made w/ love: Squeeze This In

I consider myself pretty lucky that I can fit in between present making to see others creative and festive decor/present ideas. It really gets me motivated to make more, but I have plenty on my plate to take care of before I tackle more projects. Why do I make everyone's presents? Well, I'm just a person that doesn't like the idea of waiting in long lines or fighting to get a piece of (not made in America) crap that the gift receiver might not even like. Plus, I don't really have the patience or money (mostly patience) for that sort of thing.

I'm just going to share what I've made so far and do an itty bitty review of a tutorial that I followed from The Purl Bee. Oh, and probably share some of the cute crafty festive ideas that I heart that I oh-so-wish that I had the time or materials to make.

So far I've made some candles with my friend Alycia. The plan was to make candles in thrifted teacups. I only found one teacup that I liked and was willing to put wax in. With my one teacup I had to find something else to put hot wax in. When Bryan and I went to Ikea I actually found little round dishes that are meant for holding candles. The dishes came in a pack of six for about $2. I thought it was a great deal. Anywho, we made two batches of scented candles -- vanilla and ocean breeze. They turned out great (I can't get over the ocean breeze scent) and Alycia's candles were pretty damn cute. I should have gotten pictures of them. Hopefully she took pictures before she gives them away as presents. It was definitely a learning process and a bit of a long one because there was some trial and error (plus lots of cats and one giant puppy interrupting us).

Also I have crocheted some granny slippers for my great grandmother, which by the way turns out that she did know how to crochet, but not anymore. So I tried out this project from The Purl Bee. If you know how to do a granny square it was pretty easy to make the bulk of the slippers, but if not they do include another tutorial on how to make said granny squares. So this project took about a day to do which is great considering my other time-consuming handmade gifts. Plus it only requires twelve small squares. Easy!

(As you can see I picked purple tones. My great g-ma LOVES purple.)

The only trouble I had was assembling the slipper three-dimensionally. It's easy to attach all the squares together -- in fact they show you picture by picture the best way to crochet it all in one way so then you're not constantly knotting and cutting. But when it came to make the top of the shoe I got a little confused. It was a little fuzzy to figure which side of square A to attach to square B, so I didn't follow the picture and put it on my foot to see how it's supposed to fit. I got it right with the first slipper, but the second slipper I forgot how I did it and ended up screwing up. Screwing up = taking apart, which for some reason took forever. I did get it figured it out and I think they turned out to be pretty darned adorable.

Voila! Cute, eh? Despite some assemblage confuzzleness, I would definitely recommend this project. Right now I'm on the race to finish some embroidery project before Saturday night, and I only have one full day left to work on it. Ugh.

Now some cute festive decor that I heart and I think you might heart too.

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