only 86 shopping days left...

Has this occurred to you yet? It occurred to me this afternoon. UGH. Eighty-six days until Christmas!! I was browsing the FlaxArt catalog shopping for more of this paper and found these luggage labels while I was browsing around the site. The only holiday I love more than Halloween is Christmas. It's my MOST favorite time of the year, even with the cold and ice. At the moment I'm sort of stumped for ideas for new Christmas designs...I've been busy wandering the internet looking for papers and ephemera to inspire me. I could probably dig through my supply closet or desk drawers and find the same sort of inspiration for free...that's what I'll do...rummage through my stuff. Hooray. Perhaps some more "purging of the stuff" will take place.

I made this last night. I set up an auction for it on ebay tonight. Care to bid? Just click on the picture. I love how it turned out. Now, if I could remember where I hid my microscope slides I could get to work on the gobs of ideas I have for small Christmas ornaments. Sigh...I am my mother's daughter :).

i heart halloween...

I finished what felt like a gozillion of these ornaments this weekend. It is pure drudgery through the majority of the process but the end result is always satisfying...at least for me it is. I hope the people paying me for these things are happy too. I imagine if they weren't they would let me know.

Well, October is on my doorstep with Caleb's first birthday under one arm and Halloween under the other. I am in the midst of finishing up Halloween orders and trying to plan a clever and fun birthday party whose guest list includes everyone from great grandparents on down through aunts and uncles and of course the guest of honor, a one year old. Since Caleb's birthday is only a couple days before Halloween and we love Halloween at our house, it will be a Halloween themed party. We will probably do it this way until he informs us that Halloween themed birthday parties are lame.

Logan is still obsessed with Stitch and talks about being Stitch for Halloween all the time. He is almost as insistent as my brother Patrick was about being an R.O.U.S. one year. So, anyway, when a little blonde kid comes knocking at your door in this costume, feel free to toss your couch cushion change in with the loot to help pay for it. Heh, just kidding, but really, my husband is such a sucker for these kids. If we keep buying costumes we'll have no choice but to have costume parties for Caleb just to get our money's worth out them (the costumes, not the children). My husband does not appreciate homemade costumes...he was deprived as a child...always having to wear store bought costumes. Oh well, the damage is done, tee hee.

...

because i need something else to worry about...

This is the colorcell I "bore" today. I don't quite know how this "cell" sustains life or anything else for that matter, but it doesn't seem as complicated as my palm pilot crack monkey was/is, so we'll just watch and see how it goes. I may have to break down and read the instructions, hee. Anyway, I must get back to cleaning my computer area, we're having cable internet installed tomorrow sometime between 8am and noon and then I shall be telling my DSL provider to get bent at precisely 12:01pm.

holy crap...

do I love cute stuff, not Sanrio® cute, but (borrowed* from another discussion) "sweet" looking stuff. Sweet, gentle expressions, stuff that gives you a warm sunshine-y fuzzy feeling. I don't even remember how I came across this site, but this gal has great little graphics that really have that sweet look to them. Look at these birthday count down charts:

Schnikes, I just love 'em! Anyone counting down a wedding or baby's due date, etc. can whip up a count down chart in two seconds. It's really a phenomenal site, click on one of the charts to check it out.

Speaking of weddings, today I went out wedding dress shopping with my sister-in-law...with both boys...surprisingly they both did fantastic. By surprisingly, I do mean, staggeringly, amazingly, mind-blowingly, surprisingly. I am so proud of both of them...they by far exceeded my expectations, never mind Aunt "Mih-mee's". My children are not heathens, mind you, but they have been known to vibrate ever so slightly above ground level at times. Imagine if you will, a sea of big fluffy white dresses all zipped up in upholstery grade clear vinyl, rabid salesgirls, a bride-to-be who is far too polite to tell said salesgirls to take a leap and just get the dress she wants to try on, a married woman of almost seven years who is NOT too polite to tell people to take a leap, a three year old boy and a ten month old boy. The possibilities for chaos are endless. But! The gods smiled upon us. During the six hours of shop hopping, there were no bride-to-be freak outs, noone loosing their head to me, no melt downs from the boys. We did have a gastrointestinal pyrotechnics display courtesy of Logan, but that was toward the end of the day and I have learned my lesson the hard way to always be prepared. All in all we had a good day. The monkeys are both completely comatose and will probably sleep in tomorrow morning...ha!

here, kitty, kitty, kitty...

I bought a handful of those self-adhesive shaded night lights a couple weeks ago thinking I could make some cute, quick, cheap baby gifts for the too-many-count baby showers I have been invited to recently. (Talk about breaking the bank!) Anyway, I've been at a loss on how to put them to use. The photos of the examples on the packaging are SH*T and that's putting it mildly. The pictures are so cheesy you almost don't want to purchase the product. BUT, finally, an idea sprung forth today while I was on the phone with my Grandmother.

It has already earned the Logan seal of approval so it must be a winner. It has been my experience that anything he insists on keeping for himself ends up being a favorite gift or a super seller. The kid has a knack, it's a little creepy.

stacks, piles, heaps...

of things to do. My desk HAS to be cleaned off NOW. I can't work on a square inch of it it is so cluttered. Once I get the desk cleaned and organized again the rest of my to-do list will practically take care of itself...except for the laundry being folded and put away, I'll have to do that manually, sigh. I have two new Lolly Kate samples to sew up and a slew of Halloween and Christmas ornaments to finish. So with that said, I am off to make my workspace workable! I feel like I need a mask and a cape.

big boy, little boy...

I have one of each. Logan, my three year old, is at the stage where he is a "big boy" when it suits him and otherwise he is Timon, or Stitch, or a "little boy" (like baby Caleb).

Caleb, my ten month old, wants to do everything, and I do mean everything, his big brother does. By everything I mean, climbing up on kitchen chairs to get to the kitchen sink and sitting at the end of Mom and Dad's bed to watch Playhouse Disney in the morning. It is lung-crushing how cute I find this. I am the oldest of six and I know I found the mimicking and following highly annoying when it was me being mimicked and followed. HOWEVER, from my new perspective as a mother, holy crap is it ever cute!

I'm still working here and there on the site's facelift...almost finished, hooray! Then I'll get back to making new stuff.

testing, testing, one, two, three...

Lately I have been fascinated with weblogging and web journals. It's an interesting peek into other peoples' lives and collections, likes and dislikes. I have found that just about everyone in every field on the planet has a blog/journal: presidential candidates, dairy food companies, artists, designers, etc. So, naturally, I want one too! And here it is.

My plan is to share cute stuff my little guys do, let you know what I'm working on and when to look for it on the site or ebay, as well as anything else I deem constructive.