Recycled Holiday Cards

Let's face it, as the holiday season approaches many of us will be faced with receiving a large amount of Christmas cards, most of which we'll look at once and put in a pile somewhere.  When someone writes a personal message to me, I'll keep the card of course, but what to do with all those random cards that you get from church and distant or unknown family members?

Here's a great craft tutorial that Vicky Howell posted.

There's many other options too.  You can make origami ornaments too. Here's a cute small star ornament template that you can download. I save a lot of the card fronts to recraft into new cards and scrapbook pages.  Reused card fronts also make excellent post cards.

Hope you'll join me in repurposing those unwanted cards.

~*Melody*~

Here's Little Elijah

A few months ago I decided I'd love to make Grayson a cute little elephant.  I found Ysolda Teague's awesome patterns sometime last year.  I can't brag enough on her patterns.  They are simply amazing and answer most any question you could have about that particular project. 

Here's little Elijah...

I'm in love with this little guy.  Yes he did kill my fingers to knit, but it was all worth it.  Next time I knit this little guy he's going to be made from a much heavier weight yarn and larger needles.

Here's what  I wrote about him on my Ravelry page....
"Ysolda’s patterns are the BEST I’ve ever seen ! She has such detailed diagrams and each row written out step by step. She also includes extra tips and links to tutorials if you need them. I highly recommend her patterns.

The most difficult part of this pattern is working with a small needle and such a tight guage. It must be knit tightly or the stuffing will come through. I did this one all in magic loop. I picked up the stitches with a crochet hook and put them onto size 3 dpns. Then the first row was knit in magic loop off the dpns.

I recommend taking your time to knit this one. It does knit up fast, but you might need to take knitting breaks to save your fingers from soreness. I learned this the hard way, but am very happy with the outcome."

And I'll leave you with a picture of little Grayson fast asleep in his Mema's arms (my aunt) with his little elephant.

Sore Finger Thursday

*This is a cross post from my personal blog.  I'm participating in the National Blog Posting Month over there.  Lately I've been talking a lot about my green lifestyle.  If you are interested, please take a look.*

Tonight I'm going to take a break in my green entries.  I'll resume these on Monday because I'm going on a little weekend gateway.  I'll be surrounded by family and celebrating a dear sweet little boy's first birthday.  Today I've been preparing for the trip and finishing up some last minute knitting.

I learned a valuable lesson today : my fingers and small needles don't make for a good match.  My poor fingers are so sore from knitting that I can barely stand to type.  Oi I'm telling you I'll never forget this one.  But I guess that's what life is about; living and learning.

Tomorrow morning I'm hoping to have time to do a nice and sunny fall mini photo shoot with my latest knitting pretties.  I can't wait to share with you my latest creation.  It's one of the cutest things I've made in a while.

So this is short and sweet.  Tomorrow night I'll be blogging from a different state.  Prayers for a safe journey are much appreciated....

~*Melody*~

And the Winner is....

Lauren.  You were the winner of my giveaway.  I entered everyone's comments (by number) and used the random generator to come up with the winning comment.

So congrats to Lauren.  Please send your mailing address to shopcreativeradiance@yahoo.com and I'll get that out to you.

If you didn't win this giveaway or didn't have a chance to get in on it, please keep checking back for more.  I'm thinking about a nice little holiday giveaway in the near future. ;-)

~*Melody*~

Sitting at the Coffee Shop

Growing up I would have laughed at you if you'd told me that one day I would look forward to hot cup of Joe.  I'm having a nice gentle white chocolate mocha while my dear husband is sipping a kicky chocolate peppermint latte.  'Tis very refreshing indeed.  Our local coffee shop The Daily Grind measures right up there with Starbucks.  I'd say that their Macchiatos are much better than Starbucks.

Anywho, this entry isn't a coffee review.  I guess I was just being reflective today about some lifestyle things.  I sat for about an hour cleaning some gooey glue off of some glass containers I'm repurposing.  Yesterday someone asked me to sell them some of my MSG free ranch dressing mixture.  Thankfully I have a few containers laying waiting for such the task.  I do really enjoy repurposing.  It's great for the wallet and the planet.  Lately I've been searching the 'net for some repurposing inspiration.  I do a lot already, but I like the challenge of looking for even more ways.   I'm thinking about doing some posts on my 'green' ways.  Would you be interested in reading that?

As I was writing this entry, I wasn't sure which blog to place this one in.  I'm a bit torn at times between combining my two blogs anyway.  Oh well, I can't decide for now.  So you get this entry in both blogs.  ;-)

~*Melody*~

P.S. You can check out my bloggin pic in my Twitter feed.