June Birthdays, plus an Oh-So-Crafty Boyfriend!

Two of my favorite ladies have birthdays in June - Angela is the 8th and Sabrina is the 21st. For me, birthdays inspire crafty giving - it's so fun to tailor a gift to a special friend.

This zipper pouch was a ton o' fun to make for Ang! The pattern is from Amy Karol's, Bend the Rules Sewing. It's a great book with a ton of simple projects and has neat tricks for each one. If you use the book, be sure to get connected with the flickr group - there you'll find invaluable discussions on errata and techniques. If you're a sewing beginner like me, a little 'oops' in the book can really throw you off, so the group helps give you a sanity check before spending too much time freaking out and cursing. ;-)

I made a 'practice' zipper pouch before going for it with the one planned for Ang. I'm glad I did, but maybe should have made 2 practice ones (lol!) because I still had trouble with the lining the second time around - slip-stitched it too close to the zipper, so the zipper was terribly hard to open/close. So, had to gift it on her birthday, then had to 'borrow' it back and adjust it next time she was over for craft night. (Ha.) It still ended up a little closer than desired, but I figured out that it's because of how closely the outer fabric pieces were sewn onto the zipper - something to make note of for the next round of zip pouches. On another note - I just love the fabric! It's from Amy Butler's "Belle Collection" line. The earthy tones mixed with bright eye-popping colors are great.

Sabrina turned 30 this year - WOOHOO!!! Pretty crazy. We were out of town when her actual birthday transpired, but we met up soon after (the next weekend) in Athens, Ga - home of UGA, her Alma Mater - for a fun-filled weekend of brewery touring and bar hopping. This was finally our chance to visit the Terrapin Brewery, and it was awesome! We spent several hours there, listening to music, tasting some brews and touring the facility with our rockin' tour guide, Kelly.

I found biology themed embroidery patterns from this gal's etsy store quite a while back and bought them with Sabrina's bday in mind. The pattern came in pdf form, so I printed, then traced onto a tea towel to embroider.

I intended to give her two towels - one for each pattern - but didn't get that far along. The second towel is still in the works - should get to her by the end of summer (ok, so that's an optimistic estimate). :D I wanted to do some decorative edging to both, but didn't have time, so will definitely add some sort of stitch all the way around the edge of the second towel. Maybe a simple blanket stitch, or possibly the triangle stitch that they used to edge some napkins in this tutorial. We shall see...

On the homefront, one of the best thing we've done all year thus far is to build a "kitty gymnasium". I actually can't take much credit - we both drafted the design together, but Casey gathered all the materials and did most of the construction - I only helped hold things in place while he drilled and such, late in the process. He did an incredible job and the kitties LOVE it!!!



So, it's basically constructed of a base covered in carpet with three long posts (mailing tubes) covered in sisal rope in three corners of the base holding up the top level. The top level has a corner cut off which will eventually sit on top of a shorter post (about half the height) jutting from the fourth corner of the base. Hopefully that makes sense.

Sim can jump effortlessly from the floor to the top (which is a little over 3 feet high) and he'll sit up there all day. We were having so much trouble keeping him off the counters and knew he needed an elevated place where he is allowed to hang out - it's especially great to have him satisfied and out of my way when I'm trying to cook dinner. They both use the posts to preen their claws and also to climb up to the top level. Anyway, it's so freaking awesome! Many kudos to Casey, the oh-so-crafty boyfriend. ;-)