Quilting Bee Winner

and the winner is ...

Susan M (referred to as "Mother of Rebekah S." in the last post)!  I believe the squares in the top left and bottom left are her creations.  Lovely additions to the quilt, Susan!  Thanks for playing along!

So exciting!

Quilting Bee Quilt

Put on your remembering caps.  Pull out a little blog post from June (eek - three months ago!) and recall that I hosted a quilting bee that involved 12" quilt squares in blue and a reveal date of early August.

Well, it's ready - finally!

I trust that you'll forgive me that it took a whole extra month.  You are, after all, very sweet and kind.  And let's face it.  You probably knew that there was no way I'd get it finished so quickly.  So, I appreciate your realistic view of quilting, and will strive to be better accomplished in realism in the future.

Here are some pictures of the little beauty.  It measures about 36" square - a nice little quilt to drape over a chair, to tuck your feet under on the couch, or to brighten up a room as a wall hanging!

I ended up collecting five squares that were predominately blue, and four that I like to call Blue Plus.  It made it really fun to place the squares together - I get a more traditional feel from the squares in the first picture, and I love the fun and funky attitude from the squares of the Blue Plus side.

I quilted it in an all-over meandering pattern.  I used a light blue-and-white stripe for the binding: very good choice, in my opinion.

I love it!

The best part of this is that the quilt goes to one of the lucky contributers!  I will post the winner SOON ... like, before 5 PM tomorrow!  Who will it be - Sarah E, Rebekah S, Mother of Rebekah S, Becky W, Daughter of Becky W, or Daughter of Paige M?  Stay tuned!

Etsy giveaway winner

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement, for checking out the rhymeswithsmile etsy store, and for being a part of something really fun!  I'm excited to announce the WINNER of the iPhone sleeve and iTunes gift card is Stephanie over at Thrifty Hippo!

Keep the store in mind if you're looking for something that looks good and saves the world, too!  Haha ... ok, maybe that's enough shameless promoting for right now.  But seriously ... keep spreading the word!

Can you think of anything you'd like to see in the shop?

Pickled Jalapenos

Have you had a chance yet to enter my rhymeswithsmile etsy giveaway?  No?  Well, you've got one more day ... so jump on that bandwagon and win yourself an iThing and a gift card!

It's that time of year when we have more peppers than we know what to do with.  I've decided to try my hand at pickling ... yes, pickled peppers really DO exist, and not just in the peck that Peter Piper picks.  I'm going to use this lovely recipe from my friend SB - well, really it's her sister Cat that guestposted about them.  I can't resist.  I've known this family for decades (yes, decades ... plural) and they all have fabulous taste in food.  So, yes.  Pickled Peppers for us this week, courtesy of Market 2 Meal and Cat.

Did you notice the Chinese translation of jalapeno?  Love it.

announcement and giveaway

You've been faithfully and patiently waiting for me to make my big announcement.  Well, here it is: the Rhymes With Smile Etsy shop is now open for business!  I'm sticking with "Rhymes With Smile" because saying it makes me smile (and I hope it makes potential customers do the same!).  You can access the shop by clicking on the above link or by going to http://www.etsy.com/shop/rhymeswithsmile.

With hundreds of thousands of items for sale on Etsy, I bet you're wondering how the RWS shop is any different from the next one.  Some things are the same - like, my items are handmade (with love!) and the majority are for house and baby.  But what makes Rhymes With Smile different is the twist - most of my items are upcycled.  The standard definition of upcycling involves taking items bound for the landfill and repurposing them to keep them in use.  Think recycling + creativity + oomph = upcycling.  What it means in my shop is that most of the items contain fabrics that used to be sheets, pillowcases, clothes - including skirts, jeans, shirts, headbands, ties, dresses, and sweaters - blankets, curtains, and decorative items.  When they no longer served their original purpose, they were UPCYCLED into the items I now have for sale.

Take this iPod/iPhone cover, for example:

In its former life, it lived happily as a gray wool sweater and a green flowered skirt (the lining you can barely see).  But then, the sweater got a snag and a shrink in the dryer, and the green flowered skirt ended up out of season and unloved in a thrift store.  I came to the rescue, did a little snipping and sewing, attached some velcro, and shazam - an upcycled iPhone cover!

Well, thanks for sharing in my excitement - many of you provided the encouragement that helped me make it this far.  But the fun isn't over!  As a thanks to all of you, I'm hosting a giveaway of the little wool sweater that could - also known as the Upcycled iPod/iPhone Cover pictured above - along with a $10 iTunes gift card!  You have up to three ways to enter:

(1) Follow this blog via Google Friend Connect and leave me a comment saying so (if you're already a follower, leave a comment letting me know that);

(2) Browse through the shop and leave a comment saying which item you like;

(3) Share the news about the Rhymes With Smile Etsy shop on your blog, and leave a comment with the link.

The giveaway ends on Monday, August 29th at 5 PM - and the winner (hopefully that's YOU!) will be announced Tuesday morning.

BIG news ... coming on Monday!

The big news is coming.  On Monday.  Stay tuned!

The Clock Story

So, here's the Clock Story.  

I got this clock from my neighbor.  It was in her yard sale pile, and she is a nice woman, so she just gave it to me.  And, no, it wasn't 1:16 when I took this picture.  The clock had stopped.

I disassembled it (I told her that's what I was going to do, in case you're wondering).  I decided to paint the frame with some leftover paint from another project:

And I found an old papersource calendar that my college roomate had given me for my birthday, so I cut up one of the pages and fit it onto the clock face.  Then I found the wrench in the tool box, and made sure that it showed up in the picture so that you'd think I was really hardcore about my re-doing of household items:

Finally, I sanded off some of the paint from the clock frame and reassembled it, hung it on the wall, and tried to remember how to tell time when there aren't big numbers to help:

That, my friends, is the Clock Story.