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that is my brain is addled…June has been crazy bananas with our market days:

I finished a bracelet project that will be featured in an upcoming book and it is super fun and super easy too (if I do say so myself). No pics of that one as it is top secret at this point .

We made a trip to Port Aransas last week for some beach time with Poppa Lee and Grandma Mardee, Misty and Ethan and his sister, Sarah. We missed Louis, Rose and Lillie!

Now we’re gearing up for a week of space themed cub scout camp. Our swaps this year are completely awesome. Lynn and the boys made bags of space junk/satellite debris (bits and bobs and chunks of recycled electronic stuff – super cool). I made some polymer clay planet mobiles (that GLOW in the dark!) and some wooden clothespin aliens. I’ll snap pics tomorrow in the day light. I might get them posted in the next week…maybe even tomorrow. Don’t hold your breath though…

You don’t know where to start? Well you are in luck! This Satuday, June 4th, the Lyons’ Den and aplcreations.com are sponsoring the Kids Tent at the Denton Community Market. We plan on introducing families to the wonders (heh) of letterboxing.

The kids and I carved stamps to plant on site at the market. I carved an event-type stamp that will be hidden in plain sight, tucked in my display somewhere. I printed up covers (cute vintage wagon image courtesy of justsomethingimade.com) with info about letterboxing and made pamphlet bound letterbox logbooks to hand out to kids who want to start hunting letterboxes. I cut up plastic erasers so kids can make a trail stamp if they want. We’ll have a box of stamps I’ve carved over the years for kids to stamp with. Fingers are crossed that all my stuff survives the day!!

For more information on letterboxing visit any of these sites:

atlasquest.com (this is my favorite site to use. No affiliation or consideration given, this is strictly my personal opinion).

letterboxing.info

letterboxing.org

Summer vacation has begun! Our June is jammed full of stuff leaving our July and August wide open (for now).

we swung by the giant Sam Houston statute on I-45
last weekend on our way home from Houston.

The 2010-2011 school year ended with Logan:

First graders do not get grades in the traditional sense which totally drives me nuts. I have a hard time looking at a report card that is roughly the equivalent of scoring an ice dancing routine. That is to say, subjective…before this somehow devolves into a rant about how much I hate the “teaching to the TEST” method that is going on in our schools now I’m going to stop.

Caleb didn’t have grades per se, but he did get all 3’s, which may as well be A’s for all intents and purposes. He also had all 3’s in his EXPO program (DISD’s gifted and talented which I could also spiral into a spitting rage about).

Now that our days are free to do what we want we’re getting ready to jump back into letterboxing again as well as swimming every day and riding our bicycles until dusk every night. We’ll be grilling food for dinner, making big salads with veggies from our garden and Cardo’s at the Denton Community Market and eating popsicles on the patio. It’s going to be fun!

Here’s the plan for the summer of 2011: kick the kids out of the house after breakfast, come back in for lunch and some reading time, head out for errands or a movie during the heat of the day (so somebody else can pay for the cold air), come home, go swimming, play with our neighbor friends, fix supper, veg out. Rinse and repeat. We’ll scatter some road trips in here and there and have company over too. I can’t wait!

Last Saturday was the season opener for the Denton Community Market. Aside from the high winds and my poor choice of attire for the unseasonably chilly temps I had a fantastic day. Several friends (and my mom too!) stopped by to say “hi” and to check out the market. Sales were brisk for my mini composition books, sun-catchers and stationery. Woot!

Enter the domino effect: I constantly have ideas brewing, but I rarely make time to do anything but jot down the idea (if that even). Well, this week I’ve been working like mad to get new inventory made and decided to execute some of my recent ideas. This, in turn, created additional ideas and before I knew it I was pulling out all the power tools I own making a huge mess and some pretty awesome stuff (if I do say so myself, heh). A crappy camera phone pic will have to suffice for now, but I’m getting ready to go down and take some “real” pictures shortly.

Sunday afternoon I decided to sit down and cut out eleventy smallish sheet metal shapes with the intention to make magnets now and ornaments later. After putting the cut outs through the paces to prep them, I painted them all and let them dry. As the magnets were drying I hunted through all the shelves and drawers of my studio to find paste wax for sealing the surface of the magnets. While on the hunt I thought through a pile of different ways to display the magnets. I found the paste wax, by the way, in the very first place I thought of, but the very last place I looked. I do not understand how my brain works sometimes.

More domino effect? Yes. Last week I decided I needed to make a big chalkboard sign to display in my booth for announcing future market dates, new arrivals and specials. Hello!? What is more awesome than a chalkboard? A magnetic chalkboard, that’s what.

Monday Molly and I set off to Home Depot to gather up flashing, mdf board and hardware. I used old fencing I’ve been saving for something since last summer for the frame. The fencing was hail damaged in the recent storms giving it a polka dotted look (my favorite!). I had the guys at Home Depot cut the mdf into three equal pieces. Once we were back at the house I scribbled down all my measurements and made my cuts. I only had to re-cut one piece and that was because the wood was too warped to line up properly with the other pieces of the frame. Hooray for measure twice, cut once!

I guess I need to get back to work. Fresh sun-catchers and new stationery are scattered all over every work surface in my studio at the moment! Come see me this weekend if you’re in the area!

I’ve been so excited about participating in this year’s Denton Community Market! May 7th was supposed to be the opening day. However, thanks to county bureaucracy it was postponed until May 14th. For whatever reason, I was not made aware of this change.

Imagine my surprise when I pulled into the parking lot Saturday morning expecting to see lots of other artists and farmers and gardeners setting up their tents for the day and I did not. Once the rage stopped melting my brain, I used my phone to pull up the website to see what was going on and discovered that opening day had been postponed and there would be a celebration day instead at a nearby location. I walked over to see what had happened to cause the postponement and was invited to set my booth up for the day if I wanted. Thank goodness!

I was glad to be able to set up, made a decent amount of sales and met some really lovely people too.

Since the list has carryovers from April, I feel like I should account for completion, partial or otherwise for all the bullet points.

1. I will use my good camera everyday. Well, it didn’t end up being used everyday, but I did pretty well at the beginning of the month . As the month got busier and messier, I was less inclined to tote the camera bag around with me. I do have a ton of photos to share…they’re just parked on the card until I can upload them.

2. I will get a banner made. I designed a banner, uploaded it and almost pulled the trigger. Then I felt pangs of guilt about hanging a digitally printed sign in my tent full of handmade art. So instead I went out and bought some canvas and a grommet kit. I have a stack of fabric scraps piled up waiting ever so patiently to be made into an awesome, handmade banner instead. That’s on the short list of things to do. THIS WEEK!

3. I will work on new designs daily during the week. Uhhhh, so it didn’t happen daily, but I did make a conscious effort to at least scribble ideas down in my notebook or type notes to myself in my phone if I couldn’t physically be in my studio to work.

4. I will get out for a walk every evening during the week. Crap weather and husband being out of town made this difficult to keep up with, but I did use the treadmill at least two or three times a week. Hooray for Netflix streaming on the iPad!

5. I will not overload my calendar with other people’s stuff this month. I NAILED this one. And I did not feel guilty about it either.

6. I will start on Teacher Appreciation gifts NOW. I did. However, we ended up scrambling on a couple things because our weekend plans changed up at the last minute and then I had a sort of last minute GENIUS idea. The PTA made it easy this year theme-wise. Monday: Desserts. Tuesday: Give a hug. Wednesday: Kid Art. Thursday: Write a thank you note. Friday: Bring a treat.

We made cookies and delivered them on Tuesday to their homeroom teachers, their special areas teachers, their librarians, Caleb’s speech teacher and EXPO teacher:

I really wanted the boys to make little monster/bug things and call them HUGS. But we had too much going on and they didn’t seem all that interested in thinking up ideas. Maybe next year.

The boys got to bust out the water colors to paint for their teachers. I failed to take any pictures…

Thursday the boys wrote their thank you notes. I wrote our thank you notes (from Lynn and me) on the first page of the recycled school flyer notepads we gave them this year. We gave the notebooks to the homeroom teachers, the school secretaries and the school nurse.

Last, but not least, my genius idea (if I do say so myself):

I made piñatas that we stuffed full of office supplies, candy, Crystal Light packets, and other things that might be handy to have at your desk! My original plan was to get the base piñatas made so that the boys could build on and turn them into whatever they wanted. However, the process ended up getting jammed up the first two times I tried it where I had to stop layering the paper to go pick up kids from school or take them to soccer and both times when I came back to finish up the balloons had slow leaks which made it impossible to continue on with the them. Pissed does not even begin to describe my feelings when we got home from soccer practice! By this time I was COMMITTED to executing this idea…I stayed up into the WEE hours of the morning Friday finally getting those things finished. I woke the boys up early so they could stuff and at least draw on the outsides before delivery. In the end, the boys were thrilled to deliver the finished piñatas and I know Logan’s teacher had a blast digging through all the goodies we packed in to the thing.

7. I will be more selective in my procrastination. I worked on this all month. It’s getting easier by the day. I am TRYING to get my kids on board with the “five minutes or less? JUST DO IT ALREADY” idea. It has been a struggle…

8. I will continue to cull my “collection” and make places for the stuff with which I cannot bear to part. It’s a work in progress…

9. I will remove the wallpaper from the powder room. Didn’t even think about this one. Not once, until today.

10. Clean the kids’ closets. Also a work in progress…

So. To recap my list for May:

1. I will get my banner made in time to hang at the May 14th Denton Community Market opening day.

2. I will work regularly and consistently on new ideas and designs.

3. I will exercise daily; whether it be a walk around the ‘hood, using the treadmill, working in the yard or the garden.

4. I will be more selective in my procrastination. Five minutes? JUST DOOOO EEEEET!

5. I will remove the wallpaper from the powder room.

6. Clean the kids’ closets.

And with all that wordiness, I’ll call it a night! Let’s reconvene tomorrow sometime for the not-quite-market day tale.

ETA: Happy Mother’s Day!! If you’re a mom-type person (mom, grandma, great-grandma, aunt, sister, friend, mentor) I hope you had a lovely day.

I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around burning through the first week of May already. I feel like April tried to bury me. I worked on my list. I feel like I did a pretty good job of whittling down the bullet points, though I do have my carry overs…

Lynn traveled a lot last month. I spent a lot of time cleaning and scheduling adjusters/contractors/roofers/etc. We went camping. During Lent. Grilled cheese sandwiches and tuna salad for supper on Friday anyone?

Molly turned four! F O U R. We took a trip to San Angelo for Easter where we ate copious amounts of Mexican food and got to meet our newest nephew/cousin, Baby Jake. We even got to see Aunt Katie and Miss Charlotte for a couple hours too. Fun times.

Our area had a series of hail storms blow through over the course of a week and half or so and our little homestead took a decent amount of damage between the roof, fencing and garden. Our adjuster came out on the 28th and just today I noticed water damage on the ceiling of my studio and Molly’s room. Can you guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow? Hopefully only spending a few minutes on the phone with our agent and then getting the adjuster back out to add an addendum to our original claim. We REALLY can’t afford a second deductible against these repairs.

Anyway, once I get my little indians put to bed I’ll do a proper list for May and tell you all about my first market-day-that-almost-wasn’t. Sounds exciting, right? Heh. Meet you back here in a couple hours. Break!

but now there are two monkey’s named Molly at our house! The original monkey is Miss Molly and the new monkey named Molly will be introduced shortly.

A little history: my brother, Nolan, used “Monkey” as a term of endearment for my kids back in the olden days when he lived with us and only one of my kids was actually on this earth. The term stuck and since then all the little kids in my life are referred to as “Monkey” at one point in time or another. When I asked Molly what she wanted to name her monkey she responded in such a manner that, “DUH!” was implied…with daggers. “Mom…you call me monkey all the time! So I’ll call my monkey Molly!”

So, without further ado, let’s meet Molly and wander through her process while we’re at it:

Isn’t she adorable? That face is so sweet and because of the shape of the torso Molly drew for her, she looks like she’s dancing. So much personality.

Molly paid very close attention to all the steps and details of Caleb’s monkey making endeavor. “Can we do this when we make my monkey, mom?” “My monkey is going to be a girl too.” And so on and so forth.

As soon as we dropped the boys off at school on Monday morning we ran up stairs to my studio to get started. She plopped right down in the middle of the room and set to drawing her pattern (please pronounce it “patter-ren”).

While she was drawing I asked her what color yarn she wanted to use for her monkey’s arms and legs and she chose purple (the new color now running neck and neck with pink for her favorite). I started making the i-cords and, naturally, she HAD to help so I let her and now she can proudly tell you all the stitches she made on each one of the appendages.

Once the bows and the ears were drawn, I cut out the pattern and transferred it to the felt with my new favorite toy. Then she realized she didn’t draw a “white part, like Caleb’s” so before the meltdown could commence I cut out a little face piece and set it up so she could needle felt it to the body. Crisis averted! When the needle felting was completed she drew the new face on the monkey with an air-erase pen so I could embroider it on for her. She wanted purple button eyes; however, somehow, there are NO purple buttons in my stash. Not a single one. So she chose some purple floss and I made purple french knot eyes instead.

I pinned it all together and we sat down to sew the seams. This is nothing new for her, she often sits in my lap and helps me sew whatever it is I’m sewing at the time. She puts her little hands on top of mine and we sew to our hearts content. She loves it and it seriously makes my heart skip a beat.

I clipped all the curves and turned the monkey right side out so we could stuff it. Oh how I wish I could remember the word Molly kept using for the fiberfil! Whatever it was, it was so funny and wildly wrong. Gah! Maybe it will come back to me later…why didn’t I write it down?!

With the stuffing complete, I stitched up the turning/stuffing opening and we set to work on our photo shoot:

You may recall back in February when I mentioned Caleb bringing home a craft book from the school library. Well, one of the many projects Caleb wanted to do was to knit a monkey for his teacher for her birthday at the end of March. I told him I was sure Grandma Mary would LOVE to teach him how to knit because that lady can KNIT like no one I’ve ever seen. So when we visited San Angelo over Spring Break I took Caleb out to buy all the supplies he would need to create his masterpiece. Then my mother (Grandma Mary) taught him how knit a garter stitch. On circs no less! I can’t even figure out how to work circs which is partially why Caleb’s monkey went from being completely knitted to being a mix of knitted bits and other things. The other reason Caleb’s design changed is because he wanted me to teach him how to embroider. I offered the idea of using wool felt as the body so he could embroider the face and add the knitted arms and legs he had already made over Spring Break. He wasn’t quite sold on the idea until I told him he would need to needle felt the face to the body before doing the embroidery and then he could use my sewing machine to sew the seams instead of hand stitching.

Somehow, I managed not to take any pictures of him doing the embroidery portion of this project. I think it may have something to do with the multiple times I had to untangle the back of the foundation for him. I gave him a piece of pearl cotton that was the length I normally use and he didn’t want to shorten it…so we had a couple do-overs .

After he finished sewing the button eyes on I pinned the ears and arms and legs down and then pinned the back over all of it so we could sit down and sew the seams.

Before we started I set my needle to always end on the down stroke to prevent slippage since the arms and legs were a bit bulky. Caleb guided the piece under the needle and pushed on my foot while it was on the pedal so that I could control the speed of the needle for him. I think it made him feel a little more at ease and it definitely gave my shin muscle a work out too.

When the sewing was done I showed him how to clip the curves so they look nice when turned right side out and then I wrestled the monkey right side out so Caleb could stuff it.

I sewed up the turn/stuff opening for him and made and attached the tail to his specifications.

To finish her up, Caleb asked that I make a green bow for the monkey because his teacher’s favorite color is green (“just like you, mom!”).

Proud momma moment here…Caleb is so proud of his work and so am I! He came home from school today to report that all his classmates want him to make stuffed animals for them too. I told him he would need to charge for the dolls to in order to pay for supplies and the time spent to make each one. This, of course, is leading us to an economics lesson and, ultimately, I think what we’re going to end up doing is writing DIY instructions.

You know what’s coming next right? Molly was very interested in all the ins and outs of Caleb’s monkey making. We had a lot of “when I make mine” conversations. Plus she really just loved Caleb’s monkey. Molly and I made a monkey named Molly today. More on that tomorrow!

So. What have you guys been up to this month? Fun stuff, I hope . I’ve been busy:

{soccer-momming}

{cub scout-momming}

{gardening: new veggies in the raised bed and cleaning up the front flowerbeds}

{traveling with the kids}

{spring breaking with the kids while prepping for the show}

{prepping for the show, working the show – which was okay, not fantastic like the fall show, but good traffic, just not a lot of buyers this time, recovering from the show}

{working on my dqs10 quilt}

{herding children at the pinball festival}

{becoming an aunt for the fifth time! which, let’s be honest, the only work i did was worrying about my sis and the baby. my sis ended up laboring for about 18 hours only to have a c-section because poor baby j is another in a long of giant proff head babies.}

{working on a project for Logan’s teacher}

Apparently all the while never touching my good camera! My vow for April is to use the shit out of my good camera. I am also going to do a post featuring my monthly goals on the 1st. I will be participating in the Denton Community Market this year! With that commitment I’m going to have to ramp up production to keep my stock fresh and interesting. There is tons to do, lots of ideas cooking. Fun stuff!

See you back here on Friday then?