Valentines crafting and a new toy

I'm not a crafty person. I can never come up with good ideas and generally think it's easier to buy something than make it. However, recently this view of mine is shifting. It's actually CHEAPER to make it than buy it...who knew...so I've had this strange urge to create. I think I can blame all the fun crafting/decorating blogs I've been reading lately (listed under my new "feelin' crafty?" section over there to the right of this blog). After seeing some of the super cute decorations posted I'm starting to realize that I could TOTALLY make a lot of them.


I have never once decorated for Valentines day, but I decided that this is the year I should start...so I headed to Michael's for some supplies:

I turned all of this....(wooden letters, paper mache heart ornaments, a book of scrapbook paper and some modge podge)

into this....

And a few of these.....

Cute, huh? There are so many cute scrap booking/craft papers these days and I'm not into scrap booking, so why not decoupage them onto things around your house, right? I also have the letters to make a L.O.V.E sign, but I haven't quite gotten around to it yet.

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I've also been dying to get a sewing machine for a while. My mom sews a LOT, she made us clothes as kids, she makes quilts, curtains, purses, etc. She's good. As a kid, she tried to teach me to sew, but I wasn't too interested. I never got further than sewing pillow cases and scrunchies. It WAS nice to always have her sewing machine at my fingertips if I needed it for little projects though, like hemming something. Since I moved out, there have been several occasions where I felt like I needed to use her machine for some simple project and I wished I had one, but I just couldn't justify buying one when I'm not a seamstress.

BUT, I've been thinking about it more and more lately, especially since I've been bitten by the crafting bug...so I decided to finally make my purchase. It came today:

The amazon box just makes me happy :)

I did a lot of research and went with a simple machine that was good for beginners (but that I could grow into since it has some more advanced stuff too), that wasn't too expensive, and that had a TON of good reviews on Amazon.

And here it is...after reading through the manual and figuring out how to get it started, I was ready for my first project (which I got from Jamie's blog, Right at Home). It goes along with my valentine crafting kick....

After I found that this one was a success, I made a much longer one to drape along our TV cabinet...I'll try and get a picture of that later....

So, that's that. I'm trying to be crafty now. I have so many fun plans for my sewing machine and even if this craftiness dies down and I stop using my machine, just knowing that I have it and CAN use it if I need/want is a good feeling :) And I'm sure I'll find PLENTY of uses for it once I have kids.