Par-tay...

My great aunt has secured my services as invitation-maker for my grandmother's 80th (!!!) birthday party (although, perhaps "gala" or "event" is a better word -- it's gonna be way fancy). This is the result.


That's a photo of my grandmother as a little girl. She didn't have a pompom in the original photo, but I had to add them -- pompoms are just so festive! As I was hatching ideas for these invitations, I hoped that the package of photos I was being sent would contain one that I could put a party hat on -- how lucky that I got a photo with a built in party hat!?

The insides have the party info on one side and RSVP info on the other -- I printed the info out on sheets of printer paper, then cut them up and glued them in.

I bought pre-made cards with envelopes at the local Hobby Lobby (which happened to be on sale unexpectedly). The card above is only representational of an array of different paper patterns. See?

Cute, right?

So I spent most of the afternoon on Saturday assembling 50+ invitations. But it was pretty enjoyable. I'm so pleased with how they turned out!

Please don't judge me.

Awhile ago I promised that I would share my attempts at block printing with you, whether they were or were not successful. That promise, combined with a personal resolution to stop being afraid of looking like an idiot in front of other people, lead me to share the following -- my first, really embarrassing attempt at carving for block printing:

Now, hopefully some of you are saying to yourselves, "Self, what's she talking about? That looks awesome!" Well, that's what I was thinking until I'd gotten that far (which is to say, almost done, after about 30-45 minutes of meticulous carving), and started thinking about how great it was going to be when I stamped this onto the envelopes I'd made out of grocery sacks. And then it hit me in a flash -- those words should be backwards.
ARGGGGG!!!!
So I stopped carving, inked up what I had so far, and stamped it onto another piece of rubber.

After another 30-45 minutes, I finally came up with this:

Which happily yields this:

which is exactly what I was going for. :-)

...java java java java java...

I'm currently participating in the "Coffee/Tea/Cocoa Round 5" swap on Craftster. I'm gonna go ahead and post this even though my partner hasn't received yet, and we'll just hope she doesn't see it before she does.

Here's the sampler I stitched and framed. My partner cited this as one of her favorite quotes. :-)


Here are the note cards I made by taking a picture of the sampler (two for one! woo hoo!).


Here's the pouch that looks like a coffee cup. (I'm thinking I might start selling these. Thoughts?)


And here's everything together (I'm also sending her some alcohol-flavored coffee). Yay!

...and he cooks!

Occasionally the husband cooks. Usually stir fry or chili. Sometimes pot roast stew. I took a couple photos of him cooking stir fry the other night, and I thought I'd share.


He uses a wide variety of ingredients.


He takes his craft very seriously.


He's stirring up a storm!

And naturally, it was amazingly tasty. All you kids out there -- you think you don't like vegetables? You've just never had them properly stir fried.

"Happy Hill? Sounds like a mental institution."

This weekend the husband and I went to the wedding of one of my extended family members at Happy Hill Pentecostal Church in Ramona, OK. It was a good excuse to see some immediate family members who live far away. I took pictures of all the really important stuff at the wedding and reception, as you'll soon discover.

There was a room in the church (the lobby, perhaps?) that contained an eagle and a cowboy, each carved out of a log, a stuffed buffalo head mounted on the wall, a bench, and several fake ficuses. Here's us with the cowboy (who kind of looks like McGruff the Crime Dog):

And us with the buffalo head:


Moving on, we discovered the church bulletin board. Here are the all-important American Family Association Voter Guides. Note the proliferation of "NO"s on the Democrats' sheet, and the large concentration of "NO"s in Mitt Romney's column.


Also, apparently Satan is having a revival in Branson:

The bulletin board also had this important announcement:

which wouldn't have been all that amusing had this not been the spread at the wedding reception:

Left-overs, anyone?

And here are my brothers looking like well-dressed dorks:



Like I said, I made sure to cover all the important things. If I happened to leave out anything vital, ask about it in the comments.

New Purse!

I know it's kinda hard to believe, but I made something else for myself! I'm just going crazy! What with the Scrabble bag a couple weeks ago, and now this? Mark this day on your calendars, folks.

So I'd been needing a new purse for a while. My old one was very... loved. Here's a picture of it when it was relatively new:

That was about 2 years ago. Its age, combined with the fact that I just don't give a crap if my bag matches my outfit, meant I needed a new one. But the old one was perfect -- just the right size, and it fit my body just right. So I took the old one apart and just used the pieces as a pattern. I had spent a couple months deciding what exactly I wanted the new one to look like. I entertained some ideas featuring corduroy (I do love corduroy), but I ultimately settled on this:


That band of embroidery is part of a tablecloth I found at an estate sale about a month and a half ago. I don't know what it is about it -- the fabric, the specific combination of colors, the shapes -- but this is one of the most gorgeous pieces of embroidery I've ever seen in my life. And what better way to appreciate it than to see it and use it every day?

New Scrabble Coasters!

I've made a new batch of Scrabble coasters! They're available now in my Etsy shop in sets of 4 or 5. These have brown around the edges instead a black -- I definitely prefer the brown. Thoughts?

Non-Permanent Vandalism, Part II

Guess what? Yep, we were back at the Hobby Lobby the other night. I wanted to pick up some block printing starter stuff (which I did, and which I will blog once I get around to using them, whether it's a success or not). So we were wandering around, and I thought (and consequently said out loud), "Oh! I know what we need to do!" So we went to check on our last piece of subversive art. It had been replaced by some lovely summery words (not sure why -- last I checked, it's still January), like "DIVE", "CAKE", "ANA" (whoever she is), etc. One of these times, I've got to remember to take a before picture. Anyway, we did some letter-borrowing from farther down the aisle and came up with this:


Yep. "Get the Diva a Pint." How can you argue with that?

As I was taking this picture, I had to endure the mocking tones of some passing punk -- "Ooo! That's illegal! I'm gonna tell!" Did you know that rearranging wooden letters in a retail environment is illegal? Neither did I.

You Need a Sewing Machine

No, really -- you do. And since that's the case, you need one of these:








(Psst! -- This one has a knee control instead of a pedal! Way cool!)

These are all available now from various Etsy sellers. Just click the photo and you're there. So if you're thinking of buying a new machine, don't. Buy a vintage one for the same price, and save yourself a lot of time, money, and hassle.

New Batch of Journals

(One of my favorites, for the cheesiness factor. You can't quite see it, but that girl is wearing leg warmers.)

This is what I've been working on all week-- journals. I finally got them all done today. That's eight of them, for those who are counting. Two are special orders (which I very much appreciate, you know who you are), the rest are stock for the shop. Now I don't have to make any again for at least two months, maybe. Yay! The hole-punching and the stitching gets old after awhile. Of course, I suppose I should wish that I have to make a new batch of eight every week. Hmm... Tempting...


Marking the pages before poking holes in them.


Pages and end papers are all glued in.


Tada! Bookmarks' glue is drying.