COLOR!

My Colors arrived, YAY!

I can't say which is my favorite, but I'm especially in love with the Violet, Cerise, Sea Green, Turquoise, and Orange Red.

I'm slowing working my way through this shop of 96 colors.  One day I'll make it :)

So I'm officially sick today.  I've been feeling slightly sick all week, but now, yeah, it's official.

E is home from school for his second day in a row.  I wish his slight fever and cough would go away.

They are really putting a damper on his learning time.  You know when your kids are sick but they don't lose their energy?  Yeah, I've been dealing with that for the past week.  It's like the sickness gives them a dose of crazy that's not normally there.  They run around, sniff, cough, rest for a while, run around, sniff, cough...it's getting old.  Kids are so much easier to feel pity for when they are playing the part.  Laying around, being pitiful and quiet...that brings out the nurturing mommy in me...this stuff, brings out the crazy in me!

So remember last week when I said that I had a week left to get my photo books made?  

Weeell, after I took a break from my photo organizing to blog about it, I ended up taking a much longer break than planned....the break ended last night.  So I stayed up way late yesterday and am wasting my day today trying to get these guys made.  I have WAY too many pictures!!  And the upload time is driving me insane.

So ta ta, good day, farewell, till next time!

Oh guess what?  I just noticed that my interview is up, so if you have a few minutes to spare, go take a look!

Making stuff

So this weekend was pretty uneventful.

Actually, I spent the entire weekend in my pj's.

The kids were both sick so I never ventured out of the house.

But I was able to accomplish my goal of using up every color of new wool!

{Woohoo! I accomplished a mini goal!  Picture me patting myself on the back}

I even made flowers out of the colors that I have sold already.

So now I have all 12 colors of flowers.

But now I'm stuck.

I cannot figure out what to put in their centers.

I am sharing with you for inspiration.

Please help me decide what to put in them.

Here they are, unfinished, waiting for suggestions:

Orange and Goldenrod

top to bottom, left to right:
Raspberry, Rose Pink, Lilac, Blush Pink

This is the only one that I finished last night.

It's a charcoal grey color.

I thought about waiting until next fall/winter to make it, but figured why not go ahead and make just one?

My new colors were supposed to arrive today.  The tracking said it would, I hate when it's wrong.

But now I have something to look forward to tomorrow!

12 new colors to play with and inspire me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SO the other day, I saw this cute tutorial on Martha Stewart Crafts.

I knew I wanted to make some, because I LOVE re-purposing and reusable bags!

Today, I decided to make one for KennaKat since she needs a library bag, so I went to her drawer of saved items that are too small and too ruined to hand-down, but that she is in LOVE with.

And I found...

A shirt that was stained with chocolate milk and a tutu that is too short and has lots of holes.

Well, that settled it for me, so now we have this!

If you could have heard her screams of glee and excitement!

She was so happy to have 2 of her favorite items back and turned into a 3rd thing that she loves...BAGS! This girl is definitely a bag lady :)

I'll get a picture of her tomorrow at the library with this bag in use.

{She spent an hour today with her arms in the holes, wearing it as a front dress}

making flowers and some news

Newest addition in the shop, one of my favorite colors, coral!

100% Wool Coral Dahlia Flower

I made 2 more flowers tonight, woohoo!

{Only 3 more colors left of the wool!  I might actually fulfill my goal!}

I'll take pictures of those tomorrow, I still haven't settled on the perfect centers for them.

Also guess what?  I got a message from a girl who writes on the NC Triangle Street Team blog.  They are all about supporting local etsy artists.  They had me answer some questions and they will post my interview on Tuesday!  I'll of course share the link with you guys when it's up.

I wasn't sure what to say or how much I should say because I didn't see the link to the sight until after I wrote it, so I would probably change some things if I could, but oh well, it is what it is! 

Hopefully it will generate a little more business for the shop!!

On the down side for today, E's school was broken into AGAIN this year.  They haven't found much that was stolen but they vandalized the place {My guess is bored kids}.  E's classroom was one of the rooms that got trashed :(  They killed their fish and he was really upset about that.  He asked if we can go to petsmart and buy more fish for the class.  Of course!  So we'll be doing that tomorrow afternoon sometime.

Now I'm off to bed.

Good Night and have a great weekend!!

in the shop and drooling over stuff

Finally took pictures of my most recent flowers.

I was waiting for a nice sunny day, but the only day like that was when I wasn't home.

So today, I had KennaKat pose for me while it was sprinkling this morning.

{Of course the sun is out this afternoon, but I'm too lazy to retake pictures}

I'm working through my wool felt, 6 colors to go!  I also ordered another 12 colors, I'm so anxious to get them!  The plan is to have one of every color made before the new felt gets here next week.

{We'll see how that goes}

I'm not the most goal oriented person.  I'm more of an 'on a whim' person, which pretty much relates to almost everything I do.  Being in Jehovah's Organization, Being Married, and having kids pretty much sums up my long term commitments and accomplishments.

So if I can accomplish my mini goals, then I'm pretty proud of myself.

I can't seem to get into the habit of making one a night, which is where I would like to be.  

Maybe it's because it takes so long to hand-sew them, and once I get my table cleared off I don't really want to pull all the stuff out again?

Clean up is such a drag!

I've been day dreaming about what my perfect craft room {or even just an area all my own} would look like.  

And even though I may change my ideas every other day, I'm pretty settled on what I want to use for my flower station and other small art supplies:

Feast your eyes on these beauties!

Gorgeous printer cabinet

printer/ apothecary cabinet

This person took a library card cataloger and put a printer cabinet on top...ingenious! 

Isn't this such a great idea?!?!  I could house all of my felt, my beads, my flowers, my attachments, packaging materials, paints, glues, papers, EVERYTHING in one of these babies.  Oh how I drool over them.  

Maybe some day somebody will find one of these awesome creations in their shed or basement and be like "Hey, do you want this?  Here have it for free"

And I'll say "Thanks!  You rock!"

One day...

SURPRISE!!!

This weekend, we headed up to Roanoke for a surprise party!
Nabo graduated from schooling, and we're all so proud of him.
His Wifey, Ana, organized a surprise dinner for him.
Aside from his many questions and her lying through her teeth, we think he was surprised!
We ate at Frankie Rowlands.
It was very yummy.
Everything was quite delicious.
I almost forgot to pull out the camera, but I was able to get a few shots in

My guinea pigs for testing out the camera settings...sorry guys!

Another camera test shot, sorry guys!!

The Katies

Surprise!!
it took us a minute to notice that they walked in, we were too busy chatting :)

The Katies sipping

My Entree, it was sooo yummy! 

The husbands filet, also quite yummy, it was way bigger than it looks in this shot!

The BEST Creme Brulee ever!

I don't know which one is happier that he graduated...my guess is on Ana!

On top of the food you see pictured above, I also enjoyed a fresh mozzarella and tomato spinach salad, duck con fix {next time, I'm getting that for my entree!}, scallops mmm, asparagus and hollandaise sauce, and mashed potatoes...everything was the best ever.  mmm.

It was a short but sweet weekend...

I also got to sip coffee in a coffee shop with my friend Bethany who ordered that beautiful lilac flower in a previous post, and give her the yarn for my beanie that she's making for me!  Can't wait to get it.

Also, for the first time, we visited Eitak's congregation on Sunday.  {Generally we go to Ana's} The friends were so friendly!  And I met a sister who owns a shop downtown full of awesome goodies made by local artists, and she said she'd love to maybe sell my flowers in her shop!  Cool!  So I'll be emailing her about possibly working something out in that regard!

I guess I need to get busy on making more flowers :)

Oh and if you want a quick laugh at my expense...
on our journey up to VA, KennaKat asks "Mommy, how does your belly get so big?" {I know, flattering right?}  So after I finished crying on the inside laughing I said "I guess you could say it's because I had you two in there."  and Ethylwolfe so kindly adds "yeah, and that's how she's a little bit fatter than daddy."  Thanks guys!  I guess I'll be visiting the zumba classes an a regular basis in the future!

In case you are wondering, I rationalize these insults by the fact that KennaKat absolutely LOVES bellies and asks every person she sees if they are pregnant, flat belly or not, and also the fact that E said that I was only a little bit fatter than daddy...could be worse as my husband is quite the lean guy  ;)


Have a great Week guys!!

This is who I am

You could say that I exhibit procrastination tendencies...

If I can put it off, I most likely WILL put it off...

Case in point:

Waaaay back in July, I purchased a groupon for $50 on Mixbook.com.  The plan was to make a photobook for each of the kids, from birth on.  The coupon expires on January 31...have I even started on the photobooks for either of them?  Well, I could go on to provide a handful of excuses but the answer at the end comes to NO.  No I have not.  So now only a few days away from my deadline, I'm scrambling to weed through the remainder of old picture files of the kids {remember when I told you about how our pictures were deleted...twice}  So I'm separating my faves into 2 folders.  One for boy and one for girl.  In hopes of making my book making process easier.

Ok, that's not why I started this post.  During my photo search, I remembered that I forgot to share pictures of our beach trip in the fall.  So I thought I would do that now... enjoy!  


{Plus I feel really guilty for all the terrible non-focused pictures as of late...these are better, I promise...well, if you like looking at cute kids that is...well, I think they're cute (in my totally non-biased opinion) I could literally eat.them.up. any day of the week.}

What kind of mother would I be if I didn't share this great shot?!
In case you are wondering, what are those crazy kids looking at?...
after showering off, they saw a leaf that looked Just.like.a.frog.
{this picture will go into BOTH of their photo-books, wahahaha}

There were hundreds of dragonflies racing by and see that beautiful sunset?  I got to paint that!  It was beautiful...the sunset, not my painting.  My painting was...eh.

Uncle Pat reading to the kids

Our last day :(

I can not WAIT to go back to the beach!  This house was perfect for us!  Hopefully next time, the other half of the family wont be having babies and being busy, and we'll all be able to go together :)

CIAO!

Blame it on the weather

Flower number 3 this week was made Thursday late night and I was planning on taking a shot of it outside on Friday...well, Friday was pretty dreary and yuck so I decided to wait until today...I guess the better of my 2 choices would have been an overcast day like yesterday as opposed to rain and wet from today.

Because of my lack of options, meet terrible inside lighting, choice number 3.

Don't you just love the green?  It's 'Spring Green' I love it!  And how awesome would it look taken in great outdoor sunshine?  We'll find that out in a few days I hope, but until then, enjoy another poor shot of something that deserves better.

How would something like this look as the front of a business card?

So I tried Zumba on Thursday...in a public place.

It was pretty fun, but guess what?

I killed my back.

On one of the moves something got pulled and there was instant pain.

LOTS of pain.

I stretched first and afterwards and during.

I kept taking breaks from the hour long dance fest to stretch the back, but it didn't help

I have been in a lot of pain ever since.

I'm trying to strengthen my back so that I can live a normal life instead of being in fear of taking one wrong move and throwing out the back.

On top of the back pain, there is also good pain.

The pain you feel from having a good workout.

So I'll go back.

Several friends have joined the class and it's fun, all of us looking like dorks in the back of the class, and laughing at our silliness...good times.

I'll be going again for sure, hopefully I wont pull my back next time.

Have a great day guys!

Flowers

I've been in a flower making rut lately.

Nani ordered a custom order the other week, but other than that flower, I really hadn't made/or felt like making anything.

I hate when that happens.

Then I was worried that maybe opening a store and selling the flowers wasn't such a good idea.

"Do people really want my stuff?  Is it worth all the time and effort?"

That doubt runs through my head all the time.

Yesterday, a friend of mine ordered a custom flower.  After finally deciding on her color, I went to work.

All the while, worried that it wouldn't come out well, since I didn't feel in the "groove".

But as I sewed on each petal, and the flower took shape, I regained my enthusiasm for making them.  Remembering WHY I enjoy creating these beautiful flowers.

So here it is, a custom flower for my friend Bethany.

All 40 hand-sewn petals of it..

I love it.

And I'm so thankful that I found my niche again.

I was so happy making that beautiful Lilac flower last night, that today, I made another.

A Lovely 32 petal, 100% Wool, hand sewn, Carnation Pink dahlia.

Isn't it girly?

Now that I am back in the groove, I'll be making more flowers with that beautiful new wool felt now in stock.

Happy Thursday everybody!

Got any good plans for this weekend?

I do, we'll be hanging with the whole family, I'm excited!

And if I remember to take pictures, I will share our adventures here.

Take Care!

Monkey Joes

Who's up for some more really blurry, un-posed pictures of the kids?!?

I thought so, I know you're excited.

Monday the kids and their friends were out of school so we met up at Monkey Joes to let them run off all that energy that they had on Saturday at the mall.

I tried to learn from my mistake on Saturday and take pictures while they were eating, in hopes of getting better shots, sigh, it did not work.

After spending 5 hours at Monkey Joes, I really thought my kids would be pretty tired, but I was wrong.

As we ran other errands and "relaxed" at home in the evening, they were bouncing off the walls until bedtime.  I don't know where all that energy came from, but it was pretty crazy.

Sorry for the not so great pictures, maybe one day soon I'll get some good shots.. naaah.