See my work in Denver ... and a sale announcement

If you're ever in the Denver area, specifically, Bradburn Village in Westminster, go to the shop called Blossoming, and see my embroidered hand prints! I was approached by the shop owner to make up two handprint samples to put in her shop. I'm very excited about this opportunity and I hope it brings in some sales!

Click here to see the handprints in my shop. I love making these little handprint embroideries! If you have a little one you definetely should get a handprint embroidery! They're darn cute and ready for hanging! I wish I would have thought of this idea when the girls were still babies, so I'd have a set of their prints throughout the years.

I'm selling the custom handprint embroideries for $28 in my shop for any size BUT just for my special friends and family who read this here blog, I'm offering them at the sale price of $20! If you're interested, please send an email and we'll get the process started.

And check out this Bradburn Village area ... their web site is here. They host craft nights. Craft night people! I'd be delirious with joy living there, oh man!

An accomplished weekend

How awesome is it when you write a to-do list at the start of your weekend, and at the end of your weekend, you've managed to cross off everything?! I got everything done this weekend that I wanted to get done, wahoooo! Very exciting!

I finished the custom order that I've been working on for awhile. The order was for five stamped-eye dolls, and three doll garlands. They all came out quite cute!

The garland is just darling, I think it would look cute in a girl's room, hanging from the window!

I also completed five dolls for my shop - three Halloween dolls and two stamped-eye dolls. Cute, cute, cute.

I finished my Jack Skellington doll too, and I'm keeping it for myself! It's just too stinking adorable, I cannot part with it! She's a trick-or-treating doll, haha! Notice her little treat bag? Her mask is removeable too.

So, what's next? I've sketched up some Halloween decorations that I want to make, including some garland/swag, whatever you want to call it.

Saurkraut and a big yellow school bus

After a full day of sewing (I'm FINISHED with that hugely huge custom order I've been working on, hoooooray!) (will post pictures tomorrow!) we decided to hit up the local Oktoberfest. I needed to get out of the house after sitting and sewing all day long. And you don't have to ask me twice when there's sauerkraut involved! We had so much fun! I had my camera in my purse so I shot a couple of pictures.

I even drank some beer. Trust me, this is a very rare occurrence. But they had nothing else to drink. I know it's an Oktoberfest and all, but no soft drinks at all? Ridiculousness.

Lydia LOVES sauerkraut! It pleases me so! Her and I both had a cup of kraut for dinner. Arlene had a hot dog and Mike got goetta on rye (ick!). We also had some German potato salad. And some cotton candy. And a chocolate covered cream puff. Oh and also an ear of corn. Um yeah, we're all sort of in a food coma at this point.

Saying cheers ...

... and now down to business.

Arrrrrleeeeneee!

We had to take a bus shuttle to the festival, and the girls were pretty nervous on the way there. They had never been on a bus before, but we told them they needed to practice. They couldn't wait to leave the festival so we could take another bus ride. No more fears of the bus, yay!

I think that picture is just so cute!

Cuuuuuute!

Jack Skellington fabric!

Here's my Jack Skellington fabric!

I'm so pleased with how it turned out. I stamped the Jack heads onto bleached (white) muslin fabric then heat-set it on. I made two versions: black and purple with little tiny stars. I'm in the process of making a doll with the black version; pics soon!

Both are listed on my Etsy shop: the black fabric and the purple fabric. I think I'm going to make some more fabric, but I'm going to use a heavier cotton, so that I can make a purse. How cute would that be for the Halloween season?!

Etsy Favorites Wednesday, the "Halloween DIY" edition

I tried, I really did. I tried to NOT do a Halloween-themed Etsy Favorites Wednesday list this week, but I couldn't help it! Halloween stuff is all over Etsy now-a-days, and I'm clicking "favorite" on just about every single thing I see. Etsy keeps rotating Halloween stuff on their front page and I am so happy to see it! So, this week's list includes a couple of things that I'm not going to buy, but steal the idea and make it myself! Here's the list!


Bat Resin Necklace ... I saw this necklace and it got me yearning to make some more resin jewelry. Earlier this year I swore off resin, saying that I was done making resin pendants because they're hard to do, I had a hard time selling them and they were too expensive to make for a profit. But now I'm thinking I could make just a couple Halloween-themed ones to keep for myself!


Skull Garland ... How cute and easy peasy to make! I'm definitely making a skull garland. I could also make a ghost garland and a pumpkin garland!


Vintage BOO letters ... I LOVE these. Unfortunately they are sold, but I'm thinking I could do some searching to find more. It would be cool to find a whole set of letters, then you could set out little messages all throughout the year. Yes.


Finger Soap ... these are so eerie! They're quite life-like, or should I say, dead-like? And supposedly smell like dirt. Haha!


Zombie Attack Lamp Shade ... again, would be so easy to make! And hilarious!

Getting back into the swing of things

I've been gone for a week from this here blog, but I'm baaaaack! I wanted to say thank you to the sweet folks who sent condolences about my father-in-law. It was greatly appreciated. I took five days off work to be with family, and it was really strange going back to work today and getting back into the swing of things. I was dog tired by 2 p.m. ... I think my body was really getting used to not working. But alas, I'm back to the grindstone, and we're getting back to our lives.

My hubby starts school this week and the girls begin preschool soon! And how excited are we about fall and Halloween?! So excited we can't stand it! I'm loving this fall-like weather too ... I hope it lasts, but I have the sinking suspicion that it might get HOT before it gets cool again. Hopefully it's not blasting hot in October! I have plans already on how we can decorate our house for Halloween, and we might just have to put out our decorations this weekend. Too early? I think not since many stores already have Christmas stuff out!

Check out our budding mums! I planted them last year and they came back with a vengeance this year. I can't wait for them to bloom. They fill up our entire flower box, which is two feet by four feet.

I've gotten a few things done in the past week or so ... I embroidered a tea towel for my cousin who got married last month. I copied the design from her wedding invitation, which she drew.


I made two BIG dolls ... the doll in the middle is my "normal" size doll. It was fun working with the huge dolls, their arms and legs are gargantuan compared to the regular size! These two are for a custom order. I might make a few more of the biggies to put in my shop. The girls are requesting big dolls for themselves!

I've got about 22 dolls in progress, a bunch of them are for a custom order, but I've also got Halloween dolls and stamped-eye dolls in the works for my shop. Oh and I made Jack Skellington fabric! I haven't had a chance to get decent photos of it yet, once I do I'll share them.

Carry onward and upward!

A time for quiet reflection ...

For the past two and a half years my father-in-law has battled a rare form of cancer. In the past six months his struggle with the disease increased as the cancer spread and became more aggressive. He passed away yesterday morning.

This is a time for quiet reflection for me. Hug the ones you love and tell them that you love them.

"People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. "

~ Marcel Proust

Mine

Look what I just bought! This ceramic monster that I had on this week's Etsy Favorites Wednesday list. So excited to get it!

The best hair product I've bought. Ever.

I got my hair cut and colored (just a wee bit of carmel color to lighten it up, yay!) and I was introduced to a new product: Bumble and Bumble Surf Spray. This stuff is outrageously perfect. First of all I love BB products and have been using them for ages. I wear my hair short and textured and a little spikey and my hair wouldn't look as good if it weren't for the BB products. I had been using the Bumble and Bumble Styling Creme for years (I even got my mom hooked on it!) and that added a lot of volume and depth to my hair. But this Surf Spray is awesome. After showering I towel dry my hair, spritz this on the crown of my head, rub it into the roots a little, blow it dry, and it's like WAVOOOOM! instant volume. Love it! I bet it would be great for longer hair too, to add volume at the roots.

Etsy Favorites Wednesday

(This is my 700th post, wowee!) I found some sweet things on Etsy this past week.

Tiny Tater onsie - how adorable! When my kiddies were bitty babies I made t-shirt transfer onsies for them. This sort of reminded me of those. Cute!

Monster serving bowl - this bowl has been showing up all over Etsy; it's quite popular. I want one very badly. How cool would he be as a serving dish for Halloween candy? Heck, who am I foolin', I'd keep him out all year long!

Dress up fabric dolls - these are fabric stickers for the wall. They're a bit pricey, but I'm intrigued. My girls would love these.

Silk-lined clutch - how lovely would this pretty clutch be to use while on a special dress-up date?

Porcelain earrings - I adore these earrings. In fact I pretty much want everything in this seller's shop!

How people landed here

The other day I got an email from Edward Cullen. It was a comment someone had just left on my Edward Cullen Action Figure post from March. Anyway, I figured that "Edward Cullen" person had found my post by searching the internets for the action figure's info, and I thought it was time to do another edition of "How'd they get here" - I did this before here and here. Here's what my Statcounter says are the top 12 keywords people searched for and then landed here, with my comments in italics:

• toe walking braces - I need to do an update soon to what's been going on with Lydia's tip-toe walking. Besides the people coming to my blog for Edward Cullen (haha) I get a lot of visitors who are looking for info on tip-toe walkers.


• bad things happen in threes - It's weird that this appeared three times in the list.


• tiptoe walking - yup, she still does it.


• halloween - I can't wait for Halloween! My decorations are going up September 1st!


• higgins lake michigan rash - oh dear, I was really trying to block that from my memory!


• a couple of hours - I prefer a couple more.


• tom's mom's cookies - best cookies EVER


• how to sew a tote bag - This has come up a bunch of times and I know I have never provided a tutorial on sewing a tote bag.


• Higgins lake swimmers itch - noooooo!


• crafting - there's sure a lot of it around here!


• why things happen in threes - I don't know, but it happened to me


• bad things happen in 3 - toilet overflowed and flooded house, yes, fridge broke, yes, air conditioner broke, yes. We haven't had any house issues since. So yes, bad things happen in threes.
  
  

Press your luck

So, the grandparents took the kids on Saturday for a day of swimming in the pool. We took our chance and did something fun, just the two of us ... and we went to the casino! There is a newly revamped casino called "Hollywood" about a half hour from us. Whenever we go to the casino, which isn't often, believe me, we give ourselves a minimal "allowance" and we just go to play and have fun. We always want to win, but we have only ever won little jackpots of $30 or $40. Well on Saturday, we're walking into the casino, and I see a slot machine that looks neat - it looks like a big popcorn maker. I say to Mike, "That looks cool, oh ... but it's $1." (we usually play the penny or nickle slot machines) Mike says, "I've got a single, why not, let's put it in." So he sits down, puts in a single dollar, spins, and we WON. We don't know how we won, because we didn't know how to play the game, but we won $500! Holy moly! So we promptly cashed it in and held onto it! We played for the next two hours on our "allowance" money and left the casino with actually $530, because I had won an additional $30 on another machine. It was SO MUCH FUN!

Mike was over the moon ecstatic about the hundred dollar bills we got with our payout. It was quite humorous how excited he was over the paper money. We debated about doing the responsible thing and putting the money into savings, but we did the fun thing and went shopping on Sunday and spent most of it! We bought some home-improvement things, like a new chandelier for our entry way and a new light fixture for our dining room, and new blinds for our dining room, and we got a Blu-Ray player and some discs. And the girls each got a new toy!

This is going to be a crafting weekend!

I have so many crafting projects lined up for this weekend and I'm so excited about it!! It's been awhile since I made anything, what with going on vacation and then just generally being super busy the past two weeks. I feel restless and I've got the itch to make. And boy, do I have a list! I got a completely awesome custom order this week! This lovely lady that I met at that fated craft show (where I didn't sell anything hardly anything, do you remember, post is here) ordered 10 dolls from my shop, five custom orders for dolls with the fabric-stamped eyes (yippeee!), two big dolls (double the size of my current pattern) and three doll garlands. She came up with that idea and I cannot WAIT to get it designed up. She wants me to put three dolls on each garland, to span a regular size window. The dolls will be holding hands. I'm so anxious to get started on them! Then I have a few other custom orders to be working on too, and I want to try my hand at designing up some fabric, using fabric-ink stamps. Lots to do, lots to do! I will of course take pictures of my work as it's completed. And look what I found when I was browsing through Etsy today:

Don't you think I need to own that t-shirt?! I'd be too embarrassed to wear it out in public because I'm a mom, and mom's just don't say the F word (haha yeah right!). But I'd wear it on weekends like this where I will be spending the majority of my time in my craft room.

What have you got going on this weekend?

Five Random Things about Me, from Two Pretzel's blog

Today Two Pretzels wrote a blog post, "Five Random Things About Me" and it made me chuckle. So here goes, my five random things.

1. To this day, I sleep with a little scrap of my baby blanket. It's in complete tatters and strips and doesn't even resemble a blanket anymore. I've attempted to sew it up, but its fibers are so frail it is beyond repair. Yet I love that thing. I know this is abnormal, I'm 31 and I have two kids, but I can't give it up. I'm a bit worried my children will need therapy because of it.

2. I detest shaving my legs. I think it takes way too long and I always end up nicking myself and getting razor burn. To my husband's absolutely delight (sarcasm!) in the winter time I've been known to go way too long between shaves. A little fuzz isn't so bad, I say!

3. I haven't even admitted this out loud yet. But, here goes: I do believe I'm over the hype of Twilight and Robert Pattinson. There! I said it! GASP. Don't get me wrong, I really loved the books and Rob is still the cutest Brit out there, but I'm over all of the blogs about him and the movies and the books ... I used to check those blogs constantly, but I haven't checked in for almost three weeks, and I really have no desire to. However, I do still have my little Action Figure Edward, he stands on my kitchen shelf, and I still have my Edward cardboard cut out in my craft room, cheering me on (haha!) and I'll keep both of my Edwards, because I think it's funny that I bought them when I was in the throws of a teenage-girl/crazy-fan mode over the movie/books.

4. I am a really impatient person. I want things done five minutes ago. I detest waiting for people to do things that I need them to do. At the same time, I often put off doing things or projects until the last minute and it's become increasingly worse as of late. I've been getting "friendly reminders" at work about projects or emails that I'm supposed to be working on for them.

5. Much to my waistline's dismay, I have an addiction to 69 cent Polar Pops from Circle K (they're so cheap and delicious!) and 99 cent bags of Smart Pop White Cheddar Popcorn. That's $1.68 worth of quality snackage and I've been better about it recently, but for awhile I was having a pop and a popcorn every night. The pops are huge, 32 onces, and I drink regular Coke. Lots o calories, right before bed! But man, I love the stuff. That combo is like my end-of-the-night spa treatment. Sip, crunch ... ahhhhhh ....

What are five random things about yourself! Tell me! Leave a comment! Come on, do it! DO IT!

Etsy Favorites Wednesday, the skull edition

Well it's August now and we're getting closer to October, which is my most favorite month, because my lovely girls are October babies and my darling husband was born in October also and because of HALLOWEEN! I noticed earlier this week that Etsy had a special section entitled "Halloween Sneak Peak" so I thought that perhaps it wasn't too early to do a sort-of Halloween-themed Etsy Favorites Wednesday! These are my favorite skull/skeleton-y items of the moment!

Floral Skull Tote - I like the floral design of these bags, and they come in all of my favorite colors too.

Skull/Scissors Tote - I ask you, what is better than a skull paired with scissors?

Pretty Dead Girl - I like this but it also kind of freaks me out, to be honest.

Skeleton Key Pillows - I never really realized before how popular skeleton keyes have become! If you search "skeleton key" on Etsy you'll find a slew of 'em! Lots of people are making jewelry with them.

Skull Toddler Top - the seller calls these "Crafter in Training" tops. Um yeah, love it! I think I need to make some for my girls, no? I have this exact same fabric too!


And here's a couple extra Halloween-y finds for ya:

Slit Throat Necklace - haha!

Don't play with Knives - these are hair clips, hilarious! I think they'd be funny as magnets too!

"Who will keep her safe?"

Sometimes we just don't give our kids credit for being smart ... I think we think that they wouldn't understand something, so we talk in code and we talk around an issue so as to not "expose" them to it. But this past weekend we sat them down and had a talk about their Grandpa, who is nearing the end of his struggle with terminal cancer. They've heard us talking about him being sick, and they know he's sick because they've seen him, but this weekend we had the "this is what happens when someone dies" talk, because it's probably going to happen soon and we wanted them to be prepared. They took it very well! They're so much more in-tune that we think.

We told them that there will be people crying at the funeral, and that they're crying because their sad because they'll miss him. We explained that he will be in heaven just like their Great Grandpa, who passed away last year. Lydia looks at us with this really quizzical look on her face, and she asks, "So will they both be sleeping, like laying down, in heaven?" and it took us a minute to figure out what she meant by that. Then we realized that they saw my grandpa lying in his casket at his funeral, and at the funeral we kept telling them that he was in heaven now, so I'm guessing she took it as that's what you do in heaven, you lay down. We explained that when their grandpa gets to heaven he's going to go FISHING! She really liked that and said, "He can catch a bunch of big fish up there!!" then she said that maybe he'd fish with their Great Grandpa and they can have a lot of fun together. We agreed!

So we're talking some more and then Arlene pauses with this concerned look on her face, and she says, "But, when Grandpa goes to heaven, who will keep Grandma safe? She'll be all alone!" Gaaah! I almost lost it. She was seriously worried about it and it bothered her to think of her Grandma being alone. What a sweet child to think of that! We explained that Grandma has family and friends that will be with her to keep her safe and loved and that we'll give her extra love so that she isn't so sad. She said, "I'll give her lots of hugs and kisses to keep her happy" and we told her that indeed would make her feel better.

I know they'll do okay when he does pass away, as long as we're honest and open about it and give them a chance to ask questions. It's going to be a tough time, but we'll get through and I know they'll get through it too. We count our blessing every day for our sweet and smart little girls!

A game recommendation!

While we were on vacation we bought Scrabble Apple - have you tried it yet? It's fun! We play the regular Scrabble game a lot while we're camping, but this version is quicker, and a bit more ruthless! You get to "steal" each other's words and change them around; the basic premise of the game is just like the old game of Scrabble, except all of the word tiles are fair game for anyone to use. AND the tiles come in that cute little fabric apple! You flip over a tile and either player can use it, as long as you say your word first. When Mike and I were playing it we often thought of the same word, only a millisecond too late before the other person said it. I think it would be fun to play the game with a few more people to get more brains into the mix. Our only complaint is that we thought the rules were a bit open-ended, but it was okay because we ended up coming up with our own rules on a few things. And it was slightly annoying to keep score ... we had a looooong list of numbers that we had to add up and let's just say after a few drinks we're not entirely sure who won a few games because we can't be sure the numbers were added correctly. But if you had a calculator I'm sure it would be easy to keep it straight.

(Amber, we're playing this the next time we get together! Mike is a good competitor but I'm pretty sure you'd whoop my butt!)