A Year of Creativity A Craft Date Planner to Meet, Share, and Create

Do you craft with your friends? If you do, or if you think you might want to, take a look at A Year of Creativity A Craft Date Planner to Meet, Share, and Create by Petra Hoeksema, Lidy Nooij, Miriam Catshoek, and Bregje Konings.



The idea behind a craft date is that a group of friends gets together to spend an afternoon (or maybe a whole weekend) making something. One member of the group chooses the project and brings the supplies, all attractively packaged like gifts, and then the creativity begins.

The book is full of projects and ideas for snacks packaging the craft kits for the day. If I've got one doubt its that if more than one of the craft date participants reads the book in advance, the surprise might be spoiled. The authors assume that everyone can knit and crochet and sew, or at least knows the basics. 

I'm seriously loving this idea and wondering who I could round up to give it a try.

Disclosure -- The publisher provided me with an advance review copy. This post contains affiliate links. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {7/19/19}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

{Estate Sale Tempatations} Another Barn Sale

We went to another barn sale and my husband bought practical stuff. I bought these, dust and cobwebs and all...

So far I'm halfway through First Stop Honolulu and they've just barely decided to make the flight. I've also learned a lot of new words and phrases. Juveniles in 1927 must have been a vastly different target audience from middle aged women in 2019. Don't get me wrong, I can figure out what most of it means. But I'm not sure my kids would be able to tackle all of the obscure metaphors.

I resisted the temptation to buy a popcorn popper just like the one we had when I was growing up. 

And I resisted the old toys. If that kaleidoscope had been just a little bit cleaner....did I mention that this was a barn sale? It was one of the dustier, dirtier ones.

We went back on the second day and I didn't even think to look to see if this landscape was still hanging there.

Or these two, which are almost identical. I mean, they are identical but one is a lot more faded than the other.

And there was Tupperware. Honestly, I'd have thought this stuff was too far gone for a thrift shop donation, but they wanted top dollar for pieces with cracked lids.

{I've Been Reading} Our House

Our House by Louise Candlish

Fiona Lawson is sure that she must be mistaken when she rounds the corner and sees a moving van parked in front of the house she shares with her husband and their two sons....but the van is in front of her house, all of her furnishings and belongings are gone, and strangers are moving their furniture in. She can't reach her husband and when she contacts the authorities she receives the news that her house is no longer hers.

I can't tell you much more than that without spoiling the plot. What I can tell you is that it takes a very long time to get an idea of what's actually happened and then it takes a lot longer to get to the resolution. Unlike Those People, I wasn't particularly intrigued by Fiona or the other characters.