Dollies

The 15th came and went, full of packing, cleaning (the car, my house is shameful), and Father's Day planning. We are suprising Aaron with a sushi lunch and a round of golf at a la-de-da course with his best friend, who is celebrating his first Father's Day. The best part is that Aaron truly has no clue what we are doing and once we get to lunch he'll think that the fun os over, but oh no, there will be golf, too. Oh and more sushi with the fam tomorrow night. It will be good to give him all this great food before I leave for two weeks and he tv dinners it until I return.

So all that to say, I decided not to list my dolls until after I get back, since if I did, I wouldn't be able to ship anything for two weeks anyway. Just to get you all giddy and excited here is a teaser pic of the Mama doll, all done. She's sewn up now, but I am too lazy, ahem, I mean busy, to take a pic of her.

Gotta Get 'em Dones

pack
clean out the car and take it to the shop
go to the thrift store to get beach towels, books, lap desks for car )and probably a half a dozen other things completely unrelated to the beach or our trip)
find portable DVD player and kids tents (they are sleeping in them in the hotel room)
sew up last minute totebags for neice and nephews


buy:
snacks for the road and the beach (cheaper up here than down there)
alcohol (cuz I'll need it to recover from the 6 hour drive)
an attitude adjustment for monkey
aspirin
bandaids
sanity
muzzle
swim toys

Ok, so the new 'tude, sanity and muzzle I can't really buy, as much as I might want to. Today has been particularly trying and included me leaving a full cart of things in the middle of Target while I had to wisk my child back to the car. If you were at the Target in Elk Grove and heard money having dino-raptor temper tantrum, I apologise. 10 minutes later after he got his consequences he was giggly and cute. You would have never known that he had ever had a melt down.

Is it just me or are three year olds bi-polar? I just remind myself that it is just temporary. Temporary. As in not forever....right??

Who needs a vacation?

Me me!! Ok, I don't really need one, but I would like one. Preferably one that involves the beach. That would be great. Well, next week and the week after I will be getting my beach vacation. Sort of. Next week the kids, my mom, my Granny and I will be driving down to Oceanside, CA to visit with my brother who is a Marine stationed at Camp Penndleton. He is going to be shipping out for his third tour in Iraq in July and we are going to go down and spend some quality time with him and his family before he leaves. Then, less than 24 hours after I get back from Oceanside I'll be hopping on a bus with 40 high school kids and go back down to San Diego for summer camp. The second trip I'll be on my own for.

The beach vacation I had in mind involved a cabana on the beach and nonstop "grown-up" drinks, but a sandy beach blanket and the occasional diet coke will do ok, too. My kids haven't ever been to the beach and I am quite excited about taking them. I am bummed that Aaron has to miss it (dang work). We live far enough away from the beach that our next beach trip will be just as exciting for the kids and I plan on taking millions of pictures.

That delightfully geekiny picture of us is from our trip to Hawaii 2 years ago. I was rather pregnant with Lily, so the jetski guy made us promise about 100 time that Aaron wouldn't go faster than 20 miles per hour. It was fun even at the crawl we were driving at. We had spent a day hanging out on a sandbar about a mile from the shore. The water was waist high, which was weird seeing as we were so far from shore. All the non-pregnant folk got to wind surf, go tubing and speed on their jetskis. A trip that should definitely be done again in a non-preggo state.

We did get to "deep sea walk" ie: wear positively freaky helmets 10 ft under water and walk through schools of fish. Most fabulous. Though if you thought too much about the helmet and what might happen if it stopped working (nothing, really, we were only 10 feet from the surface) it was pretty scary. I need to dig up those pictures, we looked like we were from 10,000 Leauges Under the Sea with those helmets on!

Anyone have a trip of a lifetime planned? Or, if not the trip of a lifetime, a trip of the summer? Do tell, I love to live vicariously through others.

The names are cut out and folded up...

Monkey drew out one name...

and Peanut wanted a turn so I let her pick out a name. Her one name came out as two, so I figured what the hey, we can have three winners!

Sarah was the first name drawn, so she is the dollhouse set winner and Sonya and Jenn were Peanut's picks, so they will get surprise goodies! email me with your addresses! littlelovelies @ yahoo.com

little lovelies faves of the day

little lovelies faves of the day
Originally uploaded by littlelovelies.

I will be dreaming of these things all weekend. Aren't they all so lovely? Yes, yes they are. Man, bloggers at large are so freaking talented I can hardly stand it. Really. I can't.

Last weekend was super busy, so I am hoping to relax more this weekend. Probably won't happen though. We might go down to the homeless camp again on Saturday evening and maybe after church Sunday we can go to the zoo. There is a new penguin exhibit that my monkey is crazy for.

But for now, I am going to pull out needle and thread and continue on my little family 'o dolls. I'm crossing my fingers that I will have a few done to show you next week.

Thanks for all your comments of Wednesday's post! You are all definitely going to be in the dollhouse 4th of July picnic drawing. You can still comment today, if you want to be entered. Monkey will draw a name tomorrow morning!

Dollies in progress

Wow! You are all so very sweet to me. Thank you so much for helping me put CODL (crazy old dollhouse lady) into perspective. And thanks for your comments, you are all definitely entered into the drawing for the dollhouse 4th of July picnic I am making! If you didn't comment yesterday you can still comment there till tomorrow and be entered for the picnic. But we don't need to talk about yesterday's haps anymore ;) just say hi.

Soooo moving right along to these little dears here. Above is the mama doll to my first family doll set, she is coming right along and quite cutely, too. Below is a Peggy doll with cat eye glasses. She kind of looks like she's heading up a caper, doesn't she?

All the little dots on her apron are french knots. I am very much in love with french knots right now. Once you get the hang of them they are so very easy and so very fun to do. I highly recommend them to everyone.

I don't care how sweet their digs are over at google, blogger is lame right now. I am not really yelling at you guys, blogger is. I swear. Thanks for the link, Monica! Love your new look, BTW!

A New Blog and A Really Big Rant

So my friend Amanda just started her own blog called Daily Diner. It has great meal planning ideas and recipes and is loads of fun if you need to make a menu in a hurry. Be sure to check it out and say hi!! Oh and I chose this pic because it makes me happy and I am GRUMPY right now.

And now for the rant.

I took the dollhouse back today. It didn't fit my furniture and was a little too fragile for my kids to play with, so it really was the best thing. Well I get there and tell the lady these things and she starts looking it over and telling me that I broke the roof (one end was loose, as it was when I bought it), put in all these dents and basically broke it to bits. It was still in the condition I bought it in and the whole time she kept telling me I did these things. I assured her that I didn't and the whole time she is telling me I am lying.

My stomach churned and I couldn't believe my ears. If she had told me "Oh, I'm sorry we don't take returns (which apparently was their policy)" I would have gracefully said, ok, and walked away. It was my fault that I made an impulse buy I understand these things. But instead she said, "You are lying, you broke this house, but I'm going to do a return for you anyway." Gee thanks. I felt like if I said never mind I'll just take it and leave I'd be admiting to a crime I didn't commit.

She runs my card, shaking her head, sighing and saying, "I can't believe this. That house was perfect. Absolutely perfect." So I got my money back, but my dignity is on the green shag carpet of the store. I really feel like a huge jerk, even though as soon as I got home I looked at the pics I took and all the offensive dents she blamed on me are there clear as day. I know I didn't damage that house at all, but she made me feel like I threw it down a flight of stairs before returning it, and then tried to scam them.

What makes me even more mad is that the store was crowded and I know that I am going to be the topic of the morning. The lady who bought a perfect dollhouse and then broke it and lied about it. Whatever. I shouldn't care. I know I didn't do anything wrong. It just hurt my pride, really. I callled Aaron, bawled about it in the phone and he was sweet and said all the right things.

I've learned two valuable lessons. Impulse buys aren't worth it and when buying a vintage dollhouse, point out any and all flaws beforehand and make sure you tell the person that you know they are there, just in case you have to return it. Ugh. Lesson learned. The hard way.

In honor of a hard lesson learned, I think a giveaway is in order. I am doing the Club Little House with Inspire Co. and I will make one extra CLH set for the winner of my Ranting Drawing. So leave a comment here between now and Friday and on Saturday I will draw the winner's name. I have decided to make a 4th of July Picnic, complete with quilt, picnic basket (what I had gone into the offensive store for in the first place) and fireworks. Yes I said fireworks. There will be perfect little dollyhouse fireworks! So, friends, comment away!

Over the weekend we started a garden. My plan was originally to get a wheelbarrow and plant our little garden there, but wheelbarrows are expensive and I had already made one impulse buy for the week, so there you go. We planted our garden in the bups above. I was good and I labeled all the cups, but then in their excitment to plant all the cups and seeds got mixed up, so we'll just be suprised when they grow.

This is a lesson in patience for all of us. Monkey has been pretty disapointed that flowers don't just appear when you water the ground (me too, son, me too). When they do appear he'll be pretty excited. I have to be patient when he asks 5,000 times a day to water his "planets". Hopefully my kids will have a greener thumb than me. I swear my house is where bad plants come to die. Though some hydrangea I got last year which I thought I murdered, has sprouted back to life and is quite lovely. I guess there is hope for all of us!

The Queen Mum

No, we weren't robbed over the weekend. It is the mother of all craft WIPs...my office. I am ashamed to say that this is a good day. It certainly is no cozy workspace for me. Someday, when my brain gets rewired as an organized person, it will be clean and lovely and will rival the best of the best. Until then my poor little office will remain a perpetual WIP, much like the people who use it, I suppose. Aaron did give me the ok to go shopping for stuff to reorganize, so that will be on the horizon one of these days. I feel like I won't be able to truly takle it until I have a whole weekend to devote to it. I want to be able to pull everything out and do it Clean Sweep style-keep, trash, sell/donate.

I think what I really need is for people who aren't attached to my crap-er-stuff to come and tell me to clean up my act (any volunteers?). Aaron says that the only thing that will solve my problem is a match. He's probably right.

Thanks for checking out my Etsy shop, guys! I am doing dolls this week so that on the 15th I can actually put up dolls. I just love making them! I love drawing them and dreaming up their little outfits and fun little details. I just finished cat-eyes for Peggy. Too cute if I do say so myself. I'll show her off tomorrow, maybe.

little lovelies handmade on Etsy!!

oy. I am not a very good shopkeeper, am I? Click above and it will take you away to shopping bliss!

WIP Week Continued

WIP week is back with a couple of embroideries I am working on. Above is the Retro Baby, which will be framed and below are some samples to send someone for a project that may or may not work out...

UPDATES!!

The shop is open and ready for business! As I was loading stuff in I even got a sale! Thank a million Linda!! From now on the shop will be updated with new things on the 1st and 15th of every month.

The dollhouse is going back tomorrow with not a single regret. It is just too fragile to be a child's toy and I really really want my kids to be able to enjoy it and when I put my furniture in it the scale was waaaaay off. I should have realised that it would be too small for my stuff. I can't afford the furniture that goes with those houses and, again, the kids couldn't play with it. So off it goes and I am completely fine with it.