Cross my heart

Summer is for weddings. Or at least that's the way it often seems around here. And this year there are two weddings at the end of the summer that I'm really looking forward to. One, for my younger brother. The other is for a friend who I've known since I was 8. We went through middle school and university together. (yup. different high schools.) We aren't best-ies or anything, but we've stayed in touch and I truly respect him as a person and am really excited that he's getting married!!

The other exciting thing about his wedding? It's going to be almost completely homemade. The bride's mom is making her dress. The bride's father is weaving material for the groom's shirt. The wedding is going to take place at the family cottage and everyone is going to pitch in for making food and decorations and everything. It makes my crafty heart sing.

So, I couldn't just go out and buy them a card. That would be against the point. A slap in the face. So, I made them a cross stitch card.

 I won't lie. I didn't come up with the idea on my own. I saw this only a few days ago, and just change the idea from embroidering shoes, to cross stitching paper.

It's so easy! What you'll need:
- Paper
- embroidery floss & needle
- ruler & pencil
- cross stitch chart.

So, I just googled "heart cross stitch" and in 0.0 seconds had images of what I was going to put on the front of the card. I randomly decided that I was going to make my grid 5mm x 5mm to make the math easy, and then figured out where the center of the card was and went from there.

If you look at the first picture you'll see that I made a grid of pencil dots that could get erased later. Then, you are off to the races! Cross Stitch and go!

 Some tips. 
- Make your holes in the paper before you are doing the actually cross stitching. Much easier that way.
- I thought that 5mm grid was a little big and would make it smaller next time if I did it again. But it was very easy on the math
- tough paper is probably better. (I've had this stuff sitting around since high school. Waste not, want not!)

I'm kinda looking forward to trying this again!

Lunch bag

I'm one of those people who takes my lunch to work everyday. I like leftovers. I love getting to pack fruit and fruit and vegetables and more fruit to eat throughout the day. For the past few years, I've been throwing my daily snacks into this reusable lulu.lemon bag I got when I bought a pair of pants a few years ago. It was the perfect size. Not too big. Not too small. So it was horribly depressing when it started to die. And sure. I could have just bought another bag... but did I mention that this bag was the *perfect* size?

So, while I don't sew, I really wanted pretty much the exact same bag. So sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. Right? So, using the old one as to get the basic pattern, I made a new one. 

One thing's for sure: with this bright pink and orange material (that was quite inexpensive) I don't think any of the guys at work will be stealing my lunch.