Category Archives: neat spaces

Interwebs dominoes

Posted on March 14, 2011 by SewTara| 3 Comments

Sooooo I’ve been hanging out late at night on Twitter while I work away and Thursday is *always* there.  She mentioned The Vintage Cabin, so of course off I went to Etsy to see the shop.  Then I bought something. . . s.

In my poking around I ended up at the Vintage Cabin Blog (which is hillarious and local so I love it).  In one of her posts she mentioned a shop in Toronto, SMASH that seems super awesome, but has wacky hours *sigh*

 

She mentioned her love of industrial inspired stuff and said Three Potato Four was a favourite, so then there I was on that site.

 

Vintage Cabin was also featured in N.E.E.T magazine, which is awesome and full of all sorts of cool stuff.  I can’t even link all the neat things I found in there, just go check it out for yourself and you too will be playing Interwebs Dominoes.  Yeah, I’m making up a new term.

 

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Posted in fun finds, neat spaces, papercrafts, vintage

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Some much needed Mommy organization and crafty fun.

Posted on February 3, 2011 by SewTara| 1 Comment

Somehow I’m getting stuffed up again.  It’s so not cool.  We all just got over some hideous cold.  I don’t want a new one.  I saw this printable linked  and had a great idea for it.  It’s from yoursecretadmiral and she’s a superstar for sharing such a fun little printable.

I wanted to make something to help me plan lunches during the week.  I teach in the afternoons, which at my school start at 12:25, but I have a 10 minute yard duty everyday from 12:15-12:25.  So I have to start lunch for me and the boys at about 11, especially with all the winter gear.  If we go out in the world to do something in the mornings I’m usually rushing to get a lunch ready and I’m lucky if I get to eat before we have to run out the door and across the street to the sitter.  I *hate* feeding them quick convenience food and really make an effort to prepare from scratch.

I printed out the file, cut the days apart and laminated them.  I have the cute little “My lists” house set aside for a notebook or something, I didn’t laminate it.  Then I cut pieces from a roll of magnetic tape and attached a little bit to the back of each day.  Then you have little magnets that are also write off/wipe off boards!

You could put them on your fridge or anywhere else magnetable.  These are on one of the handiest things in our kitchen, that isn’t used for cooking.  I’m a tad embarassed to show the inside but it’s such a wonderful little thing I’m going to share.  Magnetic front, builiten board back and storage compartment, all in one handy good looking thing!

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Posted in DIY, neat spaces, other crafts, papercrafts, tutorial-ish

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Organizing fun!

Posted on September 15, 2010 by SewTara| 5 Comments

I went to IKEA to buy this little friend to replace my boring table legs and have some more storage for my growing sewing supplies.

THEN I had the thought that it would be cool to label all the drawers with my Cricut and vinyl.  But then I had an even better idea and used my woodgrain shelf contact paper instead.  It was really easy and I love the way it turned out.

The drawers filled up quickly.

My fabric crush drawer, full of all the prints I can’t bear to cut up yet.

I even labelled my other drawer unit where I keep my papercrafts stuff.  Ignore the mess, thread on the floor and my slipper oh, and jammie bottoms.  Clearly I was prepared for taking a professional shot.

Next on my ‘organzing my craft space’ wishlist is this,

Then I’ll fill it with fun storage containers like this,

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Posted in neat spaces

Teehee!

Posted on August 26, 2010 by SewTara| 2 Comments

Thanks to some linky love from Mollie over at Wild Olive I’ve found some new blogs floating around the net.  Here’s something awesome I stumbled upon the other day over at the Quilted Cupcake.  Isn’t it so fun?!

I just might have to ‘transform’ my Singer now.  It’s my ‘juice pouch’ sewing machine now that I have a fancy pants Babylock.  Might be fun to dress it up a bit.

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Posted in neat spaces, other crafts, repurposing, sewing

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Another part of my day in Toronto, Mokuba!

Posted on August 21, 2010 by SewTara| 3 Comments

While wandering Queen street we spotted some ribbon through a store window and figured, as crafty gals, it might be a fun store. So we went it and couldn’t believe it. Mokuba is an entire store of ribbon!! Lace, trim, ribbon, ruffles, frilly stuff . . . it was crazy. It’s a huge normal store sized store just full of shelves and rolls and bins of ribbon!

Strangely enough I didn’t actually need anything but I did wander through and snap some pictures on my phone.

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Posted in embroidery, fun finds, neat spaces, other crafts, sewing

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Part of my day in Toronto.

Posted on August 18, 2010 by SewTara| 1 Comment

Had some fun this week wandering about Toronto.  I’m going to have to make time to do this again really soon!  There was way to much to see and I ran out of time for all the fun things I wanted to accomplish.  In Kensington Market we stumbled upon Funky Junky, an awesome vintage store full of fantastic stuff.  I was camera-less but snapped some photos with my iphone.

A collection of vintage cameras and accessories.  Beside them was an ancient Singer sewing machine, the old weighs-a-ton black model with the fancy gold writing.  Yeah, that’s my description.

Suitcases and other travel worthy things.  Super cool stuff.  The white one was really cool but when we opened it there was a blow dryer inside!  Beside them you can see the collection of phones.  Around the corner from those was a big box with Gem’s Roadster in it!  Complete with FM radio in the trunk.  There was also a stack of old video games, including Intellivision!  We had that.  I remember my mom bought it on some financing plan it was so expensive when it first came out.  Of course Atari took off and poor little Intellivision was left in the dust.

Here’s some random kitchen stuff.  It was easy to lose track of time in there with so many fun things to look at!  The best part is it will be even more fun to make sure to pop back in every time I’m downtowm and see all the new treasures.  Definitely taking my camera next time.

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Posted in neat spaces, other crafts, repurposing

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Friday Find – Creative Inspiration

Posted on July 23, 2010 by SewTara| 1 Comment

At first I was just going to find a bunch of fun images and post those but things changed. I googled, ‘creative inspiration’ and found some neat stuff. Strangely it took a while before I found THE Creative Inspiration. It’s sort of like We Heart It like images only, in my opinion, less overwhelming. Good for a quick visit and perhaps some inspiration. Here are a few of my favs, click images for original posts on Creative Inspiration and sources.

It’s Friday, go waste some time on their site!

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Posted in fun finds, neat spaces

Organizing and a change of pace.

Posted on April 25, 2010 by SewTara| Leave a comment

I had this idea ages ago for putting pictues on the bins for the toys in our house, but Wesley pulled off most of the pictures and mangled them.  He was younger then.  So today I took some pictures of the craft supplies in our kitchen, that are neatly stored in our handy IKEA shelving thingie (thanks bff!) and printed them out in wallet size.  Then I laminated them with some little quick and easy card sized laminating sleeves from the dollar store.  I switch them to the bins with little velcro dots, also from the dollar store.  Then if toys change or we switch things up a bit it’s easy to fix.

I also re-labelled the toy bin in the living room and then we had a HUGE toy cleanup.  Things were a bit of a mess after the weekend.  All the toys were tidied in about 15 minutes, which with a 3 year old and 1 year old is pretty good!

I managed to finish 5 taggie blankies today.  They were already in various states of completion so it wasn’t too hard.  I’ve been going a bit bug eyed creating the same things over and over in preparation for the craft show this weekend so I opted for a change of pace.  I pieced together a rag quilt I’ve been wanting to try.  I’ve never made one so here’s hoping all goes well!

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Posted in neat spaces

If I had a little girl I think her room would be cupcake themed!

Posted on April 21, 2010 by SewTara| 1 Comment

Imagine!

Sources

Cupcake Pillow – pattern free with sign up

Quilting Arts
Cupcake messenger type bag from XcessRize Designs
Amigurumi Cupcake Crochet Pattern from AmyGaines
Cupcake pillow case dress from mysweetangelboutique
Scrabble tile pendant by missturtledesigns
Cupcake bedding (and other decor) from Vision Bedding
Cupcake socks from We Heart It

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Posted in kid fun, neat spaces, other crafts

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More Steggies and how I work.

Posted on March 21, 2010 by SewTara| Leave a comment

So I decided, in the spirit of dinosaurs to make Nate a Steggie from One Yard Wonders.  So I set to it tonight.  I learned I’m not too good at following a pattern, and when I didn’t know what the instructions meant about making a dart I probably should have Googled it after all.  So our poor little Steggie needs some tweaking tomorrow but he’s still going to be a cutie.

There’s been a lot of talk on my online course about how people work, and manage their time.  With 2 little ones at home, and a job it’s been challenging for me to maintain a blog and start an Etsy store.  Now I’ve also added a craft show in May so the pressure’s on.  When I started my blog to help me be creative I hadn’t returned to work yet so it was a bit easier with the extra free time.  However, it did set a sort of standard for crafting and now I try really hard to keep up the pace with posting and creating.   That said, here’s my new system.  I escape downstairs, either while the kids are sleeping, hubby watches them or after they go to bed and I load something to watch up on my desktop computer, put on my headphones (which allow me to hear over the noise of the sewing machine) and get to work!  Yesterday my husband watched the kids a whole bunch, hence my productiveness, and the headphones help block out the sound of the kids which would either distract me or annoy me.  Ignore the mess, and the glare from the OttLight but here’s what it looked like when I left just now.  (That’s deflated Steggie lying next to the book)

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Posted in kid fun, neat spaces, sewing

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