Valentine's Felt Heart Candy Sachet

If you are looking for a quick, easy and very last minute Valentine's Day token, what about making this felt heart candy sachet. All you need is two small pieces of felt, 3mm ribbon, a tapestry needle, and candy. The project takes about twenty minutes to make and you will have a cute little gift.

Cut the felt in the shape of a heart, and using a tapestry needle start stitching from top centre around the edge of the heart at about ⅜ to ½ inch from the edge. Before making your last few stitches, fill the heart with your candy and close the opening with a few more stitches that meet at the centre top.

To finish off your candy sachet, tie the ribbon in a bow and trim the ends of the ribbon. I pulled my ribbon just a little to make small gathers at the top. A great alternative to felt may be a piece of red silk or other fabric. If you do not have any ribbon, you can also use yarn or tapestry thread as an alternative. The finished size depends on how much candy you have and how big you will like to make the sachet.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Organizing Yarn

In the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of organizing and developing my ideas for the Home Decorating Challenge. At the beginning of last year I did the Home Organization Challenge and the focus was on decluttering. This year I continue to focus on getting things better organized for my business and my family and I have been improving on how I do things and finding better solutions for organizing and displaying items in my home.

I work from home, and I have several areas of the house that I work from. This helps to keep things organized and allows me to create a separate work space for the different type of activities that I do in my business. This year two of the areas that are at the top of my list are my sewing and craft studios. My sewing studio is on the main floor of the house, just off of the kitchen and my craft studio is in the basement.

One of the things I started with was to reorganize my yarn stash. I have started to collect more yarn than I may have bargained for and it was getting a bit out of hand. I recently purchased a ton of plastic storage boxes ("shoe box" bins) from Walmart and they were just the things I needed to corral the excess yarn. I love these containers and I have used them before in other parts of my home. I love that you can see the contents, the lids are great and they are stackable.  I love labeling, but I can easily see the contents in this case and did not feel it was necessary. I passed on labeling them because I felt they looked cleaner and less busy by leaving them plain. Next time I will share with you what my new yarn cabinet looks like.

How do you organize your yarn?

Thrift Store Find: Vintage Wooden Frog Toy

My youngest son is drawn to vintage toys and really enjoys playing with this cute wooden frog that we found at the thrift store. Most of the vintage toys we have are little cars and trucks that are family treasures. Some of them are from my father-in-law and some are from when my husband was a child. However, my little guy is totally fascinated by this little wooden frog and he wants to take it wherever he goes. He fell in-love with it the moment he saw it at the store and did not want to leave it behind. It was even his idea for me to take a picture of it (smile). It just goes to show that even an old toy can brighten a child's life.

Do you have an old toy that you or your children treasure?