hem. The apron was a little too small for her- I made it from some vintage flocked polka dot fabric, patterning it after my favorite vintage apron. Her leggings were from Target- I purchased them last Christmas from the dollar bin before we even knew we were having a girl. The hat is the same as the rest of the family’s in pink. We knew that we were going to be driving her around in the stroller so I draped a green knit fabric over it and safety pinned wool felt flowers (remnants from the hats!) to it to create her own little flower bed! She was so dreamy floating down the street in her garden carriage.

SO FUN.

For more fun check out past years costumes, Popeye and Olive Oyl, and Peter Pan, Wendy, and Captain Hook.

Can’t wait till next year when we have two toddlers!

lots o’ love
mama gnome

4 costumes to make and just about 24 hours remaining. This is my little pile of completed pieces. I wanted to photograph the pile of things that I still need to complete, but they are spread out all over my making room- one is on my lap at this very moment. Can you tell what we’re going to be?

And, speaking of the making room, it’s featured on The Indie-Pendent today- looking rather clean and costume/clutter free (and you can even see Ginger hainging out with me by my computer!) Check it out here.

Did you know that you can make caramel apples from scratch just using honey, cream, and salt? (and apples, ha!) The recipe is here and we’re going to be checking it out as soon as we restock our honey supply. (we tried making some last night using brown sugar, cream, butter, and vanilla and they were grainy and not very gooey caramely….)

Did you also know that Pandora is awesome (you probably did, I am a little slow). Yesterday I typed in Regina Spektor and was amazed that I loved just about every song that came on. Today I typed in Monster Mash and have been listening to awesome kitschy spooky pop all afternoon.

Ok, back to the costumes. I am hemming next. I hate hemming- which is probably why I took this little break to pop into my blog and say not very much. Press, press, press.

xo
elle

I’ll see you there. And, I’ll bring the bow ties this week. woo-hoo!

elle