There have been a million times I have driven past a nasty run down lot in Akron and thought, “We should tear down that yucky house and build a garden here.” Well, the Akron Cooperative is doing just that! I was so excited to find them at the Akron Home and Garden show talking about keeping bees and Urban Chicken raising. They were even holding a raffle to give away a chicken coop (which I entered but did not win). I went to their website to find out more about them and found this:
Our Mission: to build a local food system that improves the health and economy of our community. Our approach is to use the valuable resources and productive traditions within our community by engaging youth and families to improve the conditions of our neighborhoods.
Our Goals:Focus on sustainable agriculture, nutrition education, entrepreneurship, and youth development to create change in our community. With that in mind, our five primary goals are to:
1.Educate residents about food systems, sustainable agriculture and healthy cooking.
2.Provide access to appropriate and affordable locally-grown, healthy, nutritional and culturally-focused food.
3.Engage and train youth as leaders in the food system and their community.
4.Build self-reliance through employment, training and local business development.
5.Building the capacity to produce food locally through sustainable agriculture.
How exciting! Find out more, if you are interested in helping out. I don’t know how helpful I can be to them this year with my little kiddos under foot, but next year I would love to put in some man hours in a community garden! For more information you can follow this link to subscribe to their newsletter.
It’s not really a toy. It’s an awesome tool. I bought a floor model Pfaff 4852 at Barnes Sewing Center on Saturday after the swap. I’ve been saving up for this purchase for a while. Now it is mine.
I don’t have a photo, since everything I’m sewing with it right now is ugly. And my sewing room is truly a disaster, so there is no photo of that either. I guess this promotional photo will have to suffice. If you don’t see me in a few months, I have crawled into a sewing cave, and I might not come out any time soon. At least until I learn how to serge a curved seam. Yikes!
And by the way, if anyone is in the market for a serger in the Akron area, Barnes has a Huskvarna for $200 that I almost bought. It’s still there….
This morning I had a crafty get together with my Sister-in-Law Emily and we worked on some wool owls together. Emily came up to Crafty Mart and bought this owl from one of the vendors. If someone knows who it was, please let me know, I don’t have his contact information and I want to link to his shop if possible. (Juniper informed me that this is from threebearsdesign.com)
We loved this little inspiration owl so much we needed to make some friends for him. Using brown, white and orange wool roving we felted up three more owls.
There were two different techniques we used to make them. The first was to felt four ounces of brown roving with soapy hot water until it was a nice firm ball. There is a tutorial on that here, on theartofmegan’s Flickr. Once we had our round owl bodies we needle felted their facial featured and bellies on. You can see the needle felting tool we used in the picture of Emily.
I love these little guys so much. I would love to make a bunch of other animals to go along with our owl. I was thinking mice and bunnies would be good. But it might make more sense to make reindeer for Christmas. I wonder how I could pull that off?
Each year I have plans to make an Advent Calendar with my kids, but it never happens. But when I checked my email this week I found an advent themed edition of Kids Craft Weekly and I found new inspiration to make it happen. There are some really cute projects that use recycled paper items, like toilet paper tubes. But the one that I like the most is the origami paper advent box which from Loobylu.
This might be just the right sized project for me to complete this weekend. Just in time for the first Sunday in Advent.
Well I can take a deep breath now. Oddmall is over and I made my goal, but not my stretch goal. It was a great event, and was well attended, especially for the first half of the day. Andy Hopp was a great host, and his daughter was a really great hostess. I loved watching her bop around in her cat ears and party dress, being friendly with everyone around. She’s five and I could tell that she’s make a great little playmate for my five-year-old.
Colleen stopped up with her husband Jon and son Ian, and she walked around a took pictures for me. I’ll let her write her own post, but I wanted to give my recap on the vendors I bought items from, and the ones that I thought deserved honorable mentions, continued after the break. Read more »
I discovered a wonderful tea shop during a recent trip to Chicago, and this weekend I visited a local location. It’s called Teavana which means “a heaven of tea”. I was really impressed with how knowledgeable their tea people are. I love that I can sample a few teas each visit. And I appreciate how their flyer & website educate on how the different teas (white, green, black, oolong) are made, what temperature & how long to steep each tea, and the health benefits of each tea.
I’m not quite a tea snob, but I love learning more of the intricacies of tea. I got a book last birthday from my husband called The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea. It’s full of great information, but lacks exciting pictures. Does anyone have any other tea companies or books you recommend? I think I’ll have a tea tasting party this winter!
I just signed up for a new message board called the Common Thread which connects people who are interested in talking fabric. I am really excited to get involved so early in their development because it’s always fun to watch a new group evolve. But also because they are planning on starting a Ravelry-esque board called The Woven soon and that sounds VERY exciting.
If you’re interested in fabrics, sewing, or networking with others who are, you should consider signing up. You can get in on the ground floor.
I am posting as “Devona” there, so you can find me. And if you sign up, let us know in the comments that you’ve joined so that I can keep in contact.
I’ve often run across wonderful Scrabble tile crafts but have never wanted to part with my game pieces. This week I found a bag of Scrabble tiles for less than $1 at the thrift store. So I’ve been looking for all the Scrabble crafts previously passed up.
Do you have other ideas for Scrabble Tiles? I was thinking…a pendant for a lamp pull chain, Christmas ornaments, box labels for organizing, drawer pulls, or beaded charms for wine glasses.
My favorite thing about new babies is that they can’t protest when I dress them up as silly things for Halloween. My older girls have opinions now and I can only do so much to sway them, but not Cressida. Cressida can’t tell me that she doesn’t want to be Mr. H Horrible Hair because he’s a boy and she’s a girl. Or that she thinks the green crochet eye-lash yarn hat is a bit too much. Or that Mr. H isn’t magical and all costumes should be of magical things.
For those of you not born in the late 70s/early 80s, this is Mr. H Horrible Hair. The Letter People are a new hit in our house, so even though Olivia and Elise don’t want to be him, they sure are glad that Cressida is going to be.
These transparent votive candle holder decals from How About Orange are on my list of things to do for Halloween. Usually by this time I am halfway done with two handmade costumes, neck deep in candy corn and finished roasting my second batch of pumpkin seeds. But this year things have gotten away from me, obviously, and there isn’t a spooky decoration in my entire home.
I will definitely have time for this, though. I was also thinking about doing it with an orange Gatorade powder container that I have around. We can transfer the face of a jack-o-lantern, like this one I made in GIMP really quickly, and Mod Podge it to the container and fill it with candy corn. I expect my kids will really like this, because they’ll be able to help, and then there will be a pumpkin container full of candy, and you can’t beat that!
You’re more than welcome to take my jack-o-lantern face and use it yourself. Just right click and save it to your computer.
I discovered a wonderful tea shop during a recent trip to Chicago, and this weekend I visited a local location. It’s called 
I’ve often run across wonderful Scrabble tile crafts but have never wanted to part with my game pieces. This week I found a bag of Scrabble tiles for less than $1 at the thrift store. So I’ve been looking for all the Scrabble crafts previously passed up.
