50mm Cannon lens

 I got a Cannon 50mm lens for my Rebel T3 for Christmas....mine is the 1.8 which is the lower end model. 

Apparently this is the way your eyes see things.  There is no zoom so you have to physically move around to get closer and farther away....

But it makes life really beautiful ;)

  Check out lego swimmer girl!  My son bought his sister two lego people 

(they come in sealed packages so you don't know what you're getting when you buy them)

Both of which turned out to be girls....

 I've been playing around quite a bit taking an obscene amount of photos of anything and everything I can find.  And using the manual setting to try to teach myself about f-stops and shutter speeds....

I'm not really into editing my photos on the computer.  I've seen alot of great photoshop tutorials and I know you can do some really cool things.  I just prefer not to mess with them too much....

Here's my favorite thing to photograph...

Blue Dog her favorite book for nap time....

And this one who constantly amazes me...

insisted I open my gift (from him) BEFORE he opened his own from Santa...

at only 5 years old???

Makes me a proud momma....I feel blessed...

Hand Stitched Leather Bag

My husband seriously blows me away.  He surprised me for Christmas with this leather purse that he MADE...

I think that's worth repeating--

He made it.  Cut and shaped a wood mold/form, molded the leather, cut the pieces, dyed it and hand stitched it all together....

See the cool little flying "V"---yeah he made that too...

 Carved a stamp out of some hard maple....

We both are interested in working with leather so we had been looking through a book I have that gives you step by step directions for projects. I saw a similar style bag and loved it.  So he decided to make me one....how lucky am I!?!?!??!

This is probably one of the most amazing gifts I have ever been given.  His talent amazes me...

and I love that it's something he made me.

If we could do more of this we would.

I have more ideas....

other things I'd like to make...

Stay tuned.

Homemade Caramel Candies

The end of last week I got to spend the day with some of the best girls in the world!  
My Mom and nieces and two sweet girls that are like sisters to me...we spent the whole day baking and making and it was such a great day.

We tried this for the first time...

Caramel Candy recipe from Martha Stewart
They are amazing!

These white and chocolate covered cherries from one of my mom's recipes...

These chocolate and toffee covered pretzels....
So much yummy stuff!!!

Letter Gift Tags

My big gift tag idea this year was to use my letter stencils and the fun new metallic sharpie markers in gold, silver and bronze....

My stencils are well used *translated* gunked up with acrylic paints...so I made the lines thicker to clean up all the jagged edges left after I traced them.

Doodlebugs real name starts with an "S" so of course he keeps insisting that all the "S" tags are his...how do you explain to a 5 year old at Christmas that other people's names start with "S" as well?!??!?!?

We have a few repeat letters so I added some other colors so I could tell whose gift was whose....

you could write the full name on the back as well...

Coke bottle Christmas Decorations

 My husband LOVES Coke in glass bottles...

 So any time he spies them we have to buy some...

 These are the Holiday bottles for this year

 I decided to wash them out and keep them in our window....

 Some clippings from our tree and some candy canes....

Simple and easy.

Kanzashi Flower clip

 I miss not blogging...several reasons I haven't lately....

One -- an issue with uploading photos 

(a message telling me I'm out of space)

The second --- everything I'm making is either a gift for me to give away or a gift for someone else to give away....

 This is my newest obsession...

Kanzashi Flowers

This hair clip is for Mighty

 Originally I intended to use my tie scraps (from the cell phone holders post) but this one is grosgrain ribbon...

Still experimenting to avoid making "granny flowers" as my husband calls them....

Kanzashi were originally a Japanese art form for Geisha's to wear in their hair.  They were made from hand dyed silk and rice glue...

You can Google the term and find all kinds of info....

I'm just totally addicted to making them right now and getting them to look the way I want....

You'll see more of these soon!