sucker for succulents

Where I live, I can easily get snow on fourth of July.   I just had snow yesterday morning.
An indoor garden is my only option this early in the season.

Rockin’ the Dollar Tree 2 inch clay pot 3-pack, I made a mini rooftop garden for inside the house.   I’ve got some permanent markers of various fine points and some various city skylines.

There is a multitude of artwork you can find online for your cityscape of just make up your own.

Here is the beginning of Paris.

Hand sketching the buildings in pencil first, I then retraced with the marker and erased the pencil marks once the ink dried.   Fill in the buildings and you’re practically ready for planting.

I gave them a coat of Mod Podge as a sealant and you can see they have developed some dirt stains in between because I used too thin of a coat.   Or you can use a different type of sealant but the permanent marker is not going to wash away.

Here are San Francisco, New York, and Chicago with plants rescued from Home Depot.  Besides the jade plant, I don’t have the rest of the names cause I tossed the original packaging they came in. Doh!

Come on Spring!

knitter’s coma

that’s where I have been for the last week.
Have you ever seen the yarn for sale at the Dollar Tree and wondered what you could make with it?   Me neither, but I thought that I needed to finally tackle this knitting thing and the price was right.

Now I must begin by saying that I have hard times following patterns. And those instructional youtube videos are completely lost on me.  Knitting for me has been like a journey into a dark tunnel.   I have no idea when I will get to the end and since I am not sure where I am going, it’s hard to gage my progress.  So, I basically just started knitting and knitting until I ran out of yarn and tried to see how far it got me.

If you have never knitted anything before, this thing took me 7 days of what seemed like continuous knitting (I pretty sure that this was technically “purling”) although I would say that each skein took about 7-8 hours to knit through and I only had three skeins.
And this experiment was filled with slipped knots and loose loops and apparently there is a way to tie off the end but hopefully my knitter friends will give me a “A” for effort. I’m sort of the type that needs to do something once to get my head around it, so now I can attempt a real knit pattern and actually have an idea of how long it will take me.

The only suitable place for this item is outside à la knitta, please style.

Husband comes home:
husband: “What the hell is that?”
me: “Tree cozy?”
me: “Trunk warmer?”
I got nothing.

I think he was hoping I was making something for him.
Guess I better get started on that Bauhaus scarf, oh dammit, that’s crocheted.
Back to the knitting books for me. I continue to welcome any advice or guidance.

last minute easter craft

And super easy.
I love paper crafts made from book pages.   Only, books are expensive, except when you get them from the Dollar Store.
I picked up the biggest book I could find and cut out eggs with an exacto knife before I found it a lot faster to just cut the pages with scissors.

This was mean to be a kids craft with coloring the eggs with water color paint. Until the boy got bored and mom had to paint the eggs all by herself.

In the end, used the sewing machine to stitch them all together and now the house looks a little more festive.   Even if we have 6 inches of new snowfall today.

Top it off with felt peeps bunting,

and felt chocolate bunny

and Easter is here!  Have a great holiday everyone.

psffft, consumerism

I hate buying new things.
I search ebay and craigslist and am fortunate to have some kick ass resale stores around me.   Not just of kids stuff, but I am finding more cool consignment shops for myself.

Not to forget Goodwill.  Love you Goodwill.

I have never once thought about remaking clothing until a recent visit to the $1 sale at a local used clothing shop had me buying this:

See, we’re a little Paul Frank monkey crazy over here.

I assure you, everything here was bought second hand or deeply discounted.

Why does a 2 year old need a monkey wallet?  Damn you Dwell magazine and your Small Paul ads for making me think I can’t be a cool hip designer mom without them.

Anyway, I finally took the plunge into recycling, upcycling, revamping, what have you  – to come up with this:

Now if I can only pimp him out with some felt hip hop bling. Hmmmm.

And while I was at it, decided to resew some old record label shirts I thrashed and was never gonna wear again.

Perfect for a little boy, though.

I’m actually quite amazed I was able to pull it off.   But don’t get too excited, you will still find better quality sewing from the Dollar Tree and I will not be showing you what the inside of the shirts look like.

I dream of being a katiedid.

While the sewing machine and I are often at odds, this time I was the victorious one.  But not without a fight.   That Singer made sure it got a needle in my middle finger before it was done.  Visit to emergency room not required.

So, yay!   More clothing saved from the garbage.   And that Paul Frank shirt has become what it always should have been.  A piece of clothing for a toddler and not something for a prepubescent 12 year old girl.

And now when the other moms see it, they can be like:
“Oh my god! That’s so cute! Where’d you get it?”
And I can be like:
“I totally got it on sale at Target!”
and they will be like:
“For real?”
And I can be all:
“NOT, beoches!”

Oh, I’d never say that.   To their faces.

And somewhere in the distant background, the music from The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” is fading out…..

swapping in the beautiful sunshine

My girl Marissa over at Skooks Playground is, as well as being a real sweetheart, funny and super creatively talented.  Somehow though she decided to give me props with a Sunshine Award.

Then, Lara @ Sew Many Stitches Later came along and gave me a Beautiful Blogger award even though she has no idea what I even look like.  Talk about sweet.

Thanks ladies, I am totally blushing, you have made my month.

And I get to share the love too by passing it along to some other bloggers I’m diggin’.
so here are 17 (5 for Beautiful & 12 for Sunshine) in no particular order:

playing food
playing with food? If it’s felt of course!

dollie-cious
cute cute cute AND felt!

crafter by night
Another late night crafty thinking person.

dollarstore crafts
crafts made from stuff from the dollar store!

geek crafts
the name pretty much sums up the coolness

modern roots
husband & wife team, David & Miranda have created a crafty community

giver’s log
creativness on multiple levels

dolly asylum
crazy hilarity with a bit of craft twisted in

recycle this
you want to creatively reuse something, chances are you will find the answer here and more

And an award goes also to each of my fellow swappers, who are brilliant in addition to the fact that they agreed to join my swap.  Here they are below with their featured items inspired by our shared love of all things Meomi:

Tif sent this to Tracy:

Tracy sent this to Kate

Kate sent this to Becky

Becky sent this to Lia

Lia sent this to mE!

I sent this to Jennifer

Jennifer sent this to Tiffany

 

Amy sent this to Melissa

Melissa sent this to Amy

Such cool stuff, all very rad!  Check them out!

I want to thank everyone again and just say a big shout out to crafting.
If it weren’t for craft, this blog would not be possible.
We’ll it would, but there would probably be a lot more whining and ranting.
And it would have a different name.

Hooray for Craft!

I will not eat them, either.

Every morning it’s the same thing.

I am awoken to a bonk on the head and over my eyes I see the same familiar thin hardcover.

“Wead oouss book.”

No hi, mommy.  Good morning, mommy.  I love you, mommy.  Not even a “please.”

“Op on pop.”

Growing up, I never had Dr. Seuss books in the house.
Don’t feel bad.  I had 4 Cabbage Patch Dolls.  A complete kitchen set. Barbies, Atari 2600 and ON-TV. You remember ON-TV. An extra descrambled cable channel before there was ever cable.

So I am excited the boy has taken to the books so much and we would never be able to have a proper birthday celebration for the author without this:

Well, I think the eggs turned out okay, anyway.

My plan eventually will be to make a calendar with all the cool events for crafting.
Fat Tuesday, Arbor Day and the rest of them that I can’t remember now and will probably forget later.

But in the meantime, here is my rhyming contribution for the day:

Little Mary, six years old, heard something at her school.
The boys were talking of a thing and said it was uncool.
‘Twas something she was not to do,
for she was never told.
About her little brother William,
a lad of four years old.
Why, pals they were and they had fun.
He was her bestest friend.
The riding bikes and snowball fights,
it all would have to end.
She thought of laughing and of songs,
a recent kick ball game.
To reject him and ignore him now,
well, that would be a shame.
She knew not when it was disallowed
or why it was so silly.
She could not fathom such a thought
and not play with her Willie.
“He needs me and we’re family!” “It’s awful and unkind.”
A protective sister, yes she was,
and gave them a piece of her mind.
“I can not do it! You can’t make me,
that thing you earlier said.”
“What’s that you say? It’s still okay.
It means something else instead?”

Probably not appropriate for children’s reading.

Olympics Mania – Giveaway & Swap

2010 Olympics start today, are you excited?  I am, kinda.  Vancouver is a nice showcase city. Being married to a Canadian from Vancouver is also very nice.  But people we know from Canada have hightailed out of town for the madness. Vancouver at this time was the last place we ever expected to be, but some urgent passport issues had taken us across the border right on top of the opening celebrations.

One thing I had discovered here was that one of my favorite illustrators MEOMI had designed the mascots for the olympics.  Apparently they were unveiled back in 2007 but hey, I have been known to live under rocks…

I adore the characters and the uber cuteness.

I assume it is only a matter of time before the Octonauts or other Meomi creatures will be at a theater near you.  In the meantime, pick up (or borrow from library) a book and check out the websites:

http://hellomeomi.livejournal.com/
http://www.meomi.com/
http://www.octonauts.com/

Giveaway schwag!
To get everyone in the Olympic spirit, I picked up a couple of goodies that may not be readily available in non-host cities and I wanted to share.

Please leave a comment and I’ll send this guy out to meet his new family along with some other little gifts.

As for the swap, let me know if you are interested in the same comment.  You do not need to join the swap to enter the giveaway but the more the merrier!

Pick any favorite Meomi character and create a handmade craft inspired by it (plushie, drawing, knit, etc.) to send to someone and get you’ll get a handmade item from someone as well.
I don’t have timelines, I was thinking a month or so to make something and send out.  Will finalize that once I get all the participants down. We’re setting up the mailing deadline as March 20th.  Signups for the swap are still being taken. Swap closed.  l sent everyone their partners Fri. 2/19.

Last day to win Quatchi is Monday, Feb.  22nd.

Open to everyone, everywhere.

Yay World!

and here’s a little boy, obviously unenthused by it all.

…… .  .   .    .     .      .

And the Quatchi goes to:

Sarah @ Neoteric Traditional.

Thanks everyone for playing! Happy Olympics!