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Oh such wonder and joy

Two wonderful packages came in the mail today from my dear sweet completely wonderful friend Frieda. What a treat!
Frieda has her own etsy shop and sews the most gorgeous bags. Truly.
I knew Frieda was making me a tote bag and I asked her for some shopping bags but I had no idea what they would look like. What a wonderful surprise, don’t you think?
Aren’t they scrumptious!?!

Here’s my new tote- its 16 inches across and 12 inches long and has wonderful pockets, and a clip- for my cell phone (quite handy).

Here are 2 of my new shopping bags—I cannot wait to use these!

The shopping bags measure 15 inches tall & the bottom measures 7 inches wide.
Perfection! Notice that she made some different handles for me- one has double handles, two have a nice wide single handle and the flowered bag has an extra long (and wide) strap!
And the other two:

Oh, I just can’t wait to use them! Maiden said I’ll be “shopping in style”.
Now a question- when you go to the regular grocer- such as Wal-Mart- do you tell them you have your own bags- do you offer them your bags or do you bag your items while they scan them? I’m wondering- just what is the proper protocol for this? I don’t have a problem at Aldi’s since I bag my own groceries there anyway but am wondering about the “regular” stores.

Camera Advice needed

What I've been doing

The book is wonderful. It was on my wish list for quite awhile before I found it on sale at Sam’s Club- so I decided to treat myself!
There are many lovely iron-ons inside and I have a few projects in mind already. There are a couple more onesies I’ll be embroidering for new babies and I’m planning to embroider a couple of plain T-shirts for the kiddos. And if I’m lucky- maybe a few tea-towels too!
I need to take the time to practice some different stitches too. But oh, the fun!

Crafty Goodness

Okay- I'm back to share some of the crafty goodness we've been making here.
On Thursday I made these star ornaments from scrapbooking paper.

Aren't they adorable! I just love the papers I found to make them with. I nabbed the pattern from Dub and Sam. You can make them yourself- quite easily. Some are for us and some are to give away. I've already given a couple to my Mama and she loved them so much she's planning digging thru her scrapbooking papers so that I can make her some more. My 6.5 year old DD, Sassafras, even made a couple with me- that's how easy!
Okay- then on Friday Sass and I started making these snowman pins from buttons.

Buttons from the button jar. Scraps of fabric. Black foam. Pin backs. That's it. Had the black foam left over from Halloween projects years ago. All we had to do was purchase the pin backs [$1.00 for 6 backs]. A fun, easy and cheap craft. We just used the hot glue gun to put it all together. It probably took less than 15 minutes to do these 3 pins (and that's with a 6.5 yr old's help! LOL) We do plan on making at least 3 more.
I'm thinking it might be fun to purchase some really big buttons and make a couple of jumbo "brooches".