handmade in texas box 02/44...

Well here it is in all its glory: my completed box for My Little Mochi's Coraline Mystery Box Swap. Before I found a good box I decided I would focus on the hummingbirds in the Other Mother's garden. I loved everything about that garden, even those little bastard snapdragons. I would've loved to have found a simple little wire bird cage to tuck all the goodies into, but simple little wire bird cages are expensive and my budget was beat into submission by the $25 a yard velvet I chose to buy early on...I only bought a half yard, but still it all adds up quick if you aren't careful. Luckily while we were in New Braunfels I found the green tackle box pictured above and immediately wished I found it sooner because I so would've made my own version of The Other Misses Forcible and Spink in their Botticelli/mermaid get ups.

Included in the box: a night light with an embroidered hummingbird on linen shade; a mobile featuring three wool felt humming birds, crepe myrtle branches and wire; a letter whose format was totally pilfered from the LAIKA mystery boxes; a screen shot from the film featuring Coraline and three hummingbirds at the gate of the Other garden; and a rusty old skeleton key from my collection. I tucked the button eyes (mounted on red velvet) into a separate little box and tied them up with some orange-ish seam binding tape and a paper flower I made.





You can see more pictures of this stuff over here. I really hope my recipient likes everything and that it all makes up for the box being shipped ten days later than it was supposed to ship.

we're alive, we're alive...

no thanks to a particularly nasty stomach bug the two little ones and myself have been battling off and on since last Tuesday. Molly is still not 100%. Caleb and I are happy to have normal bowel movements back in our repertoires. Lynn and Logan have stomachs of steel. I'm playing fast and furious catch up now on work that fell by the wayside due to the unforeseen massive influx of disgusting laundry, frequent bathing of small children after covering themselves in puke and diarrhea and feeling plain poorly myself.

In other news, I put the Yudu to work in a rare couple of minutes when the kids were sleeping and I was feeling capable of remaining upright. I have to say, once I finally just bit the bullet and started the process it was simple. I have a hard time jumping into new-to-me undertakings when the supplies are either a.) limited, as in if I mess up there won't be a second go or b.) spendy and it will be a while before I can try again if I mess up. This is the reason I haven't ever opened my Print Gocco box. Luckily, though, my local Michaels is stocking supplies for the Yudu so I won't be trying to out bid people on eBay and I won't be paying shipping in addition to sales tax either. Once I'm caught up with my past due commitments I'll do a separate post on my findings during the inaugural run of the Yudu.



Lynn wanted "team" t-shirts for the Pinball Festival this year and this is what I made for him and his crew (which consisted of some of our children, some of our siblings, and a handful of friends).



It's spring break week here so things will probably remain a little sporadic until we get back to regularly scheduled programming next week.

and the winner of the little mushroom dude is...

Congrats go out to Deborah who reminded me about Square Root Day. Molly will be happy to know he won't be moving too far away!

for post 678 we'll do a giveaway ...

As promised, a mushroomy giveaway to mark post number 678! Why 678 you say? Well, I am one of those people who gets a little thrill when I catch the clock at 5:55 or 12:34 or when I find that the day's date is 12/21 or 08/08/08. I don't know why, I just do. So when I noticed 6-7-8 was coming up it seemed like a good reason to celebrate!

Up for grabs will be one little woolen mushroom doll/figurine thing like the ones I made for Sonya's handmade mushroom swap.





In the meantime I drew up a little embroidery pattern/coloring page for everyone to use. I'm working up my own sample of the pattern today will cross link pictures for those who like a photo to reference with their patterns.



To enter the drawing for the mushroom doll/figurine just leave a comment on this post. Feel free to wander around some of my other posts too. I will close entries for this giveaway on Monday (3/9) at 9pm CST.