I've Been Busy...

Just not busy posting things on my blog, apparently.

But I have made things.  Crafty things, and I have proof.  Here's how I've been spending my idle hours.

Making pants for my daughter...

The elephant fabric is from Walmart.  These are flat-front pants, and I made up the pattern from another pair of her pants, which is so easy to do.  The pattern for the pocket and directions can be found at Made.

And more pants...

This is some kind of tweed loose weaved fabric that my mom gave me.  The fabric was so ugly, but I thought it would make a perfect pair of dressy pants that have a bit of vintage feel to them.  You know, the kind of pants that only little kids and little old men can pull off.  Again, patterned from another pair of his pants, with directions from Made.  These pants are lined with an old t-shirt of mine.

And Christmas ornaments...

I made a bunch of these elves from Martha Stewart.  It kept my hands busy for a few evenings while I watched episode after episode of Deep Space Nine on Netflix.  Ah memories...  Does anyone else think the first season is horrible?  I do. 

I think the orange scarf one is my favorite.  I've always been partial to orange.  I made a lot of little elves and I gave some away at an ornament party.

And I made a few paper birds as well (idea from here), but I didn't like them as much as the elves.  They're made from a really old book my husband had about whooping cranes.  I had a hard time finding pages that didn't have gloomy words like "death" "demise" and "extinction."  Not very cheerful.  Poor whooping cranes.

And I painted a mural on my kitchen/dining room wall a while ago, but I never got around to taking a picture, so here's a poorly lit photo.  I bought a pattern from jenloveskev on etsy (only 5 bucks, awesome deal), and used it for about 1/2 of the wall, but it wasn't big enough so I improvised the rest.  Now my dining room is a birch tree forest.

I was scared to paint this, but I'm glad I did.  My mantra while painting was "I can always paint it over" and I had extra grey paint to cover it up if I hated it.  But I love it.  It reminds me of the old forest wallpaper that I had when I was a little kid.  I used to have an imaginary family that lived in my wallpaper forest, just an imaginary mommy and sister my parents tell me.  Now my kids have a place to sit and imagine too.