Look What Santa Brought Me!

Two things that will be seriously helpful for my blogging. 

First, a new sewing machine. It is the Brother cs6000i, and I'm in love. 

Picture from here

It it a serious upgrade in terms of features from my late-60's Singer Fashionmate. Don't get me wrong, the Fashionmate is a workhorse and served me well, but this new one purrs like a kitten and makes sewing so fast. Threading it is very easy, there are 60 different stitches, and you don't even have to  use a foot pedal to sew. This is awesome for me, as someone with knee/hip issues. I actually got this new toy a week before Christmas (fast shipping!!) so I got to use it to make some of my Christmas gifts.

Here she is in real life!

The second toy is a new camera. 

Photo from here

It's not a DSLR-- I looked at them but ultimately decided I wasn't ready for that sort of investment, both in money and in learning. Instead I got the Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS, which is 12.1MP. This is a pretty significant improvement over my previous camera- an Olympus FE-120 that's nearly 5 years old and only 6.0 megapixels. One of the most obvious improvements is the speed of taking pictures-- the Canon takes the picture nearly as soon as you press the button, while the old one had a 2-3 second delay. Big difference for any sort of action shot.

Yes, I used my old camera to take a picture of my new camera,
because I'm silly like that

Another new toy...very exciting is this bad boy:

Image from here

That's right! A palm sander. This guy should make redoing furniture that much easier. I already have a few projects in mind where this will come in VERY handy. I think my dad was very amused that I asked for a sander for Christmas. I'm sure not many24 year old women have these on top of their wish list!

I'm excited to start out 2011 with some new toys that can only make my projects better. I hope you'll hang around to see what I do.