I went to the delightful Renegade Handmade Craft Fair today and saw a ton of awesome vendors. Among my favorite, was I Am Home. I Am Home is a married couple (awww!) who make unique, modern, eco-inspired decor pieces made with reclaimed and refurbished materials.

They get their materials from old buildings, the Rebuilding Exchange (the best building reuse material center in Chicago), and scavenge art schools for discarded wood and supplies. According to their profile, their pieces are primarily influenced by their interest in ecology, architecture, the home, nature, and the handmade/craft.

I bought a piece very similar to this one, except the tile is redish-orange, the frame is a bit thicker, and there are five trees, instead of three:

Here are a few more fabulous items from their shop:

Stilted Forest

Water Sitting In Pool

I looooooove pumpkin pie. In honor of Thanksgiving, here are a few of my favorite pumpkin pie items found on Etsy.

Organic Catnip Pumpkin Pie by CatzillaCrafts.


These adorable little slices of felted pumpkin pie are filled with high-quality, certified organic catnip and polyfill! My spoiled kitty (and my mom’s spoiled kitty) would love these!

Dollhouse Miniature Thanksgiving by BebeToby.

As a child, I was obsessed with buying and making clay food for my dollhouse. I was fascinated by the tiny, painstaking detail put into the clay food, and how real it looked. I loved trying to recreate pies, cakes, and candies myself with polymer clay, but none of them ever ended up looking this realistic. Setting a table, such as this, would have been a dream. The whipped cream dollop on the pumpkin pie is so cute and the perfect realistic detail! I want to bust out my dollhouse right now! (Unfortunately, it is at my parents’ house).

Pumpkin Pie Slice Soaps by BunnyBubbles.

Mmmmm, pumpkin pie scented soap! And it looks so realistic! This set includes two “slices” of pumpkin-spice scented soap. The soap is made with shea butter, glycerin and real cinnamon; how delightful!

Milton and Margie’s Soy Wax Candles were a little sparse on Etsy for awhile before I moved, and after the move, my shop was completely empty for a few weeks. But not anymore!

For the holiday season, we have the delicious, sweet and nostalgic scents of Pumpkin Pie and Cranberry Spice. Fresh-Cut Sage is a new scent for Milton and Margie’s, and it smells very realistically like fresh-cut sage. It’s a great scent for your making your kitchen smell fresh and clean.

Fresh-Cut Sage

Cranberry Spice

Pumpkin Pie

Milton and Margie’s Soy Wax Candles are now at Renegade Handmade, in Wicker Park! The shop is absolutely adorable and awesome. The shop was created as a permanent off-shoot of the Renegade Craft Fair, carrying handmade products from more than 300 artists. They also have an online shop, so you don’t need to live in Chicago to get the goods.

I’m so excited to have my candles there! They are carrying my mug and punch glass soy wax candles.

Location:
1924 W. Division St.
Chicago, IL

Hours:
11 a.m.-7 p.m. everday

I Like You is having their third Annual Ornament Show on November 21st at their shop. Decorate your tree with handmade ornaments by Minneapolis crafters. Though I’m not living there anymore, I have a few needle-felted animal ornaments there again this year:)

I know. I already posted about Chicago, but this is a huge change! I’ve never moved farther than 15 minutes away from the house I grew up in! I’m on an excited, nervous, happy, and sad roller coaster. In celebration of the big move, I bring you some of my favorite Chicago items on Etsy.

Shedd Aquarium Beluga Whale Collage, by Chicago resident geministudio.
I love the style of this collage. It is made of layered strips of antique paper and newsprint on a vintage canvas. The beluga has a vintage, children’s book-quality, which I think is really neat. And this is especially appealing to me because when the Duffs and I (before I became one) were in Chicago a few summers ago, we went to the Shedd Aquarium and got to see these adorable creatures. There were BABY belugas, too! They had special, colorful toys to train them to do tricks, while the adult belugas just had plain, old rods. Their heads are all jiggly!

Chicago Flag Soap, by another Chicago resident, Epically Epic Soap.
I love handmade soap. The cabinet under my bathroom sink holds the evidence. I really don’t even shower that often, but when I do, it’s with creamy, foamy, sweet-smelling, handmade soaps. This soap is skillfully detailed to look like the Chicago flag. It is 100% vegan with the fragrance, Midwest Sky, “a light, airy scent that reminds me of storm clouds blowing in the wind,” describes the Epically Epic Soap’s owner.

Chicago Skyline T-Shirt, by Chicagoan So Silly Stuff.
Here is a really cute and stylish rendering of the Chicago skyline on one of those decadently comfortable American Apparel T-shirt. I love the bright blue print against the neutral T-shirt.

Midwest Is Best Tote, by Chicago designer Megan Lee Designs.
This is a great item that honors my homeland, Minneapolis, and hails my new destination! Midwest is best!

The lovely ladies of Crafty Planet, a fabulous fabric/crafting store in Northeast Minneapolis, are coming out with their book, One Yard Wonders! Rebecca Yaker and Trish Hoskins have created the book with 101 unique and stylish ways to use just one yard of fabric.

I can’t wait to get my hands on this book! There have been so many moments when I’ve been at a thrift store or a yard sale, and decided I NEEDED to have a certain piece of fabric for no reason (other than it looking really cool). Hopefully this book will motivate me to thin out the huge stash of super-cool fabric (in quantities of about one yard, often times less) I’ve been dragging around with me for years.

I’ve taken a few sewing classes at Crafty Planet taught by the awesome and talented Rebecca and Trish. I’m really excited to see what they’ve come up with and to watch their success grow.

The time has almost come for Milton and Margie’s to pick up shop and move to Chicago! The big day is November 1st. I still plan on keeping my candles in Minneapolis shops, too, so Milton and Margie’s will be branching out to two Midwestern states.

I’m really excited to see what new crafty opportunities living in Chicago will bring. Here are a couple of the local handmade shops I’ll be checking out.

Renegade Handmade

This shop is located in the Wicker Park neighborhood, carrying handmade goods from more than 300 artists. The shop was created as the home-base of the Renegade Craft Fair, which is held in a bunch of major cities in the U.S. I’ve heard so much about the show and how cute the shop is, so I’m really looking forward to being able to go there.

Wolfbait

This shop is in the Logan Square neighborhood, featuring only Chicago clothing designers. This is right in the neighborhood we’re moving to! I will be so, so stylish.

Halloween is coming up, and I never end up executing a really good costume. I always have such grand plans, but they are never realized. But not this year! So I went looking on Etsy for some handmade inspiration.

Zombie Girl Cosmetics Kit, by glittersniffer.

A high-quality Halloween costume makeup kit! Look how cool that looks! All you people that do that Zombie Pub Crawl stuff around here should try this kit out. She has it on a discounted price of $16 right now, too! It may be a bit more expensive than what you would find at Party City, but it is a lot less scary-looking than those cheapy face-paint/vampire teeth kits (not “scary-looking” as in “a successful, scary costume,” but “scary-looking” as in “this product will probably poison your skin”).

Hulk Hogan, by thrills.

For the Hulkamaniacs, here is the Hulk Hogan costume kit. It includes: handmade/painted bandana, hand-dyed wristbands and knee pads, handmade tank top and hot pants (slightly different than the shorts pictured), and handmade boot covers with laces.

The Hamburglar, by dirtybirdyvintage.

I love things to do with The Hamburglar. This awesome kit includes: black hat, red curly wig, black vixen mask, black and white dress, striped bloomers, striped stockings, attached cape, vintage 1975 McDonald’s fry purse, red gloves, and handmade burger tie.

I was at my family’s cabin this weekend, and they had some envy-inducing mugs and juice glasses. They all would have made such cute candles! But since I can’t have those, I’ll fantasize about these (some of my Etsy favorites):

They had one almost identical to this!