Spring might be here ... but no guarantees

It's gorgeous in Seattle right now. Mid-60s, sunshine and the blue skies of legend.

I've been busy as well. Some good things happening in my life right now. (Bank of America is NOT one of them. But that's another story.) I've been making pages and trying (but failing) to get my studio organized. I've put together some things for the etsy shop -- mini inspiration kits being the latest. Eventually, I might even get them photographed and listed!!

The flowers finally are blooming too. See?

Happy Mother's Day!

Pretty relaxing day, except for the early evening, when both kids were a bit of a pill. (Seriously. Out of the 4,872 toy cars you both have, you HAVE to have the same one???) Anyway, I thought I should check in and say I'm still alive, and have been working on a few layouts, which are below. Hope your days have been productive and happy!

My brilliant children

Elephant's science fair project this year was on parasites:

He had three categories: micro, macro and entertaining. What's "entertaining" you ask? Try Mustafar lava fleas (from "Star Wars"), ear worms (from "SpongeBob") and Pokemon (there's a bug type, apparently). Pokemon is banned from his school, so I scored some serious Cool Mom cred by pointing out that he could hardly get in trouble by including them on a SCIENCE FAIR display, now could he?

:)

And here's Butterfly at the beginning of creation:
I love that she DEMANDS to paint. I would never dream of stifling such ambition.

I love these two.

Currently obsessed with ...

(and you'll need to mute the player at the bottom of the page before clicking play):

Pretty morning

Butterfly and I spent a few hours this morning being alternately snuggly and creative. A couple of days ago, I had cut and punched out various roundish shapes with an idea in mind.

Yesterday, I gathered some brads and flowers, and today we set to work taking the idea of my head and putting it into fruition.



Butterfly designed this one herself. Sweet, isn't it? I think I'm going to have to keep it:)

The rest, I'll be making some cute packaging for and selling on my etsy site.

Snow day

So tired of this weather. It's really dragging me down, the grey greys and the white whites. I miss sunshine!

Stuck at home today. The combination of living 5 minutes from the base of a mountain, living in the unincorporated and thus unplowed part of the county, on a dead-end street with a hill to climb up to the main road, a wussy-in-the-snow car and a terrified-to-drive-in-the-snow driver, makes it easy for this to happen.

See?




Took a few pictures of the pretty flowers I got while I was in the hospital:







But still kind of sad. Took some photos of my altered-book-in-progress, which I haven't shared here before:






and some pictures of a layout and some tags I've done in the past few days, just to show that I'm not totally lacking in creativity:)







But ... I'm still kind of sad. sigh

Happy early Valentine's Day

ATTN: April Cole, please don't read this till you open some mail from me:)

--------------------

I'm going in for surgery and am gonna be out of it for the next few days. That, and my seeming lack of ability to get back online, made me think I probably should get this up here so as not to shortchange anyone:)

I signed up for a swap through my friend Tara's blog, the pink couch. My swap partner is April (you might have heard that name somewhere ... above ... lol.) You can see how talented she is ... which made me really, really nervous! Plus the only swaps I'd done before this were supply swaps, and the last one didn't pan out. In other words, I sent my partner some goodies ... but my partner never sent me any. :*(

Anyway, this was a lot of fun, and fantastic incentive to get me making something when I've been down in the doldrums. So this is what I made!

Side 1:




See how it's a card? :)


Side 2:
This side is a little sign. :)



Sorry for the stinky sideways shots of the details. It drives me nuts that no matter what I do -- how I run the photos through editing programs and so on -- whatever Canon quirk it is is not easily surmountable.

So there you go! I hope you have a wonderful next couple of weeks. Be good to each other!

I never win but

that doesn't stop me from trying, lol. A beautiful, beautiful blogger (her AND her blog AND her art) is sponsoring a giveaway, and I'm hoping to be one of the winners. This is my favorite item from her shop:)



Wish me luck!!

A post!

I know I'm cheating. Oh well. I just haven't been so inspired lately. But I wanted to let you know I'm still kicking around. I'm planning on revamping my etsy shop soon. (I had decided to do this when lo and behold someone bought something! When I went to finish the sale, the rest of my listings had expired. eek.)

Anyway, in the interlude, please enjoy this word art by wordle.

Holiday traditions

Been busy as usual with the usuals, but wanted to share a few photos.

The Elephant and I decided to make some goodie bags to give to the people who adopt kitties from the shelter where we volunteer. Another volunteer had been doing this, but switched locations. I thought I'd start pretty small and see how they go:)

These are the finished eight. It was a pretty quick craft. I pulled some brown paper bags outta a drawer, grabbed some coordinating papers, washi tape, yarn, brads, eyelets and a cute stamp.

I stamped the little tag with a gift package design, and adhered one side to the bag via eyelets and brads. I also added a strategically placed strip of washi tape. One thing to note -- I left the tops of the paper longer, so they folded over the top of the bags, acting as a seal.

My sister's kitty was veeeerrrrry interested, probably because of the contents:)

I added a toy, a can of food and a little felt-wrapped catnip-filled square that I sewed. No need for perfection here -- the kitties will have these chewed up in no time!

We've been spending time doing our traditional Christmas activities. There's a wonderful display at a lake near our house that we always go to.

It's never, ever crowded, and always beautiful.

Here's Elephant.

And here's Butterfly; can you find her?

Found an awesome Sugar Cookie Workshop kit from Trader Joe's. What a lot of fun for 4 bucks! It has everything you need, save butter and an egg. It even came with three cookie cutters:)

Ahhh, cooperation!!

And the reward? Cookie dough. (Please don't leave comments about letting my kids eat raw egg. It's like a bazillionth of a percentage ... Plus I obviously survived a childhood of eating cookie dough, lol.)

And to the victors go the spoils! Yum!


Merry Christmas!

A banner day, part 2

Remember this? Um, yeah ... you're suppose to click that link to refresh your memory 'cause it's been so freaking long since part one that I know you forgot.

I almost did, after all:)

So anyway, I left off with all of the triangles cut out and the dread thought that there would be a lot of sewing ahead. Guess what? I cheated. There's this nifty invention out there called fabric glue. Why not use it?

I did, after all:)

I glued all but a small opening on each side of the top of the triangle. I then lined up all of the right-sided-out triangles to ensure I liked how the colors played off of each other, etc.

I strung the banners on a huge old length of nice ribbon, threading the ribbon through the left-open tops. See how they all slide into each other, though? Not to worry! That's where the buttons came in handy.

Not only did the buttons hold the individual flags in place,

they also looked pretty cute while hiding the unglued part. And yes, I admit I sewed the buttons on -- 50 of them, to be exact. Whew!

The banana buttons were specifically FOR my little monkey -- er, I mean Butterfly. She did pick them out, after all.

A bit of artful arranging on the previously mentioned blank slate curtain canvas ...

See the open spaces in the curtains, just outside? Yup, that was SNOW. Blech.

This is Harry, one half of my dad's cats. Isn't he gorgeous, especially in the sunshine? His brother, Houdini (Dad is obsessed with a certain magician), is equally beautiful, with orange points instead of black/grey.

Now if we could only keep him from unwrapping Christmas presents!