Preschool Halloween Party

I don't have any shop related items to post since I spent the morning at a Halloween party with my kids. This is an annual party thrown by a member of my mom's group and she does a terrific job. She goes all out with the decorations, food, goodie bags, music, you name it. The kids have a great time as do all the parents.

The top picture is a partial of the kids. We couldn't get all the kids to sit at once. Perish the thought. My oldest is the dragon in the middle with his finger on his chin. That is his latest pose.

My youngest is pictured below. Yup. This is the what-could-I-have-possibly-done-to-deserve-this-mommy look.

I don't think he liked his costume nearly as much as I did.

What about you?

Happy Halloween!

Blue Christmas Tree

I finally uploaded this card to etsy and not because it took me forever to finish. Well it did, but that wasn't my biggest problem. I had funky shadows over my card. I took about 20 pictures and still funky shadows. So I go through my check list:

Card in front of only window---check

Natural light (borrowed from friend) on---check

Table lamp on--check

Macro setting on camera on---check

Flash off--check

Okey dokey. Now I know my pictures aren't the best but they are improving. I rack my brain and try to figure out why they just look funky. It is time to pick up the preschooler so I turn off lamps and head downstairs to collect shoes to run back upstairs to wake up the sleeping baby to go. As I'm heading out the craft room door, I go to turn off the light. Ruh roh. Yup, never turned on the room light.

Man, I need more sleep. Or just more coffee.

Crazy Days

My husband is coming home from Gainesville today after visiting some college buddies. I've been home alone with 2 kids and a dog since Thursday.

Current status:

Dog is in backyard running from end to end barking at folks mowing their yards.

4 year old is at back door barking at dog.

1 year old is hanging on my pantleg filling his britches.

Yup, pretty much status quo around here.

When You Put a Baby to Bed with Damp Hair

This is what happens!

Christmas Card-Finally!

I have been so busy, with , well, life that I haven't even started on my Christmas cards. And as an estian, that is bad, bad, bad. 30 lashes for me. So, here is my first. I stamped out a gazillion of these snowmen, colored them with my copics and cut them out. I officially hate snowmen. Ok, I'll like them next week when I'm on to something else. But, today I hate snowmen.

The inside sentiment is very cute for this card. It says "All my best friends are flakes." I bought this set because it made my mom laugh and that was enough reason for me. If you hop on over to my shop, you can see the inside of the card.

I'll be posting more Christmas cards soon.

Conversations with a Four Year Old

On occasion, my son Stas decides to play the "Who is in the Family" Game. Here is last night's version from the dinner table. The picture at top is him at his preschool trip to the pumpkin patch.

Stas: Daddy, do you have a brother?

Daddy: Yes, his name is Todd. That is your Uncle Todd.

Stas: Do you have a sister?

Daddy: Yes, that is Mimi.

Stas: Daddy! No, silly, that is your girlfriend!

Who knew?

Stas: Wok (my mom), do you have a brother?

Wok: Yes, his name is Thomas.

Stas: That's a train!

Wok: And he kinda looks like one!

Stas: Mommy, I ate all my peas, can I have a piece of candy now?

Don't you love it?

Soccer Season Comes to a Close

Soccer season is officially over in our house. We had a great 7 week run of it. Stasiu did pretty well. This was his first time playing an organized sport. He learned to pay attention, follow the rules and have a good time. The coach he had was wonderful. Half the time he ended up laughing at the kids. How can you not when they get so enthusiastic about kicking the ball that they are 10 feet off the field and have to be turned around back on to it?

This is him in the blue sweatshirt. The number 10 was a great player. He almost managed to get the ball past him. You can see how much fun he had.

Earlier in the week, we had the parent, kid game and the kids all got their trophies. That was a bit of a weepy moment for me. I never thought I would be the weepy kind of mom but now and again it hits me. Of course, we all ended up laughing when every single one of the kids were spinning the little soccer balls on the axis.

The same coach is going to do this again in the spring and we are definitely signing him up. He had such a wonderful time and he learned so much. I don't know who had more fun, him or us.

My 6th Anniversary

Sunday was my 6th wedding anniversary. We didn't do anything fancy since we have a 4 year old and a 1 year old at home. Actually, we like staying home and playing with the kids. Since we have so much stuff we do the traditional list and I got him an iron chiminea. His traditional list said candy. I got tons of it! So I guess we will be sitting outside by the fire eating chocolate for a while.

I made this card for him. He is so supportive of my card making it is hard to give him one that he hasn't seen. He was going to give me the Big Kick for Christmas but A. C. Moore had a great coupon and I couldn't' resist. A girlfriend brought a bunch of folders over for me to play with and this is what I came up with. She did something much like this for a Christmas card and it came out so nice I thought he would like it.

I Made the Front Page

I wasn't online yesterday. Firstly, it was my 6 year anniversary and secondly, I was fighting a migraine so I took it easy. So when I got on line today I did my usual; check etsy shop, check treasury list, check treasury west, check blog, check majaba... Wait, I have a TON of hits and hearts. Ok, etsy's counter must be off. I am participating in Etsy Greetings Trick or Treating promotion but that is an awful lot of hits for such a short time period. Could I have been on the Front Page?? Naw. That is for the true artists, I tell myself. I make cards. I like my cards. I put work into them but I don't own a printing press of any kind, I don't make my own stamps and I don't make them from my own drawings or pictures.

Well, whadayaknow, I made the front page! So, I guess I can get that whole, I'm not the front page type out of my silly little brainpan and list more of my cards.

Thanksgiving Card

This is one of my first Thanksgiving cards of the season. Yes, I can hear you now. Beth, you are saying, it is October and you are way behind. I know. I know.

Here it is. I am particularly pleased. When I got this set I kinda sat and looked at wondering what exactly I was going to do with it. Then I found my embossing pen and my copics and went to town. I put an ivory piece on the inside so you can write your own sentiment.

I'm really pleased with this.

The Beaded Frog

A few nights ago I had a Girl's Night out with my mom's group. We went downtown to a beading store called The Beaded Frog. We had food, wine and a great time out without husbands, kids, snotty noses, diapers and got to wear high heels and dry cleanable shirts and dangly earrings. Now, many of us our crafty. Myself, I do paper crafts besides sewing, knitting, quilting and dabbling in other things. Once while living in Halifax I visited a beading store and made something but was not pleased with the outcome.

This place was something else, let me tell you. The selection was overwhelming. There were 3 people there to help us. You could do everything from completely designing and physically creating your own piece to picking up a single item and getting help creating a piece. I chose the latter. I had picked up the center green piece you see in the picture above about 4 or 5 times and put it back. It is a hand painted piece. To me, it looks a bit like a tree of life image. Finally one of my friends told me to get it and get help.

Now being all of 5 foot 2 and a bit, shall we say busty, I didn't want anything elaborate or chunky and one of the other girls, Stellla, had a beautiful piece she designed around a large polished stone and helped me with this. She put a large brass piece behind it then picked out a bunch of small brass pieces. I decided I wanted to make this more of an everyday piece and picked out 3 stones. The clear stone is my husband's birthstone, the dark is my first son's birthstone and the light green is my youngest son's birthstone. I love so much how this turned out that I am planning another trip with my mom.

So, if you are down the Greenville, South Carolina way and have never done this, pop in and have a good time either by yourself or with girlfriends. It is a lot of fun!

Trick or Treating with Etsy Greetings

Etsy Greetings invites you to go trick or treating. I am participating in this week's fun! Here are the rules:

This is a fun, easy trick or treating experience, heavy on the “treat.” Everyone who finishes Trick or Treating through the shops will receive a coupon good for free shipping*. At the end of each week, the coupon holders will automatically be entered in a drawing for a pack of cards that has been donated by all our talented Etsy Greetings Team members!

Below is a list of this week’s participating sellers and just below that is a list of Halloween words that can be found in the listed shops. These words will be found in the TITLE of the listing.
What you need to do is visit each shop, find a listing with ONE of the words and click on the item (each shop name can only be used for one Halloween word). Notate the listing number. (Found on the right side of the page, under the heading “additional item info”.)

Once you have trick or treated at each shop, please contact SarahKatesKreations (http://www.SarahKatesKreations.etsy.com) with your list. She will email you your coupon and enter you in the drawing for a pack of cards!

Here is the list of participating shops...

AScrappyDesign
BeverlyDyer
CapeCard
CardGoddess
CardsByJenna
HaleysHandmades
NYPapercrafter
RavynFaire
RoseBushDesigns
Southernscraps
StelieDesigns

Here is a list of our Halloween Words...

bats
black
boo
candy corn
cat
fall
frightful
halloween
moon
spooky
witch


Happy Haunt.... I mean Hunting!

And please feel free to visit our blog at http://www.etsygreetings.blogspot.com and learn more about all of the talented and wonderful Etsy Greetings Team members. We're giving Hallmark a run for their money!

A Finished Craft Room!

I finally got my big piece of furniture in the craft room. It is the gentleman's chest pictured below. As mentioned in a previous post, my mom gave it to me to house my supplies. It has many drawers and the cabinets are deep. It is just over 5 feet tall and 5 feet wide. It is about 1 and 1/2 feet deep.

Now, here is the kicker--2 men carried it up my stairs to the second floor. See, my craft room is the bonus room above the garage. We hired our handyman to help us do this. He, SuperJim, and my husband lugged this thing up the stairs at 9 at night while my mom and I counted the gray hairs rapidly popping out in our hair. My son, by the way, thought it was cool-when he could tear himself away from the Backyardigans. My husband had a strap and would holler "Ho!" (no kidding, he really did) and SuperJim had his back under it and that is how they got this sucker up. Thankfully, no one got hurt, it didn't get scratched, fall down the stairs and take out the front door--seriously, I thought it would happen.

Afterward, my husband needed a LARGE drink and a handful of advil and SuperJim was laughing. I guess that is what all superheroes do.

I spent the next couple of days organizing, getting bins for the little things--because there are a lot of little items involved in paper crafting and just finding a home for everything. I am supremely happy with my new space. I was up here till almost midnight Saturday just enjoying the space and tidying up. My husband had to come up and remind me I had an early morning and should think about sleep.

I still have a few things left to do. I need to hang the organizer sitting on the craft table. I still need to paint since the current color which I think is named dirty yuck is not working for me. The room is still spillover guest space so I have to be mindful of that but I am still in love with my new space!

Witchy Woman

The weather stinks today. It is wet and humid. I can't take pictures and I wanted to try something with my inks but am not sure they will dry right with the rain, so I'm playing.

I have unfortunate hair. Witchy hair, I like to call it. I have to dry it then curl it with a good curling iron or flat iron it. I actually did put product in my hair this morning. It helped a bit, really it did. My hair gets all poofy and frizzy and fuzzy and flies all over the place. On days like this I usually put it up in a clip but with the change in the pressure it also brought a headache so I am letting it hang--quite literally.

I ran with my son to the store real quick and by the time I got back, my hair had gotten poofier and this was the result. Some people pay good money to perm their hair to do this. I don't get it, I just don't.

For all my friends who have never seen my hair except curled or up--here it is. Make sure the kids don't see. I know they think I'm a witch anyway.

I do have some good news, though. SuperJim is bringing my gentleman's chest tomorrow night! Mom and I spent the afternoon yesterday putting most of the stuff I have in bins to put in the chest so we are ready for it. I'll take pics in a few days and post.

I've Been Tagged!

It's been going around the blogging world like a virus. The tag. You name 6 things about yourself, "tag" 5 people then they do the same. It's fun. You get to do something silly and involve others in it. I always prefer to have cohorts when I do silly things.

I was tagged by OmShanti. She has a great shop with luscious balms, soaps and salves. She also happens to be having a sale now!

My facts:

1) I lived for 3 years out of my native country in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
2) I've probably lived in over 20 homes.
3)I will be celebrating my 6th wedding anniversary in 2 weeks.
4) Besides making cards, I like to knit.
5) I own probably over 2000 books.
6)I really, really don't want to move away from where I am now.

Now, I am tagging some fellow etsians. Take a look at their fabulous shops and their blogs. They are very interesting people and very nice to boot!

RoseWorks Jewlery and her blog. I featured her in my last entry.
ChristopherandTia and her blog. You probably know her from her monday suck day blog give away. She's super cute and a lot of fun.
CurlyfrySC'sCollage and blog. She is on my Team South Carolina and is also very nice!
KalaPholStudio has one of the more interesting blogs I read.
Last, but certainly not least is Posh Pretties. She has the very cool blog that inspired my new background. You can find out more about that about 3 posts ago.

Blog Feature

I was featured in Rose Work's blog recently. Rose work has a great esty site and is a member of Big Damn Crafters as am I. We all come together to relish in our common geekness in the show Firefly and all things geeky and Joss Whedon. You can check out more about us at our blog, by clicking on the link or going to my blog roll below.

On her blog, she likes to feature fellow Big Damn Crafters and their works and this week's feature was the color blue. Why, you may ask? Because she felt like it.

Now, my favorite color is brown. Here are a couple of my favorite pieces from her shop.




I just love the necklace. It is simple, yet shows a range of beautiful autumn colors. The earrings are flirty and would swing along in my hair when I would wear them.

Go on over to her shop and take a look around. She does a lot of colors and has some whimsical pieces in there as well.

New Look for Blog

I really, really need to be organizing the craft room. I have gotten a few things done. The stamps are pretty well organized, the books are, too. It's the little things that are making me nuts. The non set stamps, the individual markers, the bits of this and that here and there. Since I won't have my huge gentelman's chest to start shoving things into yet, I'm feeling a little lost.

So, I've been haning out in the forums and came across art2theextreme's forum post. You can visit her blog at the previous link. She is talking about another cool blog, by Posh Pretties. Posh Pretties does have a cool blog and I had visited it since she posted about my craft room mess and gave me words of encouragement. I thought she was a whiz at html and thought nothing more of it. Well, art2theextreem wasn't satisfied with that and did some investigating and looked in the upper left hand corner of the blog where there was a link for The Cutest Blog on the Block. Yeah, she is way more observant than I am. Anyway, there are tons of very cool and FREE blog backgrounds for you to use.

Check them out and give your blog the new look it deserves!

So, what do you all think of the new look?

My Craft Room Vomited

About a week and a half ago I decided I HAD to do something about my craft area. It was out of control. I had built in shelves off to one end that were covered in books that could be better utilized for supplies, things listed, etc. I finally talked my husband into putting a bookcase in his office to house said books.

We asked our handyman how much it would cost to build us a bookcase and were floored by the price. Wood has gotten very expensive lately.

In the interim, I had started boxing up said books and reorganizing. I was well on my way to
getting ready to hit the holiday season with
zeal and lots of product.














Then, my mom has a great idea. She has a ginormous gentleman's chest that she plain doesn't have room for and wants me to put it in my overcrowded craft room. It is a beautiful piece. A bit impractical, but beautiful nonetheless. Plus, she is crafting alongside me now and buying supplies, so how can I say no?

My computer table won't fit alongside the far wall so we call our handyman to adjust some shelves to create a makeshift table for me and my lovable campaign desk will have to go into storage.















But, wait!

My handyman looks at my built in ugliness and says they are good wood, solid and there is enough to make the bookcase my husband wants and I get to clear them out of my craft room!! I'm beginning to think he has super powers. You know, we call him Super Jim around her and talk about him with our hand on our hips in our best superhero stance.

SuperJim arrived yesterday, took down the ugliness that was the built in shelves, helped me move my lovable campaign desk and is bringing my mom's gentleman's chest next week. In the interim I have this to deal with. I'm organizing and sorting as best I can. I actually sat in the floor for a couple hours yesterday listening to my friend's radio broadcast (see my blog roll) trying to figure out where to start. I'm need to at least uncover a part of my craft table so I can get some things done. I can't even see not making anything for almost 2 weeks, can you?

The pictures are a bit of what I have still to clean up.