The Aftermath & A Swap

Thank you all for your comments about my video. :) Truly, I laughed and laughed! For those of you who mentioned how calm I sounded, I did my freaking out/swearing before I picked up the video camera. The whole thing went down like this: I discovered Maren, took one glance at her "finger painting" project, grabbed her wrists with my Mommy-death-grip and rushed her to the bathroom to attempt to wash her hands before she could touch anything else. I actually was able to laugh about it when I was scrubbing her hands and they weren't getting any less purple! Once I had scrubbed Maren as best I could, I grabbed the camera! After I captured my blog-worthy footage, I grabbed the rubber gloves and paper towels and went to work. With the exception of the fabric on my chair and Maren's pajamas, the dye came off of every other surface due to the liberal use of a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. I've said it before and I'll say it again--I'd like to find the person who invented those little white miracles and give him a big, sloppy kiss!

My calm in the face of disaster may also have been because this is not the first time she has done this. That's right, folks--this is actually the second food coloring incident this month. The first was far less catastrophic: although another of my chairs got ruined, she didn't get any on her brand-new Gymboree cupcake clothing and the mess was minor. I don't know what possessed Maren to get my food coloring out in the first place, other than her internal radar for finding the things that will cause the biggest mess in the least amount of time. I kept it in the back of a kitchen cabinet, and have no idea how she spotted it. After incident #1, I moved it to the very top shelf of my cabinets. That means on Monday when she got it out, she had to climb from the chair and stand on the countertop in order to reach that top shelf, and even then it must have been a stretch. That alone is enough to give any parent heart palpitations--she is fearless, I tell you! And really, the food-coloring mess pales in comparison to the Great Rit Dye incident of '07, which ruined another chair (that's three, if you're counting), several towels, and left a big green spot on the office carpet.

In other (less destructive) news, my swap partner Amy from the Sweet Heart Box Swap received her package so now I can share it with you. The idea for this swap was to decorate a heart-shaped candy box and fill it with supplies and other goodies. I was lucky and found this really great fabric-covered box at at thrift store, so all I had to do was cover the bottom with pretty paper to disguise the nutritional information and then gussy up the top. I made a ribbon flower with a vintage earring in the middle and used a vintage black rhinestone shoe clip to frame a cute fabric tag phrase. Not sure why I went with the black but I just liked how it looked with the pale pink and red. Here's what the inside looked like:

With the exception of I think three or maybe four of those little cups, everything else was stuff that I had in my stash! I'm currently working on another heart box for a different swap and I have enough to fill that one too. That, my friends, means I have a LOT of stuff squirreled away in my craft room. Yikes! This was such a fun swap and I do hope Amy liked her swap package.

It's back to the craft mines for me--I have to finish heart box #2 to be mailed out by Friday (eek!) and come up with a brilliant idea for the Sweet Goodness Hanging Heart Swap, to be mailed out by Monday (double eek!). Back to the glue & paper I go!

Maren, the artist

Crafting in Blogland

Drats! I missed blogging again yesterday. Oh well, I didn't have anything to say anyway! LOL


Last night I made these cute buckets to take to the ladies I Visit Teach. I bought the buckets on clearance at Michael's after Valentine's Day last year. Would you believe I was able to do the handles of three buckets almost entirely with ribbon scraps from my stash? When I say scraps, they were all pieces less than 18". (If they're longer, they get stored in a different system, but the short scraps go into a vintage aluminum sugar canister for when I just need a little bit of ribbon.) I used pink rub-on letters from my stash for the 'love' and filled the buckets with pink frosted and be-sprinkled sugar cookies. Pretty cute, no? Now I just need to go get the rest of the cookies decorated and taken to the neighbors so I won't be tempted to eat them all myself. Frosted sugar cookies are deadly to my willpower!

There have been such cute, creative crafts popping up in blogland in just the past few days. The bright colors of my friend Shonda's button flowers sure do brighten up these January days, don't they? I'm crazy over this tulle hanger and wreath made by Andrea Singarella; the tulle is so romantic and pretty! I have a few vintage nighties that could use a pretty little hanger. And these darling vintage-inspired bunny carts made by Holly from Hollydoodle Designs make me want to ditch all the red hearts and skip straight to Easter! I love the creative inspiration I get from blogs; no magazine could ever match it! Thank you all for posting your creative endeavors for the world (and me) to see!

And now, maybe just one more cookie before I give them all away...Yum! :)

Fun find

Last night I was at Michael's for a few minutes while DH was in REI looking at guy stuff and I came across these fun little guys in the $1 section. They come in black (two designs), hot pink, bright blue, chartreuse, and orange and they're about 4.5" tall. They are made out of that thick felt stuff. Aren't they great? I love the really graphic silhouette effect, plus I am a big ol' sucker for anything with a chandelier on it so of course I had to buy a few. They can probably be blinged up with some adhesive rhinestones or they can be left as is. I can see a lot of possibilities! So go...run and buy some right now, and then tell me what you make with them!

Just testing

Friday Fiver

1. What do you need? Curtains for the sliding glass door in my kitchen. I have some in the perfect color ordered from JC Penney and I just found out they're backordered until the end of February. :( Now I'm not sure if I should wait the month+ and risk them being backordered even further or cancel and do the work of finding something else.

2. What won't you share? I have a hard time sharing certain vintage treasures I've found while junking. I'm always afraid that I won't ever find the item again so I tend to be a little selfish.

3. What do you hurry through? Grocery shopping! I shop with a wild 2.5 year old, in a military commissary that is not quite full-sized and is full of retirees who take their sweet time and park their carts in the middle of the already narrow aisles. The prices are much, much cheaper than the other local stores so I still shop there but I hate every minute of it and want it to be over as fast as possible!

4. Who is worth waiting for? Don't have a good answer for this one--I'm an impatient person by nature and I don't really have anyone in my life that requires me to wait for them.

5. Friday fill-in: I can't bear to ______. I can't bear to switch lotion scents unless I've completely used up my current bottle! There's no real reason that I shouldn't be able to switch whenever I want but my OCD steps in and it would drive me nuts to have two half-full bottles in the cupboard!

Happy Mail

Today I got a lovely little package in the mail from Miss Natalea. I met Natalea at Silver Bella and we hit it off--she's darling and fun and so creative! Natalea hosted a giveaway on her blog last week and I won! Look how prettily she wrapped everything--I hated to tear it all apart. (Because I am a pack-rat, I kept the paper, of course.) And look what was inside:

Isn't this fun? It's the cutest little book about charms. I am crazy for charms, so this is right up my alley! She even included a darling little silver key charm tied to the package. What a fun treat to brighten up a cold, gray Thursday. Thanks again, Natalea!

More Silver Bella projects

With the rush of hosting family for Thanksgiving giving way to my December funk and the craziness of preparing for Christmas, my unfinished Silver Bella projects got summarily shoved to the side of my desk and and forgotten about. Now that I'm in the 'digging out' phase and enamored of the idea of having more than two square feet of workspace on my desk, I figured it was time to get them done. Hey, it's only been two months since I got back from Silver Bella, so I'm already ahead of my usual schedule--I still have unfinished projects from when I went to CKU back in 2004!

The two projects I finished were from my classes with Jenny & Aaron of Everyday is a Holiday. The first class was "Dreaming of a White Christmas" and we made this cute plaque with decoupaged images of candy-colored houses, hand-drawn by Jenny & Aaron. I think my favorite part is the icicles we made by cutting photocopied sheet music into random drippy shapes, then covering them with clear glass glitter. You can't tell by the photo but this piece is 10"x16".



The next class was called "Let Them Eat Cake" and features a plaque with this great cake image. We made a background using hand-painted wallpaper sheets and then decoupaged on the cake. We antiqued the whole thing using a paint wash and then added clear glass glitter to accent the cake. We had the option of adding fabric flowers and a feather for the bird's tail but I decided to forgo those in favor of this cute crepe paper pinwheel from a different class. I think I may use this to decorate for Maren's birthday each year. Maybe I can figure out a way to attach a number somewhere. This piece is 11"x15".


I loved the suggestions some of you had for the Coke bottle carrier I posted yesterday! If you have any more ideas, please share them

Sweeney Todd & Thrift Tuesday

First a Sweeney Todd review: Well, it was pretty gruesome. I'm familiar with the stage version, and although I knew the subject matter is dark as dark can be, it is far less....squirty...than this movie version is. It was like Tim Burton took the "Tim Burton" dial and turned it up to 11. The bleeding was really quite over the top, as was the scene with Mrs. Lovett's demise. The movie itself was visually striking, even though all of the colors were very grayed out. I loved the pop of color in the "By the Sea" number, and covet Mrs. Lovett's kooky red striped dress & stockings.

I was surprised at how well Johnny Depp sang, especially considering that he had no voice training at all for the movie. Helena Bonham Carter was adequate, but her voice was thin and it was obviously a big stretch for her. The music is quite difficult anyway, but a more accomplished singer might have sounded stronger. I was disappointed that a portion of my favorite song, "A Little Priest" was cut--that's the funniest part of the whole show and I think the lyrics are brilliant, so I was disappointed at so much of the humor cut out. I also think they could have played it a lot more manic--on the stage, it's played up for the laughs, and Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett are terribly amused with themselves. I thought in the movie version was a lot drier and just really missed out on how sickly funny the whole song is. Also, much of the really great harmony was cut, although I suspect that's because it was just too difficult for the actors to sing.

Overall, my feelings are mixed. It was really quite gory--from the spurting blood to the way the bodies are unceremoniously dumped from quite a height straight onto their heads, to Mrs. Lovett's fiery end. If you're squeamish, this is not the movie for you. It is dark and sinister and not the least bit uplifting. I quite like the music, and I enjoyed the actors' performances. I don't know that I'd want to see the movie again, although I am hoping we can get tickets when the most recent Broadway version of Sweeney comes to Denver this summer.

In other (less bloody) news, I went thrifting yesterday! I've been on the hunt for Valentine candy boxes to use for my swaps so I've hit all the local stores in the past few days. I was lucky and found one box, which I'm working on to send to Amy, and I've got my fingers crossed that I'll find another before the next swap is due out. I found a few other fun things as well: The dishes are the salad bowls that match my Christmas dishes. I don't have any, which I realized earlier in December when I offered to host a table at a church Christmas dinner and had to use another set of non-matching salad plates. I only found six dishes (I have service for eight) but I think six is better than none, and they were only 50¢ each. The vintage cards are unused and were only 80¢ for the stack. Not like I need any more vintage cards, but when I see old cards I am powerless to resist! I love the one on top with the bear and the red & aqua color scheme. Also shown are two pair of sparkly vintage earrings. They were more than I usually like to pay but they're really pretty and I'll put them to good use.

When I saw this fun old Coke bottle carrier, I grabbed it as fast as I could before anyone else had a chance to see it! It isn't terribly old--there's a date of 1976 on the inside--it is a fun piece, great bright red, and it was only $1.99. Not sure what I'll do with it yet but I couldn't leave it behind for that cheap. I also found these books for Maren (with the CDs still sealed), a darling pair of cherry-print linen Ann Taylor LOFT pants for Maren (did you know they had kids' clothes? I didn't), and a gorgeous vintage dress for me that is so fabulous that it deserves a post of its own.

If you signed up for the Sweet Goodness Hanging Hearts swap, you should have your partners by now! Be sure to email your partner and introduce yourself! I'll be back tomorrow with some Silver Bella projects that I finally finished.

Gratuitous Cute Kid Photo!

Friday Fiver and Attack of the Giant Snack Foods

First, the Friday Fiver:

1. Where do you like to walk? On the beach. Because I live in a land-locked state, this unfortunately doesn't happen very often.

2. What does your hair look like? You're familiar with Sideshow Bob, right? No, only kidding--it's not quite that bad! At the moment it does look slightly napped-upon, though. My hair is long and brown and curly. I'm completely bored with it, so I'm hoping to get in for a cut & highlight sometime soon.

3. What are you jealous of? The gorgeous homes I see featured in Country Living magazine. The ones with a perfect mix of quirky antiques and comfortable, homey furnishings. The ones decorated with charming vignettes that my toddler would destroy in 3.8 seconds flat.

4. What kind of promises do you make? I promise to only read one more blog and then I'll go do something productive. Swear.

5. What makes you stare? My handsome husband in uniform. My daughter when she's laughing. Women who are 63 who dress like they are 23.

And now, I have to share with you a website that has kept me amused for the better part of a week. I first found Pimp That Snack through Baking Bites. Earlier this year she was inspired by PTS and made a giant Hostess cupcake cake. I have a secret, shameful love for Hostess snack cakes so naturally, this caught my eye. That led me to Pimp That Snack, a website devoted to people who are determined to make gigantic versions of candy and snack foods for no other reason than just because they can. I haven't read all the archives yet but so far my early favorites are the Giant Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, these enormous Gummi Bears, and a ridiculously large Cadbury Creme Egg.

The site is British so some of the candy bars and treats may be unfamiliar to you, unless you are like me and became intimately acquainted with every type of candy bar available during my Study Abroad stay in London. (Incidentally, we had SUCH a problem with those British dryers shrinking our pants....I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with the aforementioned candy bars. I'm fairly certain that when an American eats British candy, most of the calories get lost in the conversion from the metric system. Ahem.) Anyway, if you need a good way to kill some time at work or avoid loading the dishwasher again, hop on over to Pimp That Snack for a fun read.

Tomorrow Maren is going to her first birthday party! Her little friend Abby is turning 3 and Abby's mom is bravely throwing a party and inviting other children. I've been telling Maren about it since the invitation came last week and she is SO excited! She keeps asking if it is time to go to Abby's party yet. Then provided I can find a babysitter, Quin and I are off on a hot date to see this. I can't wait! Hope you all have a fun weekend!

Valentine swap goodness

Thank you all for your suggestions about how to fix my blog template; I appreciate them so much! This weekend I'm going to save a copy of my template and then start fiddling around. Hopefully if you check back on Monday things will look different!

Tomorrow is the last day to sign up for the Sweet Goodness Hanging Hearts Swap! It's easy this time--create a hanging Valentine of some type for your partner. That's it! You can use any medium you'd like--as long as it hangs, it counts. LOL We have a good number of folks signed up already so it's shaping up to be a great group. Friday the 11th is the last day to sign up and then partner emails will go out by next Tuesday. To sign up, just send an email to heartswap2008@hotmail.com.

In addition to the Sweet Goodness swap, I've signed myself up for two other Valentine swaps. They are both the same theme so I figured I could handle two of them without totally overwhelming myself. I'm doing Maria's Sweet Heart Box Swap and ArtsyMama's For the Love of Supplies swap. For both swaps I get to decorate a heart-shaped candy box and fill it up with all sorts of trinkets and goodies in red, white, and pink. I think it sounds like so much fun, and I've already started gathering supplies. It's ironic--both my swap partners are from Anaheim! One is the fabulous Dede Warren, who I got the pleasure to meet at Silver Bella and the other is Amy Bauer, who doesn't have a blog. I'm on the hunt for some great candy boxes to alter--I'm itching to get my fingers all glittery!

Blogger help needed!

I need some Blogger help! When I look at my blog, I see a skinny bit of text in the middle, a sidebar, and then TONS of blank space on either side. It's driving me nuts! I'm all for a little white space to rest your eyes, but this is ridiculous. Can anyone help me with any of these issues?

• How do I stretch out my text column to make it wider? I'm pretty sure there's a way to do this, I just have NO IDEA how to fix it.
  
• How do I alter the size of my sidebar? I hate that my swap buttons are HUGE but I know it's because all items in the sidebar are the same width.
• Is there a way I can add a sidebar to both sides of my main text, like you see on Typepad blogs? I checked out the templates Blogger supplies but none of them have sidebars on both sides.

If any of you know the answers to my questions and can explain them to me slowly and patiently like I am a 4-year-old (HTML is not my friend), I would be very appreciative!

In other news, I went to Target this morning to see if there was any Christmas stuff left at 90% off. I was really good this year and did almost no after-Christmas shopping, but curiosity finally got the better of me. All of the Christmas stuff was gone, packed away to make room for the Global Bazaar line. Oh well! The Making Memories Christmas line from the scrapbooking aisle was still ringing up full price--I got some neat things 90% after Halloween, so I expected the Christmas stuff to be marked down too. Not that I needed anything but I love their designs and for 90% off, it's worth trying to find a place in the storage closet for it until next year. How annoying.

I did, however, find TONS of toys marked 75% off! I don't know how long that deal has been going but there were still several aisles quite full of good toys. Most of the stuff was for older kids and Maren already has more toys than she knows what to do with, but I picked up a few fun games for us (Totally 80's Trivial Pursuit, Harry Potter 2 Scene It, 1 vs. 100) and a few small toys to stash in the closet for birthday presents. I also went to JoAnn's, where I was surprised to see that all of the Easter decor is out already! Easter is early this year (March 23) but still, this seems awfully early. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised--after all, Target had Valentine stuff out well before Christmas. I will admit that I am terribly excited to pull my Easter decorations out this year! I loved them so much last year, and was sad to put them away. I'm eager to see my pretties again.

While the snow falls and Maren sleeps, I'm going to go get all the Christmas junk put away ONCE AND FOR ALL. It made it down to the basement, but it's all still in a pile at the base of the stairs and it's driving me nuts!

Very Gout I Talk!

Aw, crap. I missed a day! I really didn't mean to skip blogging yesterday--I took pictures and downloaded them and had a topic in mind and everything, but then I started watching a movie and forgot. Whoopsie.

Maren got a toy keyboard for Christmas from her Papa Quin. She loves it, most especially because it has an attached microphone and we all know how kids are powerless to resist the opportunity to amplify their already-loud voices by several times. Oy, my aching ears. Anyway, the keyboard was clearly manufactured outside this country--my bet is China--and whoever designed the packaging is clearly in need of a better translator. While Maren sang "Twinkle, Twinkle" at the top of her voice, we adults amused ourselves by trying to decipher the statements on the packaging.

This one has me completely mystified. Very Gout I Talk? Should that be Very LOUD I Talk? or Very GOOD I Talk? Or something different all together? No idea.


You may need to click this one to make it larger. The first line is perfectly intelligible, ditto for the second. But hang on a minute--"The Drum That Interest Clap Reaction Promotes The Hand"? What? There's more confusion about the drums on the other side of the box:


Drums Can Flap? Awesome. I love the first line, which is also splashed in huge letters across the front and back of the box: "37 Keys More Funtion Attune Electronic Organ." You'd think there was someone at that factory, in management perhaps, who had some grasp of the English language, wouldn't you? It's like they relied solely on a broken version of Babelfish to do their translating. For more entertaining mis-translations, go here.

Tagged by Tiff

Man, this is a nasty cold. I still feel like I have a head full of cotton, although I suspect most of that is due to a certain two-year-old who decided to cry and fuss every 25 minutes between the hours of 2:00 and 4:00 a.m this morning. Seriously, NOT a good night, and I haven't been able to shake it off yet. I feel like I need to go drink a giant Dr. Pepper or something; I need something to jolt me out of my fog. Because I'm still feeling blah, I'm taking the easy way out on blogging today and responding to a Tag from Tiff at Folded Gingham. Since I've already recently shared seven random things about myself, I'm going to cheat by answering seven Friday Fiver questions from the past couple of weeks.

1. Sweet, salty or savory? Most definitely sweet! I have a crazy sweet tooth. It gets me into big trouble.
2. Tell us something you love: I love when my DD is asleep and the house is quiet and I can get things done.
3. Who is the craziest person you know? That may have to be my nutmeg-eating younger brother, Kristjan
4. What's the last movie you saw? We rewatched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
5. Do you sleep with your bedroom door shut? Yes, otherwise the dog comes in at 4:00 a.m. and bugs us to feed him. Even with my door shut and DD's door shut, I can still hear her make even the smallest sound. I've developed Super Mom Hearing.
6. When do your claws come out? When people don't follow through with their responsibilities. Had one of these moments last night, in fact. Flakiness makes me insane.
7. Best ice cream topping? Hot fudge. Chopped Reese's cups. And sprinkles, oh yes, always sprinkles! Maybe not all of those at the same time, though. No need to gild the lily.

Here's hoping I return on Monday with a post where I'm not whining about how sick I am. Yeesh. Have a good weekend!

Meeting the Shoe-Obsessed One

Had you worried there for a minute, didn't I? Nope, I'm not pooping out on my January Blog Challenge a mere three days into it!

If you are a reader over at Memoirs of the Shoe Obsessed this will be old news to you, but over Christmas vacation I got to meet one of my very favorite bloggers in person! Andie and I first met through a swap that Shara hosted last summer and we've been fast blog friends ever since. Andie and I are both from the same area and our parents still live there. Since we were both in town visiting our folks over the holidays, we decided to squeeze out a little time to actually meet face-to-face. Our girls are close in age and personality, so we wanted them to be able to meet and play as well. There aren't a lot lunch venues that allow for a couple of wild two-year-olds to do their thing that don't have the golden arches or a giant animatronic mouse as their mascot, but at the last minute we thought of IKEA. After a lunch of those yummy meatballs, Andie and I tried to visit while simultaneously keeping our kids from a) destroying the store and b) getting lost. Who knew visiting with a friend could be such an aerobic activity?



Anyway, it was delightful--beyond delightful!--to actually meet Andrea. If you read her blog then you know she is fabulous, but she's even better in person! I wish so much that we lived closer together--I think between the two of us and our ~ahem~ spirited daughters, we could raise some serious hell! Anyway, I hope we get the chance to meet again sometime in the not-too-distant future. Andrea gifted me with the cutest blue and red apron that she made just for me! It's already gracing the pantry door and brightening up my kitchen.

She also included note cards in my favorite turquoise and red! Does she know me, or what? Um, my gift that I was making for is still on my desk. Ahem. Andie, I'll be getting to that soon, I promise!

Anyway, meeting your blogging friends in person? I highly recommend it! I hope that someday I can meet more of you!

A personal blog challenge + Free clip art!

After my pathetically sparse blog posting performance in December, I've decided to take up a personal blog challenge for January. I challenge myself to post at least every week day from now until January 31 (weekends are optional--I can post, but I'm not going to flog myself if I forget or need a break.) Hopefully I won't run out of things to write by day 14 and start posting things like My Top Ten Breakfast foods or Things I've Picked Out of My Toes. Some days may just be photos, but I promised they'll at least be gratuitously cute Maren pictures.

If you're not familiar with Dover Publications, now is the time to get acquainted. I've long loved Dover books--I used to buy the little books of paper dolls at an art store near my home and my college bookstore sold Dover Thrift Editions for a mere $1.00, which enabled me to buy myself a tidy little stack of the classics and poetry. One of the things Dover is best known for is its vast collection of permission-free clip art. A couple of years ago my mom gave me this book & CD-ROM for Christmas. I've loved it! There are beautiful Victorian-style graphics taken from postcards and greeting cards for nearly every holiday. I've used them frequently on my blog and have also printed them out to use in various craft projects. I recently ordered this book, which has illustrations that are more 1920s-30s in style. I like it quite a bit, but I still love the Holiday Vignettes book better.

If you want to get a taste of what Dover has to offer, both clip-art and other items, you can sign up for their weekly Sampler newsletter here. Every Friday you get a newsletter with links to all kinds of samples of featured products. Some are clip-art, some are coloring pages, mazes, games, illustrations, and much more. To save the images to your computer, just right-click and choose a folder. There is also a weekly e-card you can send that is usually a cute vintage illustration. I've really enjoyed getting them each week in my inbox and have amassed quite a few pieces of clip art in the process.

We're all still sick at my house. Maren has finally succumbed after toughing it out for almost two weeks now. She's a tough little girl, and her personality changes quite drastically when she's not feeling well. I had a rough morning today (no more codeine-laced cough-syrup for me, thankyouverymuch) but I'm actually feeling better right now so I hope it means I'm on the mend. Back tomorrow!

Happy New Year!

In 2008, may we be able to face our challenges with strength and grace, and may we receive our blessings with thanksgiving and appreciation.

I'm looking forward to another year of dear friends made through this blog! :)