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.

Christmas presents

Since the holiday season is officially "on", I've started thinking about what I will be gifting to my family this year. I have at least 8 people to consider for gifts, with others that will get smaller gifts. And this includes a range of people--from my grandmother to my 13 year old brother. In years past, I have often purchased things from the school I was at, but now that I'm no longer a student, thats not an option (plus I'm over it anyway.)
My family tends to gift eachother very practical things- my mother runs a daycare and goes through a lot of kitchen linens, so my gifts for her almost always include dishtowels and potholders (which might sound lame but she always appreciates them), my stepdad is a contractor and often works outside even in the winter, so lined carhart pants and laying pieces are key for him, as well as good tough work gloves.

Regardless, this year I don't want to do my "normal" Christmas thing. Last year I made candles and gave them to all my female family members, and this year, I want to take it a step further, and make ALL of my gifts. And apparently I'm not the only one! Over at (never home) maker, Ashley writes about how she would like to attempt a homemade Christmas (and also how shes otherwise decluttering her holidays) in this post titled Season's Greetings& Farewell to Stuff.

Along a similar vein, many people are suggesting that people wrap their gifts this season in reusable shopping bags. Sarah Richardson (of Sarah's House on HGTV) recommends this, and I see lots of great ideas at Sew, Mama, Sew! for how to make reuseable bags into pretty packages. I am planning to make use of these ideas--to start, I will make a bag like this

 to hold each gift. I made this bag using a pattern also from Sew, Mama, Sew!, which is super easy. You can find that pattern here: Classic Tote Tutorial

Then I will pretty them up even more, but using some of the ideas they blogged about yesterday. You can find the whole post here, but here is a picture that sums it up:

From Sew, Mama, Sew!

Since some of my family members actually occasionally read my blog, I can't go into real details yet about some presents. But I can tell you that I've so far used beads, yarn, ribbon, wire, fabric, and towels. Also I have already done a post about how while I'm home for Christmas, I will be seriously re-working my mom's kitchen (with only a little help from her). 

The trickiest part will be making something for my 13 year old, soon to be 14, brother. His top request is a video game, and while I am proficient in programming I am not a video game programmer!! (But wouldn't that be awesome?) If you have any ideas about what I could make for a 13/14 year old boy who likes camping, hunting and history, please, let me know!!

So what about you? Will you make some or all of your gifts this year?