I'm not a beader but I play one on TV.

I'm not a huge jewelry person but after nursing for 6.5 continuous years figured it was time for a nursing necklace. For those who are thinking I'm celebrating being a registered nurse a nursing necklace is something moms wear to keep baby's hands occupied while nursing and in the distractible as well as fiddly stage. That and getting to wear some pretty beads doesn't hurt either. However, I've never made jewelry before and this was sort of a last minute decision while at the craft store. I found a nice large donut shaped jasper pendant that I liked, picked out some cord I thought would work and came home to look up some hints on google. I quickly learned two things: 1. I forgot to buy a clasp, thus the super long length of necklace right now. 2. I should have bought some nylon or other water resistant cord. Right now my beads are strung on leather.




But not too bad for a beginner, huh? The necklace is actually straight but I shifted in the odd self-portrait. Being the waste-not-want-not type I had to use the other beads in the packet. I made sure to knot between the beads in an effort to keep a tugging baby from creating a shower of beads over her head and will be buying the clasp soon to bring the length from "Look here! Here, here, huge belly!" to at least the upper hemisphere. Although, now that I think about it that might not be any better. At least it will bring it closer to baby's hands.

A little bit more excess.

Because it wouldn't be me to reign in and do reasonable. More hearts, left pile the ends still to be woven in, right pile all done. In the pile will be a one-of-a-kind quilted fabric heart too. Fiddly but fun.




For a person who loves to wear red and brighter pinks on her body, I sure do keep a lot of blue and green fabric/yarn.




A new obsession. I saw these cute little letters on Creative Jewish Mom and decided to give them a try. One thing kept bugging me. I didn't want to have to give every bean a clear coat to protect the sharpie from rubbing off. Then I remembered a wood burning tool I saw at the store for next to nothing and thought it might work on a dry bean. Well lookie here, it worked just fine. I still need to practice my line formation with the woodburning tool and next time I'll nestle the beans in some playdough so my fingers and nails don't come precariously close to the 950 degree metal tip. Ouch.

This was so much fun.

I'm participating in a swap with some fellow sewing moms and my package is in the mail tomorrow! It was so much fun to put together something just for the mom especially right after Christmas. I didn't intend for it all to be handmade but turns out pretty much all of it is. Clockwise starting at the top left corner: A moda love pincushion, my favorite lip balm, whoopie pies and the Fear of Commitment Cowl. More on everything I haven't posted previously sometime this week or the next.

Playing with the label maker again.

I wanted to make a few tubes of my favorite lip balm to tuck into the swap package along with the Fear of Commitment cowl (it's finished by the way and in the background blocking).




I ordered these cute little transparent lip balm tubes from etsy and in typical Marielle fashion had to gussy them up a bit - the easy way. So after mixing and pouring, instead of whipping out the sharpie and masking tape (my tools of choice), I dusted off the label maker.




Clear plastic label cartridge + my blog's name and I have to say they look very modern, very clean.




This time I cranked out a larger batch. I'm not planning on going into business but these are handy to have to share with friends and tuck into packages I mail out. Also, being my favorite lip balm I usually have one in the living room, each jacket pocket, my purse and even each bathroom. Why, yes, yes I am addicted to lipbalm.

How I tackle my to do list.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one tackling the post holiday cleanup. With Christmas and New Year's behind us the house was still looking pretty neat, until we got sick. Then my inability to enforce "put away the toy you took out before you take out another" brought it all down like a house of cards. So what's an ADD, perfectionist do when she has an in your face reminder of what needs to be done around the house? Start a totally unrelated project. Yup, folks avoidance at its best. At least I'm predictable, Mr. Maricucu would have seen this a mile away and it doesn't phase him in the least anymore. He knows I'll get to the must dos on my whacked out little list but I've got to put up a fuss first.




In my defense (or justification?) I have been meaning to do this for a while. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to label her laundry hampers, in fact I'm positive. My mom had this same system since the early 90s. She had finally had it with the large communal hamper that would require sorting of all the laundry and then washing all on the same day. She lined up a bunch of multi binned hampers in our hall closet and told us which garments went in which bins. Then we walked away and with each step to our rooms totally forgot. After a few weeks of my siblings and I messing up "the system" she took a sharpie to every garment and on an inner tag gave it a number which corresponded to one laundry bin. Problem solved.

Once Mr. Maricucu and I were married I quickly adopted the multiple hamper and sort as you go approach. Which worked swimmingly, until the kids got older. Suddenly I realized the kids had no idea how to sort since some of my categories were a little vague and the garments a little hard to decipher. So the other day I took a sharpie, packing tape and a sheet of paper and got to work. I cut out numbers which corresponded to my number of hampers and then pseudo-laminated them with packing tape. I also wrote the name of the load at the top so Mr. Maricucu and I can consistently put them back on the right bin (more on that below).






Meet my favorite hamper. It's large (holds two loads for my largish front loader), slim (so I can fit five of them in my walk in closet) and about hip height which makes them easy to carry.




I used my favorite multi function tool (a clothespin) to clip each sign to a hamper. I didn't want a permanently attached sign since we throw a load in and then chuck the empty hamper back in the closet but not always in the same order.




Then I wrote a corresponding number on all the garments currently in the hampers. For items with tags I just wrote the number on the size tag.




For those items with ouchless or ironed on tags I just wrote somewhere on the inner waistband or neckband which is double thickness thus reducing the risk that the sharpie would show on the outside.




Then I placed the hampers back in their home at the back end of our always cramped walk in closet. They fit in a sort of "L" formation along the back corner and as you can see the hip height hamper fits perfectly under my shirts and shorter garments. Instead of trying to obsessively label every.single.garment in our home I just placed the sharpie in a convenient spot in my closet to label things as they get thrown in the hampers. Eventually everything in our rotation will get a number. Now I can get back to the real work.

Hey Chicken Little . . .

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! At least if you were to believe the local media who had their reporters staked out at every grocery store Thursday to get the latest status report on who was running out of bread, milk and eggs. Friday was the big day for s-n-o-w.

Mr. Maricucu laughs at me because I don't watch the weather, I just stick my head out the front door sometime in the morning and make a good guess for the rest of the day. Which is why the mass hysteria at Costco on Thursday was a surprise. I was doing my annual "grocery shop before Christmas so I don't have to step foot in a store until after the 26th" run.




How much snow were we central North Carolinians expected to receive you say? A whopping two inches that didn't even stick to the ground.




For those of you not living in the South that little dusting paralyzes the city. Schools shut down, businesses have employees telecommute because the kids are at home and the department of transportation hauls out the salt trucks for the main highways only. See? No snow on the ground.




Of course he had to taste it. Who knows if he caught it or picked it up off the ground. I'm not even sure I want to know.




Can you tell my second son was thrilled to be out in the cold? He wouldn't last a minute up north.




My Frankensteinish project continues. As you might have guessed I'm working on baby's waldorf doll and for now all I have to show for it is a bunch of limbs which thankfully were stuffed full of wool after these pictures.

What's going on.

Meet one of my favorite snacks. Freshly segmented grapefruit and a few slivers of a rich white cheese. I grew up eating this and it's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't tasted this combination. The cheese can be swiss like my choice or muenster, fresh mozzarella, gouda, etc. The rich fatty cheese perfectly tempers the zippy bite of the grapefruit. I usually segment two or three grapefruit at a time since two of my kids thoroughly enjoy this treat as well. This video quickly demonstrates how to segment a grapefruit. I squeeze my rind cuts and core over the fruit since we love to drink the juice after eating the segments.




To balance my healthful choice above I've been doing my part in ingesting the required amount of holiday calories. Buttery white velvet cookies taste like a richer version of those dutch-in-a-can shortbread cookies.




Finally, I've had a few late night sewing sessions too. This particular one makes me feel like Dr. Frankenstein.

The advent calendar is a success!

Boy are these kids loving the very simple ritual. A little treat and an activity to do with momma, not much there but to them it's gold. Today they worked on construction paper mittens. My younger son has an obsessive fascination with me tracing his hand so I traced mittens around their hands and let them color those.




Regarding the advent calendar I didn't want to be left with empty spots on the hanging garland so I pondered making some felt ornaments (yeah, this late in the game, who am I kidding?) or even a paper chain until I saw someone post this wonderful 3D paper snowflake tutorial. So I've been taking the opened tubes of paper and cutting them down to a square to repurpose into one module of the snowflake. See? Sort of a tear-dropish shaped ornament and the beauty continues even after we've used that portion of the calendar. Love it.




Although I'm feeling antsy since we don't have the tree up. Seems Thanksgiving weekend was the time to do it but I'm hoping by this weekend it will be up. My younger boy gave me a serious talking to after seeing the neighborhood lights saying, "momma, where our Christmas tree?!" Hands on hips, furrowed brow and everything.

New Home Construction

Our blank canvas. Through a stroke of fortune this year we bought the gingerbread house kit at Costco and I didn't notice until after checkout that the house was preassembled. Score! So the kids start out with a blank canvas, a muffin tin full of candy and a dream.




This year their dream looked like this.




First I had to appropriately bribe the baby in order to keep her out of the muffin tin of teeny little bead candies. She was performing quality control on the gingerbread.




Then I quickly hit the house with the royal icing. Yes that job was mine, not the kids, can't you tell? Obviously my OCD tendencies go out the window with the gingerbread house and over the years I've learned to let go more and more. My objective is to get on as much icing as quickly as I can. Luckily goopy icing looks like icicles.




What I found interesting is being a bit older, the boys were actually trying to replicate the house on the side of the box. Yes, they were trying to get all the details just so. I thought that was darling.






This is what happens when you leave a frosted tree within her reach. It was only a moment but alas, she went to town with the royal icing.




Midway through the project the boys decided this was to be a gingerbread fire station and what station is complete without a pole?




I have to say I'm a bit surprised at how much candy actually ended up on the house. In previous years the poor forlorn gingerbread house would have a smattering of candies and the kids would have ingested the balance.




After cleaning her off, the baby went to do what she does any free moment. Mess around with my laptop. If you read any gibberish I've posted somewhere online, it's likely she posted it. She actually begins to quickly tap on the keyboard pretending she's typing.

Holiday Math

What happens when you add this . . .




to this then throw in a couple of little boys?




Most definitely NOT this but definitely a heck of a lot of fun. More on that story this week.




Oh and if you're looking for a movie to add to your Netflix que, you have to watch Nothing Like The Holidays. Mr. Maricucu and I thoroughly enjoyed the humor and the bit of bittersweet reality in this one. Plus it was fun to see a big family Christmas celebration again even if I do enjoy my very quiet laid back holidays these days.

The advent calendar is up.

After the umpteenth time of being asked, "is it Christmas yet?" I figured it was time to set up the advent calendar. However, I think I may have traded one problem for another because now they're asking, "is it time to open up the advent calendar yet?" Oy.

I chose to hang it in front of the dining room windows since it really was a bit too big for the mantle and I felt, too busy for the tree. Command hooks (the wall-painting-hater's hook of choice) made quick work of hanging and curling ribbon functioned as the stringing garland.




It's hard to believe December 1st is around the corner but indeed it is.




At least we'll have a cheerful little addition to our Christmas decorating this year.

How did I not learn to love the hot glue gun before?

I've resisted buying a hot glue gun for years. Perhaps it was because I was railing against the 90s frou frou, topiary and fabric meets hot glue gun decor but I was convinced that I did not need a hot glue gun. Not when my priorities in choosing something to go on the middle of a table are that it's functional, can be lifted with one hand and easily be dusted. But a while back I was inspired to make something that I've since forgotten and bought the glue gun. The poor thing has sat, neglected in the sewing room for months until this week.

A last minute primal push to somehow put together an advent calendar was the reason. I still plan on putting together some kind of nativity themed one, possibly out of fabric but that was not happening this year on such a short timeline. If anything, age has allowed me to be realistic about my abilities. That or I'm lazy. I think the former sounds a bit more sophisticated.




After scouring google images for inspiration and wasting way too much time overthinking it I settled on this nifty little tube pyramid. If you've ever gotten those single serving tubes of sour cream you'll recognize these. I bought a 50 page 8x8 scrapbook paper pad that had a rainbow of solid textured pages. Office labels stood in for a spot to write the number of each day.




This is pretty easy but in case you need pictures like I do, just wrap the sheet into a tube and glue with your new best friend the hot glue gun. Warning: Asbestos fingers are a blessing when doing this type of activity.




Turn the tube with the seam to the center back and then squeeze a line of hot glue along the top inch and squeeze shut.




The tube will now be squeezed only at the top. Place a number in the front of the tube and your advent units are ready for the next step.






So, after you've repeated the above 23 more times you've got a beautiful rainbow of tubes to fill.




This was the most time consuming part of the project. Coming up with a list of bible excerpts from the nativity story (Luke 2) and activities/crafts for each day. Hard because it meant being realistic and keeping things super simple in order to be able to follow through. Plus it's the holidays and I don't need additional stress. I kept the activities fun, short, simple and family friendly.

Just print the list and cut out a slip for each day.




Of course, after you've bought your child a pre-made advent calendar that dispenses chocolate each day there's just no turning back from that standard. I alternated between two of my nut-free favorites. I tucked in one piece for each child and on some days even one for Mr. Maricucu and me.




Fill a tube with one slip and the treats. These were pretty large tubes and you could definitely do a small toy instead of chocolate or even a small ornament as well.




Place a line of hot glue on the lower part and squeeze the tube shut in the opposite direction as the top part (aka perpendicular). That way you end up with a triangularish/pyramid shaped tube. If you use chocolate and your hot glue is pretty hot, let these cool upside down so the chocolate doesn't melt in contact with the hot glue.




Wash, rinse, repeat. You know, for someone that has done neutral colors for so long the birthday bunting and now this project have totally wet my appetite for bright, bright, shades.




I punched a hole at the top of each tube.




Then tied a short piece of ribbon to the punched hole. I'm going to use ornament hooks to hang them up. Now the big decision. Do I hang them on a piece of knotted ribbon on the mantel where the baby can swat at them repeatedly from her perch of the indoor climber or accept my reality and hang them from the tree which would mean hunting for one each day? Don't know yet and I don't even have my tree up so we'll see.