Category: small things

a good day after all

Posted on by trish

On Fri­day, errands and a meet­ing brought me to Queen Street West, an area of the city that brings up fond mem­o­ries of art col­lege days. 

Usu­al­ly I would rum­mage through antique shops and read as many cro­chet and knit­ting books as I can at Rom­ni Wools, but I was­n’t hav­ing a very good day, still recov­er­ing from a par­tic­u­lar­ly tough day at work ear­li­er in the week. Self-doubt came rush­ing in like a giant wall of waves. And the future sud­den­ly seemed very bleak. Like noth­ing I do is ever good enough, or ever going to be good enough.

After run­ning those errands I still had plen­ty of time before the meet­ing, so I decid­ed that I would try to find the white squir­rel at Trin­i­ty Bell­woods Park. But not only the white squir­rel, all the squir­rels must be hid­ing in cool places in the trees — I could hard­ly see any squir­rel at all! I dragged my heavy bags and tired legs for­ward in an attempt to find a park bench in the shade — avoid­ing the sun­ny spots was what need­ed to be done here — but the only free ones were those bak­ing in the sun, of course. So I walked toward a friend­ly-look­ing tree that offered a large area of shade. Once I was under its shade I looked up, and real­ized that it was a gink­go tree — a liv­ing fos­sil, my favourite kind of tree! That made me hap­py, like spot­ting a friend in a par­ty of strangers, or receiv­ing kind­ness from a passerby. 

 

I sat in the shade for a bit, and when I was less tired I got bored, so I walked around the park, and found a small flowerbed, with flow­ers of all dif­fer­ent colours, like a celebration.

 

There were lots of these flow­ers that looked like they were made out of crepe paper. I don’t know much about plants and dont’ know what they’re called. Per­haps you can help me out?

 

After wan­der­ing in the park I still had more time, and I was feel­ing a bit bet­ter, so I thought I’d wan­der in the streets. After all, while being all gloomy ear­li­er I skipped some of my favourite shops. So I wan­dered into Mag­ic Pony, and was sur­prised that they car­ry the Yum­my Dessert key­chains by Hei­di Ken­ny ‑ I thought they were only sold in the US! Hei­di Ken­ny’s blog was one of the first ones I fol­lowed and inspired this lit­tle blog of mine. So I thought I must get one of those keychains!

Prob­lem was, they were sold in blind box­es, which meant that one could­n’t choose the par­tic­u­lar toy one want­ed. You know which one I want­ed to get most? My favourite is the jel­lo mold. 

 

I read on the box that I had a 1/25 chance of get­ting the jel­lo mold. I thought as long as I did­n’t get the white and brown cook­ie I would be hap­py (not that it was­n’t cute, it just did­n’t quite look like a cook­ie…). I picked up a box with my eyes closed. As the friend­ly Mag­ic Pony staff cheered me on, I anx­ious­ly opened the pack­ag­ing and out it tumbled…

A JELLO!!!

OMG I GOT A JELLO!!!

XD 

The Mag­ic Pony is indeed magical.

It’s even slight­ly squishy like real jel­lo! XD

I made it just in time to my meet­ing with my super­vi­sor. I real­ized how much I miss being in a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple who do the same kind of work — the same kind of wide­ly-mis­un­der­stood-and-unrec­og­nized-by-the-main­stream work — and under­stand. I was once again remind­ed of the pur­pose of my work, and the skills that I do have. And the future seemed a bit more hope­ful. (If you want to know what kind of work I do head over to the about page. I updat­ed it recent­ly :D)

When I got home it was late. I checked my emails and Word­Press told me that a love­ly vis­i­tor had com­ment­ed that she liked my favourite things posts and may con­sid­er writ­ing in her blog again. These words of kind­ness remind me of those moments when a client looks up from the art she’s mak­ing and smiles with her eyes, sat­is­fied by a moment of joy or heal­ing or insight or con­nect­ed­ness with a vibrant­ly cre­ative part of self. It’s about offer­ing what lit­tle I have and see­ing oth­ers turn it into some­thing amaz­ing beyond my imag­i­na­tion. I mean, the abil­i­ty to turn ordi­nary things into amaz­ing things is already inside every­one, whether I put things out there or not. But I guess the dif­fer­ence is that I did put things, or some­times myself, out there. Some­times it does noth­ing, but I know that some­times it can make a dif­fer­ence. And that, I remind myself, is what I will have to hold on to as I trav­el along.

Today we walked passed a food mar­ket and saw this bloom­ing suc­cu­lent plant (again, I have no idea what it’s called). I’ve seen the same kind of plant before, and when it blooms it has a long stem com­ing out of the mid­dle of the plant with small pink flow­ers branch­ing out at the top. I always thought it looks like it’s offer­ing its flow­ers to the world.

 

It’s a bit of a long-wind­ed post. A bit all over the place, too. But I guess at the end of the day it’s just about catch­ing the bright things, and find­ing parts of myself and my place in the world in the midst of the bright things and not so bright things.

And see­ing that it’s almost Sun­day, I’ll end with a video that cap­tures a small, but very bright moment :D

 

Have a good day, friends!

 

 

 

catching the bright things

Posted on by trish

 


I was begin­ning to won­der if this was maybe what strength was all about: not being the first, or the tallest, or the pret­ti­est. Being strong, I decid­ed, was about catch­ing the bright things that blow by every day, and know­ing when to let the garbage drift away.

– Lau­ren Kir­sh­n­er, Where We Have to Go 

 

The paint­ing is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the mask­ing exper­i­ments I post­ed yes­ter­day. I cut sten­cils from foam pieces to masked shapes and then stip­pled paint on the canvas.

I recent­ly read Where We Have to Go and it has become one of my favourites. I thought the quote goes well with the paint­ing. I liked the book not only because of the way it’s writ­ten (and it’s set in Toron­to!), but most impor­tant­ly it’s because it reminds me so much of my own ado­les­cence. I felt very much con­nect­ed to the way the pro­tag­o­nist is think­ing and feeling.

So, about catch­ing the bright things. Much of Cana­da is cov­ered in, as the news reports call it, an “oppres­sive heat blan­ket” these days. I keep wait­ing for an epic thun­der­storm to lift this blan­ket of heat and haze and smog, and I’m still wait­ing :( Though this aggres­sive weath­er sys­tem has brought with it some incred­i­ble sun­sets. Look how red the sky is!

 

Ris­ing tem­per­a­ture in the apart­ment also makes cold water­mel­on so much more enjoy­able. I’m con­vinced that scoop­ing with an ice cream scoop is the most effi­cient way to eat water­mel­on. Unlike chop­ping the mel­on on a chop­ping board, how the juice splat­ters every­where with each chop, when scoop­ing out the flesh all the juice would be saved in the rind like a bowl, not one drop would be wast­ed. See?

 

Have a bright and beau­ti­ful Tuesday!

 

 

 

weekend wonders

Posted on by trish

The past two week­ends have been quite won­der­ful. I did­n’t have a chance to post those week­end pic­tures here last week, so here they all are! :D

Last week­end we took a long over­due trip to Ikea, had their fab­u­lous meat­ball com­bo and Swedish dessert sam­pler and of course lin­gonber­ry juice :D

 

And at Ikea I got a large jar of Per­ler beads! I thought my heart was going to burst when I opened it and saw all the colours spilling out. Must be a mil­lion of them in there — filled to the brim with hap­pi­ness :D

 

My first project was a Nyan Cat. I real­ized that if I copied the pix­els exact­ly it would turn out huge (5.5″ across, appar­ent­ly, like this awe­some ren­di­tion). I did­n’t even have a large enough board to make the full-size Nyan Cat, so I sim­pli­fied it a bit. And the jar of beads also did­n’t have grey (for the cat) or tan (for the Pop­tart). But that’s OK. My Nyan Cat would be lilac-coloured and the Pop­tart pas­try would have to be yel­low. And here it is fly­ing across the screen with the rain­bow trail…

 

Fig­ured out anoth­er way to wear my cro­chet tea rose — on a belt! My belt had a met­al buck­le and the flower had a safe­ty pin on the back, so the flower was held to the belt buck­le with a cou­ple of mag­nets in between. I think it looked alright. 

 

Over the past week I’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with dress­mak­ing (I’m hop­ing to replace old rat­ty t‑shirts with clothes I make). So far I’ve made myself this blouse with some fab­ric I found in my mom’s fab­ric bin. It must be from Hong Kong. It’s not exact­ly pol­ka dots, because the white dots are kind of ovals. Mike and I both think that they look like grains of rice. (More on the mak­ing of this top lat­er!) I wore this flower pin on my belt with it. I asked Mike to take a pho­to while we were watch­ing the sun­set on the deck at top of our build­ing :D

 

And I save the best for last — my new niece was born on Wednes­day! Her name is Lucy :D We saw her for the first time this past week­end. She’s so precious…

Wish­ing you a week full of won­ders! :D

super awesome week! :D

Posted on by trish

I’m very eas­i­ly amused, so it’s not hard for me to find awe­some things to feel hap­py about on an ordi­nary day. But last week was SUPER awe­some! Just an accu­mu­la­tion of awe­some things that I don’t encounter on a reg­u­lar basis.

First, the weath­er was REALLY nice all week. So nice that I start­ed to expect rain — sun­ny weath­er does­n’t last more than a few days until the rain clouds start to take over again, and so if I start to expect rainy weath­er than I would­n’t be too dis­ap­point­ed about the loss of sun and blue sky.

But rain did­n’t come! And at the end of most days last week Mike and I were able to enjoy some gor­geous sun­sets on our west-fac­ing balcony.

 

Thurs­day was the day that I was real­ly pray­ing for the rain to stay away. It was the open­ing recep­tion of a small art show I orga­nized in the com­mu­ni­ty, and the Weath­er Net­work called for rain all day. So I was a bit ner­vous about it through­out the day, but guess what? It did­n’t rain. Not one bit.

AND guess who walked through the door at the art show opening?

MURDOCH!!!

 

I still can’t get over it ‑ Yan­nick Bis­son, of Mur­doch Mys­ter­ies, one of my absolute favourte TV shows, came to the open­ing reception!

I was too utter­ly shocked to go up to intro­duce myself or even to snap a pic­ture (I also had to give a short speech and I’m ter­ri­fied of pub­lic speak­ing, so I want­ed to focus on prepar­ing myself for that). I saw that he was min­gling with the direc­tors, so I thought some­one would even­tu­al­ly intro­duce me after the speech­es and all that… but he left! He left ear­ly, even before I gave my speech :’(

Oh well. It was still real­ly cool to see detec­tive Mur­doch in per­son! :D Mur­doch Mys­ter­ies is prob­a­bly my sec­ond favourite show at the moment (a close sec­ond behind Fringe), because not only is it a Cana­di­an pro­duc­tion, it is also set in late 19th cen­tu­ry Toron­to (you know how I like to vis­it old hous­es and learn about life in the past). And so when Inspec­tor Brack­en­reid men­tioned “Mary of Shuter Street”, I know exact­ly where that is! :D

The next day I had to work at a school pic­nic. The sky final­ly sprin­kled a few drops of rain on us but noth­ing major after every­thing was set up, which I was real­ly thank­ful for, because oth­er­wise it would­n’t be pos­si­ble to run the cot­ton can­dy sta­tion outside!

I even got to work at the sta­tion for part of the day, mak­ing cot­ton can­dy cones! Despite my hair and glass­es and clothes being cov­ered in cot­ton can­dy floss, it was way fun!

I also served pop­corn from the popper!

I saw this very cool tuto­r­i­al for mak­ing ani­mat­ed image on Make it and Love it, and thought some of the pic­tures I took of the pop­corn pop­ping would make a fun ani­ma­tion. Though I did­n’t take the pic­tures with that in mind and so only two pic­tures were usable… but I thought I would give it a try any­way :D

Looks like it’s eat­ing the pop­corn rather than pop­ping them out :P

nom nom nom nom nom…

The ani­ma­tion was so much fun to make! I’ll have to try it with oth­er pic­tures sometimes…

And then I got a cup­cake at lunch break (on top of all the oth­er great food the par­ents brought), which I ate while sit­ting on the grass. The cup­cake was as deli­cious as it was pretty.

Then on Sat­ur­day we met up with some old friends and wit­nessed anoth­er old friend being mar­ried :D Very excit­ing indeed. There was sushi as far as eyes could see at the lunch buf­fet recep­tion. After much eat­ing and chat­ting and clap­ping and laugh­ing and singing, and while oth­er guests start­ed leav­ing and helpers start­ed clean­ing, here I am rest­ing by the water­colour, feel­ing very happy.

Rec­og­nize the mus­sel­s dress, and my sum­mer shoes? :D

The flower pin is anoth­er crafty sto­ry in itself. I will have to save it for next time.

I know not every week will be like this one, and some weeks are com­plete­ly dis­as­trous, but I’m just very, very thank­ful for all the won­der­ful things this week. Hope you have a great start to your week!

 

If good things last­ed for­ev­er, would we appre­ci­ate how pre­cious they are?
— Hobbes (the stuffed tiger)

 

 

 

Snow

Posted on by trish

 

Like the petals in our pockets
May we remem­ber who we are
Uncon­di­tion­al­ly cared for
By those who share our bro­ken hearts

The table is set
And all glass­es are full
The pieces go missing
May we still feel whole

 

Warm wish­es,
Trish

(The rest of the lyrics here)

 

greetings from the tree! :D

Posted on by trish

Hey Jorge! Where’s the tree and what’s with the fire?

Well… we’ll get to that in a moment. But now, the orna­ments! :D

A yel­low fab­ric star that Mike made when he was 5 makes the tree top­per every year.

 

Meet Snow Bear! I made him at school 2 Christ­mases ago. We were sup­posed to make a sculp­ture for a role play exer­cise, and he’s made of a Sty­ro­foam cone and some corn and seeds, but I can’t bear to toss him away.

 

And next we have my favourite chip­munk in the tree. (Jorge: but isn’t there only one chip­munk in the tree…?) I saw him at Pot­tery Barn and just had to bring him home. I’m not one who shops at Pot­tery Barn ever, but I had a gift card! :D So it was meant to be. Actu­al­ly, I orig­i­nal­ly bought him for a secret San­ta gift but I mean, who could ever give away a chip­munk with ears made of pis­ta­chio shells?

 

And here’s my Mod­el Mag­ic snow­man, made from left­over Mod­el Mag­ic I saved from school. (With a grin­ning Bob the Toma­to talk­ing toy.)

 

One year I made many of these orna­ments with shards of glass from jars and bot­tles, which I smashed with a ham­mer :D I then sol­dered the edges and paint­ed on it with glass paint. I sold and gave away all the ones that I made through­out the years, and haven’t start­ed mak­ing them again because it involves so much time and work. But I still think it was a real­ly good idea. I real­ly like the organ­ic shape of the glass and the idea that it came from a bro­ken bottle.

 

Last year I took a work­shop in felt­ing. It was an orna­ment work­shop and we made a San­ta, a snow­man, and a pen­guin. I gave away the San­ta and the snow­man and kept Mr. Pen­guin. Mike quick­ly point­ed out how he bears a strik­ing resem­blance to the Lin­ux Pen­guin.

The work­shop instruc­tor kind­ly offered us extra felt to take home to prac­tice, so with the extra felt I made this mush­room. There are also an assort­ment of pine cones and plas­tic hol­lies in the tree from flo­ral arrange­ments that Mike’s office received. I’m thank­ful for his co-work­ers who asked him to take those home for me before throw­ing out the arrange­ments :D They make excel­lent tree dec­o­ra­tions because they come with a long wire stem, which are very easy to insert into the mass of plas­tic tree nee­dles and make the dec­o­ra­tions look like part of the tree.

 

Here’s my first attempt to make a cro­cheted acorn. He has a remov­able cap too. (Jorge: and we came from the same ball of yarn!)

 

New to the tree this year are my orna­ments from the dough adven­tures. Here’s the teapot one made from the cook­ie mold my friend kind­ly passed on to me.

And here comes the crazed rab­bit and his car­rot! :D

 

But the most spe­cial thing about the tree this year is the fire­place under the tree. Yes, a fire­place in an apartment!

TA-DA!!

Mike built this fire­place by run­ning this video on a gum­drop Mac he got for free on Craigslist. Isn’t he the most bril­liant? :D

It is a fire­place one can hug! (And it’s quite warm!)

 

Just so every­one can ful­ly appre­ci­ate this love­ly Mac fire with us I took a video with the Zumi! If you lis­ten care­ful­ly you’ll hear it crack­le like a real fire­place! :D

 

 

Warm wish­es to you and your family!

favourite things of the week!

Posted on by trish

‘Tis the sea­son for can­dy corn! I was point­ed to a tuto­r­i­al for mak­ing can­dy corn trick-or-treat bags on The Purl Bee — they’re so cute! They would make great par­ty hats as well, I think!

While brows­ing on The Purl Bee, also saw these sweet felt­ed buck­et hats! I love the pur­ple one. I would real­ly like to try mak­ing these, as I’ve nev­er tried felt­ing in the wash­ing machine before, but I don’t have a 16mm cro­chet hook. So I was real­ly hap­py to see that there is also a non-felt­ed cro­chet ver­sion of the buck­et hat! Maybe I’ll make that for now until I get a 16mm cro­chet hook…

More sweet treats! Recipe for a GIANT s’more cake on The Birth­day Blog! (I also think that a blog that is all about birth­days and birth­day par­ties has got to be one of the most awe­some blogs ever.)

Spot­ted this via the Craftzine blog, fea­tur­ing a frost­ed cake between a giant piece of sol­id choco­late and two home­made gra­ham crack­er. I’ll be such a hap­py camper if I ever get such a cake for my birthday!

Equal­ly awe­some but per­haps not as sweet… a cro­cheted owl pel­let!

Found on Futur­i­sticky via the Craftzine. I nev­er knew what owl pel­lets were until last year, when I saw some real owl pel­lets on posters cre­at­ed by grade 4 stu­dents. It’s quite fas­ci­nat­ing what can be found in these, um, regur­gi­tat­ed bun­dles of undi­gest­ed food. And the cro­cheted owl pel­let even comes with pieces of cro­cheted bones!

And final­ly, a video! While brows­ing on Ama­zon try­ing to find a book to read on the upcom­ing 17-hour plane ride, I saw this!

A Kir­by’s game, all in YARN!! :D

I don’t play much video games except Tetris (and I’m real­ly rather good at it, if I do say so myself). But I’m rather excit­ed that there’s a game based on yarn. I prob­a­bly won’t spend $50 to buy it, but I will like­ly rent it just to see what it’s like!

Maybe one day they’ll make Tetris in yarn too.

Have a great week­end every­one! :D

 

time capsule

Posted on by trish

A cou­ple of weeks ago I went to vis­it my par­ents, and my mom asked me to clean out some of my old stuff. I always avoid­ed clean­ing out old stuff because I don’t want to decide whether to throw some­thing out or not. I’ve been delay­ing it since I moved out of my par­ents’ house, and I feel bad for still tak­ing up so much space even though I no longer live there, so now I’m slow­ly get­ting into the process of dig­ging things out… And I’m hap­py to report that I’ve thrown out some things that I real­ly don’t need (like tried up tubes of poster paint from grade school and unfin­ished salt dough projects), and I’ve also tak­en home some real­ly inter­est­ing things that I’ve kept since I was a child but haven’t seen for ages and ages, to a point where I’ve for­got­ten that I have these things…

So, let me intro­duce… this is Mr. Rice Pad­dle, who was giv­en to me by my Gr.5/6 teacher. I need to fix his rice pad­dle because it’s kind of falling apart, but I think he’s a real­ly awe­some-look­ing oni­giri and one day I’m going to cro­chet one after him! (he’s also a bank and I actu­al­ly found hun­dreds of HK$ tucked inside him!)

And look! A tiny squir­rel! It was sit­ting in a box at the bot­tom of the draw­er, and I had to take her home because she has such a pre­cious expres­sion on her face, and the tiny blue bow… Plus, she looks per­fect with this acorn on our win­dowsill, even though she already has her own acorn. It was also a gift from my grade school teacher (in Hong Kong we got gifts for get­ting high marks in spelling tests, term tests, etc.).

And then there are things that I kept when I was a child, and actu­al­ly haven’t got­ten thrown out and made it across the ocean when we moved to Cana­da. Like this 20 cents coin here. I don’t know when I found it but I know I kept it because it has a hole at the top and I thought it would make a good neck­lace charm. But of course I nev­er made it into a neck­lace charm and it had been sit­ting in the bot­tom of my draw for­ev­er… until now! So, this is the side that says “20 cents”, which is equiv­a­lent to rough­ly $0.026 CAD.

And then on this side is a bauhinia flower. Along with this coin I also found a pur­ple bead that looked like a semi-pre­cious stone, prob­a­bly from a neck­lace that I took apart. So I thought they belong togeth­er, since bauhinia flow­ers are usu­al­ly purple-magenta-ish.

So, after I don’t know how many years this coin I saved for a neck­lace is final­ly made into a neck­lace! All it took was a cou­ple of jump rings. I also cleaned the coin with a bit of rub­bing alco­hol. :D I’m rather pleased with it.

And then I also found these beads I made in junior high, with the left­over fimo from a snow globe kit. I remem­ber buy­ing a book on fimo just to learn the tech­niques for mak­ing faux mille­fiori beads. Man, I don’t think I’d have the patience now…

These are tiny, and I don’t know what to do with those green beads yet, maybe com­bined them with oth­er things… But I thought the pur­ple one looks good on its own on a short chain. I actu­al­ly made a trip to the bead store to get gold-colour find­ings for these, but I got the wrong kind of head pins :( so I resort­ed to mak­ing my own head pin, with a spi­ral at the bot­tom and a loop at the top, like so:

And it looked like this, when I’ve short­ened the chain:

I also found this swirly heart, and Luna.

I real­ly don’t remem­ber when I made the swirly heart, but I prob­a­bly made it with fimo. I also don’t remem­ber where Luna came from, but I do remem­ber her being my favourite char­ac­ter from the Sailor Moon series, fol­lowed by Sailor Mars. Though I would have to say that my least favourite car­toon char­ac­ter of all time is actu­al­ly Sailor Moon her­self. Her whin­ing drove me crazy, espe­cial­ly in the North Amer­i­can ver­sion. I was also rather upset that in the N. A. ver­sion Luna was giv­en this real­ly scratchy old-witchy voice — her voice is sup­posed to be bright and ener­gized and cute like her char­ac­ter! The North Amer­i­can peo­ple got it all wrong… *shakes fist*

Any­way, I digress. I attached jump rings to both and put them on a chain for the pho­to but I actu­al­ly don’t know what to do with them yet. So they’re going back into their cap­sule — which is a heart-shaped box lined with red vel­vety mate­r­i­al on the inside and cov­ered in seashells on the out­side. I’ve had it since as far as I could remem­ber, but I’ve only recent­ly tak­en it home from my par­ents’ recently.

And speak­ing of the pas­sage of time, the next post will be my 100th post on this blog!! :D So! To cel­e­brate, I will be spend­ing the 100th post on the things I will make for Leethal’s 2nd Make-Along this Sat­ur­day. I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the first Make-Along back in spring, about the time when I start­ed this blog, so I’m real­ly excit­ed that the 2nd Make-Along is hap­pen­ing around the time of the 100th post! :D I will be cro­chet­ing things that have to do with the num­ber 100, and if you’re inter­est­ed in set­ting aside some cre­ative time this week­end please join me and oth­er crafters in the Make-Along! :D

A week in montage

Posted on by trish

1. Nap­kin origa­mi, fam­i­ly gath­er­ing at restau­rant :D

2. Storm approaching!

3. Red bean pud­ding cake, among oth­er glo­ri­ous dim sum food

4. Received roy­al mail! awe­some :D I ordered a used book through Ama­zon and it was shipped from the UK!

5. We tried mak­ing sea glass jel­lo with this recipe, but for­got to dis­solve gelatin before adding con­densed milk, so the gelatin was all clump­ing and I thought I could sal­vage it by beat­ing it with an elec­tric mix­er… any­way. It tast­ed excel­lent, just a bit foamy at the top and the jel­lo pieces all bro­ken into bits at the bot­tom… per­haps we could call it sea foam jel­lo instead :P

6. Sight­ed! White berries! A bit like snow on the bush­es. I wish I know what they’re called…

Favourite things of the week!

Posted on by trish

Hope you’ve had a fab­u­lous long week­end! Did­n’t write for sev­er­al days because I have been away, but I’ve also been sav­ing these links to share! :D

I saw this quite a while ago — anoth­er bril­liant, bril­liant way to make small gift bags by How About Orange! From envelops! And also pret­ty tape! Per­fect for Christ­mas cook­ies, I think. Or those cook­ie mold orna­ments I was mak­ing! :D

Spot­ted anoth­er paper-fold­ing project recent­ly via Whip up — paper crane cup­cake top­pers! Would go well with green tea cup­cakes, I imag­ine. This looks like a promis­ing recipe…

And a real­ly neat activ­i­ty I saw today via The Crafty Crow, Com­bin­ing music-mak­ing, song-writ­ing, and water­colour! :D Read the post on Net­tle’s Notes to see how it works, it’s real­ly cool.

I stum­bled upon these fab­ric flow­ers on Sim­ply Vin­tage­girl a while ago — look how pret­ty!!! Real­ly want to try mak­ing them, but kind of weary about the flame part for the petals… the tuto­r­i­al has real­ly clear instruc­tions though! So maybe if I come across some syn­thet­ic silk one day I’ll give them a try…

Aaaand last but not least (though the tini­est), saw these can­dy corn *squeal* by Danielle­o­ra­ma on Tiny Plush Tues­day! They remind me that fall is quick­ly approach­ing and that makes me so very hap­py :D (Yes, I’m one of those odd species that aren’t too fond of sum­mer) I’m also feel­ing rather inspired to start cro­chet­ing a can­dy corn :D

Hap­py day!