Thing-a-day.com

and I have nothing.

You see, the news of the school shooting at NIU today has just floored me. I am so sad and hurting for those who lost their lives.

NIU is my alma mater. It is where I met my husband and I am just so shocked that it happened there - so close to home. I’d be sad had it happened anywhere, but this just feels more personal.

So I can’t sit and make something. I am just so sad about this.

and everyone was sleeping, but the mom, who was still trying to work on the nice little gifts she was going to leave out for the family to find in the morning!

So I made these magnets tonight. I have been wanting to make them for some time and just never could find an excuse. So today I printed out pictures of things my kids LOVE (yes, that would mostly be Hannah Montana and High School Musical!) and created these for them:

And then I decorated some little mailboxes (that I got a few weeks ago from the dollar spot at Target) with stickers and the new magnets:

And now the kids and I (and their dad) can leave each other nice little notes or drawings or treats or just whatever we want. I LOVE this idea and have been waiting to be able to pull these mailboxes out and use them with the kids.

More knitting on the cardigan today, but no pictures to show. Camera needs to be charged up. Today was a very sleep day around here. All three kids took naps (which almost never happens) and it felt like we were all in this fog. But I did knit some and enjoyed it. But a kind of slow, boring day frankly was had around here!

Today was a GREAT day!
First more work on the cardigan I am loving to knit:

And then tonight at dinner, I decided, on a whim, to make homemade spaghetti sauce. I have tried it before, but it’s never tasted great (it’s never been bad thankfully), but it’s always been boring or not thick enough, or not seasoned enough, or whatever. But tonight, tonight, EVERYONE in my family LOVED it. I wish I would have taken a picture of it simmering on the stove, but I didn’t think about it until after my husband asked if I did to count it for thing-a-day and by then, we had eaten most of it! Oh well. You’ll just have to trust me on this one

So today, for day 10, I worked on the right front of my cardigan. I feel like I’m flying right now, although it doesn’t look like a lot, some of these stitches just take time.

The side of it is a bit strange as well because although it’s a common rib, I am supposed to be knitting/purling through the back. And I keep forgetting and having to rip back! I think though, I’ve ripped back enough that I’ve got it down finally. :::knock on wood:::

So with my theme of love, well I am loving knitting this cardigan I am working on. I will knit it a lot over this weekend, and even though I am not finishing it, I am going to count it because I am putting in more than 30 minutes each day on it. I can not wait to finish it and wear it!

So today, I completely finished the back up. That’s a nice big piece to get out of the way so it felt good to be finished with it! =)

So begins another week.
I admit I’m feeling at a loss about what to do. Last week, I planned everything out so well, and this week, well, I’m going to wing it!
Given that Valentine’s day will fall in this week period, my theme will be love. But I will be stretching it I completely admit.

My thing for today is that I read a book. I LOVE reading. I read Lean, Mean, Thirteen by Janet Evanovich. I LOVE this series and just decided to read the entire book.

Here is my informal review of it:
tly what I was looking for!) I have read all the Stephanie Plum books thus far. I did like this book, but it seemed a it like a let down compared to the others. And I have to admit - part of me is ready to see her settle down with one guy or the other. OR ditch them both and bring in a new guy (isn’t that terrible of me to say LOL). And it kind of feels like that point is coming with the series. My fear is though, because the series is so popular, it will get dragged out far too long and make me not like them anymore. But hopefully that won’t happen. And I will enjoy the next book very much.

And sorry, no pictures to go with it today!

Well today I made yet another bookmark. This one out of ribbon (similar to the one I made the other day) Another simple, easy project.
This one is thinner but it’s more sturdy. And both ribbons (the blue one and the white with splotches) were almost gone so this seems to be the perfect project to use with leftover ribbon from other projects!

Anyway, this is really simple and if you can sew a straight line you can do this! I just sew the two ribbons together. Then fold the bottom to create the point. And then fold down the top and tack both ends down!

This one will be slipped into a letter I’m going to send someone and hopefully she will like it as much as I do! LOL

Today I tried something new …

I made a pillow. I’ve never made a pillow like this before. I made each side a different fabric. Now, knowing my theme is for books, this might not make much sense at first (and I suppose this is a stretch) but here is the pillow doing it’s “job”

So, it’s a book holder for me. This will certainly make knitting and reading much easier. I admit I saw earlier (with the pattern for sale). The one I saw is much nicer than mine, but truth be told, I didn’t actually want to spend 12 dollars on the pattern.
This one works well enough - although if when I make another one, I need to use wider ribbon. I need to have the ribbon lower down on the side of the pillow. I need to make the pillow wider. And I probably won’t do ribbon on both sides of the pillow because, well, it does look funny if it’s displayed that way. The fabric I used does in fact match my couch, so I could theoretically leave this one on it for fun, but the ribbon sort of turns me off.
Anyway, the one I saw also had pockets on it for pens or whatever and that seems pretty neat too. I don’t want to completely copy the one I saw and am not sure that I really need a pocket on my pillow, but I will at least keep that in mind!

Today I made another accordion book. I wasn’t as happy with this one as the last one, but it will work and it did turn out okay in the end.

My girls made projects today as well, but I’m not sure where they left them =)

Continuing on with the book theme ….

My oldest dd made another book today (and really they are so cute. I’ve tried to take pictures of the pages, but they don’t turn out well and I REALLY wish that I had a scanner to scan them in that way). My other daughter made a bookmark. And I also made a bookmark - this one out of fabric =)

I really like my bookmark though. I think it turned out very cute. Although, I was also thinking that I might add a little charm to the end of it to give it some weight to hang down, but I’m not sure because I really like it now and sometimes too much can be, well, too much!

Today was I made a really fun thing: an accordion book. Now, I have never made one of these before and didn’t know how much fun I would have with it. We took a trip to the zoo recently and so I made it from those pictures. I can see how these could become quite addicting! If I ever made a scrapbook from this time, I think the accordion book would fit int here very nicely and give me a way to showcase lots of pictures without doing 10 scrapbook pages.
I took a bunch of pictures, which I did upload to the flickr group, but I’ll just post the mosiac of them here:

My girls also both did their projects today as well. One made a bookmark and the other made a book. It’s so cute. They wake up and almost immediately begin to brainstorm about what they will make for thing-a-day today! They are having fun with it and that is really fun for me to watch =)

So, keeping with our theme of books, today we all made books! The girls both decorated their pages (and I have to say, they did a fabulous job but I’m biased LOL). I kept mine blank. I am not sure what I will do with it though … Maybe I will use it to do some drawings through out February

One: How come the “like it” button isn’t showing up in the posts? I really miss it … I want to be able to mark posts LOL!

Two: When I insert a picture, it won’t create a line break after the picture - whatever you type next goes beside the picture and not underneath it (even though I manually typed in the br code and just tried to hit enter). How can I make it work?

Thanks so much in advance if you can help me out! =)

Our first theme is “books.”

Today we decided to make book marks for this theme.

Here is all three of ours (my 8 year old’s, 5 year old’s and mine):

And a close-up of mine:

It says “A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. Chines Proverb”

Hey everyone! I’m excited to be joining this year. I wasn’t around last year, but it’s nice to be able to participate now!

In addition to allowing my own creative juices to flow, I am also going to be doing this with my two daughters (8 and 5) and they can’t wait to make lots of great things either.

Can’t wait for February to start and I better get going on creating a plan to see me through the month!