i dont think the staff of the homedepot by my house approves of the use of their products to make robot costumes. i scoured the store for all things robotic like washers, some funky sink drain screen things, nuts, bolts, expandy dryer duct, all kinds of things for the party tomorrow. i didnt really find the kind of things i thought i would. at least not for the prices i hoped for. what happened to the days when you could buy a bag full of washers for a dollar? not that i do a lot of washer shopping. i kept bugging this old guy, saying things like, "do you have any cool looking round things? or square? or something that looks like a robot to you" i dont think he had my vision. oh well. i did find some good stuff at hobby lobby, not as industrial looking as i was planning but still fun for the kids. i think the best find were these oversized silver hologram sequins, about the size of a nickel, a bag of three hundred for three dollars. now thats what im talking about! i hope this is as entertaining for the kiddos as i think it is going to be. melinda will be here in a few minutes to help me assemble and paint the boxes, i mean robot bodies. yippie! oh and i think i have finally figured out my server/photo issues, so maybe after all the party excitement i can post some pics!!
i got back to my roots tonight and made a fun set of three notecards to send to hillary as thanks for my new shirt. with all this excitment over fabric and sewing, i had kinda forgotten how much i love paper. sorry paper! but really paper, fabric is like your cousin. think about it, it is flat, comes in solids and patterns, can be cut to your liking, is functional and totally impractical at the same time. i could go on and on. i guess its a good thing i work at a store filled with paper. although i find i can almost never come home empty-handed. i think it would be pretty much the same scenario if i worked at a store filled with fabric. ooooh, what if someone opened a paper AND fabric store. how sweet would that be???
hooray! i got home from a blah day at work to find a package from hillary on my kitchen table! she sent me this cute snap shirt, which means i need to get crackin' and make her some note sets or something cute with the paper i promised her.... maybe i will poke around at the store tomorrow night.
we are getting all geared up for eliots robot party on saturday. he is pretty excited and he doesnt even know what we are doing! considering his glee over the robot mask kerry made out of a paper bag for him at dinner tonight, i think his little head might explode when he sees the fixins for the robot costumes! how fun! plus i emailed a picture of the invitation to the bakery lady so i am looking forward to a cool robot head cake. i had thought about doing this myself, but the last time i made a cake that wasnt flat and 9.5 x 11 was, oh wait, never! i have never made a layer cake, can you believe it? i think i was spoiled after all those years of special cakes from my grandma. *note to self, open bakery when kids are in college so i can bake teddy bear cakes for my grandchildren some day. does anyone else way over plan things? i mean come on, this is birthday party number three, is he really going to remember it? am i setting myself up for failure? is it crazy that i am already mulling over ideas for collettes first birthday in may? i think it might be.
speaking of collette, that little girl is on the move! she crawled officially today. ok, well, it was only two knee motions for a total distance gain of about five centimeters, but it was still a true knee pumping, hand slapping crawl. look out huffmania, here comes collette. i can only imagine how much stress this is going to cause eliot. he kind of freaks if she even leans towards his toys, what is he going to do when she is making a bee-line for them? leslie any help on this one? did allie have sharing issues with henry? am i in for it?
other good news today? my five (yes i said five) boxes of thin mints arrived at work. i think i had some sort of mini panic attack when they passed the order form around the office this year. somehow in the shuffle i forgot to sign up last year and had NONE! it was awful, hence the five boxes this year. but it was well worth all the taunts from coworkers. i feel so secure opening that freezer door and seeing four boxes stack up in there. that should last until the end of february at least...
Hi Hannah! Oh a robot party -- that sounds like oodles of fun!!! Oh my gosh, he's going to love it! And always remember that these kids' parties are just as much for the mamas as they are for the kids. So even if they don't remember --- they have your memories to live by (and photos too!). Go ahead, go over the top! That's allowed! :)
At 2 years old Alison was remarkably maternal over her little bro, so sharing wasn't an issue back then. Now, however, is a whole new ball game. I am constantly intervening, trying to get the two of them to grasp the concept of sharing. But that's normal with all kids....so we're just trying to get by this stage! :) (It does pass, right?) Ha ha!
Oh I like your snap shirt from Hillary! I received my little dress yesterday too....can't wait for her next swap!
i know how much clark LOOOOOVES talking about crafts. so i thought i would throw in a few male oriented links to keep the opposite sex occupied. i find this site quite funny. dont forget to try the other names on the left side. and even though this may seem girly upon first glance, the pictures are hilarious and so is her commentary. i suppose all guys like this? i dont really know....
a few weeks ago, i stumbled upon a blog that allowed you to sign up for snail mail. hope, the creator of the blog, would then send you a real card in the mail. pretty cool huh? i kind of forgot about it all, until my card showed up yesterday. it was nice to get real mail along with all the bills and junk. after the kids went to bed, i made a little card for hope and am popping it in the mail tomorrow. how fun!
my friends chad and jenney went into the hospital tonight to induce labor. they are expecting their first baby, and she is making us all wait anxiously. jenney was due jan 18th. here is hoping all goes well this evening and that baby babcock makes her entrance soon, and that all are happy and healthy!
isnt it funny how we all assign ourselves degrees of accomplishment? i have been thinking about this lately, as my desire to make things has grown. i think, man, i cant do anything. i wish i was as creative as hillary, or tara or annie. but then i realize my friends think i am very crafty. how can that be? then today hillary posts a link to a beautiful webpage with miniature quilt art. so pretty, and she wishes she was that creative!! are you kidding me? she wishes she was creative??? at what point to we acknowledge our own skills? i guess this is the point where i say to myself, yes i have some creative ideas, and yes there are people way more creative out there than me. but this is good, because it makes me want to get better. or i could just quit trying to do things myself and just make one of these....
i have realized that html makes me feel utterly stupid. i know that i have the brain capacity to figure it out, but i just cant quite make that last crucial leap. it is so frustrating. i can see in my head how i would like my blog to look, but i cant make it happen. it must be similar to being a baby and not being able to talk. collette communicates just fine with her squeals and grunts, but you can tell she wants to say so much more. me too. i want to design, post, upload, whatever you call it, so much more on this dumb thing.
i am a fabric addict. i cant be stopped. kerry and i snuck into sarah's fabrics in lawrence last night while clark had to run to the gap really quick. i almost had a mental breakdown. so much cute fabric!!! oh my goodness. my brain couldnt process for a few minutes. i just kept circling the first stand of bolts right by the door. finally i managed to escape my stupor and look around the rest of the store. oh baby!
i had the whole evening to myself tonight. i thought about working on eliots superhero cape, or trying my hand at another zipper pouch, but decided it was too cold to go outside. note to self, next time we buy a house, make sure you can get to the basement from the INSIDE of the house... instead i spent the evening going through all of the tpod archives. that trixie, she is so cute. makes me wish i was more diligent taking pictures of eliot and collette. tomorrow, i will start tomorrow. on a cool people note, we had two encounters tonight. kerry came over bearing gifts from her mom from gymboree. needless to say, all the loot was for eliot and collette. thank you kerry, thank you mrs. fulton! i think now that the evening is winding down, its time to fill up the old hot water bottle (yes, you read correctly, and i love it) get in bed and read some les miserables. i like some light reading before bedtime...
i havent quite yet figured out how to be able to add as many photos to a post as i want... it is irritating. flickr wants me to post an entry for every photo. so here it goes. as promised some project picks. this first one is a baby sweater i am knitting for collette out of pistachio rowan big wool. it is very yummy.
That is adorable. Isn't it amazing how small the sleeves are? Baby clothes are the best....especially little girls' clothes. The buttons are so sweet too.
What size needles are you using for the rowan big wool?
here are the buttons that i am going to use for collettes sweater. kris was kind enough to bring her moms old button box to work and let me dig around in there for some, i thought these were perfect. what do you think? post a comment and let me know.
right after i made a pillow case for eliot from marikos tutorial, i made this bag. i found a great tutorial on craftster called jordy bag. it was so easy to follow, im sure i will make so many more of these. i made it big enough to fit all the pretty paper i get from work...
for an extra challenge right off the bat, i decided to add a pocket to the inside of my bag. it is perfect for holding the receipt for the things i need to return to anthropologie before david gets mad at me. and if any of you ladies have an eagle eye, you will spy my joanns mailer peeking out too. i used the 40% cupon to buy the material for eliots superhero cape. more on that later.
i made this zipper pouch tonight. it was kind of a beast. i didnt really know what i was doing. hillary directed me to another tutorial on craftster. it really helped, but i still didnt know what i was doing. what is a topstich? i have no idea, and i didnt do it. hopefully it isnt the secret to keeping this pouch together. this sunday we are having a post-holidays/inventory party at papersource. we are doing a secret gift exchange, and the rules were you had to make it, and you couldnt spend more than five dollars and an hour on it. this pouched squeaked in under the limit. i hope kirsten likes it! again i am mad at flickr because i already reached my free photo limit and i didnt get a chance to upload the interior shot , it has a really pretty chartreuse lining.
tonight was going to be devoted to taking pictures of all my current and completed projects and posting them on this blog. not so. sorry kerry. i know you are my most devoted reader! i promise that i will be doing just that tomorrow night. tonight david has dibs on the computer and camera for real work. craftiness comes second. oh well. it is becoming more and more apparent that we need a second computer at home. this will most likely be some version of the imac and most likely a desktop. which is good and bad. i do like the macs, i just dont feel as confident yet with them. although i found out that the art institute offers a class on getting to know your mac. i just might have to do that. and if i ever want to realize my dreams of graphic design and web page building, i will most certainly be better served with the mac. i suppose that makes it official. im a mac person. i feel kind of strange admitting it.
if you look down three posts you will see that the long post about my favorites was not lost like i had thought. it was just there this morning, how strange. anyway, please enjoy the links. although now that i think about it they seem to be decidedly girly. maybe i need to include links like this or this for any male readers i might have.
i just spent about a half an hour detailing all the blogs i like to read with all kinds of links and cool commentary, only to have an unexpected error as i was posting. lost the whole thing. maybe some other night. i need to go to bed. suckety...
david got some negative feedback from warner brothers yesterday, and he was pretty upset about the whole thing. if you dont believe me, check out his post. i just want to say that i am so proud of him. for everything. for getting his masters, writing his thesis, staying home with eliot, and having a freelance editing job all at the same time. doesnt sound possible? well he did it. for starting not one, but two businesses while staying at home with eliot and collette. who needs just one business to run, or one kid to look after? why not do two at the same time? impossible? nope. he's doing it. how about writing basically his first screenplay and having warner brothers (warner brothers!!!) read it not once, but twice! i would say that is one hell of an accomplishment. so all of you out in cyberspace (c-y-b-e-r chase!) now you know how proud i am of my husband.
so i have become hooked on blogs. i love them. especially the creative, crafty ones. i like to check all of my daily reads in the morning, its almost like reading the paper. only much better. besides, i get all my vital local and national news from npr in the car on the way to work. blogs are almost like a choose your own adventure for adults. you find one you like, then look at the links that they like, find another you like, then look at those links, and so on. you get the idea. so anyway, i decided to share a few of my favorites right here. also just in case anyone might have missed the links list i painstakingly added manually to my html code on the side bar to your left. of course there is davids blog. i check that often, for insight and to make sure he doesnt say anything embarrassing about me. and now that toby is back in kenya, i will most definitely be checking his photo gallary with regularity. he likes to sneak in new pictures all the time. then there is the hinge, who really introduced me to blogs. there was a time during the elections when i thought we might not be friends anymore, but i have gotten past that.
moving on to people that i havent known personally for quite some time. there is of course hillary. i love, love love her blog. she is amazing! her beautiful bags, her sickingly cute stuffeds... i really cant hardly take it she is so good. i found hillary from a link from jennys blog. jenny is another crafty lady that can do everything, cook, knit, sew, garden. you name it. plus, you just have to love her cute characters. and mariko, god bless her sewing tutorials. i found them once a long time ago before i was a blog reader, but now i just think her blog is cool, and her sewing skills amaze me. another followed link was the trixie update, which i read regularly now as well. i already posted about ben and his super daughter. they really are super! i also fine myself drawn to designers blogs, maybe because i secretly wish i would have studied graphic design in college. one really cool one is ericas. i love her illustrated tutorials, pretty much her entire graphic style. very cool.
now you know what i do on the internet, besides window shop for things that i would love to have but really dont need. does anyone else love to fill up their carts and then close out the whole window? maybe just me...
is what my husband made me feel about the post where i talk about holding eliots hand. he said it sounds like i dont love my kids. i went back and read it, it does sound kind of mean, and i certainly do love my kids. im sorry. i guess i just dont want to be one of those annoying people that ALWAYS talk about their kids, and how they are the best, and perfect and whatever. i am very suspicious of the parent who doesnt admit that sometimes their kid drives them crazy. im not buying it. speaking of obsessive parents, check out this guy. i appreciate what he is doing from a historical, posterity standpoint, but it just makes me exhausted looking at his webpage. so much work! and then he has to find time to still take care of his daughter!!
i did it, i did it! i went down to the basement and had a little heart to heart with my sewing machine. we both agreed that we needed to get down to business, and with that i sewed my first ever project, a pillowcase for eliot!! it is this cool, retro airplane fabric. i will take a picture once my digital camera gets here. i found the instructions from this great blog called super eggplant, created by mariko, a very smart lady. thank you mariko!! i need to get down to business on eliots superhero cape for his birthday, but maybe i can sneak in a little tote bag before then...
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