Sneak Peek Monday!

It was going to be Sneak Peek Sunday, but I wasn't quick enough on getting this out. So you miss out on the alliteration, but you still get the sneak peek. Yay, you! I can't work on my awesome new cardi because I ran out of yarn, and I'm still waiting to get new stuff in. So I decided to share what I have because I'm just so darn excited. And you get two sneak peeks in one! We finally closed on our house, and I get a craft room! I can't wait to have my own space to mess up again. I will say, though, it's really sad to leave my craft room in Holly as we put so much time and effort and thought into it. *sigh*

We'll start with my new craft room since it's the less cool of my cool sneak peeks. This is my new craft room in the new house. There's not really anything in it so it may not be the greatest look, but it's got so much potential! I can't wait to fill it with my crafting things. It will definitely be epic. Epic, I tell you. Plus, I'll have a place for the Rayna Crafting Tornado to pass. I understand how these pictures are probably boring, but I can't help but picture all my crafting things and all the ideas that will be buzzing around in there. It gives me chills. :) My room has one very large closet and lots of space. And also two windows and a ceiling fan. Thrilling, I know. :)

On the other hand, we have my awesome new cardi. Once again, it's a free pattern on ravelry. (if it's free, it's me!) I heart free patterns. :) I'm not the kind to knit sweaters. I'm way too impatient for that. I get bored with long runs of doing the same thing so this pattern is perfect for me. It uses a bulky/super bulky yarn with giant needles. So it takes a fraction of the time that a normal sweater would. I chose Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca in a beautiful deep blue color, and it's sooooooo soft. I can't wait to live in this thing! This is what I have of the back panel. As you can see, it's got a really cool lattice pattern with some cables on the side. Now, tell me, have you ever seen anything like this in the store? Exactly. It's mine. Because of the yarn I chose, it's quite an expensive sweater, but I am strangely okay with that. In any case, I can't do anything until I get the remaining 8 hanks of yarn. This is 2, so far.

Please to enjoy my exclusive sneak peeks. :)

Special note: I took all the pictures here with my new phone, the LG Optimus. I freaking love this phone! It replaces my uber-crappy Samsung Reclaim. I am never buying Samsung again. I called them so many times with issues about my phone, and they didn't seem to care. So take that and stick it in your powdered donut, Samsung.

Cupcakes are crafts, too!

I'm trying my hand at a new hobby. Rayna, do you really need yet another hobby, I hear you say. One can never have too many hobbies. I find joy in many things so why should I limit myself? So there. Yes, another hobby. But this one's delicious... I'm making novelty cupcakes! Well, I've made one batch, at least. But I do plan on making more! Scott bought me a really neat book for a housewarming present (warm my house with cupcakes!), and it's got so many cool recipes in it. I'm definitely planning on making more. I've already planned things like Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays ( I can't decide if I want knitting or goldfish cupcakes for my birthday. Maybe knitting goldfish? Awesome!).

For those of you who know me, I hate cooking. Maybe not hate it, but I'm terrible at it. I mess up macaroni and cheese, and I usually eat ramen when it's just me. I cannot cook. I will not cook. Although, I have been making Joey's food. That's beside the point, though. I can puree anything. That's not hard. So, anyway, cupcakes. Mmm, cupcakes. This book has everything in it. There are several recipes for cupcakes, which is good because I like everything in one place. There are also a bunch of frosting recipes. I went kind of cheap on that front. I bought frosting. :) Hey, you have to start somewhere. :) It's just as delicious, I can assure you. I'll get to making my own.

I made the Bake Sale Pies. Delicious! Anything with M&Ms is a hit with me. This was also marked as an "ez" recipe so it was a good place to start. There are so many cupcakes I want to make in this book. There are cupcakes that look like eggs, monsters, jungle animals, whales and bees, just to mention a few. Of course, there are also things you wouldn't want to eat. For some reason, there is a recipe for cupcakes with roaches on top of them and cupcakes that look like nasty rats. Ew. Definitely do NOT want to eat. This book has all the techniques and recipes you need to know to make their cupcakes. I love it! As you can see, Scott and Joey loved them, too. These cupcakes make a great snack! ;)

The Frog Prince

I can't believe it's November already! We had a wonderful October as we took our boy trick-or-treating for the first time. It was so much fun! We have since moved to Ohio, but we haven't yet moved into our house. Preemptively, we trick-or-treated around the new neighborhood where we will be living very soon I hope. We met a bunch of the neighbors, and we got candy, of course. It was awesome! On that note, the craft for this time was Joey's costume. I knit him the cutest little frog costume. I, personally, thought it was genius. :) Plus, none of the other kids had the same costume.
I got this pattern from a book called Wacky Baby Knits, and, despite all the problems other people had with it, I had a great time knitting it. When it comes to knitting, I just trust the pattern. Even if it doesn't make sense to me at the time, I always just do what it tells me. It always turns out. :) I wish everything worked out that way! There were a couple times I had to check the ravelry forum to see what other people thought of the pattern, but then I just went for it. Sure, I'll make the frog eyes just like I made the frog eyelids. It doesn't make any sense, but I'll figure it out. I'm usually one to make it up as I go, anyway. Everything turned out fine, as you can see. The pattern was free, by the way. I'm sure you can google Wacky Baby Knits along with frog or you can just go straight to ravelry (if you have an account) and look it up there. Ravelry is definitely my go-to place for patterns. Google is kind of a waste of time that way.

Scott also had a hand in this, and I always value his design opinion, but he really helped with this one. The pattern had me stitching the black part of the eyes. We went button shopping for all the buttons to close up the legs and the collar, and Scott found the coolest green froggy eyes! They match the yarn perfectly, and they really just made the outfit. So, thank you, baby. :) Your input was invaluable.
I hope everyone had as much fun this Halloween as I did. We're finally starting to move into our new house! We should close on Monday so I can't wait to get my craft room back. I'll have to post new pictures! I get my own room with a ginormous closet! Hurray, me! I hope everyone's looking forward to the holiday season. I finished knitting Scott's Christmas presents, and I have to start work on Joey's sometime soon. I'm hoping I'll be able to wait until we get into the new place. For now, I'm working on something for me. ;)