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Today, Daniel served Sam Elliott a cappuccino. TWO cappuccinos, since the first one was so delicious.

I am pretty sure this means he wins at life.

Here’s a quick roundup of the craft projects I’ve tackled recently:

Harry Potter themed decorations for my birthday (in June)

I think my favorite of the HP crafts was my “Weasley is our king” banner. It came out EXACTLY how I envisioned it and fit perfectly over our fake fireplace. I started out with some paper grocery bags and colored pencils and it went beautifully. I’m also very proud of my D.A. shield, as it took some trial and error to get it to look like the Warner Bros version.

Baby Dress

This was a “I bet I can whip up a cute little baby dress in no time” project that turned into a month-long fight with my sewing machine. It turned out that a dull needle was the culprit, so once I got that sorted everything went pretty smoothly. I took about 5 years of sewing in 4-H so I am all right at reading patterns, but I soon realized that I overestimated my ability and no longer had my mom standing next to me to help me decipher the pattern instructions.

ANYWAY. I hadn’t sewn anything with a pattern in probably almost a decade so I’m glad it came out really cute and I was happy I set a goal and accomplished it.

Silly Floral Napkins

I saw pictures of cloth napkins like these on someone’s blog somewhere and thought it was a lovely idea. Turns out that it’s actually pretty hard to sew the ric-rac in between the two right-sides of the fabric and get it reasonably even. I’m glad I only did two of these! I bring them to work in my lunchbox every day.

Bunny Cloth Napkins

I embroidered some Martha Stewart bunnies onto some thrifted cloth napkins as a housewarming present for some friends. Cameron and Brianna are adorable and they have a bunny named Dante and a new baby bunny named Delilah, so I felt it was fitting.

Owl plushie

Daniel’s former co-worker and his wife are having a baby, and the nursery is a woodland/owl theme, so I sewed this little owl from a Doodle Stitching pattern. I really like how it came out.

Purple Pouch

Daniel asked me if I could make him a zippy pouch so he could have something smallish to put his camera and moleskine notebook in. He is a big fan of purple these days, so we picked this combo out at the fabric store and he seems to be very happy with it.

Doggie Plushie

A co-worker offered to trade me a Harry Potter Sorting Hat if I made her baby boy a plushie. I said SIGN ME UP and here is the plushie! He’s a cute little doggie with embroidered paws and face, and a waggable tail.

Purple Gingham Napkins

I don’t have a photo of these yet, since I gave them away before I remembered to take a picture (that happens to me more often than I’d like) but since Tim is good about taking photos I might nab one off his Flickr stream. Imagine some lovely purple gingham cloth napkins with two rows of topstitching in lavender.

(Edited to add: Photo has been nabbed!)

Purple Floral Napkins

I love making cloth napkins. They couldn’t be easier! They’re just squares, and they’re pretty simple to jazz up if they need some jazzing. For these ones, I sewed a stripe of ric-rac over one corner. This was MUCH easier than trying to edge all four sides of all four napkins with the ric-rac, and still gave it a bit of visual oomph.

And that’s not all…

I have a couple more baby bibs in the works, and I’m trying to decide what to do about the messed-up cloth baby shoes I finished yesterday. Do I rip it out? Ignore it and still give it away? Ignore it and keep it since I don’t mind but other people might? I woke up at 6-something this morning with a persistent vision regarding these shoes being messed up, and I had to get up and go check if my vision was right and it WAS. I was sad, but it also let me fall back asleep since I knew what was wrong wth them.

More photos as events warrant…