SortaCrunchy

Meet My Sweet November! (and a sweet giveaway!)

I'm pretty giddy over the lovelies who are sponsoring SortaCrunchy in January, and I'm particularly tickled over introducing you to this sponsor today. You'll see why in a bit!

From Candy, creator and owner of My Sweet November:

My Sweet November is a One Woman Show. My name is Candy and I do all the designing, production, and photography of all of the items I sell. I've been creating and selling jewelry since 2009. As you can tell from my shop, cameos are my favorite component to work with. In my shop you'll find nautical and gothic inspired jewelry as well as modern and whimsical designs. Perfect for special occasions or just everyday wear. I hope you enjoy everything I create just as much as I enjoy creating it for you!

I had so much fun peeking around My Sweet November. I have to say her cameos are AMAZING. So incredibly unique, playful, and fun!

I know two chicas who would be cuckoo over the unicorn cameo:

And honestly? I have a few friends who would look darling in the victorian skeleton cameo:

Candy has more traditional offerings, too, such as this delicate gray rose cameo:

and this charming I made you a mixed tape heart necklace:

Oh, goodness. There is just so much cute stuff! I'm sitting here with a big goofy grin on my face as I click around her shop! But I'm also smiling because I know Candy is offering a very special treat to one SortaCrunchy reader!

To celebrate our partnership this month, Candy is giving away one tiny owl necklace!

Oh my heart. THE TINY OWLS!

Okay, so here's all you need to do: Go check out My Sweet November and let me know which of Candy's incredible creations is your favorite in the comments section. That's it!

BONUS ENTRIES - LEAVE ONE COMMENT FOR EACH BONUS ENTRY:

* Mark My Sweet November as an Etsy favorite. (Etsy members will see the heart to mark favorites in the left-hand column of the shop's favorite page)

* Like My Sweet November on Facebook

* Share this post in the social media format of your choice (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc). Make sure to tell me how you shared it.

Giveaway closes January 14th. Winner will be notified by email.

ONE LAST THING: Use code "SC15OFF" at My Sweet November all month long to receive 15% off of your purchase! Perfect for winter birthdays, Valentine's Day, and post-holiday-cash shopping.

Thank you again, Candy, for sharing My Sweet November with us this month!

my laptop cord died

So instead of surfing from the couch in the evenings while Kyle and I self-medicate with TV time, I've been doing this:

Look at it! 

Isn't it sad and awful and wonderful and hilarious?!  It's going to be a skinny scarf for Dacey.  She is enthralled with the idea.

I wish some of you knitting experts could come watch me and tell me why I keep accidentally increasing stitches.

In the meantime, comments and emails and post drafts are all being neglected.  (even more than usual, I mean)

P.S. - No one is more surprised than I am that I haven't ordered a replacement cord yet.

P.P.S. - To all the Penelopes, I'm sorry.

Fun, fun, fun! Rae Grant's Homemade Fun (giveaway!)

 
I was fortunate enough to receive a review copy of Rae Grant's newest release Homemade Fun: 101 Crafts and Activities to Do with Kids a few months ago, and I am so excited to share it with you!

I first got to know Rae back in my days at Simple Kids when I got to both review her first two books as well as interview her.  I can testify to the fact that she is every bit as delightful as you would imagine that the creator of such brilliant, creative, and inspiring books would be!

Homemade Fun continues in the same aesthetic as Rae's first two books.  Charming vintage illustrations abound and the hand-drawn instructions gently guide the reader.  Homemade Fun praises the handmade, homemade life.  It invites us all to go back to a time when "families celebrated the seasons and holidays, as well as the cycle of everyday life, in a homemade way."

Simple Idea, Thoughtful Gift: Meditation Stones

An enchanting idea from crafting contributor Laura . . .

Here's a truly meaningful gift that you can pull together for Mother's Day, if you work fast. But this is definitely something that transcends Mother's Day . . . you could even make one for yourself. Chances are, each one of us could use an opportunity to slow down and reflect upon our blessings.

All you need to do is collect some smooth, interesting stones of various sizes, and make a little pouch to put them in. The stones should feel pleasing in the hand. I collected these at a local riverside, but you should be able to find rounded stones in streams, at ocean beaches, or anywhere water has a chance to work its smoothing magic on rough bits of rock.

Once you have a collection of stones that make you happy, you need to make a pouch for them. A pouch is one of the simplest things to sew, and it's small enough that you can make this even if you don't have access to a sewing machine. Just remember to keep your stitches nice and small so your stones can't escape.

First, cut two pieces of cloth the same size and shape: squared off at one end and rounded at the other. Just cut them freehand, this doesn't require exactitude. 

Next, fold down the squared-off end and sew across twice. Make your seams about a half-inch apart -- the space between these seams is where the drawstring will go.

Next, put the right sides together and sew from just below the drawstring channel on one side, down around the curve, to just below the drawstring channel on the other side.

(If you have a momentary lapse of reason and sew a seam directly through your drawstring channel on one side, as I did, no worries. You can snip little holes on the inside of the channel to let your drawstring through. But it's easier if you don't mess up to begin with.)

Next, find a piece of string, ribbon, whatever you'd like to use, and attach one end to a small safety pin (small enough to fit through your drawstring channel). Oonch the safety pin through the drawstring channel (yes, I believe "oonch" is the technical term) all the way to the other side. Pull through, remove the safety pin, and tie the two ends together.

Now turn the whole thing right side out, and you have your pouch!

Looks like the stones will fit just fine...

Fill with your stones, and now you have something really special. In fact, you may not want to give them away. 

But if you do, be sure to include a little note about what these little beauties are all about. I also like to write a few lines about where the stones were collected. These little details are what lend meaning to your gift. 

Whatever your spiritual background, we all could stand to spend a little more time reflecting upon the many blessings in our lives. And what better way than by holding in our hands these little pieces of natural beauty?

Laura is the mother of three kids who range from toddler to teenager.  She is passionate about healthful, sustainable food, and making things from scratch.  In her fantasy life, she has a farm with chickens and goats, but for now raises her vegetables in the flower beds of her suburban garden.  She chronicles her adventures at Chicken Counting.

How To Make Your Own Lacing Cards

Lacing cards are one of those things that I actually remember playing with as a child. They had a set in my kindergarten classroom, and I remember distinctly the satisfaction of "sewing" in and out of the little holes. They are a great exercise for fine motor skills, and safe practice for those who are eager to begin sewing.

To make your own, all you need is an image or shape on any kind of paper, some scissors, glue, a cereal box or cardboard of similar thickness, and a hole punch.

Cut roughly around the image you want to use. Apply glue to the back (glue sticks work great, or you can thin white glue with a little water to make something like decoupage glue), and glue it onto your cereal box cardboard. Once the glue has dried, cut closely around your image. Punch holes around the edges, and ta-da! Homemade lacing card.

When you make your own lacing cards, not only do you save a bit of money, but you can customize the cards to your own child's interests. You can choose shapes that your toddler is learning, or favorite animals, or turn them into a puzzle or game.

Think of it as a dot-to-dot. Put numbers by the holes, and as your child connects the dots by drawing the lace through, a shape magically appears! Or you can do a simple message -- you can check out an example (which you are welcome to download) here. No need to get fancy with the computer either, just break out the sharpie and be done with it. Making a lacing card in five minutes and handing it to your child to play with immediately has its charm, believe me.

And, um, the reason these look a little worse for wear? They were grabbed off the table and played with immediately. Even though we have store-bought lacing cards by the dozens, the homemade ones always seem to charm them the most.

Isn't that always the way?

Laura is the mother of three kids who range from toddler to teenager.  She is passionate about healthful, sustainable food, and making things from scratch.  In her fantasy life, she has a farm with chickens and goats, but for now raises her vegetables in the flower beds of her suburban garden.  She chronicles her adventures at Chicken Counting.

Building with Packing Peanuts

The next time you get a package in the mail, you might be getting more than you bargained for. That is, if you were lucky enough to get cornstarch packing peanuts. You probably already knew that these things dissolve in water, can be composted, and are generally about a thousand times better for the planet than styrofoam. But did you know they were a free, versatile crafting material?

One day I was in our local craft store, and saw these special "crafting peanuts" in a small bag for $5. And I thought, hmm, those look just like packing peanuts. Turns out, they're exactly the same. Except the ones that come as packing material are, um, free. That's my kind of project!

The possibilities are myriad for these things, but one of my favorite things to do is to build structures. All you need is some kind of base to help your peanuts stand up during construction, and a damp sponge.

To build, you simply touch a peanut to a damp sponge, and stick it to another one. Repeat. I've had kids as young as three master this technique, and it is virtually mess-free.

For an igloo, turn a bowl upside down, and cut a short section of toilet-paper tube in half for the door. Build all around the bowl, and simply remove the bowl when you're done. Ta-da! A home for... a goat, apparently. Hey, we encourage imagination around here.

To make a more traditional house-shape, use a half-gallon milk carton as a base. Rummage through the recycling bin and see what you have. Can you imagine... a cereal box for a skyscraper? A folded piece of cardboard for a tent? A construction paper cone for a tipi?

When your structure is complete, there's no waiting for glue to dry or anything -- you can play with it right away. Or, you can paint it! Now remember, these little peanuts are water-soluble, so the paint you use should be chosen with care. Watercolors are a no-go. Acrylics work, but are tough to clean up. We found gel-based finger-paints gave the best balance of easy clean-up and not dissolving the house too much.

I'll be bringing you a new craft every month here at SortaCrunchy, so please let me know in the comments what kinds of crafts you'd like to see!

Laura is the mother of three kids who range from toddler to teenager.  She is passionate about healthful, sustainable food, and making things from scratch.  In her fantasy life, she has a farm with chickens and goats, but for now raises her vegetables in the flower beds of her suburban garden.  She chronicles her adventures at Chicken Counting.

Live~Love~Dance - Giveaway!

There's someone I would like to introduce to you today.

Keara and I met four years ago via our mommy message board.  We both had become first time moms in January 2005, we were both moms-at-home, and we soon found out that we share the same birthday!  When we lived in Texas, Keara and I lived close enough to each other that we were able to get together in real life to talk and hang out while our little ones played.  She and her husband are two of the kindest, most generous, loving, wonderful people I know.  I have so many sweet, happy memories of spending time with Keara's sweet family.

Just about two years ago, Miss Keara opened an Etsy shop to sell the handmade tutus she discovered that she loved creating.  Her shop took off right away, but she recently had put the business on hiatus when they added baby number three to the family.  She has opened up again with a fun new addition - glass tile jewelry.

Here is some more from Keara in her own words:

Hi! My name is Keara and I am a wife to my wonderful husband, Joe, and a mother to three beautiful kids. My oldest son is four, my youngest son is two and my daughter will soon be eight months. I definitely have my hands full!

I am most happy when I am creative. I think sometimes as mothers we can lose ourselves in the hustle and bustle of taking care of our families and we forget to do the little things that make us happy. This inspired me to open up my shop, Live Love Dance Boutique. This really makes me set time aside for my creative time. I started out just making custom handmade tutus and I loved it! I really liked the feeling of accomplishment when I would get the feedback of happy customers and see pictures of the tutus on smiling little girls. I took a break when I was pregnant with my little girl and have recently opened my shop back up with my fun glass tile pendents.

I offer both premade pendents with fun images or personalized pendents with names, words, quotes or pictures! Please come by and take a look around. If you do not see a listing for something that you would like, please convo me and we can make a reserve listing just for you!

When she started posting pictures of her creations on Facebook, I knew right away I needed one!  I sent her a favorite picture of the girls, and look what she was able to do:

As you may know, I'm quite the fan of owls.  My sister Emily is too, and so I picked up this sweet little guy just for her:

When Dacey turned three, Keara and her boys came to her birthday party.  Keara gave Dacey a tutu from her shop and it has been one of Dacey's absolute favorite gifts ever!  It has been through two moves and both Dacey and AJ have worn it a lot, and it has held up brilliantly:

This month marked a special milestone for SortaCrunchy - this little ol' blog that I started to talk about cloth diapering and raising babies hit the 500 subscriber mark which just fills my heart with humble gratitude.  To celebrate and honor you sweet readers, I am giving away a photo tile pendant from Keara's Live~Love~Dance Boutique.  All you need to do is pop over to her shop, look around at her lovely creations, and come back and leave a comment telling me if you won, would you pick one of the premade tiles, a custom-worded pendant, or have her create a photo tile for you?  That's it!

Givaway will run from today (August 29th) through Thursday, September 3rd.  Thank you for hanging out here with me, and thank you for shopping handmade and supporting work-at-home-parents!

SortaCrunchy Recommends: Cloth Couture fitted cloth diapers

 Via the magical, wonderful world of twitter, I was able to connect with Allison Vaughn of the brand new cloth diapering shop Cloth Couture (located at Hyena Cart).  Even though when we use cloth diapers these days I generally reach for our pockets, I have been wanting to pick up some new fitteds for the summer.  In the summer, I like to use fitteds either coverless or under wool covers because the natural fibers are so nice and breathable (unlike the polyester covers of most pocket diapers).

Allison offered to send me a diaper to review and I was all too happy to take her up on it!  After looking carefully at the diapers offered in her last stocking, I decided we needed a large rather than a medium.  It's important to remember when shopping for cloth diapers to look carefully at sizing charts as one company's medium may fit like another company's large.

Look at this little cutie I got to pick out!

  

That's a little bonus cloth wipe tucked in the package.  One of my favorite things about receiving made-by-hand diapers are that the packages generally contain thoughtful notes and sweet little extras.  I have to admit this really makes my day and makes me feel so valued as a customer.  Inside this package from Cloth Couture there was also a sample of Crunchy Clean Detergent.

Here's the diaper on its own:

You can see from the inside that this particular kind of fitted has a snap-at-the-top soaker.  This is my FAVORITE style of fitteds!  Some fitteds have sewn-in soakers which does make laundry just a smidge less complicated (no matching up soaker to diaper when they come out of the dryer or off of the diaper line), but I find that sewn-in soaker fitteds take forever to dry.  I much prefer a snap-in.

I was super impressed right away by the workmomship of this diaper.  The sewing is absolutely impeccable and the fit is spot-on.  I love that the edges of Cloth Couture fitteds are turned, not serged.  Plenty of people make great fitteds with serged edges, but I love the clean, neat look of turned under edges.

 Both of my girls have been heavy wetters, and I think as they move closer to potty learning they tend to hold it in more and let it loose all at once.  At this stage, I find a prefold with a doubler is going to soak through very quickly, the Cloth Couture fitted was barely even damp on the outside.  PERFECT for going coverless around the house in the summer!

I asked Allison a few questions about her new business and here is what she had to say:

How and when did you start making diapers?  Well I started making diapers in January, I think. I started small but it became an addicting passion. I became tied down (in a good way) to my machine.

What is your vision for your shop? I really want to introduce cloth diapering to a new parents as a trendy alternative to disposables. I would like to bat down all the negative rumors about cloth diapering and help contribute to its comeback.

Allison has been extremely helpful and accommodating to work with, and her fitteds are very, very reasonable.  As it just so happens, she stocked her shop today and has a gorgeous offering of fitteds, all-in-twos (hurry!  only one left!), and fleece soakers, and for you wool junkies out there, she even offers some hand-dyed wool!  AND she has two free-for-shipping lotteries going on, including one darling hand-made outfit for an older sibling who has already learned the potty!

Because she is so generous, Allison is offering free shipping to SortaCrunchy readers good from today (May 8th) until May 13th.  Use code freeship506 at check-out to get FREE SHIPPING on your Cloth Couture order!

Allison, thank you so much for the chance to review your lovely work.  Cloth Couture fitteds definitely work for me!

Now y'all get to shopping!  Happy diapering!

five senses friday

This week.  This week feels like a good time to indulge in a Friday feature I've long enjoyed at abby try again: five senses friday.

 

smell
- wildflowers. 
- the newest shave soaps to find a place in kyle's ever-expanding stash. yummy.
- non-smell of fresh laundry a la charlie's soap (which i am running dangerously, treacherously low on.  must re-order today)

taste
- pizza dough- made twice this week, once for pizza, once for breadsticks.  made the remarkable discovery that it does not, in fact, need two hours to rise.  twenty minutes in a warm oven, punch down, thirty minutes covered with plastic wrap in the fridge, and you are ready to roll (it out).
- cheese grits

sound
- that dog up there, the dog named Dufus.  he lives next door to my parents and barking is his love language and boy, does he love my girls.
- Dave Ramsey's message of hope last night.  so inspiring and encouraging. and I totally saw my high school friend trisha in the audience several times which was pretty much just as exciting as hearing dave's wise words.

 

touch
- creamy, soft, kissable baby skin. my mama holding my newest niece, kadence.

 

sight
- i always make the most unexpected discoveries at my parents' house.  the wall hanging now sitting on our mantel was collecting dust in their office.  mom sent me home with it.
and that bib? my grandmother made it for her little tribe of grands so many years ago. i am in love with it. little cap sleeves! and that crumb catching pocket is divine.  it's completely reversible, too.  they do not make bibs like they used to, no ma'am they do not.  my mother suggested i cut it apart to use it as a pattern to make my own (or have some made, more likely), but the thought of taking scissors to this treasure nearly broke my heart. we'll have it on long-term loan before taking it back to grandma's.
- a wardrobe of spring and summer clothes for AJ once worn by her big sister. i was quite actually in tears unpacking them from the bins, calling to mind the spring/summer/fall Dacey wore them - the things we did, the places we went.  Mistress Size Six (!) couldn't fit her big toe in them now.  looking forward to those t-shirts and sundresses appearing in a whole 'nother summer's worth of memories.

this was nice.  hope your weekend is restful and lovely.

Shivering, snuggling, and semi-sabbatical

First of all, I am happy to announce the winner of the Save Handmade giveaway: Becky of The Newson Narrative!  I've used Random.orgto select the winning number for every giveaway I've ever done, and I've never had it pick Numero Uno until today.  I guess, statistically speaking, it was bound to happen.  Congrats, Becky!  Now the rest of ya'll . . . keep shopping stores like LeakyMouth and do your part to support handmade!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I have to confess.  I've been feeling a wee bit grumpy since this blast of arctic air came barreling down the plain Sunday evening.  One might even say curmudgeonly.  It's almost as if I started to believe I was actually raised in the sunny hills south of Austin and not up here where the waving wheat can sure smell sweet and it's not at all unusual to actually put away your sandals and flip-flops before Christmas.  It only took four idyllic years of life in the Hill Country to erase an entire childhood's worth of memories of what winter really feels like.  If you'll recall, I was born in Houston, so I suppose somewhere deep within me is a person who is completely at peace with seasons which are Mild, Warm, Hot, and Someone Kill Me Please, Before This Heat Does.

So what with the crankiness and all, it's probably for the best that I resume my aforementioned hiatus and just lay low a bit.  And, actually, I was just reading (link via a tweet from Amy of MomAdvice) that when it comes to blogging, what you don't say may be just as important as what you do publish. 

I think what I really need to do is focus on gratitude for scenes like this one I found in the hall this morning

while I focus my creative energies on projects long shoved to the side.

Oh, that's not say I'll be completely silent through the end of the year.  With some gentle persuasion, I was able to coax out of Santa that I would, in fact, be receiving the Nifty Fifty and PSE 7 that I have been droooooooooooooooooling over for months, so I suppose I'll be showing up now and again with some new favorite shots. 

Speaking of favorite shots, my Flickr photostream is up and active (and please do remember these shots are all so very straight out of the camera), and yes, I've succumbed to Twitter, so you can see what I'm doing there.  And there's my Tumblr page.  So, see?  You'll hardly know I'm gone.