This is it!

Well dear bunny readers, tonight is my last night posting as a working mom! I KNOW! I am so excited to just be at home with my boys and am also a little nervous about the whole find work by myself thing, whether it's teaching, freelance, etc. Whatever happens I am just thrilled to have the opportunity to be with my boys. And have time to craft more!

So I played all day today. A little patchwork, a little printmaking, a little play outside with my two Spider-men, a little canvas painting and some cooking thrown in just to even things out. Fun stuff today. Now it is bedtime. I have to work tomorrow, but not next week or the next one or the next one or the next one....well I have to work just not in a boring office ;)

T.E.A.L.

This is great. You have to check it out, here. I am seriously going to try and find some typos to correct in public now! I had thought about it before, but was never brave enough to do it. Now I can say that it is a mission...of sorts. YAHOO!!! Break out the Sharpies and paint pens and study up on typography. Imagine a typo-free world where everyone used I and me correctly...oh and the correct usage of there or their or they're. Sigh. I think I should also take a photo of the person's face when I ask for permission to fix the typo(s). That would be funny.

Busy Bunny

Oh, I have been a busy bunny this week...which accounts for my absence here! So sorry! Anyway I have cut out all pieces for the Sassy Apron Swap and will sew it together tomorrow. I decided to do a Denyse Schmidt pattern for the apron and then a Lotta Jansdotter pattern for the tea towels with some patchwork on them to match the apron. I am super excited about patchwork! Yeah! I have carved some potato stamps to work with AND have started work on those Mac posters with the painted canvases. I have been baking, cooking, playing with my boys, etc. Yes I am tired but LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT. I have a second wind right now, but I do not start sewing after 10 PM. Things get quirky if you start after 10 PM. Finishing or continuing to work past 10 PM is another story entirely and is acceptable. Now printmaking after 10 PM is just fine. In fact late night printmaking produces some of the most fantastic stuff! On that note, I am going to get my ink and some fabric. Good night, dear bunny readers. You are loved! BTW are you totally curious as to what this blog will look like after May 30, my last day of work? I know I can't wait either. Give me your ideas in the comments!

And now, deep thoughts.....

Seriously...I am kidding. I just could not think of a clever title for this post. Anyway I am SUPER excited about designing wedding invitations for 82% Serious! I have so many ideas and just spent some time over at print & pattern. I love that site. You should check it out sometime. I am thinking about a line drawing of some helicopters for her. You know the ones that fall from trees in the spring time, not the real helicopters. I am also thinking about some kind of illustration of a tulip tree branch and its flowers. Hmmmm. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

On a side note, I have a huge amount of projects to finish for swaps! YIKES! Plus I told my lovely sister that I would make her a bag for her birthday. Oh and some sugar scrub, which I am still totally digging by the way. Maybe I should go do that. Or I could just keep blogging. Or I could go eat ice cream. Decisions, decisions, decisions!

So my last day of work is this Friday. I am SO EXCITED! I think that will be the day that I finally post a picture on this great picture-less blog of mine. I am not sure what it will be of, yet. But it will be fabulous. I know the suspense is killing you, right?

Well I am off to go sew or clean. Yeah right who am I kidding! I am off to sew!

Book Addiction and a Business Plan

Yes, I will admit, I have a book addiction. I love them. I love reading them. I love looking at them. I love how they smell, brand new from the store or fresh out of a box from amazon. Sigh. I ordered two new books, one about making artisan bread in five minutes a day (yeehaw!) and the other about starting your own craft/art business. I have seriously been thinking about that for a while and I think I am ready to do the small business thing full time now. My dilemma? What do I make to sell? So I thought I would list what I love:

•books (duh)
•paper
•fabric
•ink
•messy stuff (like wax and more ink)
•brayers
•great, beautiful typography
•drawing
•photography
•baking
•cooking

I'll think of something. All I know is, I am going to have a blast doing what I love!

Comfort

I love when you find comfort in unusual places. Mine occurred tonight while watching Throwdown with Bobby Flay. I know. Bizarre, but true! Anyway I cannot cook a nice pot of rice. I can cook a lot of things brilliantly, but not rice. I am going to attempt a method I discovered at Amy Karol's blog here and will have to report back to you about the success level. Ok so back to the comfort. It turns out Bobby Flay cannot cook rice either. The first time I saw this happen I thought it was just a fluke. Now it is official. He even admits it while making Jambalaya. It's comforting to know that not even the professional can cook a pot of rice. I still like his recipes, even though they are complicated and have a mile long list of wonderful ingredients, and I can sympathize with the man.

One thing I will learn this summer from Mr. Flay is grilling! I would love to be THAT girl who can grill! Bring on the heat and flames! BTW Bobby Flay has an AMAZING German apple pancake recipe. I have made it several times and it is always a hit. You have to try it!

Faux-bagels Experiment #1 and others

So I wanted to make some homemade bagels...an area of baking that I have never attempted before. After reading several recipes, I decided that it was too much of a hassle and that is the reason why they are so expensive to buy. I have these mini angle food cake pans and thought, hey what if I make some bread dough, roll it into a tube and bake it in the mini cake pan? The result: bread that looks like an angel food cake. They smell good. They are round and they have a whole. All of which are good bagel qualities. But will it fool the boys into thinking that they are bagels? I will have to let you know tomorrow...

On another note, I am almost finished with that henna linoleum block. I had to take a break to let my hands rest a bit. And I sort of stabbed my finger. Nothing major. Only one swear word and hardly any bleeding. I'll jump right on that horse tonight after the boys are sleeping!

I also had this great idea for Nathan's new office. He has some old Mac posters with Ghandi, Picasso, Einstein and Miles Davis on them. He gave the Jim Henson one away....what a dork! I have always thought that it would be AMAZING to make Muppets for a living. Anyway I am going to paint some canvases a solid color and then mount the posters to the painted canvas. The posters are an odd size, which means custom framing. Everyone knows that is expensive as H#$$! So wish me luck. They look fabulous in my head. Then again most everything looks fabulous in my head. Reality is another story. :) I think I am going to play around with a similar piece of paper and a junk canvas first. Don't want to ruin the Mac posters! They are so great.....

Clementines + Tuna Melt = YUCK

Two of my favorite things...tuna melts and clementines. They are NOT delicious when eaten together. YIKES! I did not think of that when I sat down for lunch today.

I am using my husband's laptop and boy does this keyboard take some getting use to! I just ordered a couple books from amazon, wow I know big surprise me ordering books! Also I found some fabric with surfboards all over it for one of the apron swaps that I am in. I am so excited to get sewing!

Update on the to do list:

•started the pirate quilt tops...excellent
•made some origami paper cranes and goldfish for a mobile in the making...now to make better ones for the mobile
•finished the giraffe, elephant AND henna design block prints...ok so the henna one is 90% done. I embellished just a little. I'll finish it later, I promise ;)

I feel pretty good about my progress, so far. Let's see if I can keep the momentum going. My plan for this week is to do a LOT of surface design. I must find my fabric dyes in the garage and crack those babies open!

Well, dear bunny readers, I am going to take a shower and then maybe go to the zoo or at least get outside. I would love to sew, but it is just to nice out. Oh, I almost forgot, I have to bury a dead bird first. Toodles!

TGIF...almost

I have to say that I am so excited for tomorrow to be done with. Why? Well because 82% Serious and I are having one of our crafty weekends together! I know! Oh how I love crafty weekends. It is true that sometimes we do not do any crafting at all, but that is not what counts. I just love spending time with her! This weekend we are planning to make some aprons and perhaps melt some glass in my garage with my blow torch. Fun times!

Happy Mother's Day

I had a wonderful Mother's Day today. I woke up to the soft gentle sound of the rain and birds happy to have their tummies filled since I finally remembered to get some more bird seed for them. I sewed the tops to the pirate quilts, which was fun, and showed Ammon how to "drive" my sewing machine. I told him that he was only allowed to use it if I was home. I could see all sorts of things being sewn, which could be bad. Next we had an oh so nutritious lunch at McDonald's (I figured it was Mother's Day so none of that bad stuff in the food counts). Then the power went out at our house. Bummer. So the sewing stopped as well as my plans to bake cookies. Oh well. Eli and Nate took a nap while Ammon and I worked on his homework together. Then he wrote in his story journal and I cut out fabric for some zipper pouches. Still no power yet, so we went out to dinner. Mexican food! Then I was told that I could buy some new pots...which I have been wanting and needing for awhile now. I am so excited! I got three new ones, plus one of those hand blender/puree thing-a-ma-bobbers that Alton Brown always uses. So, as you can see, it was a great day. Now to just decide on what meal to break my new pans in on.........

Hey Stranger

I had no idea that is has been almost a week since my last blog...ugh. I have been up to my eyeballs in busy! Anyway, I completed my pleated beauty bag for the BTRS sewing swap and gave my sister that foot drawing I wrote about earlier. I also have carved the elephant block prints but have not yet finished the henna tattoo inspired one. So I see lots of printmaking in my future, of course I will be using my new jar of ink.

I made an amazing, no wait and AMAZING, pound cake with a strawberry/blueberry syrupy sauce to go with it. YUM! I used a recipe from my King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Book for the pound cake. It is amazing how moist whole grains are in baked goods. It could be labeled as a "made with whole grain" cake...it does have a bunch of butter AND sour cream in it, though. Anyway the berry sauce was my own concoction. I had two big containers of strawberries. So I sliced them up and mushed about half with a potato masher. Then I poured in the rest of the un-mashed strawberries, two containers of fresh blueberries, about 1-2 tablespoons of vanilla sugar, some honey (to help make it syrupy) and some cinnamon. It was DELICIOUS. The best part is that I get to have some of that wonderful berry goodness in the form of a granola yogurt parfait tomorrow for breakfast. I made my own granola, so the only part that is store bought is the yogurt, which I have been seriously considering trying to make from scratch.

May I just share a proud mama moment with you? No Eli is not potty trained...yet. But Ammon was writing a story today. He was spelling words out to himself and actually corrected his own grammar! I KNOW! AMAZING! He knows the difference between there and their and he is only seven! He also keeps making me Mother's Day gifts and wants my husband to make me breakfast in bed and bring me "lots of presents." He's a GREAT kid :)

I am off to bed now. Tomorrow my goal is to pump up the volume on this blog and do the resume stuff, plus the portfolio thing...oh and some drawings/rough sketches for wasted earth and for my mom's horse farm, too. Good night!