The sun will come out

Oh the sun is starting to make regular appearances around here and it is so lovely. The rain has made everything very green (even if the gloom has also made it very late to leaf and flower).

I’m so glad we did this nice neighbor fence on this side. Tuesday loves to chat with Tracy and spy on her garden, I don’t think Tracy minds too much. I set about picking every weed in the yard this weekend; call me crazy but I love it! It is the most satisfying thing to me. Tuesday loves it too, the only downside is if we walk to the car and she sees a weed in those ten steps she screams, “WEED” and has to pick it right then. I hope I’m not setting her up for gardening OCD in the future.
My dad brought his dog, Buddy, over for a walk. Tuesday happiness = through the roof. When my dad calls she always asks to speak to buddy. hahaha

 



Taking a break to stuff treasures into her pockets.

Oh no! Brent and Kat aren’t home? (my brother lives a few blocks from me). Well, carry on…

I really could get used to this weather.

cut it out, gift it up

Our favorite twins turned two this week and we celebrated in style. I wanted to do something fun for their presents and decided to go with matching (well coordinating) tee shirts. Carmen’s husband came up with the idea to flip flop the colors for each twin and they came out great.


The cow thing isn’t just totally random and out of the blue; my friend Karen (their mom) comes for a line of dairy farmers and works in the industry. I never showed the creations Carmen and I made when she was visiting, but I am loving heat transfer in the Silhouette. Even though my blade is nearly dead (I’ve never changed it—holding out for a sale!) it still cuts this stuff like butter. I got my material from Specialty Graphics vs. the Silhouette branded stuff. You can buy by the foot (really a 14×14 inch piece) and they have a lot more variety. This is the EasyWeed and I have a batch (um a pretty large batch) of HotMark coming (so if you have more tee shirt ideas let me know!). It is still a bit expensive so I always fill up all the space when I go to cut with other random shapes I think I might use. I put a bird in the margin and used it to spruce up a many times re-used gift bag:

I was hesitant to iron on the paper, but it worked like a dream. Tuesday unknowingly helped me with the tag. I took a sheet of watercolor paper she’d used and ran it through the Silhouette.

Love how it turned out (minus having to cut it three times, I really do need that new blade).
The party was so great, I love hanging out with my friends and Tuesday had a blast. The birthday girls were loving life.



Tuesday vs. Lachlan: mini bites vs. big bite. She hates to get food on her face, hands, clothes, etc. That doesn’t always stop her, she just starts freaking out and pointing to it. Biggest photo challenge of the day? A bounce house. Holy moly.





These two are so funny together. I really need to get it on video. I almost didn’t get my camera out as is; I don’t know why sometimes I just want to blend in, but I love these images. Birthday parties are the best.

naptime

me:

Tuesday:

*I found a project sort of like the one shown here on Pinterest. I finally took the plunge and went over there. It’s awesome, like visual bookmarking (way better than my totally unorganized bookmarks). I am in the process of moving all my starred things on google reader over to it. I was hesitant, but it is so ridiculously easy. If you have a board let me know! You can find me here, and if you need an invite I’m happy to send one to you.
p.s. Tuesday is into dressing herself and picking out her own outfits. You can’t see it but her underwear are on inside out as well and she has train socks on. Nice touches, don’t you think?

tip toeing

Last week Donna and I decided we could handle three kids at the tulip festival (this is where Donna interjects that it was my idea). We actually did pretty well. We went to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival, the one we hit up every year for wonderful color during this horribly grey time of year (yes some of you have snow, but you also get sun). We lucked out to because it was partly sunny which was wonderful, and so needed.

You can’t see it here but William is saying to himself, “how fast can I get in one of these puddles?!?!”

We rode this little cow train (little teaser: I have a cow craft coming up this week, any guesses what it is?). I realized Tuesday was too big to sit with me, but she did great in her own seat.

I got to switch to the seat in front of her when William decided the ride wasn’t for him:

Tuesday was a bit more mellow about the whole thing.


It helped that I had her on a constant stream of freshly popped kettle corn. The smell of popcorn is probably one of my top five most hated smells, so you guess how far I was willing to go to bribe her.

The fields were beautiful, even though we went very late in the season. In fact they are extending the festival through the eighth if you are in the area (this is in Woodburn, Oregon).
Now I need your help with something. My neighbor has these gorgeous tulips blooming now. They are a late blooming dwarf tulip, but she doesn’t know what type is called. She didn’t get them at Wooden Shoe, and I don’t know where else to look. I must have them, I keep wanting to snip them all from her yard! I took this picture yesterday so if you have tulips that look like this right now please let me know!

So, so beautiful.
Until next year tulips!

What I’ve been beading… and a give away!

I am loving beading right now! I found an old book of mine that I remember drooling over as a kid and am using that to learn some new tricks. It’s crazy to me that I can have a book 20 years old and still use it to learn things, I really don’t feel old enough for that to be happening. I’m sure people feel like that their whole lives, but re-reading this book just brought back so many memories and suddenly 20 years seems so quick. So one of the things I decided to try my hand at is making beaded stitch markers for knitting.

This is my first batch. I sent them home with Carmen, since she’s addicted to knitting now. I happened to have this sterling sliver wire from a bead and gem show I went to years ago in my stash. I just made a little loop on the bottom so the beads wouldn’t fall off, strung the beads (with a special little silver one first) then looped the wire around a pen and twisted. I cut the left over wire and tucked it so it wouldn’t snag the knitting. SO EASY. I should have done these years ago, as I’ve bought some spendy ones myself at wool festivals.

Of course, as with everything, I had to go all in on this project. Kristen pointed me to Belladonna Beads (in Portland) after our just sort of sucessful bead shopping here in town. I went nuts! Turns out pure silver wire is expensive (lucky you Carmen!), and the coated copper much less. Also they make special tools for beading. I knew that, but now I have some and they are so much nicer than my Master Mechanic tools. They stay open until you squeeze them which is so helpful.

Also the pin things that have a nice end on them already so the beads don’t fall off = genius!
So to my knitting readers out there, would you like a set of ten markers? You can tell me what colors you like, and size (I can make bigger or smaller loops for the needles). I’m happy to ship them anywhere. Leave me a comment today and I’ll choose someone Friday!
*Comments are closed, Kelsey  was the winner!

With out a plan.

I just started throwing fabrics on the design wall yesterday, no plan.

I started sewing it together. Turns out you need to have two straight edges for fabric to lay flat. Enter seam ripper.

I’m not sure what is going to become of this, but so far I’m learning a lot and having tons of fun with it.
Go do something out of your comfort zone today. I doubt you’ll regret it.

Second baby bumps deserve some love too


When Carmen and I were pregnant the first time it was all we talked about. Baby this, baby that. I don’t think it’s just because I’m not pregnant that we don’t talk baby all the time. It’s our two little girls that have us chatting most of the time. When I first picked her up at the airport I exclaimed, “oh your bump is so cute!” I knew she was pregnant, and we did talk about it some, but I can see how second (and third, and forth…) babies get a little less focus. I’m going to try to squeeze in a shoot with her whole family when they come back down for her brother’s wedding, but I wanted to get some just of Carmen while we were having girl time.

We carved out about thirty minutes from our busy crafting, chatting, eating agenda and shot these in the pearl in Portland. It was bright and sunny for one day, and we happened to be out in it. Of course this meant shade was better for taking photos, but Carmen wanted to make sure we got a few that showcased the beautiful weather, like the one above.

Carmen in front of her dream home, a condo right in the pearl.

Sorry Carmen, I should have gone across the street to get all of the lovely garden in!

Carmen is due in August, so it’s much earlier than a regular maternity shoot. But you know what? She still has so much energy and was up for anything that I’m totally down with earlier maternity photos now, it was so fun.


Carmen you’re gorgeous and I love you! Kisses to baby girl number two!

And us now


Oh my what fun Carmen and I had. When you plan a girls weekend just to do girls things I think it’s pretty hard not to have a fabulous time. We beaded, and chatted, made tee-shirts and chatted, shopped and chatted, and ate and chatted. Among other things. The photo above was taken at Word of Mouth Cafe. I asked Carmen what places she wanted to eat at while in town and this topped the list.

Rightly so, oh my goodness yum. I opted for the fruit in the fruit vs. potato battle. But least you think me too healthy I also got a last minute side of biscuits and gravy, oops!

Carmen got the cream brule (spelling?) french toast. I’m not a big fan of french toast, but I must admit this looked good (and the super thick bacon was good, she let me try some). Nora, I’m not sure when you are coming back up here, but I know where I am taking you guys to eat this time!
I have a few more pictures from our trip. Not of all the fun things we did, since we were too busy having the fun times (and often in sweat pants), but of an impromptu photo shoot with Carmen. I couldn’t resist her cute baby bump (she’s due in August). So you’ll have to image photos of the first night when I picked her up around dinner time. We went to Homegoods (there isn’t one in Alaska), and then a nearly three hour Moroccan dinner… with Tuesday! She did great though, having a belly dancer in the restaurant helped hold her attention :). Thursday we did some more shopping, and worked on tee-shirts. I will say we are both addicted to using the Silhouette for tees now. Carmen got to come to the Portland Modern Quilt Guild that night, and then we went out with  a bunch of the girls, which was so fun, and such a rare thing for us to get to do. Friday we crafted it up some more, and of course ate at Word of Mouth (which took up a good part of the day, since the wait is long there). We went to Portland to do a little more shopping, but mainly to hang out in a beautiful hotel room Carmen’s husband had booked for us. We beaded, knitted and I got Carmen hooked on Alias (Bj has one of these for work, which makes watching movies on a laptop so much more enjoyable!). Saturday we went to the Barefoot Sage to have 1.5 hour soaks and massages for our feet. We rounded out our decadent weekend with more shopping and food, plus the photo shoot since we had absolutely amazing weather. 65 degrees and SUNNY!
I couldn’t have asked for a better time, or better company. Carmen lives too far away, and I was sad to drop her off at the airport. Of course knowing she’ll be back in a few weeks with her little darling Chloe makes it a little bit better. Then it will be girl time squared, I can’t wait to see what our little ones do together. They talk on the computer all the time so I’m sure it will be quite fun for them to see each other in person (the last time was December, in Hawaii). And to Carmen’s husband: Thank you Andrew! That was as much a treat for me as it was for Carmen!