Thank You For Coming....And A Winner!

Happy Monday and a big THANK YOU to all who dropped in for a visit to my Holiday Open House. I think we've all had that anxious feeling of "what if I throw a party and nobody comes" so I was very honored and excited that so many of you came to visit. There were 23 wonderful projects linked up and I'm not going to choose a favorite because they were all wonderful. Combine that with the 12 comments that were left and that's 35 names that went into the drawing for the giveaway celebrating reaching 200 Followers. I went low tech for this since it was a combo of linked projects and comments and you got one entry per.

 

And the winner is............

Congrats Michele! Email me your address so I can get "Lady Jingle Elf's Stocking" on her way .

And please join me next month on August 20th for another Holiday Open House!

"Christmas" ( and More) Open House Link Party!

Welcome, one and all to the first ever linky party at The Answer Is Chocolate! So glad you're here. What better time to have a holiday themed link party than in the middle of Summer? It's never to early to get ready for the holidays, so I thought I'd do this once a month through September, then weekly! Please link up decor, cards, gifts you've made, recipes...anything that goes from Halloween through New Year's! I realize it's early yet so even if it's not for / from this year, link it up because a lot of us are new since last holiday season and who can't use a new inspiring idea?

One of the things I love about the blogging community is how supportive everyone is of each other, especially us newbies. So please please please visit  at least two other links won't you? And leave them some bloggy comment love?

Christmas Open House Link Party Rules:

• Link to your specific post, not your main blog
• Describe your linked item  and don't just list your blog name
• Please grab my button and place in your post on on your sidebar

• No fruitcake ( just kidding...mostly) 

To celebrate my first link party and reaching the 200 ( now 219!) follower mark, I'm giving away a little something to get us in the spirit:

Lady Jingle Elf's Stocking

And what's a stocking without stuffers? So it will come with some goodies that may or may not include chocolate ! To qualify for the giveaway:

• Link up something to this party
• Leave a comment 
• Be or become a follower 

Both the giveaway and party will close at midnight Sunday July 18.

Chain Chain Chain.....Chain of Flowers

Sorry Aretha. Ooops. Miss Franklin.  After I made my first "bib" necklace  and used some chain I'd bought one day just because it was there, I had more chain leftover. OK I had a whole 'nother package of it because I have "Noah's Ark shopping disease" and buy everything in at least twos. Anyway, I decided to try another necklace, not quite as "bibby" but more with a medallion kind of look. I had more organza in my stash and more old tee shirts on hand, so I cut a couple into strips and made rolled rosettes....

I still wanted these to be lighter and softer than a traditional felt backing would allow so I thought Hmmmm...why can't I use tee shirt fabric as my base? So I did. Used fusible webbing stuff to glue two pieces together for the base:

Made layered flowers from organza and then put them and the tee shirt rosettes together on the base in a pattern I liked, hot glued them down then trimmed around to get the shape. I find this easier than cutting out a shaped base and then putting the flowers on but that's me. Sewed my chain on, and didn't even use a jump ring to add the clasp, just opened up one link of the chain and :

Linking Up At:

 

Christmas Is Coming and Tuesday & Wednesday Hops!

Here's part of what I'm giving away for my "Christmas Open House" link party on Friday July 16:

 Lady Jingle Elf's Stocking

 Looking forward to seeing  great Holiday goodies! Halloween is OK too! 

Welcome to those stopping in from :

Mmmmmmm Milanos!

Check out this new flavor of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies! There's a contest that ends July 25 where you can enter to win a BUSHEL of these! A. Bushel.

Grand Prize is a “bushel” (case) of irresistibly delectable new Strawberry Milano® cookies!  You could be one of 1,000 winners!  This sweepstakes is open to Milano fans only, click the “Like” button on the Facebook Page before entering.  

 And, you can go here to get a coupon for a $.55 coupon immediately : Get a coupon for 55¢ off Strawberry Milano cookies here


Disclaimer: I am a member of One2One Network through whom I received this widget.

I Tutued!

I was very inspired by Samster Mommy's  Tutu 2010 drive, that I tried my hand at making one last night and I think it turned out OK. No, it's not exactly going to be used by any Bolshoi ballerinas but that wasn't the point anyway :)  I more or less followed the instructions that the Greenbean's Crafterole used, which she modified from Samster Mommy's tutu-orial.  I used a roll of tulle cut in 24 inch lengths ( so when they're doubled over they're 12 inches in length) and tied them to a length of satin ribbon. It was super easy and for a first crack at making a tutu, I think it will work:

 

Excuse that piece that's flipped up in the corner...it really does lay down! 

Linking Up At: 

 

Tutu Special Tutu Not Spread The Word

It's been unusually hot in my neck of the woods and I have not felt like doing much making of anything these past several days. I like to try to keep my blog current by posting something daily and I was at one of those "I got nuthin" places today. Then, I checked my reader and saw something on one of the blogs I recently began following, Greenbean's Crafterole ( I just love that name)  that just needs to be blogged about and shared...even if I'm the last person in the blogiverse to have found out about this...I'm guessing I'm not.

Greenbean blogged here about "Tutu Drive 2010" which  is an effort to collect dress up clothes to donate to seriously ill children. She learned about it from another blogger, Samster Mommy who is coordinating this blogland drive.  It's part of the Princess Alexa Foundation  which Samster Mommy tells us was started by a mom to a little girl named Alexa who liked to go everywhere dressed as a princess, but who sadly, lost her battle with her illness in 2008.

We came through the one scare we had with our son when he was 2 and he has been blessed with good health ever since. I cannot imagine anything more devastating than knowing that your child was seriously or terminally ill. I also can't imagine that gathering things like dress up clothes would or even could be high on the list of things you have to do. So this just sounds like the most awesome thing that creative and crafty people could do. Here's what Samster Mommy is doing (and I've linked directly to the post w/ all of the details):

#1 Make/Buy a tutu sometime between now & July 20th & mail it to Samster Mommy. It's needs to be sealed in a ziploc baggie & the baggie should be labeled with the size. She'll gather all the goods together & send them off to Crys in one big box of tutu goodness! And if you can, email her a pic of your creation so she can feature it on the blog.

Please mail all donations to:

Samster Mommy
P.O. Box 84132
Gaithersburg, MD 20883

#2 Please help spread the word! (100 tutus is a lot & if she  doesn't get enough people involvedshe's going to be spending a lot of all-nighters with her tulle stash.) You'll see there are two buttons available on her sidebar for the Tutu Drive, if you have a blog all you have to do is copy the html code below the button & paste it as either a gadget (there's a gadget for html) in your sidebar or just paste it directly into your blog post in "edit html" mode.



I will attempt #1, but #2 was easy to do. So let's help Samster Mommy reach her goal OK?

She's even got a "10 Minute Tutu-torial" right here!