And peace reigned throughout the land.......

It's my fairy tale - I can end it any way I want! Yes, our little guy went home to his Mom and Dad this morning. And yes, we were sorry to see him go. However - I am looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning and to the temperature of my kitchen to rise a couple of degrees since the fridge door won't be constantly opening and closing.

Last night our F.A.M.E. group had our monthly meeting. Only four of us were able to make it but we really enjoy getting together anyway. We all work on our own thing usually but last night I also brought along some kits to make miniature brooms for anyone interested. The tutorial is one from Casey's Minis site. I printed out Casey's instructions, (making sure it was clear where they had come from), and bagged up the materials needed along with the instructions. Here are the kits I put together and, in the second picture, Louise and Mary Lou are concentrating on putting them together. Okay - Mary Lou is. Louise is talking. Go figure. (insert smiley-face here, ha ha)
See the brown paper bags in the centre of the table? They are holding our "tidbits". We keep them secret until the end of the evening, then draw names and each person chooses an anonymous bag to take home (after opening it in front of us, of course!). We'll talk about that again in a moment....Back to the broom-making:

Two of us used the wire wrapping as shown on Casey's site and two decided to use leftover threads from the Penelope cloth to wrap the upper part of the broom head to make them look more "rustic". Here are the finished brooms:

After completing the brooms we all went back to working on items we brought with us until it was time to draw for the tidbits. In response to my last post where I had a "spoiler alert" because I was showing what I was making for this month's tidbit, Alayne asked how our exchange works. Basically, mimicking the tidbit exchange from Camp Mini Ha Ha, each month anyone attending our meeting will bring one small item that, if it were on the retail market, would have a value of around 3 to 5 dollars. Hand-made items are always highly coveted but, given the range of experience and skill sets, ready-made items are also welcomed. It's just a way of encouraging people to find the time to do a little bit of mini-ing each month - no matter how crazy their life has gotten! Plus - we really look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. I showed you what I was making - a basket with a set of towels and bottles in it. Since that photo, I continued with the basket by dry-brushing "straw" coloured paint over the whole thing to tone down the dark brown a bit, then I sprayed it with a matt-finish spray to seal the paint. After that was dry I arranged the towels and bottles, bagged it, and it was ready to go. Marijke ended up with my tidbit. I got a great set of fabric bolts from Louise - absolutely perfect for the quilting shop I will be working on this year.
One last note about the basket set I made - If I were to do the same thing again I would make the towels first, decide how I wanted to set them in the basket, then adjust the basket size accordingly. Well, live and learn!

We also took some time to finalize plans for the Miniature and Doll Show and Sale we will be hosting in Fredericton on October 22nd, 2016. The information and the application forms have been drafted and will be sent out to targeted people and groups that we think might be interested. If anyone reading this would like to be included in the mail out, please let me know and we'll make sure to get it to you.

Along with the show and sale we are planning on doing two free workshops - one for adults and one for children. Numbers will be limited - especially for the children's workshop. I received a package from Maureen H. of St. Albert's Minis. She sent me a number of templates for making chairs out of folded paper (and fabric if you wish to glue it to the paper). These will be perfect for an item in the children's workshop. Thank you so much Maureen. I brought them to our meeting last night and everyone was thrilled with them. Personally, I'm also thrilled with the lite brite pegs you sent me for making bottles out of. I can hardly wait to give them a try!

As I mentioned in the last posting - this next week is "Irish Week" for us, leading up to St. Patrick's Day, and we will be very tied up with events we are involved in so postings may be a little sporadic. I will do my best to check in as often as I can. Until the next time - TTFN!!!