kitchen love

Doing dishes never looked this good! Haha, not really. Doing dishes never looks good. But you can try to bring some joy to it by making cute dish towels.

I like to embroider stuff, as you probably know. And I think it's important to add a little homemade flourish to your life. Consequently, most of the gifts I give tend to be on the homemade side of things and tend towards wonky as most of the things I make end up slightly askew. I like to call it character. Or maybe style. Yes! That's it! Wonky is the style I intend every time I set out to make something... :)

Anyhow, I digress. Have I mentioned my lovely boyfriend before? And especially how lovely it is that he appreciates my penchant for things homemade? I made these as part of his Christmas gift and just got around to taking pictures yesterday.

The first one came out of my head. Or at least, I think it did. But chances are I saw it somewhere, cataloged it in the deepest region of my brain for future reference, forgot I saw it, and then produced it thinking it was solely mine. I imagine I should be attributing the idea to someone, somewhere, but who knows?

The second one is the kitchen gnome. Kitchen gnomes make doing dishes magical, didn't you know? He comes from Andrea Zuill's blog BadBirds. Every month she posts a free embroidery pattern and they are dripping with awesome! Check out her blog here and download the gnome here.


And for the record (and just for fun!)... Me: cookies, wasabi, coke and eggs. Dave: milk, sushi, rum and ham. :)

sweet dreams

I made these pillow slips for my lovely boyfriend for Christmas. Who doesn't want a dinosaur sending out waves of love as you drift off to sleep? I know I do! Aforementioned boyfriend also took these shots, proving he's no slouch with a camera either. xo.

on the upswing

This past week has been a rollercoaster of feeling well, not-so-well, horribly ill and everything in between. But all was not lost. I managed to drink a lot of this.


And finally finish this.


And even learn how to do this! (Yay french knots!).

cooper's wedding {the eve of}

I. AM. SO. EXCITED! Cooper's getting married tomorrow! YAY YAY YAY YAY!

It has been an absolute privilege to watch everything fall into place over the past few months. I almost said "magically fall into place" but that would be doing a great disservice to Cooper, who's meticulous attention to detail and organizational skills are beyond compare. And that's an understatement.

As a wedding guest book Sarah is having all the guests sign a square of fabric with fabric markers. Then, after the wedding, her Mom is going to sew all the squares together into a wedding quilt. I know - an immensely touching, beautiful idea.

So you know I was thrilled (and honoured) when she asked me to design the center square for her quilt. OMG... I DO! :)

My idea was to create something with a homemade arts & crafts sort of feel... cute but not overly so, simple but not stick man simple. And of course, it had to be wool because it's soft and awesome.

I'm over the moon with how her center square turned out. I hope you can see all the love I poured into it. I love you Sarah and Robert! As I said before and will say again, it will be an honour to witness the linking of two perfectly matched souls. I'm wishing you lots of love, laughter, peace and happiness tomorrow and forever. Enjoy your special day! xo.

A Bird On A Towel

I can't seem to get enough of the bird theme lately. Here are two tea towels I stitched for my sister. How can drying dishes not be fun with towels like these?! Also, the applique inspiration came from my very dear friend who is proving to be no slouch at applique herself. xo.

Robo-Awesome

I dropped into our local yarn store a few days ago and couldn't resist picking up a package of iron-on embroidery transfers from Sublime Stitching. This company is great. Their motto is "This ain't your gramma's embroidery!" and how true! They have the cutest patterns for sexy librarians, forest friends, monsters and zombies, tattoo alphabets and best of all... ROBOTS! I bet you can guess which one I picked up.

For some reason I felt that the robots were pleading to be stitched onto dish towels. So here is dishtowel number one. This little guy can be found chillin' on my oven. Every time I see him, he makes me grin. Robots are awesome.