November Wrap Up

November Wrap Up

November was a busy, productive and celebratory month in our house. Yay!

We started out the month with a trip to Iowa City to cheer on the Iowa Hawkeyes football team for a win. It was a cold day, but my newly made upcycled T-shirt scarf helped keep me warm.

Upcycled T-shirt Scarf - Iowa Hawkeyes

I was off to Boston the following week for work. While I was in meetings most of the time while I was there, I did manage to squeeze in a visit to the bar that the tv show Cheers was based on.

cheers

The following week I celebrated my birthday. Number 38 baby! While my age doesn’t really bother me, I generally think – where does the time go? Still so much to do, good thing I feel young! My husband and I celebrated by going out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, Sam & Gabe’s and bringing along a bottle of wine I bought last year on a girls trip to Napa. It was a 2009 Syrah from Cakebread Cellars. Amazing wine and memories of a wonderful trip with my girls!

cakebread-wine

The weather was really nice for the first half of the month, so we were able to get outside to do yard work without having to wear too many layers. Carter really enjoyed “helping” rake the leaves.

raking leaf-pile

Project-wise, I worked on (and completed) quite a few things. Aside from the upcycled t-shirt scarf, I also did a few other upcycled sewing projects working with knit sweaters. I made a Sweater Christmas Tree and a Sweater Wine Bottle Holder. I’ve got one more sweater project in the works for next month.

Sweater tree - upcycle an old sweater into a cozy holiday decoration.Sweater Wine Bottle Holder - upcycle an old sweater for stylish gift giving.

This wine cork ball ornament I made has been popular on Pinterest this last month.

Wine Cork Ball - tutorial

Gearing up for the holidays and gift giving season, I also made two new bracelets complete with full tutorials. The arrow bracelet was a bit of an homage to the Hunger Games: Catching Fire movie coming out (I saw it on Thursday night – so awesome!). The braided bead bracelet was one I’ve been meaning to recreate since last year but I’ve just finally managed to get around to it. Both are great for layering with other bracelets.

DIY Arrow BraceletEasy Braided Bead Bracelets

We rounded out the month by having a really nice Thanksgiving with my husband’s family. I made my husband’s grandmother’s pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting, and as always they were a huge hit!

Every year at this time, once Thanksgiving hits, I feel really behind on the gifts I plan to make for Christmas. Luckily most of our gift exchanging is much lower key this year, so a few handmade gifts to do and otherwise shopping should be fairly minimal. We were gone all weekend, so we still have he house to decorate too. I tend to have more projects planned than I’ll likely have time for. My intention of getting all my photos organized before this time of year to make my photo gifts easier went by the wayside, so that will be a time suck over the next week! I’m still doing the same method which is working well, I just didn’t keep up on it as diligently during the year.

Here’s to a productive and hopefully fairly low stress December (is that possible?)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *