Made Gifts

Since Thanksgiving day was very close to the end of November and I was helping the costume sewing for the Nutcracker production of Nina's ballet school, it was so hard to manege the time for making Holiday gifts for the teachers and friends. We barely finished the gifts for Nina's ballet teachers by the last lessons. I also wanted to give some hand bags for my friends who have been really helpful for years. I couldn't make it by Christmas but I finished it just a couple of days ago and finally gave the bags to the friends.

For this one below, I used some remnants of Kimono fabrics from the bags I made for December consignment. This friend, the recipient of this gift told me she liked the fabric when she saw that. I made it with a kiss lock frame and a chain handle. Kimono silks are good enough for formal occasions.

The main fabric for the next one is a felted old Nordic sweater. Felting a sweater (it has to be made of  100% wool) is pretty simple. I wash a sweater with hot water and laundry detergent in my washing machine then dry in my dryer. I used a pair of leather handles and a aluminum tubular spring frame. The felted thick fabric and leather handles made this bag durable. It opens wide and has a large bottom gusset so this bag can hold a lot of things.

These women live sustainable lives enjoyably. They are very good at giving new lives to old things. The way how they live is a good example for people including myself who want to live greener without any pressure. Reusing old Kimono and sweaters is a perfect gift theme for them.

From here I am going to show the items Nina and I made together for her teachers. These two cosmetic pouches below are the gifts for Nina's ballet teachers. Nina did cross stitched their initials for the first time! I think they look great for the first time.

This one is for Nina's music teacher. She has a beautiful black cat so we made a tree ornament of a cute black kitten. Nina designed the face and I embroidered it on a piece of felt.

We are so glad that all the recipients were very happy!! Did you make handmade Holiday gifts? Thank you for reading. Please have a great Sunday!!

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year everyone!! I am so grateful that in 2014 my family has been all safe and healthy. And I had a very busy full year both in my private life and the crafty world. We had the beautiful no-snow first day of 2015 (Wow! it is so rare!! I don't really mind having a green Christmas and a new year day once in a while ^o^).

We spent a very quiet day in the house with only three of us. We had an annual, traditional Japanese new year meal for a brunch. I only prepared a bit of dishes this year but it was good enough for three of us. I am trying to modify our special new year meal adapting to our lifestyle and taste. I think I will add some more non-traditional dishes which everybody loves.

I don't make new year's resolutions. But one thing in blogging, I'll try to post more craft tips and tutorials this year. Let's keep crafting and having fun friends! And of course, I wish all of you a healthy and wonderful new year!! ox

The time of harvest

We went apple picking to Garwood Orchard in La Porte. Apple picking is the best activity for us in early September. We tried this orchard for the first time and it was one of the greatest orchards in the region. It was a huge, beautiful, and very family friendly fun farm. They also have many kinds of vegetables and berries for U-pick. We got tons of apples in a several varieties.

Of course, I baked two apple pies that week.

And also my favorite Irish apple cake.

We've given away lots of apples to friends and we still have about a dozen left. I think I will make another apple dessert.

The leaves started coloring here in Northern Indiana. It is sad to know the Summer is surely over. But Fall is filled with the beauty of the nature. It is the time of harvest. What are you going to harvest this Fall?
I hope you are having a wonderful week.

Love,
Hiromi

Catching up

Hello Folks! So so so long time no seeing you! How have your Summer (and Winter) been? Some of you maybe are questioning if I have been sick or there was some big drama going on in my life. And I cannot keep my blog anymore? No need to worry! I am still here being fine (except for my chronic migraine) and so are my family members.

Oh my....... a whole month of July is missing on this blog! I've been so busy for so many reasons since the last post. I have to make it up so today's post will be all about catching up. I'll try to go through just briefly but it might be boring for some people who expect only crafty stories. For those readers, please just skip reading this. The next post would be something crafty. I'll try.

I don't know where to start. So I just tell you the story following my July calender. As soon as the new month of July started the big storm hit our region. It came in the night before the first day of the month and we lost the power. And that wasn't only thing we lost that day. So many trees in the town have knocked down. Our favorite big tree as well. Actually the tree didn't fall but had a major damage. Many of you might remember seeing this sugar maple tree in my older posts. The tree had a perfect broccoli-like shape for kids climbing up and hanging ropes and a swing. Thank goodness, it didn't hit the house but now the tree lost that perfect shape. Half of the broccoli is missing. It won't cover my front door with its nice cool shade anymore. I am so sad that the tree looks miserably off balance. It would take decades to grow those big limbs back if it is possible.

 

We call this "Nina's tree". Nina is much more optimistic about this disaster than I am.

Half of the "broccoli" is missing.

Our backyard got damaged too. A couple of tall trees fell from the neighbor's yard. The little bridge is back in place now.

This is one of our neighbors' house across the street. fortunately the house didn't get any major damage.

We were planning to finish lots of home improvements by middle of July. Because we had my family came to visit us from Japan!! Surprisingly, it was the first time that my family visits us since we moved to the US about nine years ago! So that was very important event for us that we wanted to welcome them in our home nicely finished. But everything got behind of our schedule because of the storm. (there were a several more reasons but I cannot even remember anymore!) Then just in time, we made it and finally had a great week with my family. (I will write about the week with my family sometime later. That post will be a nice little travel guide of South Bend and Michiana area.)

My dad, sister, brother-in-law and niece. In front of the beautiful historical building "Tippecanoe Place" in South Bend.

Nina wanted me to make another doll which just looks like hers for her cousin Momo (she is Nina's best friend) to play together. So I finished another adorable doll a couple days before Momo's arrival. (Hope I could write about that later too.)

Also, I had a deadline for writing an essay for a magazine. I wrote two pages of the article, knitted three pairs of socks and took many many pictures for this work. I was going to finish it before the arrival of my family but like as most of the time, my editor needed something more for the pages so I needed to work for some more hours when I have the guests in my house. (Now, it's over!!! It always makes me feel funtastic when I realize that I don't have any deadlines ahead!)

On the same day when my family left to Japan (it was a sad day!) we had my husband's brother and his wife came to visit the family in Michiana and they stayed in our home for three nights. There was no interval between two groups of the guests. I wish I had more time to tidy up the house before the second guests' arrival. But anyways I am glad we made it at long last and it went pretty well.

Meanwhile, I had to prepare stuff for the workshop which was scheduled right after that. This time I was going to teach basket making. when I have a class, I prepare materials ( I need to have everything divided for each students to make the class as efficient as possible because I usually don't have less time than I need) , tools and the original instruction written and drawn by myself. I had six wonderful participants in the class and we surely had a good time making and chatting. I am going to write about this too. And also this class gave me an idea that I should write tutorials of several different basket making I have ever done.

The samples I made for the class.

Wonderful participants working in the beautiful vintage boutique "Junk Evolution"!

I brought many many colors of threads. Looking at different color combinations was very interesting to me.

Finally this long story gets to the final chapter. Unbelievably it became August. I could have peaceful days from now on, I thought.......

Last Saturday, there was an auction in the neighborhood so we went. Tim got a bunch of tools and I luckily was able to bid off the stuff I wanted.

It was a set of Fiesta dinner ware on the end of the long table in the picture below.

They are in the color called periwinkle. I believe they are vintage but am not sure. If there is someone knows vintage Fiesta very well please let me know about these. I checked the prices of all of these online and I found that I payed only about 20% of the market price in total. "this must be my very lucky day!"....... I thought.

 

In the afternoon of that day, we had Nina's friends came over to our house. They were going to play in the basement. THE BASEMENT which we just refinished a couple weeks ago to welcome the family. Kids turned on the light switch of the basement. Then they yelled.

"Mr.Tim! You have your basement FLOODED!!!"

Oh man, wasn't it my lucky day? We had about 80% of the basement floor covered with about 1/2" of water. It was from my old washing machine which came with the house. The whole drain water came out the broken hose (or something). If you have had a flood in your home you would know how much that make you down! We had three floods in our basement including this. We are pretty much experienced. (which I don't want to be experienced at all.) But still..... it dragged us down.

Well, now the basement is dry but you can imagine how hard my husband and I had to work on it. It ruined our rest of the weekend, of course. And I am still way behind on my schedule of everything.

That is the story about why I could not update blog so long. I am sorry about that but I think now you understand the situation and even be moved with sympathy. (Because you are so nice! Ha-ha-ha.) I am hoping our rest of the month will go well and I'll feel lucky again. Well, I think I am generally lucky person because my family is healthy and you are here to read my story.

Thank you so much for reading such a long clumsy post. Hope you have a great week!

End of School Year

Hello! Finally, the school year is over. This winter was really long and cold here in Michiana. Our school had six snow days. That's exceptional. We rarely have more than three snow days usually. So we had three make up days through the Spring semester and even in June we had three more. That is why our Summer vacation started late this year. Yesterday was the last day of my daughter's third grade year. It has been pretty busy and messy around here as you may imagine. And you know, today is not just a first day of Summer vacation. It is the first day that Moms get busier and messier. Before my hair gets disheveled too much I would like to share things recently happened around my sweet girl.

She had a small piano recital. She played five songs. It wasn't perfect but she did pretty good. Surprisingly she never gets nervous before the events like this. Piano recitals, ballet performances, school talent shows, and so on. I guess that is a good thing, right? She could be something. Maybe....

She had worked hard on her school project in May. It was "Living History Museum". Every student pick one famous person in American history and research about the person. Then they present the result in front of parents and teachers pretending they are the persona they have in their reports. The picture below is Nina painting her background. I helped painting the green grass.

Her famous person in American history was BILLIE JEAN KING. I whipped up a skort from her old uniform shirt two days before the presentation. I needed to buy big framed glasses and deliver to Nina at school that day. I could not find an appropriate pair of fake glasses so I just grabbed a biggest pair of sunglasses from a store rack then ran to school. The glasses sorta look weird but she did great anyways.

Can you tell who is who? This was really a fun event and kids did very well. I think this was a very good way to learn history. Nina even remembers other students' persons' life histories. That is great.

Nina's 9th birthday was May 15th as I told you in this post . We usually have her birthday party right after school is over. But this year we had it the last weekend of school year due to the snow days make up. We had over twenty guests at St.Patrick's county park. This was the first time for us to have a party at park, and we liked it very much. St.Patrick's park is a beautiful place and very well maintained. We went skiing there many times this Winter and there are nice skiing (trekking) trails in the woods.

The second birthday cake was not home made. (You can see the first home made one here.)

It's cake time!

Mr.Tim challenged to the limbo. The cake wasn't home made but the limbo equipment was!!

The last weekend of May Nina's ballet school and company had the Sleeping Beauty ballet performances at DeBartolo performing arts center at Notre Dame University. I have been watching their productions for five years and this one was my most favorite. We are very fortunate to have such a good ballet school in the region. Nina is pretty much enthusiastic at ballet so far. I am not going to force her to keep going forever, but to be honest, I sometimes dream to see her dancing a main roll on stage someday. (I majored in dance and theater. After graduating college I worked as a dancer for a while. That made me a ballet Mom!)

Nina (and I) made a thank you gift for her teacher. A "stuffed teacher" is the thing we make occasionally. You can see the other stuffed teachers we made in the past here and here.

I attended the assembly to see Nina received some awards and celebrate that our school year was successful. I cannot believe that she is already going to be a forth grader next year. The parents her graders' started worrying and talking about which middle school we should apply for two years later. That is going to be a big decision.

I am glad we had another great year in school. We will enjoy the Summer in Michiana more than usual. Because we are not going to Japan to see my family. They will be coming here!! My Dad and sister's family will stay for about a week ( I know! It's too short! But it is really hard for my sister and brother in law to have a long vacation. ) We are looking forward to it. I always wanted to show them how I live in this country. It has been nine years. It was a long time.

 

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you started a wonderful Summer (or Winter in the South Hemisphere). Have a beautiful day!!