Stocking Update: Fail

I think I have learned a lesson.  When your Dad is gone for a month on a business trip, it's all you can do to make sure your Mom doesn't go insane and help her keep the house together.  That's my excuse for not posting in like, three weeks.

But yeah, I haven't worked on the stocking at all since the last post.  So you're not missing anything.  When I do start working on it again I will post stuff.  Hopefully I will be posting stuff again next week.

Oh, and I finished one of the books on my reading list, and will be posting a review soon :)
I also got the Divergent series for my birthday :D and I will review that too.  I probably won't do separate book reviews (for several reasons), but I'll review the series as a whole.

Look out for some posts soon, but in the meantime, have some ice cream!

Stocking Update: Week 1

First week of Stocking updates!  Yay!

So I started the stocking like, two weeks ago, and normally the only chance I get to work on it is on the weekends, and at The Needle Club (a girl's crafty group where I live).  So I don't normally get a lot done.  If it was my younger sister who is crazy about crafts and will sew and crochet all day long, she'd have it done by now.  But I don't have the luxury of that much time :P

Oh yes, and please excuse the low quality of some of the pictures.

Before I started taking photos of this project I finished the stocking front, which was mostly a lot of sequins and embroidery.

Pretty snowflakes!

Then the fun stuff started!!  The snowman has, well, a snowman butt bottom, so I sequined it and appliqued (fancy for sewing it onto the main body of the stocking) it, and it actually turned out pretty nice.  I had some problems with sequins that wanted to keep falling off, but it looks pretty nice now.

Then I did the snowman arms and mittens.  The arms were pretty easy, just sequin, stuff, and applique.

I never actually got a picture of the arm by itself.  Woops

Then came the mittens.  There's not one, not two, but THREE pieces to the mittens.  And how they were supposed to go on was kind of confusing.  And never mind all that, I also had to have my first experiment and embroidery!!!  O.o  And, yeah, that didn't turn out too well.  I think one of the lines turned out pretty well, but the rest were a mess.

They don't look terrible in this picture, but trust me, they are worse in real life.

I've been told that practice makes perfect, but, uh, I'm not sure I'll ever get anywhere near perfect.

I finally figured out how to put the finger ends of the mittens on, and it turns out I'm not supposed to sew all the way around the edge of the fingers when you applique the mitten fingers on, so that way the snowman can hold his lights.  Yeah........

But all turned out well, and I'm working on sequinning the snowman middle, so that should be on by next week!  But for now, there are two floating snowman arms.........  Hey, if I could I would put the head on next and then we could have a floating snoman snowman head too!

For some reason this reminds me of the Cheshire Cat.....

Experiment Post: Intro

Okay, so I've decided to start a, uh, what should I call this?  An Update Series?  How about I just give background information and maybe it will explain itself.
I'm making a Christmas stocking for my youngest brother, who isn't born yet, but will be in January.  We'll call him Peanut :) It's a tradition in our family (has been for like, almost three generations) to make each other's Christmas stockings, so I have the privilege of making Peanut's stocking!  I'll post updates here every Saturday.  I'll include some pictures and an explanation of my adventures while making the stocking.  Trust me, it gets pretty crazy sometimes, and all I'm doing is making a stocking!!
This is the stocking I'm making:

Pretty cute right?  And simple, which I like because it means less work!  Well, actually I wish there was more detail, because then there would be more fun.
I already started the stocking before I decided to do this, but I haven't gotten too far, so nobody's missed much :)
I'll start posting updates every Saturday, so look out for my first post tomorrow!

Chocolate Book Tag

Yay!!  Two of my favorite things combined!  Thanks to Monica at Spilled Ink for the tagging of me :)

Dark Chocolate (a book that covers a dark topic)

I think I'm gonna have to go with Island of the World by Michael O'Brien.  I could put almost any of his Children of the Last Days series under here, but I feel like this one is the one that best fits the description.  Or maybe I'm just putting it here because the book is so deep and that makes me think of Dark Chocolate?

White Chocolate (a light and humorous read)

While not exactly humorous, this book (or any in the series) is a very light read, and pretty fun too.

Milk Chocolate (a book with lots of hype that you're dying to read)

I've been wanting to read this one ever since I watched the movie.  That was shortly after I saw the Hunger Games, and I wanted to compare the two stories.  Now I really want to read the book, which, as a little birdie told me, my sister is getting me for my birthday :)  Don't tell her I know, I dragged the secret out of Mom.

Caramel Filled Chocolate (a book that makes you feel gooey inside)

 

This is one of the many romance novels I have read that makes me feel gooey inside :) But this one does it the most!

Wafer-less Kit-Kat (a book that surprised you)

 

I was going to mention one of my first sci-fi books here, but instead I'm putting Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale instead.  This book, unlike the sci-fi books which surprised me in a good way, surprised me in a not so good way.  It was just really dry, which surprised and disappointed me, since the prequel was soooooo good.  I was really surprised at how cookie-cutter it seemed, especially after the originality of the first book, Princess Academy.

*Snickers (a book you're going nuts about)

 This is kind of hard, because there are books that I have gone nuts about before that I now am not so entranced with, and there are books that I would like to go nuts over, but haven't read them yet (e.g., The City, Divergent, etc.).  That being said, I... don't really have an answer.

Hot Chocolate with Mini-Marshmallows (a book you turn to for comfort)

 

The Lord of the Rings :)  Need I say more?

A Box of Chocolates (a series you feel has something for everyone)

 

I think I would have to say the Fairy Tales Retold series.  It has a little bit of romance, a little bit of adventure, and a little bit of religion.  The religion part might annoy some people, but it's one of the highlights of the series to me.

Well there you have it!!  My Chocolate Book list :)  Look out for more posts in the near future.

*I king of feel like this should be called Nutty Bar, since you're going nuts over it?