Junie Moon: gifts

Showing posts with label gifts. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Gifts for my Sorority Sisters

Whether you are young or old—friends are important and help us through life, both the good and the bad. I am blessed to be a member of Kappa Epsilon Phi—no matter how many years go by or where our lives, jobs, or interests take us in life—my sisters and I are still friends. Today, I thought I’d share a few of the projects I’ve done over the years for my sorority sisters.

After moving here from Tucson, I was teaching at the college and care-giving for my mother-in-law. I could not easily leave town, so I invited my sorority sisters to come here to the beach.

I sent each of them a special invitation I made on my computer using a wedding invitation kit found on clearance at A.C. Moore. The seashell theme works for my beach/house party just as well as for a wedding itself.

When thinking of a gift for my sorority sisters when they came, I thought a glass vase acid-etched with our sorority’s letters would be perfect as place settings at the table, especially when filled with flowers. Flowers always make people happy.

Some blue glass beads and Windex were put in the vase so you could see the finished etching better. I crafted my own stencil by printing the size Greek letters I wanted onto paper, tracing them onto white contact paper, and the carefully cutting out the stencil with a craft knife. The glass vases were purchased at A.C. Moore on sale.

The scrapbook project was actually done years ago before I moved to Florida. I ordered a scrapbook for each of us to document our adventures together and had each one inscribed. We all have a special “sister” name; naturally, I am Sister Junie Moon as that’s what I’ve been called for numerous years.

Scrapbooking our shared experiences makes for wonderful memories. When we are truly so old we can’t hobble about wreaking merry mayhem together, we can always look back on the fun we had.

To keep paperwork together, I purchased Martha Stewart cases and stenciled those as well. We stick bits of souvenirs, tickets, meeting programs, invitations, postcards, or whatever in the case until we can put our little memories in our scrapbook.

I love thinking of little projects like these I’ve shared with you today and over the years on my blog. Not only does it make me happy to do something creative, it gives me great joy to gift people.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Rolling Along Julia Child’s Way

Three years ago, I read about Julia Child and her rolling pins. She favored a no-handled pin made of hard wood such as maple about 18-inches in length and a diameter of about 1 3/4 inches. Around the same time, my friends and I were taking a series of classes where we learned special cooking or baking skills from each other. One of those classes was for making donuts and other assorted goodies. On the supply list was bringing a rolling pin.

Source: Unknown

Remembering Julia and her rolling pin, I set about finding one and then decided I’d simply make a pin using Julia's specifications. That thought led to the idea of making a pin to gift each of my friends attending the baking class. Not having any previous wood workshop experiences other than some minor efforts with my dad, I ordered lengths of unfinished solid maple from a wood company and asked my friend Paula’s husband Sam to help me as he has every tool known to man. The following pictures show my progress.

To add a small note of grace, I personalized the pins by stamping each attendee’s initials into one end of the pin with a metal alphabet stamp set attached to a wood-burning tool to finish it off.

Sam was such a sweetheart to help me with this effort. I learned so very much from him and am grateful for his willingness to do this and his patience.

The final step involved using a special sealant made for wood items that come in contact with food.

Since a dish towel was also on the supply list, I tied a new dish towel around each pin.

Here are my friendship gifts—I loved this project and think Julia Child would have approved.

The class itself was so much fun and we made all sorts of yummy treats: maple bars, donuts, and so on. The series of classes/workshops helped us learn more about each other and the amazing skills each woman has to offer.

I miss my friends back in Tucson—they are such awesome people! Maybe I ought to start a similar sort of group effort here with my new friends as they all have skills in a variety of ways, too.

And these are the homemade cinnamon rolls I recently made using my own special rolling pin.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

A Moon for Junie Moon

Since the inception of my blog, I’ve used the header depicting a glass art piece made by my wonderful sister Connie. Deciding the glass moon definitely has a personality, we named her Junie Moon and she served perfectly for my blog header.

I absolutely loved my Junie Moon and was horrified when I broke her moving from Arizona to Florida.

Connie made me a new Junie Moon for Christmas—don’t you just love her beautiful lips? Notice her mouth is slightly open? That’s because she always has something to say—so me! The new Junie Moon is going to hang on the wall in my sewing/craft/office and hopefully I never have to move again and risk breaking her.

Look at those eyelashes—this Junie Moon is definitely a flirty girl! Thank you, Connie, for this beautiful work of art. I love it and you!

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Summer Quilts

The kids love the quilts I made them for their birthdays. I photographed them in the Magnolia tree on the side of my house.

Cam’s Surf Shop quilt.

Kayleigh’s Bannerama quilt.

Andrew’s Beachin’ quilt.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Surf Shop Quilt

The third and final quilt in my grandkid series is yet another design from Crazy Old Ladies. Besides the cool name (Crazy Old Ladies) and the fact my wacky old self would probably fit right in with them, I do love the company’s quilt designs which are fun, fresh designs.

This quilt is for Camden (fondly known to us as Cam). The pattern is Surf Shop.

It was fun playing with different fabric prints to make the surfboards. A couple of the boards have Hawaiian flowers I appliquéd as indicated in the pattern instructions.

While each of the grandkids gets a quilt of a particular design I feel suits their personality, I used the same fabric as the binding for all three as well as having my friend Cathy Messner use her long-arm machine to quilt the same sailboat/wave design to give a sense of continuity to the quilts en toto.

Here are all three quilts.

These are the matching pillowcases. I completely enjoyed making these gifts for Andrew, Kayleigh, and Cam. The kids arrive this Sunday evening—I look forward to giving them their gifts and enjoying sailing and other adventures with them for the next two weeks.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Bannerama Quilt

Yesterday, I shared Andrew's quilt; today, I'm showing the second of the three grandkid quilts—this one was made for Kayleigh.

I used another quilt pattern from Crazy Old Ladies--Bannerama.

The quilt and pillowcase fabrics are varying prints from Emily Herrick’s Shore Thing for Michael Miller Fabrics.

I’m hoping you can see the quilting design in this photo—each project was quilted by my friend Cathy Messner on her long-arm machine using a sailboat and waves pattern. Tomorrow I’ll share the last of the three grandkid quilts—I’ve had a blast doing this for them.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Beachin’ Quilt

Summer means sailing for me along with outdoor movies by the water, picnics, the beach, great parties, and so on. This year I’ve invited three of our grandchildren to spend two weeks with us and have enrolled them in sailing classes. Kayleigh, Andrew, and Cam are 14, so two weeks with three teenagers ought to be a blast!

To prepare for the kids’ arrival this Sunday, I’ve made each of them a gift which works perfectly as it coincides with their birthdays. The gift includes the sailing lessons, a quilt I’ve made, matching pillowcase, and new beach towel. Today, I’ll share the first of the quilts and pillowcases.

This is Andrew’s quilt made from Crazy OldLadies pattern called Beachin’. The quilt is made pretty close to the same design as depicted on the pattern front as I loved the combination of the varying colors and prints. The fabrics are Shore Thing by Emily Herrick for Michael Miller Fabrics.

This photo shows a bit of the back.

I used Michelle’s Magic Pillowcase tutorial to match the quilt. Tomorrow I’ll share Kayleigh’s quilt gift—I hope the kids will enjoy these gifts of love from their grandparents.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Sweet Baby Blanket

Now that I’m officially considered a senior, my opportunities to give baby gifts have diminished. My peers are past the baby-making years and my own babies are done with family building. In a way, it’s somewhat like my reaching towards the end time in life and being cut off from the beginning of life—a demarcation which makes me feel odd.

So, I was excited when one of my friends had the blessing of welcoming her first grandchild in the world—a little girl named Savannah.

Using an idea from my friend Sara at Unwind the Yarn Shop in Fort Walton Beach, FL, I cast on 150 stitches using U.S. size 6 needles and knitted one ball of yarn for 26 rows (13 ridges) before switching to the next color. This is simply knitting of every row.

After finishing the last color, the color scheme was reversed. The yarn is Rowan Handknit Cotton. The first set of blocks color order (in parentheses are the number of skeins I purchased for the entire blanket):

Slick (3)
Mist (2)
Shell (2)
Celery (2)
Ecru (3)

Second set of blocks:

Ecru
Celery
Shell
Mist
Slick

Blanket done, I started thinking about creative ways to embellish it. I crocheted a simple scallop edging in Ecru around the blanket. After the edging was done, the blanket was washed and blocked.