Kinky Boots - These Boots are Made for Walking

It didn't show up below, so here it is!

I hope this comes through! It's the catwalk scene from Kinky Boots, which I watched during the kids naptime yesterday. the whole movie cracked me up, but this scene shattered me, it's so funny. The stuffy British owner of a failing shoe factory decides to make boots for drag queens - "2 1/2 feet of tubular sex". Drag Queens have a hard time finding shoes to support their weight, you know.

The owner is strutting his stuff because the drag queens didn't show up to model his kinky boots. If you haven't seen this movie, you MUST, it's HILARIOUS!

It's the perfect cheering up movie clip, which today I needed.

It has been three years today since my dad died. It's weird how surreal the experience was and, at times, still is. I think what made it so strange for me was that I was moved out of the house, and had stopped seeing and talking to him on a daily basis, so it was hard to think he was gone. He was just at work, or at his house, but not gone.

I just deleted everything I had written here about him, I think because nothing I could say would do him justice. He was one of the most complicated people I have ever know. Maybe the most complicated. He was a genuis. He was maddening and hilarious and weird. He loved all movies scifi or action or political, but wouldn't hesitate to take me to a romantic comedy. He took me to Clueless, French Kiss, and Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. And He loved them. He would have taken me to Kinky Boots, I'm sure. That scene would have cracked his stuff up.

The weekend before he died my family traveled down to SOuthern California to say goodbye to my brother, who was leaving for his second tour in Iraq. For weeks after hearing Dallas was leaving for Iraq everyone on the family had a bad taste in their mouth. We all felt something might happen to him, so we drove 6 hours to say goodbye to him and left to go home the next day. We all stayed in a hotel and in the morning, my dad had to get up and go to work. He worked his weeks in So cal and flew his plane up to Nor Cal for the weekends.

I remember sitting, eating breakfast and looking up to see my mom out the window saying goodbye to my dad before he drove away. I thought for a second about going out to say bye and decided not to because I would see him next weekend when he came home. It was on his way home the next week that his little plane crashed into the side of a mountain. It is definitely something I regret, but I try not to dwell on. I just make sure now that I tell my family how much I love them all the time. So much so that my son frequently rolls his eyes at me, "I love you, too momma. Stooop!"

Kay. Now go hug your kids, call your parents give them some love and go watch that clip again, so that you can be all cheered up, now that I brought you all down.

Our Big Surprise!

This is the fun thing that Missy and I have been working on! We are holding a craft show with some totally awesome gals and now we are formally inviting you to be a part of it! If you are a crafter who lives in or can travel to the greater Sacramento area on May 5th, we would love to have you participate. Here are some of the details:

Hi everyone!

Thanks so much for expressing interest in the Handmade Parade. Missy and I are so excited that such talented ladies want to be a part of this with us! The goal of the Handmade Parade is to sell our wares on a grassroots level to friends, family, coworkers, and area shop owners. Even if you are from out of the area, we believe you will benefit for being a part of this as a way to meet collectors, shopkeepers and, of course, hang out with other crafters! It is our goal to hold small scale craft shows twice a year - The Spring Fling in April or May and the Fall Fest in September or October - for as long as there is interest. Right now, we would like to limit participation to 8-10 crafters, to keep the event manageable.

Spring Fling 2007 is going to be on May 5th, from 10 am until 2 pm, in Sacramento. *I will give more location information to those who are truly interested and contact us* Each crafter who participates is being asked to pay $20 for advertising and production costs, and bring a homemade snack/treat to share with our collectors, in keeping with the handmade and homemade theme. We will need to know if you will need a whole table, or can work with a half table, or irregular table such as a card table. Whole tables are about 6' long by 22" wide. We will cover the tables with vintage linens, and all you need to bring is your product and displays! If you have special requests, or suggestions, please share them with us. We would like to keep this event as light hearted and fun as possible!

If this is still something you are interested in being a part of (and we hope it is!) please email us back at handmade_parade@yahoo.com indicating what your displays will require (half table, whole, or irregular). At this point the price to participate is the same all the way around, since it is all going towards advertising and production. Payment will be due by April 1 (no foolin!). Please include your preferred way to pay (paypal or check) so I can give you the information you will need to process payment.

Please feel free to forward this email to any crafters you know who would be interested in joining us-as of right now we have at least 5 slots available. It will be on a first paid first signed up basis, so be sure they pay as soon as they decide to join us. (We already have 2 jewelry gals, and we would like to keep this as varied as possible, so let's get some different styles of craftiness involved!)

Please feel free to copy the Handmade Parade logo into your blog and let people know you are participating. For the time being we aren't include address information on the logo, but we might later. People can email us at handmade_parade@yahoo.com with questions and to get information.

We can't wait to meet you all and have a great day!

Love,

Claire Bone and Missy Ballance
Handmade Parade Grand Marshalls

Bloggy Friend Fun

Yesterday my kiddos and I spent the day with Missy and her two kids, crafting, chatting and having fun. Missy was showing another friend of ours, Melody, how to sew and me how to needle felt. She is a great teacher and even better multi-tasker-she was teaching us both at the same time!




Missy makes the most adorable mohair bears and bunnies and used to make Little Missy Primitives Dolls. She even gave me a LMP to take home! I was like a kid in a candy store in her studio- there were so many great things for projects and inspiration. The doll she gave me is on the table to my right. Cute, huh?


Our kids played really well together, which is always nice. Her Gracie is only 5, but she is so smart! She was in the craft room with us the whole time, sewing and felting away. I think Missy has a future crafter on her hands...



Missy and I have also been working on a fun little project together, which is pretty darned exciting, if you ask me. Of course, I do get pretty darned excited about a lot, so you'll have to be the judge of how great it is on the excitement meter.

Fairytale Dreams

Monday was a day off for Aaron, so instead of being good and working on the house like we should have, we took the kids to Fairytale Town. It was the first time going since Peanut learned to walk. She had the time of her life going down slides with Daddy and Monkey, walking from slide to slide, and climbing up on play structures by herself. It was funny because you could tell she was so proud of herself. She thought she had made it big time.



See that pic below? It's of the entrance of FTT. See how the grown ups are crouching down to enter? My kids think it is the coolest thing that they don't have to crouch down. About 30 seconds before I took that picture as we were leaving someone wasn't paying attention and conked her head smack on the stone. She was pretty embarassed and her husband laughed at her. Guess she shouldn't have been fooling around with her camera and should have been looking where she was going... Poor thing. I personally feel really bad for her. ;)


Afterwards we took the kids to another Sacramento landmark, Gunther's Ice Cream, which has been in business since 1940. My grandmother used to go there with dates and her friends when she was in college and my uncle worked there when he was in high school. Some of my earliest memories are of me and my parents going to pick him up from work and me watching the ice cream being made through the window. They always have the best flavors of the month. This month is Cherry Cobbler ice cream. Y. U. M. I am always completely wracked with indecision on what to get when we go there.


Not suprisingly both kids conked out in the car on the way home, so I got to work on some brooches, cards, needlebooks, etc and Aaron put new closet doors up in my craft room and the kids room. So I guess we had a bit of a productive day!

I am a Looooser!

Do you see that stash of pink and brown fantabulousness above? That is from my swap partner, Nancy, who has been extremely patient with me because she hasn't gotten her stash from me yet. Nancy, honey, thank you sooooo much for this awesome stuff!! You won't be disappointed by your box (just by the time it took to get to you...)!! She was the sweetest and even sent my two kiddos those great duckies. Can you believe it? Cute cute! She sent a notepad, bookmark, thrifted watering can, CHOCOLATE, handmade coasters and warming pad (which smell lovely, what is in them?) and my favorite, brown embroidery floss and a whole beading kit!! Thank you so much Nancy!

And do you see the sweet confection of a potholder below? That is from my potholder swap partner, Amy. Thanks Amy! The potholder and the recipe look great!

How was your weekend, friends? Mine was pretty busy. We have been playing catch-up since being sick and it is not fun. Friday was the first day I left my house in two weeks and since then it has been nuts. On Sunday, I was at a friends house visiting and Aaron calls me. My son is hollering in the background and Aaron calmly tells me he swallowed a penny and what should he do?

Greeeaaaat.

So I tell him to call the advice nurse who is basically useless and tells us to take him to the urgent care center (yeah, the same one I was in two weeks ago for my kidney infection. We are all on a first name basis) since Monkey boy was crying and seemed to be in pain.

So I hopped into the car, drove home, we dropped our peanut girl at a friends house and were on our way. Funny thing is once we got into the car monkey was just fine. No more tears, no more pain, but since we started the adventure, what the hey, let's finish it, right?

So we go to the doc, wait 45 mins go in take an xray, where we can see perfectly that he swallowed a dime. Even better. Thinner, smaller, it'll pass through him just fine. So later today we are expecting a return on our little "investment". The doc suggested washing it up and putting it in his baby book. I think not.

But hopefully we have learned a valuable lesson on putting things into our mouths... We are gonna get the monkey a piggy bank so he can learn to save his money properly.

So how was your weekend?

Busy Busy Day

I left the house at a quarter to 8 this morning and got back at around 3:45. My kids had follow up drs appointments at 8:30 am ( yay! no more flu or pnuemonia!), checked out a new thrift store where I got this lovely stash above - all for $9. We went to lunch and went shopping for baby shower stuff.

It is a co-ed shower in the evening, so its a dessert shower. We are making cupcakes and having everyone decorate their own. Then we'll have prizes for creativity etc. We got oodles of cake mix and candy. There will also be a chocolate fountain and all sorts of fun things to dip into the chocolate. I'm pretty excited about it! I'll have loooots of pics as I am making stuff for the shower.

Thanks for all your sweet comments about the flowers I made! A few of then will be in the shop next week. Most of them are hopefully going to be sold at a shop here in town. I need to take samples of my stuff to the owner on Monday and hopefully she'll love it all and want to sell it! If not, it will all end up in the etsy shop, lol! If you saw something you liked email me and I'll put it in the etsy shop for ya!

Spring Flowers

I am ready for spring, can you tell? I put my pattern girls away for a bit to work on these flower pins and hairclips. I really love them! And they are so super easy to make. I used a few of the flower tutorials that are out there right now and then sort of tweaked them. I'm not big on following directions, so I modified them to my liking. How do they look?

So, yesterday was Valentines Day and Aaron and I were going to go to the movies, something we haven't done in ages. However, the night before both our kids decided to cry and be generally unhappy until 2 in the morning, so we were pretty beat. Besides, is it just me, or do movies seem like a crappy date now? When we go out, I want to talk and visit and have adult conversation. We can Netflix movies anytime. Although, occasionally we rent a movie and say, "dang that was probably awesome on the big screen!" Like Moulin Rouge and Marie Antoinette. Great movies that were probably completely unforgettable in theatres. I still need to see MA, but I can tell from what people are saying that it was awesome.

Maybe I should Netflix it right now?

BEWARE:This Post is Full of Freaky Circus Clowns!
So, if you are afraid of clowns, this is not the post for you! Come back tomorrow when I have less creepy fodder!

I promised awhile ago to devote a whole post to our favorite kitschy breakfast eatery Pancake Circus, and here it is. Chock full o' freaky clown goodness, too. The food here is great, cheap and service is uber fast. So fast that is you tell the waitress (whose name might actually be Marge or Peg or Sue or some other diner waitress worthy moniker) that you need a minute, she almost looks at you like you asked for escargot or something. We needed about 15 minutes and she was really getting a tad testy with us. Luckily the kids are cute, they charmed her into not caring so much. She even brought our monkey boy a huge hot chocolate with a massive mound of whipped cream.

The two clown pics down there are from the cash register area, which is so saturated with freaky clowns it creeps me out a bit. Basically the sad clowns are the ones that are creepy and you can see that there are a few there. Why? Why paint a sad clown, people??

Gimme Some Lovin'

I set out to be productive and productive I was. I was able to get oodles done despite a fruitless trip to the hardware store and a late breakfast out at Pancake Circus (I took the camera and got some good pics! I'll blog about it in the mornin). I finished up my Valentines for the Flickr Valentine Swap. I started out hand embroidering them all and well, that got old real fast, so I put my sewing gals to good use. They turned out pretty cute considering I changed my plan halfway through. A few lucky peeps will still get a hand embroidered one. Next time I'll start earlier!

Then I moved on to my collages.


I picked my girlies and played around with colors and vintage buttons and seam binding....

...and came up with these! I am really happy with how they turned out. Especially this one down here. I'm a bright color kinda gal and I think she really fits the bill, don'tcha think?

I like these gals, too, but I think next time I'll put some patterned paper under the pattern tissue. I really like the textures on this one. I mod podged the tissue to the plaque, which gave it a cool wrinkly effect and then I used spray adhesive for the girls to keep them smooth. It feels really cool to touch! I wasn't sure I was going to like the plaques over canvas, but I think they turned out quite nice. I still want to try some with canvas, but I think I'm going to favor the plaques.

I'm going to call the collages Kae Collages after my husband's grandma. She turns 90 this year! In the 60s decoupage was pretty hot and she was a decoupaging fool. She made all sorts of cool pictures, most are 3 D, and pretty fab. Whenever I pull out the Mod Podge I think of her. The next time I go to my inlaws I'll have to go around the house and take pictures of her stuff. My mother in law must have at least 10 around the house. It is really great how timeless they are.

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

What a fun Mail day it was for me yesterday! Not only did my order come in from Amanda, (who is quickly becoming my very favorite person to shop with) but I also got a sweet little brooch from Heidi at Everyday Cookies. It is so fun to open up the mailbox and have sweet little treats like that. Miss Amanda even threw in some extra goodies for me - her storybook cards (they made the trip quite well, dear!) and a pattern for my little girl. I cannot wait to sew it up!

On Friday over at Inspire Co., Amy posted these bon bons she made for a friend. As soon as I saw them I knew I needed to make some! I went a bit crizazay doing them and made like a dozen of them. These are the ones I am going to keep for my decorations. I am sending a couple with some swaps I'm in. I think I might use a few as pincushions. They are pretty perfect for that, I think. They have also inspired me to try to make some that look like muffins and cupcakes, so I might try some of those later this week.

I have a HUGE list of things I want/need to make right now! I am finishing up my valentines for the Vday Postcard swap on Flickr and the thank you's for the brooch swap. I want to mail them out Tuesday. I also picked up a few Vintage pattern catalogs at an antique store yesterday and have been painstakingly cutting out the beauties to make collages and cards from.

Since it is a three day weekend, my lovely amazing husband will be home and I'll get a full day to craft, while he can help with the kiddos. Soooo, that makes my goals for this weekend pretty lofty- finish up those Valentines, the thank yous, make a couple collages and a few cards. I think it can happen! We'll see. Shockingly the kids prefer me to Aaron with boo boos and general sickness and since both kids are still getting over being sick, that means lots of whining for mommy.

Not that I don't want to take care of the kids, but sometimes Mommy needs a break, right?

Thank You Beki!!

My Brooch Swap from Beki came yesterday afternoon! My partner was the amazingly talented Beki and she did not disapoint! She made me the most beautiful brooch!! I just can't stop staring at it, it's that cute. I am working on a purse right now that I think it will look perfect on. It is good motivation to get the purse done, so I can put this beauty on it!

She also included a patchwork zippered pouch, which I LOVE, and a cute notebook, ribbons and my favorite-this itty bitty sack full of buttons. The sack was just so cute tucked in there like that. I'm a sucker for itty bitty cute things. Babies, puppies, little sacks of buttons...

My current project uses lots of buttony goodness so I am thrilled to have more. I will be putting them to use right away! I love that yellow one in front best, I think. What can I say? I'm a simple gal. I just can't help it that buttons just put me over the moon!

Now, everyone go check out Beki's etsy shop and get a cute little pouch or purse of your own. I have my eye on a few cuties there myself, better hurry!

*Can you believe "itty bitty" is not a word?? Spell check just dinged me.

When It Rains It Pours...

When we do something round here we like to go big. Especially when it comes to illness and baby births and stuff like that. When I had my peanut girl we were taking care of my little sis while my mother was on a dream vacation to Italy. She was to be gone three weeks. No big thing. I still had six weeks till my kiddo was born. Week 1 sister comes home with a memo from teacher saying that the class had a "ringworm" epidemic. Luckeee. We took all the necessary precautions and avoided it. Week 2 my peanut girl decided she wanted to come early, but since it was too early I was put on bed rest for a week. Did it and the day they let me off bed rest I went into labor and well...So week 3 rolls around and I have a new baby a two year old a 7 year old and my poor sister comes home with the dreaded ringworm. By the way, my mother in law deserves a medal for helping us while I was in the hospital. She bore the brunt of the drama on the homefront and plenty of drama there was.

In the true spirit of us doing things big, this week I am recovering from the aforementioned kidney infection (of which I am pretty much fully recovered), but my kids didn't want me to feel bad being the only one sick and all. Soooo. Monkey boy had the flu and Peanut girl has pneumonia.

I think he is pretty much recovered because he is back to being all snotty to his sister today. Of course, she being sick has made the slightest touch from her brother absolutely deadly. She is also basically fine just a yucky cough. It all just adds to the chaos that is our life. Bedtime is interesting right now. We sit the kiddos on the counter in the kitchen and assembly line the meds and graham cracker bribes until the deed is done. They are good sports about it. But they also think graham crackers are cookies.

All the sickness has led to longer naptimes which equals slightly longer craft time for me. Can't complain about that! So I have been making my little swappy thank you gifts for the gals who participated in my swap. It has been really really fun! I would show you, but I'm pretty sure my readership basically consists of these gals and it would spoil the surprise and we really can't have that, now can we? Sadly the pics will have to wait till next week, after they have been mailed out and hopefully arrived. I'll post next week fo sho' gals!

Oh and thanks for the logo love! I went with D after much agony. I'll show you the site that it was for when I get the go ahead to show the public!

Excessive Pics of the Logo....

So last night I actually started and threw out three different designs before deciding on this one in the way of the font an color. All the fru frus that I added aren't sewn down yet because I am wracked with indecision on which one to use. I kind of like the imperfect look of the fabric. I feel like I am almost there on finding what I want, ya know what I mean? Soooo, I need your help in deciding which one to use. Which is your favorite? When I finally decide which one to use I'll retake the pics in better lighting. And maybe a better camera!



Exhibit A


Exhibit B


Exhibit C

Exhibit D

Exhibit E

Thanks for the love!

Thank you so much for all your get well wishes you've left me in comments and email! You are all too sweet, but it is much appreciated!!

It turns out the fever I had blamed on my cold was actually due to a kidney infection! Awful awful awful thing to have, but once treated recovery is fairly swift. I feel like I shall be back to my normal blogging, crafting and cooking ways very very soon. I have actually decided to embroider my logo for a new group I just joined. I'll tell you all about those fantabulous gals in another post. They all deserve their own post, they are that cool.

Anyway, back to the logo. Since I have been under the weather with a mandate to rest, there is plenty of time to embroider. Embroidery is the perfect convelesence craft, no? As long as there is decent light all you need to do is use your hands and you can create beautiful things. It's a great way for a sicky like me to feel useful! I hope to have it done tonight, so I can snap a pic of if for tomorrow. Plus I need to send it off to the powers that be by the 6th, so I gotta get cracking!

Also, yesterday was the deadline for the Brooch Swap for all you swappy gals. If I had my wits about me when I set that date I would have seen that it was a Sunday, and the post is closed Sundays! Der! So if you had to send yours today, no big deal. I created a flickr group for us called Little Lovelies Brooch Swap, so when you get your brooch be sure to post it for all to see. We want to admire each others handiwork! I do still plan on sending you all a thank you gift-most of them are done, but getting sick sort of curbed productivity if ya know what I mean.