Photobooth Friday: Make em' Laugh

I'm having a difficult week. Not as bad a "bad brain" week but one of those weeks where you feel like you can't do anything right and when one of the things you love doing so much is attacked by one small-minded person, you let it bug you because you are having one of THOSE weeks. Sigh. I'm also trying to wrap my head around the application process for school. I think I put it off because I am a wuss and I hate how everyone seems to know how to do stuff like this except me and why oh why am I not able to "get it"? Erk. It has been a week where I say things that come out completely snarky when that wasn't my intention. I have oodles and oodles to do and somehow manage to forget about doing them. Instead, it has been of the utmost importance to read Sweet Valley High books. I am having one of those weeks where I simply feel foolish and bummed out. But you wouldn't know it to see me. I've got my wig and clown nose on and I am determined to make y'all think I'm a happy camper. I was a happy camper in that photo above. It was almost a year ago and my sister and her family came out for a visit. It was the hottest day of the year at 118 degrees f and we decided to go thrift shopping and photoboothing. It was crazy, crazy hot and the mall was super bursting with people but we went anyway because they had air conditioning and we were hot and hungry. We had lunch, visited the booth, picked up some See's for dessert and then ran around Ikea taking pictures as if we lived there.

I hope next week is better. More photoboothers can be foud in the flickr pool. Happy July!

I say To-May-Toez

I'm eating homemade peach cobbler for breakfast. Is that even legal? My neighbor made it for us as a thank you for watering her garden. The gift was completely unnecessary but completely yummy also. Don't worry, I have some juice or milk or somethng to balance out all the butter and sugar.

This tomato you see up here was the first tomato from our crazy crop. We also have a Tiny Tim bush but with it growing so close to the ground it seems it has become a new habitat for little worms and bugs and such. Darn those pesky bugs. This tomato was absolutely mazing. So sweet and juicy and just delovely. Here is a picture of it sliced, the color is almost fuschia! Too bad you're not a neighbor. We've been handing these out all week. I've been planning my weekend lunches and weekly dinners around them. I love having a garden! LOVE IT!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of chatting with a wee one who will only answer to the name Minnie Mouse. She told me all about why she won't go into The Tiki Room. It was adorable and I had a blast. Today will hopefully wrestle up some more nifty conversations and then I need to write my personal statement for my Pacific Oaks application. Personal Statement? what is that exaclty. Can any of you smarty pants out there help me with this? Yikes! I gotta go to the post office and then catch the subway...time for work!

Happy Wednesday!

Quilty-crafty and memories

One of my dearest and niftiest friends is going to have a baby. The wee B.Birdy is due in a few weeks and the baby shower was two weeks ago. I am a far from a subtle gift giver and can get kinda crazy but I think I reigned it in pretty well. The mister and I made the new-family-to-be a nifty circus themed baby quilt.

I pieced it and stitched and the mister helped me pin and all that jazz.

We added a treasure trove of polka-dot ribbon tags all around the edges for the little miss to roll or crawl to when the time comes.

 

 All I can say other than how pretty it is, is that wrestling all that fabric into your sewing machine is enough to cause you to growl and say things you probably shouldn't while making a pretty pink baby quilt.


I also presented them with a small assortment of circus themed books. Babies can never have too many books. I don't think anyone can have too many books except for The Leets who is probably shaking her head as she reads this saying "Jeksa? I think I may have too many books!" and I would tell her that yes, maybe she has one or two too many.

 

All this quilty stuff reminds me of all the tiny doll quilts I am seeing pop up all over the internets. These tiny quilts remind me of my Mamos and the gifts she used to make for me to give to the little girls whose parties I was invited to. As a tow-headed tot I was invited to a lot of birthday parties. We were flat out poor folk and well, my mother had an exquisite eye for beauty and hated the stigma of poor that hung over our heads so she always went a little all out when it came time for birthdays. The year I turned six was the year of the doll kit. She made these adorable cookie cutter shaped dolls about eight inches tall. Arms and legs akimbo with sweet embroidered smiles and long yarn hair braided into pigtails. Each doll was dressed in tiny handmade dungarees and plaid shirt with itty bitty buttons or snaps down the front and came with a nightgown, robe, and party dress. The dolls were lovingly placed in a wicker basket that Mamos turned into a bed with tiny pillow and matching quiltlet. All in all a very beautiful and sweet birthday gift. My dollie had brown hair and her quilt set was all navy blues and purples. It was made from a faux quilt print but all that sweetness wrapped up in a basket was magical to me and my friends. I still have the quiltlet but sadly cannot find my dollie. More than a decade ago before my Mamos died I tried to get her to make them again. I told her that people would start to turn to simple handmade items for gifts, that the whimsy of what she made would trump a beanie baby any day. I wish she had made them. I've been hashing them out in my head and have attempted them on my own but all it does is make me miss my Mamos more. She would have loved the internet and I do believe the internet would have loved her.

The Week in Review: July 9-15

I do believe last week was quite satisfactory. It was super busy with no time for crafting but I felt productive whihc felt good. Plus, I did a whole lotta visitin' with new friends and old. Visiting is always a good thing!

There was work, paint, kids, cupcakes, laughs, movie watching, book reading and of course, Felt Club shopping. It was also a week of Rootbeer Floats and hanging out in the garden. The tomatoes are coming in full force! All in all it was a swell and nifty week!

Felt Club was a blast. The best part was meeting soooo many flickr peeps and vendors whose blogs I have reading for years! It is such a surreal thing to greet and holler at a person you have never met but feel like you've known for years. What a treat! I bumped into flickr friends, vendors, classmates and old friends. A blast I tell ya! The swag bags were amazing and all the moolah I spent was well worth it. Pictures coming soon. I can't wait for the Holiday event and I hope I get to be a vendor! I am working on super duper cool top secret stuff and I can't sleep it is so fun and exciting!

This week I'll be elbow deep in paint with the kidlets, planning a halloween road trip and stitch, stitch, stitching away on new goodies for the shop!

Happy Ice Cream Month! Click here for more detail on the picture.

Phle-gm

Every morning the neighbor who lives behind us hacks up a storm. It's not just a simple H-A-A-AC-K sound, it is more like that horrible phlegmy monstrosity your brother would do as he sat on you and prepared to hock a loogie in your face when you were kids. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're missing out.

Seriously though, I hear it EVERY morning and it's gross. What does he do? Go outside and become one with nature? I imagine he spits it out somewhere in their backyard. He probably spits it in the general area of where they pulled out the glorious lemon tree that had been there from the previous owners. Neighbors, ya gotta love them. These are the same people who use their tiny hibachi grill just outside their kitchen door in such a manner that the smoke blows INTO the kitchen and sets off the smoke alarm which they ignore. For many minutes. These are the same people who for no good reason, hacked up their beautiful concord grape vine while it was chock full of the purple jewels. They then built a grape arbor of sorts and the vine has come back but still, it made a mess and all that fruit was wasted. We did score some of the wood though and now have two vines ourselves.

Lookie the goodness as it grows! They are huge now. These are also the same people who wail. We think it must be some sort of prayer but the wailing can get really really loud and disturbing, ooh and they fight. Once my old neighbor thought we should call the police because it was so loud and violent sounding. It's the kind of loud you think will make them end up on COPS. Unfortunately they fight in a language that I don't understand so for all I know she's yelling at him about dirty underwear or something. These are also the people who have planted out sod for the dirt patch that runs along the sidewalk...three times, and don't water it. They put in a dozen rose bushes with cactus right next to them and underneath. They just put in the rose bushes. It's hot. It's summer. I'm not sure if the nonexistent roses are gonna come out. I guess it beats living on the other side of the courtyard where the whiney neighbor spies on everything we do and complains. She also goes through our trash and tries to sell it at her many garage sales. I'm telling ya, neighbors, you gotta love them.

I just got back from Felt Club XL Summer and I think I need to pass out now...after I drink my Izze Soda and take pictures of all my loot. Happy Sunday!

Furryville

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with my post but I thought you might enjoy the colors...

I can bake shortbead from memory, dialogue along with Grease 2; songs included, play "C" on the uke and still turn a cartwheel but I can't, can't, can't manage to shape my eyebrows.

Sure I can pluck a hair here or there which is all fine and dandy until all the hairs gang up on me to create a millipede on my face. Sheesh! When did this happen? True, it has been more than a year since I went to a professional and I thought I could keep up but those pesky eyebrow hairs are sneaky I tell ya. They throw a wild party in the middle of the night and the next thing you know it's furryville. It probably doesn't help that I have my very own unibrow. I spend so much time battling it out with that monster that the wee ones take full advantage of me. I should shave y'all off, that's what I should do! What'll you do then? Huh? Where will you go, you little buggers? Where will you go?

But I won't because even though I can still turn a cartwheel, sing along to Cool Rider (and yes, I do know the choreography) I can't really draw an eyebrow shape. I'm at your mercy you wanabe millipedes and I'm begging you to cut me some slack!

Please?