harry potter cursed my machine

one of the bean's oldest and dearest friends celebrated her birthday last weekend with a super fun party at a local tea room.  to add something fun to her gift, i wanted to fire up the ol' embroidery machine and bust out a couple of fun little things for her.  she's a huge harry potter fan, so i'd bought the files to make her a cute little pouch and matching keychain.

except that my stupid machine is the finickiest, whiniest machine in all the land.  i got almost all the way through the bag when for some reason it started stitching in the wrong spot, which totally jacked the whole project up.  and then on my second attempt, i managed to get through the whole design but the lining of the bag didn't align properly and i had to rip it out.  it should've been so cute (and you really don't see the mistakes in this picture):

and then when i decided to give the keychain a shot, it got through the design and then decided to completely screw up on the backside, creating a birds nest with snarls of thread on the back that i couldn't fix.  i would have taken pictures of the total failure but i'd thrown it across the room in a rage.  heh.

anyway, i knew this meant that there must be thread caught somewhere inside the machine that i couldn't see without taking the damn thing apart.  it took all these tools:

and pulling off the plastic covers all over the machine:

before i finally found the piece of snarled, knotted thread caught between the tension discs.  what a pain in the ass.

meanwhile, the bean was working on her own handmade present for her friend.  she came in to show me that she was doing it "build-a-bear style, mom" - which meant that she'd cut out this cute little red glitter heart:

that she put inside of the little ducky she was making.

as for me, i'd finally managed to complete that keychain successfully.  i'd also thrown together a quick little raglan top using some harry potter-themed fabric i'd picked up at joann's.

at the tea parlor, we got the girls settled in at their table before sitting down at a table reserved just for the adults.  we had the place to ourselves, which was good considering the girls got a little rowdy a couple of times...totally unbecoming to a place such as a tea room.  heh.

there were feather boas and hats for the girls to put on, which definitely contributed to the noise level in there.

and when it came time to open presents, the birthday girl seemed to like our handmade gifts.  yay!

i took this with one of my mom BFFs:

and then when we corralled the other moms to pose for a picture, i handed my phone to the bean...who promptly ran around the room taking selfies.

the mom posse.

the girls gave each other big hugs and said their goodbyes in dramatic 11-year-old fashion, and then it was time to go.  i think the tea room ladies were happy to see us head out the door.

the october birthday party train just keeps on rolling through!