bird mobile

bird mobile

About a year ago my friend, Jennie, and I made this mobile for a friend's baby shower. I just came across this photo of it and thought I'd share. :)

oh, and I should say we used a pattern from Spool.

costume

costume

pretty much done! just need to hem the skirt - by hand, blech - and also hand stitch the dress lining together. jay has talked me into fashioning some sort of wolf as red riding hood's grandma outfit for him. i got some fur at joann's yesterday and bought some granny clothes at goodwill. we'll see what i come up with.

paint square

paint square

love this idea

paint square etsy shop

pumpkin stem

pumpkin stem

hi. here's the hat i made as part of oscar's halloween costume. it's supposed to be a stem on top of a pumpkin. while the green in his pumpkin suit is paler, it is also made of fleece so i think they will work together. i also made my mom-in-law a little black bag for church (for keys and such) and sewed a doggie appliqué onto a shirt this weekend. i'll post the appliqués later...

housie

housie

I made etta a little housie under the counter in the kitchen where we have a hole waiting for a wine fridge. The colored stripes are WallPops vinyl from Lowes that I had laying around.

halloween invites

halloween invites

A peak at the quick invites I did for the Halloween party. Of course after a few hours of drawing in corel for the invite I wind up liking the plain and simple envelope [that took me 5 minutes to make] better.

japanese sewing adventure

japanese sewing adventure

I signed up for the Japanese Sewing class at I mentioned to you before over at Modern Domestic. It's an all day workshop the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I just went and bought one of the required books, happy homemade vol.1, at this amazing Japanese market out in Beaverton (I need to go back there and spend more time browsing! Why is stuff from Japan so simple and cute?). The class is supposed to guide us through patterns written in Japanese. Looking at it, I think a little help would be good. I think I've settled on making the dress shown above (B). Now I need to buy fabric ;)

I am soo excited to get to take a sewing class!! (thanks to Trevor and his parents for the awesome birthday gift)

polka bats

polka bats

The bat garland is done. It looks ok...just ok. I made my pattern to detailed and in order to get all the detail to come through in the finished product I had to use 1/8" seam allowances. When I was turning the bats right side out the seams broke - in at least one spot on each bat! Total pain...but it's done.

i love my blue squash

i love my blue squash

We went to a fall festival this past weekend and I got this Blue Ballet squash. It's blue! And edible! His little orange buddy in the background is a Kabocha squash - also edible - but not as cute.

rainbow

rainbow

I just did the set up to so that I can post pics directly from my phone.

birthday cupcakes

birthday cupcakes

portland store: golden rule

portland store: golden rule

we need to check out this store the next time you're in town, it looks neat! check out more about it on this blog here. (this blog seems very hipster-y, but also awesome. the writing cracks me up. AND the photos are beautiful.)

bats

bats

I'm making a bat garland for Renee. She loves bats and Halloween and her birthay is next weekend so she is getting a bat garland. This is the third little guy that I sewed up and the first one that came out decent. I think I made my pattern a little too detailed. I finally figured out that with super tiny stiches and a 1/8" seam allowance it works...kind of. I still need to press this guy and sew a dozen or so more of his buddies. The fabrics are all different sizes of black and white polka-dots.

Note to self :: Before tracing and cutting out 16 sets of bats...try sewing one first to make sure it works.

i love my blue shoes

i love my blue shoes

speaking of consignment, i am smitten with these shoes i bought last week. they are so little-boy-classic!

oh, the subject is a reference to one of our favorite color learning books: pete the cat (thanks pam!). pete loves his blue shoes too!

home life blog

home life blog

i came across this blog the other day when i was looking for sewing ideas for young boys. apparently this is a god fearing, mother of five (soon to be six!) keeping this lovely blog. they live somewhere near cooperstown, ny which is one of my favorite areas! i love it because they live in such an old fashioned way, the kids are home-schooled, and the photos are lovely. i think it's an interesting peak into another way of home life.

as for the sewing research - she mentioned the ottobre magazine that has finnish children's clothing patterns. the styles can be a little embellished (maybe it's the crazy fabric or punk hairstyles that distract me), but there's a lot of cute ones i would love to take on. i wonder if the library has this subscription... probably pushing my luck.

chair

chair

I found this little etta-sized chair at one of the baby consignment shops yesterday!

white

white

speaking of simple and white....have you looked at west elm's website lately? they seem to have changed their style a bit and it is a lot more simple and natural and they are partnering with small artists like lotta and sesame letterpress. this little penguin decanter thing totally reminds me of a simple white version of that crazy orange glass penguin.

image via west elm

I *might* be designing a new coffee shop and I was looking around the web for inspiration. I want it to be a little hip and sleek but still be warm and natural. So I'm thinking white with light, rough wood - kind of Scandinavian looking. All the coffee shops we have here are either totally hippie with random stuff just thrown together or very "northwesty" [blech!]. Hopefully this coffee shop actually happens!

clutch

clutch

I signed up for martha's craft of the day email awhile ago. This was today's craft....I want to make it right now!!

image via marthastewart.com

washcloths

washcloths

i just made these earlier today with inspiration taken from the little yellow towel you left behind here. i bought this blue terry cloth at that outdoor sale at fabric depot (that saturated my laundry with purple dye) a while ago. i just cut up some rectangles and added these little guys to them so oscar would love getting his hands and face wiped up. tree!

macro

macro

I just have to say that I am addicted to the digital macro setting on our camera! Jay thinks I am totally insane because I am always taking pictures of fruits and vegetables and other random things.

 

tomatoes

tomatoes

Today I made Slow Roasted Tomatoes from Smitten Kitchen with the remnants of the little tomatoes from my garden. They are soooo good - the slow roasting process intesifies the tomatoey flavor. After the 3 hours of roasting I packed them in olive oil and stuck them in the fridge to be used later this week...in something.

simple salem

simple salem

on my trip to boston my dad's girlfriend and oscar and i went up to salem on the ferry. we took a trolly tour of the little quaint town and i was just smitten with all the simple, rustic colonial architecture. i can't get enough of those crazy sloping roofs! or anything tidy and simple just floats my boat. the last image was this italianate feeling little piazza tucked in close to the city center, but kind of obscure. loved that.

penguin postcards

penguin postcards

i had a birthday coupon from anthropologie to use up in the month of september. i went in hoping to find a soap dish for the kitchen but theirs were too fragile and fancy to be appropriate. instead i found this collection of 100 penguin book cover postcards. i adore them! they are so simple and often quirky. most of them look like the one shown on the top right, but there's a ton of unique ones too. i'm going to send you the one full of penguins :)