magic birthday

or golden birthday, or whatever else you want to call it. today i am 29 on the 29th. wow. here it is, the last year of my 20s. ive gotta say, im not to sad to see them go. dont get me wrong, im still going to enjoy this last year as much as the next 20 something, but i am ready for 30s. i think they are going to be good. no, i know they are going to be great! thank you all so much for the birthday wishes. toby thank you for the card from kenya! david, thank you for my beautiful flowers! mom and dad, thanks for making me. probably the best gift of all.

man, i thought that shirt was so sexy in the second grade...

mail and one big hole

so i managed to get two packages to the post office today. my backtack goodies are on their way to canada. can i say that? i guess so, she is going to find out soon enough anyway. so here is what i came up with.

a little zippered pouch filled with embroidering goodies, some leftover fabric, an owl days of the week tea towel ebroidery pattern, a vintage summery lounge coat pattern, a summer kinder egg (doesnt get as melty, how cool??) and a needle roll. it was my first attempt at a needle roll. harder than i thought it was going to be. here is a shot of the inside. im pretty pleased with it.

it looks very similar to the one i received, thanks mary for your inspiration! so on to the big hole. david got something very big accomplished this weekend. when we bought our house, on the side there was this awful raised concrete bed full of yucca and chicks and hens and all kinds of things that im not crazy about. sorry yucca but i hate you unless im in texas somewhere. anyway, being the respectable, new homeowners that we were, we made a half-assed attempt to dig out the plants, then let the thing get all overgrown for the next three years. nice, huh? so this last week, in some fit of restless energy david decides he is going to chop down all the weeds, dig out the bed, bust it all up with a sledge hammer and get the thing the freak out of there. he man-handles the weeds with no problem, and then starts digging... and digging, and digging. holy cow, what we though was a 18 inch raised bed turned out to be an old concrete gold fish pond filled in with huuuuuge rocks! you think im kidding? check it.

look at the size of those rocks, and how deep that piece of crap is!!! here is a shot of david in the thing for scale. notice the tired look on his face that says, "what have i started?"

he got the whole thing dug out tuesday night i think. i secretly thought it was just going to stay like that for another few months, but no! a second surge of restless energy was to be had on saturday. my dad showed up with his big truck and his big jack-hammer. yeah, there was no way a sledge hammer was going to do a thing to this baby. i wish i would have gotten some action shots of them busting the thing out, but it was really hot and surprisingly disturbing in a homoerotic way to watch two men use a jack-hammer. (im thinking village people-esque here). they managed to get the whole thing broken up, hauled out, and filled back in. see how much happier and cleaner david looks. way to go sweetie!

there is one last small pile of rocks to be hauled away, and then the plan is to plant some peony bushes along the side of the house and put down some grass seed on the rest. can you believe it!?? it looks a million time better. you rock david!

very cool

myra has thrown down a thrifting challenge for this weekend. it goes a little something like this, how many cool items can you get for 20$? hmmm... well today i had some free time to stop buy an estate sale. unfortunately for me, i never find those estate sales where the nice little old lady had a huge stash of fabric and notions. i dont know why, but i never do. fortunately for me, my friend sarah does and she buys me cool fabric. but, i digress. so at this particular sale, which was ho-hum, but i still managed to kick start my thrift challenge weekend. i bought five old photographs for one dollar. they are so cool! i love that i dont know anyone in the pictures, and im not sure where some of them are. they all say kodacolor print july '65 on the back. these two are in san francisco, im pretty sure.

that guy in the glasses squinting at the camera is the son i think. there were a few big, nicely framed pictures of him. im digging that lady with the kerchief over her hair.

this is where things get hazy. i have no idea where this is, joice st. anyone? is that sanfran? its a pretty sweet car though. anyone have eagle eyes and can make out the plate? i cant.

i really like this one quite a bit. the guy feeding the pigeons is the dad, i think. at first i thought this was in europe, but upon closer inspection, the billboards in the back are in english. so maybe london somewhere? maybe they are in d.c.?

this one is my absolute favorite. i love everything about this picture, and i cant explain why. look at that kid, and that white-blonde hair. i love that he is wearing a belt and slacks on vacation. he looks so relaxed. im not sure what i will do with these, maybe use them for cards. more than likely i will just keep them, put them on my fridge or inspiration board. i also found a pretty cool 8mm camera for david, but im not counting that in my thrifting total. so that means my current standings are: 1 item, $1. not too shabby...

for me

i am so excited. i placed my first order for japanese craft books today from yes asia, a little early birthday present to myself!! well, early in the sense that i ordered before my brithday (the 29th) but it wont ship until july 6th and arrive around july 14th. i ordered two skirt books that i spotted on marikos blog (i also borrowed these pictures from her, thanks mariko!).

i cant wait! happy birthday me! and thank you david for telling me to just order them already.

real fast

so, i am officially back in kc after many weeks of fieldwork. it feels good to be home and to know that i wont have to leave again in four days. on the downside, it was really, really, really hard to sit in the office today for eight hours straight. ugh. i couldnt take it anymore, so i broke down and am posting really fast like. i have a picture of my cousins wedding invitation that was done by an amazing local letterpress artist named brady. he started a business called hammerpress, and if you are ever in kc you should run, not walk, down to his store/studio and buy up all the cool postcards and prints you can afford. his webpage doesnt do him justice, and this scan of the invitation certainly doesnt do him justice. all the great texture and color is lost in the jpg. phooey. but because it is so freaking cool looking, i just had to share it. i have been meaning to for a while.

how awesome! and it totally fits their personality. i mean come on, not very many people have a skull and crossbones on their wedding invitation, right? (there is a little brown skull and crossbones above the star at the top center of the invite, hard to make out on this scan, i know). its printed on this brown cardboard/chipboard type paper that brady uses all the time. i could go on and on, but this is supposed to be a fast post at work and its time for me to leave anyway, yippie!

too much

sometimes when my husband is bored at home with the kids, he sends me little gems like this. it takes a bit to load, then double click the black box...

so much back-tack love!!

**after spell-checking i realized that this is a ridiculously long post with tons of pictures, sorry if it takes a long time to load!

i realized when i sat down to write this post that i never mentioned that i was participating in the back-tack swap! how did such a wonderful thing as that slip my mind? i have no idea. the most amazing package arrived at my doorstep from my sweet backtack pal. can i reveal? i think so, the amazingly talented mary! look at all the goodness she sent me!

here are some closeups and then i will gush over the contents...

so first off, WOW! can you believe it? i love the fabric and what mary did with it. i have been wanting a needle roll for a while now. much, much nicer looking than the clear plastic totebox i have been lugging around. and the matching pouch filled to the brim with knitting goodies...how awesome. i mentioned that i have been wanting to try to knit some socks, and she sent the most beautiful, softest yarn i have ever seen. i am almost afraid to try anything with it, what if i ruin it??? exclusively found at purl in soho i might add. there is also a really cool bookbinding primer from the 50s and that cd is an electronic copy of a book on how to knit a whole enchanted castle!! if i was a really good mom, i would knit the whole thing up for eliot for christmas. im not that good. maybe someday. oh and for kicks, she even threw in the leftover fabric!! thank you so, so much mary. i am blown away by your talent and generosity!

gosh, on my own meager crafting note, i managed to whip up a bag for my sisters birthday a few days late, but i dont think she will mind. except for the solid chartreuse fabric for the handles and on the inside, the rest is made from some martha stewart tea towels i scored at kmart last week. i was so happy to find something in my stash that coordinated so well. even though she lives in town i am going to mail it because we all know how fun it is to get mail.

here is a peek at the inside. i was so happy to have enough leftovers to make a pocket for the inside. hillary was right, those magnetic snaps are freakishly strong.

we had a great time at the wedding last weekend. it was very strange to be without the huffsters. i put them to bed at my parents house and then met up with david to see a movie friday night. in the theater! wow! afterwards we were itching for some coffee and grub so we headed over to nichols lunch. its this awesome diner that has been around since the 30s and is open 24 hours a day. you sit down to eat a three dollar breakfast at 1:30 in morning next to just about anyone from a homeless guy to a drag queen from the bar next door. the evening was so, whats the word... oh yeah, "single" for us. in the david and hannah pre-kids sense. it was nice to have some time to sit and talk and more importantly to sleep in the next morning. i forgot what a luxury it is to sleep until nine. pure heaven. just the perfect amount of sleeping in, not too much so that you feel like your day is wasted, but enough to feel decadent. the wedding on saturday was beautiful, it was at a beautiful old farmstead that has been in the grooms family since the late 1800's. we spent the evening outside enjoying good weather and good company. it must have been a good night since i was able to get david to have his picture taken with me.

if you are very observant and have a good memory you will notice that i have no tan lines! i had good success with the neutrogena build-a-tan product. it also helps that this isnt a closeup, but it did even things out pretty good. at least it didnt look like i was still wearing a wife-beater under my dress. that was my goal anyway. and last but certainly not least in this tremendously long post, i couldnt help but throw in a picture of the yummy smoothies we have been having for dessert every night. you just cant go wrong with relaxing on the porch swing with your family, enjoying a summer night, drinking a big glass of this...

i heart papersource

today was my first day back at the papersource and i almost forgot how much i like being there. being in a place filled with beautimus paper and creative people is good for the soul. i mean what other manager gives you tips on how to wrap a wedding gift??? seriously. we are going to a wedding this weekend in a little town outside of wichita. i love wrapping gifts, and i seem to really get a kick out of wrapping wedding gifts. i like to make them pretty, but not so "wedding" you know? this is what i came up with.

all you paper addicts like myself might recognize the design of the wrapping from snow & graham. they make such awesome stuff. im a sucker for anything letterpressed. i stamped the card with one of my all time favorite stamps ever. she is just gorgeous. here is a closeup.

i bought her, along with many other stamps, online from papercandy. such awesome retro images! i also used a great stamp from them for my christmas cards last year. speaking of cards and my love of letterpress, i bought this really great card today at the store from a place called egg press in portland organ. too cute, and look at the awesome woodgrain envelope! love it, just love it! amy do you know anyone at egg press? if so tell them i think they are wonderful!

on a non-craft related topic, has anyone had any luck with evening out tan lines with self-tanner? i have some monster "farmers" tan lines from being out in the field, and let me tell you, they just dont look very pretty in a nice dress. i suppose i should have started working on this problem sooner instead of two days before the wedding, but i was hoping they would somehow magically disappear. hmmm. i guess not. i suppose i will be sporting a cardigan all night. maybe if we let eliot dress himself for the wedding nobody will notice my tan lines. this has been his getup for the last few days.

pjama pants arent just for sleeping, they are for all day i have been told. he wouldnt touch the bear slippers last winter, but i guess they are the cats meow in the 90 degree weather. go figure...

a tale of two tshirts

so is that totally dorky, or what? oh well. today i "modified" two shirts that have been haunting my closet. i got this wrappy number off the clearance rack at the gap for four dollars. a nice yellow, but a little too gape-y for my tastes. i am also really bad about having just one nice white tank which always seems to be dirty when i need it to wear under something, so i took some cute fabric i had laying around and made a little panel for it.

it was more difficult to take a picture of myself in the mirror than i had anticipated. mostly this just looks like a gratuitous shot of my chest. nice. the second shirt was a plain white girls shirt i picked up at target for some potential embroidery. as i was digging around in my pit of a basement/craft area, i rediscovered some photocopies from a japanese craft book that amy sent me, and was inspired. i managed to put this together on the front porch swing while the huffsters were napping. i really like how it turned out, here is a shot post washing.

and here is my attempt at a close up...eah.

at first i was actually going to do some applique and slip-stitch and the whole bit, but then i got lazy and just left the edges raw. they are a little fuzzy now, but thats cool too. much faster anyway. i had hoped to post pictures of collette all cute and smiley in her swimming suit today but she was not as thrilled with the pool as i thought she would be. our sweet friend julie invited us over to swim today. maybe next time!

ps. note to self, wash grubby eliot prints off the mirror in the closet.

tractors, bedhead and garage sales

it feels so good to be back from arkansas for the last time. it feels even better to take the whole week off from work to stay at home with eliot and collette! we started off the week right by packing up and heading out to deanna rose farmstead in overland park. eliot had a blast running around, checking out all the animals. he was a bit nervous feeding the goats....

he had no problem however climbing onto the gazillion tractors around the place. he wanted to take this one home, think it would fit in the back of the civic? hmmm.

i think the trip to the farm pretty much wiped collette out. she slept hard. how hard you ask?

that is some pretty mean bedhead. i love how that clip is just fighting to stay on. i have been tossing around the idea of sewing some sort of kerchief (?) with elastic for her. i had some time to go to an antique store and some garage sales while i was in arkansas, and managed to find two old sewing books, so hopefully there will be some inspiration to be found. i also found what i think to be an amazing find. so before i reveal the pictures, let me set the scene. around christmas time, the papersource was carrying some postcards of images of mens clothing from catalogs from the 70s. i totally fell in love with them, and sent some to my snailmail buddies and amy at angry chicken. here is a picture of the box so you can get an idea.

since i found these i have been obsessed with these kitchy images of men, imagine my delight when i stumbled upon these babies at the garage sale...

i almost choked when i saw them. i had to casually ask the lady how much she wanted for the set, she had them marked two dollars a piece, but said i could have them all for five. i calmly said, ok, paid her and got the freak out of there before she changed her mind! i cant wait to have company! although i made this disturbing discovery when i went to wash them...

apparently when you add water, their, um, "clothes" disappear. HA! so funny, i pretty much laughed for about ten minutes straight standing at the kitchen sink. unfortunately david had gone to work so i had no one to share my discovery with. i just cant get over how funny they are! im totally having unsuspecting company now. if only i can find some forks and spoons like the pens with those naked ladies that "undress" when you turn them upside down. that would be priceless. so which one is your favorite ladies?? its hard to choose. david is fan of the guy with the towel. i think im going to have to go with the studly guy next in line.