March Goals

I've been in a funk the last week or so. I don't know what it is but I have zero motivation to do anything. All I think of is everything I want/need to do which then stresses me out...and leads to more funk (and not the fun Earth, Wind and Fire kind of funk. No, this is more like that gross toe jam kind of funk.) So last night I sat down and made a list, are you surprised? I'm sure you recall a few mentions I've made about my affinity for lists. I think this is something I may do monthly now since I was already thinking of things I need/want to do in April!

March Goals
Paint Lindsay's Piggy Bank

Dye Curtains
Clean out 3 dresser drawers

Clean out/organize the closet

Clean under craft table
Try 2 new recipes

Finish next Book Club book
Fix Car!!!

Workout 4 hours a week

Get a plant for my apartment

Save $100 for Florida

So that's them. I can't decide if it's a lot or not but whatevs. I am going to try my best to complete them all in the 3 1/2 weeks left this month.

Handwriting Game

The lovely Louana over on Eleventh Monkey did this Handwriting Game and I thought it would be fun to do too!

All you have to do is take out a pen and paper, answer the following questions and post it to your blog. Here are the questions:

1. What’s your name / blogger name? Jamie Winifred Toohey - I used to be embarassed by middle name but now I love it. I'm named after my great Aunt Winnie. My first name is after my Uncle Jimmy (James). My last name used to be Towey until my family came from Ireland to Ellis Island and it was changed. When I was younger I used to write my name as Jme 2e a lot!

2. What’s your blogs URL? you already know this =)

3. Write, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

4. Favorite quote? "The sleep of reason produces monsters". This is a quote by the artist Francisco Goya but it's actually "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos". This is part of a series of etchings called Los Caprichos. I've loved this quote for quite a while and it can be interpreted many ways. To me it means if you don't use your head or occupy your brain, bad things will happen. This is entirely true for me. I used to be such a hopeless romantic and not that there is anything wrong with that but I would follow my heart even when my brain was telling me I was being stupid. I ended up getting hurt and allowing a lot of shit to happen to me that I should have known to get out of. Also, I know that if I don't occupy myself as far as crafting, reading or just trying to better myself in any way I end up depressed and closed off.

5. Your favorite song? 'Change' by Blind Melon. This song kind of goes along with some of the things in the above quote. My favorite line is "When life is hard, you have to change." This is so incredibly true, if things aren't going the way you want or you are miserable you need to do something to change your life. I try to live by this as much as possible.

6. Your favorite band / singers? Tool, Guns n Roses, Pantera, Maiden, SVR (stevie ray vaughn) and seriously...this list could get out of control. Music is such an integral part of my life that I have soo many favorites, especially depending on the mood I'm in. I've been going through a bit of blues phase right now and thank goodness for Pandora!!

7. Anything else you want to say? Seriously, do you see how my handwriting from the title to this sentence went straight down the crapper?! I have terrible handwriting normally. It's a combination of print and cursive and I have a tendancy to leave out letters. I think faster than I write so the entire time I am rushing! I was just told by a coworker a week or so ago that I have the handwriting of a 12 year old boy!

8. Tag 3 bloggers to participate. I am tagging three awesome ladies!
Courtney - you will...won't you?
Amy - The Mad Crafter
Erin - My Beautiful Disaster


Play a long if you want, leave a link here so I can see your handwriting too. Some girls have such nice curly, cursivey handwriting that I love!

Crochet Candle Holder Cozies

That was a lot of C's!
Anyway...Tanya over on Shoot from the Hips made adorable Mason Jar Cozies and even provided directions on the different stitches she used! I've been looking for more candle holders and I had two glasses that I was using. I decided that crocheting them some little cozies would add just what was missing!

I used the Spider Stitch and the Twists DC stitch, I think I like the Twists the best. I used a light yellow and a darker yellow yarn for accents. The one with the two stripes totally remind me of the tube socks my Dad wore when I was little!
They look sooo pretty at night with the lights off!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a fabulous Thirsty Thursday!

Zombie Magnets

Another thing I made for Jeremy's birthday were these cute little zombie magnets. I had seen the pattern a few times on Craftster and decided to make him some. The pattern is from NeedleNoodles. I used that plastic weave stuff and then sewed a piece of felt on the backs and stuck little magnets I found at Joanns between the back of the plastic and the felt.



That pattern is only for the guy so I just changed the hair to make a girl one too. The magnets are surprisingly strong which made me happy because that means Jeremy can actually use the magnets instead of just have them on the fridge for decoration.

Have a fabulous Wednesday!

Love Muffins!

Jeremy's birthday was this past Sunday and one thing I made for him were Love Muffins! He's on a bit of a health kick so I thought muffins for breakfast for a week were a lot better than a breakfast sandwich from Wawa every day!
I originally got the idea when Kimberly from chez sucre chez shared a video on how to make heart shaped cupcakes. He doesn't like sweets (which drives me nuts!) so I thought muffins might work and I mean...love muffins...it just sounded to perfect to not at least try!
Next I needed to decide on what kind of muffins. I searched around on allrecipes.com and found these Cranberry Pecan Muffins. I followed the recipe just as described except I used double the amount of dried cranberries and first soaked them in apple sauce. I have to say they are delish!! The heart shape didn't work as well as I had hoped on all of the muffins but a lot of them looked good. I made sure to put those ones on top. I found these adorable boxes at Joann's. They are so perfect and make the muffins look so professional!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh or frozen cranberries

1/2 cup chopped pecans

TOPPING:

2 tablespoons sugar

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Here are all the ingredients and you can see my yarn stash in the background and my apron on my sewing dummy....not on me, oops! Oh and also...some gratuitous advertising for my Dad's band 2 Big 2 Fail is back there =)

I was so pleasantly surprised by the foil lid on the sour cream. It's an image of Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur, California. Isn't that great?! I usually buy generic sour cream but decided to go classy with Daisy for these muffins. Because of this, I will totally be buying this brand all the time now!

Directions:

First I dumped all the cranberrys in a bowl with enough applesauce to coat them all.

Then, in a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla. Fold in sour cream. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and salt; stir into creamed mixture just until moistened. Fold in cranberries (apple sauce and all) and pecans. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Combine topping ingredients; sprinkle over batter. Bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

If you watched the video, then you already know but if not, to get the heart shape you fill the liner 1/3 of the way, place a marble between the muffin liner and the tin and then fill another 1/3.

Like so...

After baking here is what they looked like. Not all of them looked like hearts but it didn't bother me too much. There were enough that did and it's the thought that counts!

I'm sure these would look better if they were cupcakes and I could have used the icing to accentuate the heart shape but whatev...these were cute and tasty!

On a side note, do you blogspot-ers like the new way pictures are put into your blog? Instead of the path it's the actual picture. I thought I liked it at first but after doing this post with so many pictures, it was a real pain in the foot! Dragging the pictures is kind of difficult, especially since I like to write and then post the pictures so I'm all messed up!

Have a wondeful day!

Instax #7

For my 7th picture in my 52 Instax in 52 Weeks project I decided to show you my obsession with lists!

You can't read the lists in the picture (which I'm happy about - specifically because two of them show my budget for last and this month). You can see my little notebook that I keep in my purse and make daily to do lists, lists of things I want to make, need to buy, etc. It's opened to the list of Jeremy's birthday presents and his birthday breakfast I plan to make. You can also see here a big notebook. I use that for my weekly to do lists, craft to do lists, etc. That stays at home on my dresser. There's also my budgets somewhere in there and my list of meals for the week. I think my list of Granny Squares is in there too.

I'm a lunatic about lists! If I don't write things down, I have a really hard time thinking about anything else. I learned this when I was younger. I have a ton of journals (16 to be exact) from the age of 17-23ish I would write almost every day. I learned that it really helped my stress and depression. I was able to reflect on things and really figure out who I am and why I think and act the way I do. Over time I stopped writing. It was about the time that I started crafting again. Crafting has become completely therapeutic for me and does the same thing writing once did. It helps me calm my brain, lowers my stress and just lets me focus and think things out. However, I still need LISTS!! If I don't write things down, I get very overwhelmed and worry that I will forget something. So I write it down. Plus, there's nothing quite like the feeling you get after you check something off your to do list!

Do you make lists?!

Evil by Request

My friend, Kara at work requested that I make her an "evil animal". It's not often that I get to make gorey, evil things. Pretty much only for myself and Jeremy. It was nice to be able to make something totally creepy for someone new!
I racked my brain for a while trying to figure out what to make. I had saved this pattern of a severed finger that I found ages ago on Ravelry. So I thought, "Ooo a little animal eating a finger!" I searched some more on Ravelry and came across this Robbie the Rabbit pattern. I am not a gamer in the slightest so I have no idea what Silent Hill is or what this rabbit has to do with a video game...however, he was exactly what I was looking for! This pattern is an extension pack to the Creepy Cute Crochet book. I ran right to the library and picked it up. I decided to alter the bunny pattern a bit. Obviously he's a different color, I also added feet, a tail and made his face not so happy but more angry looking.
I also ended up changing the entire finger pattern because it turned out WAY too big for this lil' bunny.
I am sooo in love with the face made from clay! It was a lot easier to work with than I had anticipated and it just looks so great! I definitely think in the future that I will be making faces more with polymer clay.
So without further adieu...here is Bubba Bunny.

Bubba lives in the mountains of Pennsyvania. (queue that creepy banjo music)

As you can see, his favorite treat is not a carrot. He prefers to gnaw on the fingers and toes of hikers who get stranded and sometimes "disappear" from the Appalachian trail.

I decided on this story while watching "Into the Wild" last night. Muahahaa!
I had a ridiculous amount of fun making Bubba. There were just so many elements used to put him together besides just crocheting. Clay, felt, paint...so awesome!