Sweet Valentine idea from Inchmark, who made tiny candy boxes out of matchbooks last year. Hello, little Valentines. You are the cutest.

Behold! The cutest little fishy on the face of the planet.

And his little fish bum too! Oh. My. Goodness. The glue-gun burns were a small price to pay.

Bryan was a sea captain.

And I was a jellyfish. I made my hat from a lampshade.

The joy buzzer was the best part of my costume.

The whole costume only cost me like $11. Before going out for the night I added tentacles and a sweater. Surprisingly, there were tons of jellyfish on the street, the best one being a girl who had affixed blacklights to the underside of a white umbrella. I practically genuflected in the street. Happy Halloween!

A birthday cake for Michelle!

Michelle’s artwork was just featured on NPR. She says this is her lucky year, and it’s looking pretty good already.

Is this not the grown up version of a tutu? It is quite possibly the pinkest thing I have ever owned. When I wear it, I smell like Bing cherries in a bed of warm cotton candy.

The original J Crew Version was $425, and isn’t available anymore, but I followed the step by step on Orange Beautiful to make this one.

I did things a little differently, because her version required more patience than I could muster, so here’s a run through if you want to make one for yourself. Start with a jacket or slightly boxy sweater, and then embellish it thusly:

1. Buy some fabric. The original rosettes are silk charmeause, but I chose polyester chiffon, because I wanted the flowers to be fluffy instead of cascading. You’ll need about 4 yards of whichever you choose.

2. Cut the fabric in strips and fold it to size. You want your petals to be about 4″ H x 2.5″ W. So I cut my fabric in strips, then folded the strips in half several times until I had a stack of material about the right size. This doesn’t need to be an exact science, but you want something that looks kind of like this:

3. Sew a knot in the middle of the stack to hold the pieces together, and then cut along the folds to create a grouping of square “petals.”

4. Cut the corners off the stack of squares until you have a roughly oval shape:

5. Here’s where it gets a little tedious. Take three layers of fabric at a time, bunch them by hand, and then pass the needle through a few times until you have the ruffles you want. Repeat with the next three layers and so on, until you have a finished rosette:

6. If you don’t like the effect, go back in with your needle and tease apart any layers that are too clumped or whatnot. The back of my rosettes looked like this:

7. When you have about 30 flowers, attach them to your sweater or jacket by hand. I’d wait until you’ve mostly finished the flowers to affix them, because your rosettes will get better as you go along, and you’ll want the prettiest ones up by your face, right? (I didn’t do this, and I wish I had).

8. When all the flowers are affixed, fill in any gaps by sewing down the top and bottom petals of the flowers in areas that need attention.

9. Pull away any stray threads from the flowers’ raw edges.

10. Wear your sweater around the house for a few hours, and pause to trade bon mots with imaginary dignitaries whenever you pass a mirror.

Cute! Now where am I going to wear it? Someone please get married. Thank you.

Amazing, right? I’ve been working on my own version in bright pink, so it’s extra ka-pow! Here are some of the petals:

It’s almost done, and it’s so good you’ll want to stuff it in your mouth when you see it. Upon seeing it, please restrain yourself, because I’d like to wear it once before I have it dry cleaned.

Making things makes me happy.

Bryan and my friend Jaime really helped — I’d intended to use a store-bought journal, but couldn’t find anything that would work. If you’d like to make one too, here’s how we did it.

We took some white cardstock sheets, 8.5 x 11, and folded them in half to make all the pages. Then we stacked those sheets with the folded edges along what would become the spine of the book.

We used a red file folder as the book cover — it had multiple creases along the fold, so you could expand how many papers it would hold in the file. We folded to the widest creases, and the “bottom” of the file became the book’s spine. Once a ruler is involved, my temples start to throb from all the pressure, so my friend Jaime measured how big the cover needed to be, then marked it off with a ruler and trimmed to order.

Bryan printed up the letters, also on white cardstock. Jaime and I cut out little templates of squares that would fit over the letters, traced a square around each letter, cut them out, and glued them in the page corners. You could easily just write the letters in by hand if you liked too, but I wanted a more polished look.

The binding was the tricky part. We tried hot gluing the pages in, but they weren’t stable enough, so Bryan took an electric drill and drilled holes in the cover, which I then threaded with ribbon. I wish we’d had some little grommets to finish the holes, but it looked pretty good, notwithstanding.

At the shower, while Alli opened the gifts, everyone took turns drawing pictures and writing messages to the new mom and baby.

I like party activities that let you interact without having to make a pregnant woman cry by guessing at the exact girth of her enormous belly. This one is a champ.

1. Use vintage scarves, and trinkets in place of bows.

This is a gift I wrapped for a baby shower a while ago. It’s in a vintage silk scarf I got for a dollar at a garage sale. I tied it twice over the top of the box and used a pair of baby booties in place of a bow. It’s similar to the furoshiki concept.

2. Try a reusable wrap cloth.

This one is for sale at Rickrak, but you could also try making one of your own.

3. Make bows from recycled plastic bags.

This plastic bow is from Creature Comforts, and it’s made from a recycled Target plastic bag. Surprisingly cute, huh? Click through for directions.

4. Troll flea markets for containers and embellishments.

This photo is from Lil Fish Studios, it’s a simple kraft paper box embellished with an old velvet ribbon and a vintage belt buckle. When I’m at a garage sale, I look for cheap wooden boxes, ceramic powder boxes, or package embellishments that will make my gift seem extra thoughtful.

5. Make your own pretty boxes.

Check out Eco-Artware’s template for making cool pillow boxes out of old cereal boxes.

6. Forget tape.

This photo is an example from an entire article full of alternative giftwrap options over at Future Present. I like the look of packages sealed with utility clips or clothespins.

7. Dig through your donations box.

This gift is wrapped in scraps leftover from a Halloween costume. It’s part of another article on recycled wrapping over at Enviromom. I never considered using old T-shirts or clothing items to wrap.

8. Use old maps to wrap.

Some cute examples here and here.

9. Repurpose magazines.

This is a bow made of recycled magazines, which you can buy from BellyBuzz on Etsy. If you’re feeling crafty, you can make them yourself.

10. Use recycled paper for tags.

I like the idea of using recycled sheet music to make tags, like these from MissingMyCity’s photostream. You could use parts of old cards, maps, or stationery catalogues.

That’s it! Do you have any pretty ideas for wrapping with repurposed or recycled materials? Feel free to leave links in comments.

Remember that Apartment Therapy House Call I did a while ago? I forgot to tell you something kind of cool about the photo above.

The little votive shelves in the hallway are handmade. I went to a hardware store and bought some flat metal plates (I think they were mini circuit boards? Not sure.), and some metal L-brackets with holes for screws. I glued them together with epoxy, let them dry overnight, and screwed them into the wall.

Because we live in earthquake country, I affixed the Ikea votives to my mini-shelves with double-sided foam poster tape. All together though, each shelf, including the votive, only cost me about 90 cents.

We took them down recently, because hard metal edges and low flame aren’t particularly toddler friendly, but I loved them while we had them. They were gorgeous all lit up.

Knit Pro is a program that lets you turn any image into a cross-stitch, knit, or crochet pattern.

On one hand, it could be a sign that things are going pretty damn well for us. We have so few worries that ribbon storage has made it onto our lists. Then again, it could be the household version of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Regardless, this is genius: