Work took Jon to Alabama this weekend, and I found myself alone in the apartment without a voice of reason. This is how I am accepting the fact that I once again decided to give Books & Tea a makeover, I just spent $100 at Joanne Fabrics on a craft I have zero experience with, and I didn’t complete nearly as many chores as I had intended; although, in my defense, I’ve also completed more chores than I normally do in one weekend, so there is that.
On the Blog
I can’t explain the allure of new WordPress themes, but I am captivated by them, and the moment they go up is the moment I begin planning to overhaul the blog. This time, I meant business. Since “featured images” are such a key component to my new theme, I spent most of Saturday and Sunday creating new images for the site focusing on consistent colors (teal, grey, white) and themes (books and tea, of course). One of these days, I hope to master the art of creative clutter, like some of my favorite Bookstagrammers, but until then, clean and simple is what I can do.
I had given myself a deadline of end-of-day Sunday, but that isn’t achievable. As I dug through my crates of books, I realized that I’m missing a lot of the books that I reviewed on Books & Tea. I’m sure they were misplaced during my moves last year, so now I’m trying to decide between tracking down those books at the library or just letting them go. Who clicks that far back on a blog anyway?
On the Craft
I visited my mom in Oklahoma last weekend, and during my last day there, I found myself staring into a barrel of Christmas ornaments of various plush animals– bears wearing ice skates, pugs wearing scarves and hipster glasses, owls not giving a hoot– that sort of thing. I then had this brilliant idea that I should sew myself some festive, stuffed animal ornaments. That I could sew myself some festive, stuffed animal ornaments. I even said these thoughts out loud to my mom and she did the worst thing a mother could do– agree with me. And this is why I ended up spending $100 at Joanne Fabrics. At the time, 4 yards of flannel, 10 sheets of felt, various beads and buttons, and 2 pounds of polyester stuffing didn’t seem like very much. After I sat down on Sunday to learn a blanket stitch and sew my very first ornament, I realized I had enough sewing rations to make it through several Christmases. I also realized that I’m terrible at sewing.
This is my very first ornament. Don’t laugh! …Okay, you can laugh. I’m pretty sure my mom did when I sent her a picture of it this morning. The lighting is very bad here because my apartment is basically a cave, but it’s cream-colored flannel, dark green thread, and gold beads. Everyone keeps telling me that it looks like it was “made with love”, which I think is just a polite way of saying “your star looks like actual garbage”. After realizing what I had gotten myself in to, I sent Jon a text apologizing for the very ugly Christmas tree we will be having this year.
This 2-3 inch ornament took about three hours to complete, so I think this means I have to crank out an ornament every other night until Christmas to fill up our 4-foot, fake Virginia Pine.
The next ornament I plan to make is a sheep wearing snow boots. I’ll let you know how that goes.
By Golly, Ollie! 
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