brookaloo

handmade swap received!

so i've been stalking my mail box for the past week waiting for my handmade swap package to arrive.  i don't usually get many packages, which is something that i regret not doing for others.  it's just so much fun to get something in the mail.  swaps are a good time.  i think i'll do more, there are tons to be found on craftster.org, or by reading other crafty blogs. i'd like to come up with one too.

here is my beautiful new little birdie from suzanne at phatsheep

(click on the photo for a larger shot)

i absolutely love the bird, the colors go perfect in my room which is where I plan on keeping her.  she also made some sweet little mice pins, one is pictured, the other i was all ready wearing.  i must of known that these were coming today because i coordinated my outfit to match the mousy pin.  as an extra bonus, there were stickers, buttons, and chocolate.  thank you suzanne!

some cookies

i slacked on the cookie baking this holiday season, so i'm making up for it now with some springy cookies. i love these cookie cutter from bake it pretty.  i also got the button molds which i have yet to use, but have some valentines cupcake plans for.

i got these pretty little paper cups for lily's birthday (in may) but i'm planning ahead this year:

they are such a deal, $4.25 for 75 liners.  there are so many pretty ones to choose from.  i'm such a sucker for pretty packaging.  

here are the cute gnomes i made from the cookie cutters i got from them as well.  

i also got the beehive, mushroom and a snail, but i got tired last night and didn't do any of the snails.  truth be told, sugar cookies with icing are a little too sweet for me, so i end up giving them away or begging the girls to eat them, (for some reason they don't eat alot of sweets). so i might come knocking on your door friends with some cookies.  on a beautiful day like today, i feel like hanging laundry, walking for miles, and opening up the whole house for some fresh air.  i'm counting down the days to spring. 

handmade swap

here's a little hint to my first handmade swap.  i'm lucky enough to be swapping with a gal from Shetland Island (had to google earth that one to see where it was).  here is a link to the handmade flickr group: handmade swap group.  the deadline is 5 days away, so i'd better get busy. 

obsessed

i've collected cookie cutters forever.  i have bags and bags of them, and i'm pretty sure i've used all of them at least once.  i've found some new ones over at bake it pretty that i must have. 

the beehive, coffee pot, cozy home, gnome, mushroom, owl, snail, unicorn, whale, and teapot are all coming to live with me.  

a girl can dream right?

damn you anthropologie for having so much goodness.  i don't even want to look at the sale items, i know they are still all out of my reach.  but the shoes, oh the shoes!  

these i can afford. ebelskivers. i have a long history of receiving appliances for christmas. 

i can remember as far back as jr. high receiving cookbooks, hand blenders, and a bread machine. not to

mention all the coffee pots, tea kettles, wooden spoons, and shawn's favorite, an apple corer. which my

mom swears "she cannot live without". the ebelskiver pan was a gift a few years ago, and i break it out

once in awhile. they are really easy to make, these are cinnamon roll, lemon custard, and cherry filled.

the pan itself came from williams-sonoma

we've also been playing a lot of scrabble. here chloe is beating me by quite a bit.  given we play a sort of "go-fish" scrabble where you can ask someone for a letter like "do you have an a" and if you want to give it up you can.  then chloe decided that you should be able to start a whole new row if you cannot make a word off the rows we all ready have going.  

and at last the ice is ready.  shawn had to shorten the rink due to some serious holes (thanks lyra) in the tarp, but now it's all good and they played a game last night with the neighbors.  

christmas tree

this is our first real christmas tree.  in the 11 years that shawn and i have been married, we have never had a real christmas tree.  we had the $2 goodwill tree our first year, it was about 2 feet tall, and stood on a milk crate.  then there was the awesome rotating aluminum tree with changing lights.  that hasn't come out since the cats arrived.  the past few years we've had another goodwill tree, this one 4 ft tall, but so cute.  i love that tree, but i really really wanted a real one this year.  our neighbors introduced us to a cut your own tree farm out  by chelsea, so a few weeks ago we decided to give it a go.  i was feeling really really crabby, as well as shawn, and i'm pretty sure the girls were too, so it wasn't a christmas card moment.  at one point shawn and i were both yelling at each other about directions, and i proceeded to say that i would not talk to him anymore because he had ruined our perfect "christmas memory" of buying our first real tree.  which then became pretty funny because that's really a more fitting christmas memory, so it all smoothed out by the time we got there.  

to add insult to injury, as we were looking around for a tree, there was a family, complete with grandparents, holding hands circling a tree singing "oh christmas tree" before they chopped it down.  as we walked by with our wagon and saw, i gave shawn one of my "oh brother" looks, which meant "we suck" since there would be no singing around our tree.  it was a sweet moment, but a tradition that i cannot see our family adopting.  instead, we finally found a sweet spruce, named him bruce, and cheered as shawn cut it down.

yea!!!!

i can't tell you how sweet it felt to be driving home with a christmas tree on our roof.  we were one of a hundred cars on the road with cute little trees tied to their roofs.  at last we had our christmas memory. 

more tree highlights found on my flicker account

 

shadow art fair

so our first shadow art fair has come and gone. i worked until 3am the night before, tagging, finishing, and with the anticipation of the next day. i've been to all the shadow art fairs, but never as a vendor, so i was really excited to see how the entire day 12 HOURS would go. we borrowed stacey's sweet skeleton for a display. i didn't realize that 1/2 a table was going to be so small. we shared a table with a sweet couple of girls with cool stuff.

   

milvi, julie, me, and carol.  

carol's beautiful bags

    

some of julie's beautiful scarfs, hats, the red one was so lovely. we had a great time. the day was non stop all day long. sometimes you couldn't even more there was such a crowd. i sold much of my stuff, but was happy to bring some goodies home for our tree. we had a huge table set aside for all our friends to come and have a beer with us. the shadow stout was delicious, beets in beer, nice combination. i ate a lot of crap though, which combined with not a lot of sleep, lead to this dreadful sickness that i can't kick. it was worth it, perhaps we'll have another go this summer.

sneak peek

so here's a little sneak peek of some of the stuff i'll have at the SAF

i'm nervous and excited, and just overall relieved that i have almost everything done.  i cleaned up the entire house today.  i had basically taken over every inch of extra space with bags of stuffing, boxes of yarn, baskets of felt, and a my sewing machine living on the dining room table.  just a few little touches and i'll be officially done.  hope to see you all there!

shadow art fair

i've been crossing my fingers that we (me & crafty friends) would get into the shadow art fair for the winter show, and WE DID! this is exciting for us, i have been wanting to do the shadow art fair since it first started, but never got around to making anything.  so now i have to crank out even more stuff.

here is a link to the projects we submitted, shadow art fair projects from ypsiknits.

so many ideas are going through my head right now, i can't wait to get started.  good thing the girls have hockey tonight, i'll have a good 3 hours to myself to work. high five yeah!!

i finished something!

yeah me!  it's been awhile since i've had the time to finish a project.  i was cracking out some major cleaning around the house though.  i took 2 van loads of stuff to sal's army, purging crap feels good. 

so yesterday i got to thinking that my lamps in the living room were sagging a bit. i had some old paper lanterns hanging in the corner, and i loved them, but they were full of dust, and really droopy.  you can't clean those things, it's impossible.  so being frugal, i decided to recycle an old lampshade i had in the basement.  it was a beautiful 50's lampshade, but most of the vellum had come off or torn, so i just tossed it aside.  i bought this cute paper at Hollanders by Stephen Mackey, little girls on skateboards, and at the beach.  

i love how it turned out.  i left some of the old paper because it was still in good shape, no use wasting it.  now i'm inspired to do some more recycling projects.  

i also went "home" as in back to where i grew up for a week to hang out with my parents.  while there i went to something called the "spoon river drive", the best i can describe it is miles and miles of yard sales, flea markets, and crap along this stretch of road through all these small towns.  

that sale was insane! 

a plate for every state

i love green bikes

i bought 5 paint by numbers (all finished and framed) for 25 cents each! 2 little elves ($1), some salt and pepper shakers $5, and scraps of fabric 50 cents.  

this is the house i grew up in, now my folks live there again.  i felt like i was in HS again sleeping in my old room.

this is the downtown, a block from our house.  you blink, you miss it.  it's so tiny.  

i love that my parents moved back.  it's such a sweet town, not much to do there at all, but i could really relax.