… since I’m feeling a little bit guilty for spending recently (nothing major*, but amy ruppel christmas stuff at target, martha stewart stuff at kmart, more martha stewart at michaels, some stuff off of ebay (christmas is coming, get off my back!) and let’s just say that’s not the end of the story and leave it at that, ok? i do have a marriage to sustain here, and you know the key to that is SECRECY AND LIES AND HIDING THE EVIDENCE SO MUM’S THE WORD), I would like to show you some things that I managed to NOT BUY, even though the item(s) BEGGED me, LEAPT into my cart (online or physical) and yet I DID NOT PURCHASE.

First off, this was actually in my target cart, and I DID NOT BUY IT. I got to the checkout, and put it aside. NOW THAT’S WILLPOWER PEOPLE.

FLOR at Target is just so mean. I mean, they KNEW it would be SO HARD TO RESIST. Poopyheads. *pout*

The aforementioned Amy Ruppel print over at ReForm School.

the white 5×5 expedit bookcase from Ikea. I’ve been watching for this sucker on craigslist for the last 4 months and there’s been birch, there’s been black-brown, there’s been 4×4 but NO 5X5 IN WHITE. I admit, I would own this now if James hadn’t have talked me down off the ledge. I can wait. It will show up on craigslist. I CAN WAIT– she says testily.

Now if you have a 5×5 white expedit bookcase and are ready to move it along.. please contact me!

Oh and then there’s the fabric…

I add it to my cart, but then never check out.

even though i want them..

nay.. I NEED THEM..

I MUST HAVE THEM!!

ARGH!

And finally,

LOOK AT THE SWEETNESS!!

I am kind of sort of hamming it up with all the other stuff, but I seriously had to bite my tongue down.. HARD.. to not order these. And I may give in. Alicia from Posie Gets Cozy is selling these sweet “Santa Lucia and Attendants
Clothespin Dollmaking” kits for only $20, and they would a) be awesome fun to make with the kids and b) look great on my mantelpiece (along with my martha stewart snowy village from michaels *cough*) I am aching for it a little bit. I only have a little while longer to waffle about it though, before they’re gone for good – so you go get some now, won’t you?

The sad thing is there is more that I have managed to not buy that I’m not telling you. Some things which sound kind of crazy, like polyfill in bulk. It’s hard, but I managed to not buy it.

I just want credit for my amazing will power for these things! Is that so much to ask??

that is all.

-amy is a huge talent. she’s kind of a big deal**

*a SKRUVSTA chair off of craigslist for $50 isn’t major, right? RIGHT? RIGHT?!!? I need it to put my yvestown cover pattern to use! Which I’ll of course need to buy fabric for! At least the pattern was purchased some time ago.

**isn’t that guy on Project Runway just WEIRD?! I can’t tell whether I love him or hate him!

flower stitch detail:

Also made a pillow:

and 2 christmas pillowcases

Ahem. Hi.

While I am still swimming in a blue sea, my head is firmly above water now, and only dips back down occasionally, which makes the previous post very embarassing to me. Not that it’s not real, or not true, but just in that morning after, “Did I really put underwear on my head and dance around on the table last night? Did anyone see??” sort of way . . . So now I have this “must post something so it’s not right there” blogging urgency, and so here goes.

I have to admit, I am getting all Christmas itchy. And it’s no use to just refuse to acknowledge Christmas until after Thanksgiving, because by then all the good stuff (hello Amy Ruppel window clings at target!!!) is gone and you mourn not getting them the day after halloween because hello! it’s a day after halloween and i refuse to acknowledge Christmas yet! and then you finally acknowledge it already and the amy ruppel stuff is gone and you are bummed.

So yes, that’s a long way to tell you, I got the Amy Ruppel window clings yesterday at target when picking up new shoes for Ethan. They are BEAUTIFUL. I feel a deep need to run back and buy 5 more to never ever open and just look at longingly and then maybe sell on ebay in 50 years. I mean seriously. AMY RUPPEL! I saw them and I had kind of heard an amy ruppel + target murmur on one of the crafty/design blogs i read, but I feel like this was not given the appropriate trumpeting it should have. AMY RUPPEL is doing the illustrations for the Target 2007 season — those little decorations on the website – Amy Ruppel. The in store decorations – Amy Ruppel. The window clings, and I beleive there are some gift bags (which my target didn’t have, and I am going to go HUNT SOME DOWN) – yes yes, that’s right, Amy Ruppel.

Apart from the sweet little holly leaves and ornamentation that is on the target.com website itself (all amy ruppel) i can’t find any actual PRODUCTS, which then i can snag and post here to show you, so let me just show you this mural she did on the wall at the newly opened Rare Device store in San Francisco:

Amy Ruppel wall mural at Rare Device, via design*sponge – she posted more rare device photos here.

Amy Ruppel’s paintings go on sale on her website about once a month, in the range of $90-120, so as far as art goes, this is very reasonable and we should definitely have some in our home. My excuse – I never get to any of it in time to buy some, and even though as far as original art is concerned, it’s very afforadable, it’s more money then I really want to spend.. There are some even more affordable methods though, for example, she is Student of the Month along with Sally Shim over at ReForm School, where you can get this print for $35:

They have got some other really cool stuff over there too, so check it out.

So I digress – Amy Ruppel at Target! I’m going to get a gift bag, and then i’m going to freaking FRAME IT!

OK, so yes, I’m a little excited. Just like I was last year over all the Tord Boontje stuff at Target. If I was delicate, I would SWOON!

Tomorrow we have our last soccer game and then the awarding of the kids there soccer medals. Jocelyn is VERY EXCITED. Last spring when Ethan got his, she wanted one SO BADLY that we went home and I covered a circle of cardboard with tin foil and ran some ribbon through it for her. This year, she can’t wait to get her hands on her own REAL medal.

Monday is a day off for me, but not for James or the kids, so I am going to have to decide how to spend my beautiful day all to myself. Sewing pillowcases? Sewing a quilt for jocelyn (haven’t even started yet)? Seeing a movie? Going and checking out the newly opened Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture exhibition at the National Building Museum? Sleep in until noon and wear jammies all day?

OH DECISIONS DECISIONS!!

-amy swoons anyway.

Pillowcases for the kids using this fabric from reprodepot:

Lollipop cookies from Me and My Girl:

An advent calendar from allsorts, which I know realistically I won’t ever make, but isn’t it lovely? I can dream can’t I!

last week was not a good week for blogging, and i’m not going to make any guesses about how this coming week will go, so i thought i’d better jot a few words here, on sunday night.

it was a busy weekend. the rain rain rain that washed the DC area from wed-fri in a gray drizzle, brought a shiny clean saturday morning, with lots of puddles and also – cancelled soccer games. James and I were secretly relieved. Jocelyn’s game was scheduled at 9am. Big relief there. I saw it as a sign, and started the big basement project: PAINTING!

But first, I managed to go out furniture buying – a craig’s lister was having a mid-century modern storage unit sale (in lieu of a yard sale, get it?). I wasn’t sure the guy ACTUALLY wanted to sell anything, because whenever I asked how much something was, he would have to check with his wife (who invariably said she didn’t want to sell that one), talk about how it needs to be cleaned up and/or refinished, or tell me how much he could get it on ebay.. OK, it wasn’t that bad, but it was disorganized. There weren’t any deals to really be had, as he knew exactly what each piece would fetch and stood firm, especially on the designer pieces. I did get 2 end tables that didn’t break the bank AND that James said were tolerable (he basically hated everything there (!!!)). Ooh, and a super cool retro lamp. I love them all, and they’ll look great downstairs.

So yeah. Painting. That was the real project of the weekend.

I had picked out the final paint color and purchased 4 gallons 2 weeks ago, which is so long ago that I couldn’t really remember what it looked like. The lighting down there is sooooo bad, that as I worked, it looked more and more like muddy, concrete gray (and I’m not dissing gray, gray can be very lovely) – not pretty at all, but then when I stepped back, or popped upstairs for a drink or a break and came back down and saw it fresh, it showed it’s true color, a lovely misty gray-green that just makes me giddy with happiness. The lighting situation however, will have to be remedied. It’s BAD.

I always put a DVD on my computer (laptop) whenever I have a big project like this, as boredom is my biggest opponent in finishing the project. Lesson learned: don’t put in an action movie (I put in The Rock). Because you’re working and half the time it’s just dramatic tension music – not good for boredom. Before the movie had ended, I gave up, as I felt kind of dizzy and naseaus and had a feeling the paint fumes were getting to me. The next morning I put in something with less action (first The Little Princess, and then Red Dwarf I) and a little more talking, and coupled with an open window, I got on quite well. So well, that after seeing the end well in sight, we packed up the kids and headed to Ikea, knowing that we didn’t want to have to wait until next weekend to get some of the furniture we want for the basement. I finished the painting and pulled a scant 5 feet of tape before I called it a night.

I must say though, even with the tape still on, it looks gooooood.

So here are the basement “tv area” items so far:

James is getting excited about picking out a TV.

I still have some final decisions to make about the kids’ area, mostly, WHICH corner of the room it will be in, and so I put off buying anything for that until I am more certain what I’m going to do.

Can’t wait til all the painting is cleared up and we can put everything where it goes.

We’ve got Halloween school parties and pumpkin carving and of course, halloween itself, so it’s going to be a busy week.

-amy is tired just thinking about it.

Being home with sick kids has it’s up side…

I’m off to sew some piping now while it’s still quiet time.

recovering them in this:

Ahhhh it’s good to finally get pictures off the camera and posted.

So, I’m recovering them, yes. What I’m not sure about, is if I want to do anything to the wood..

Options: do a darker stain, do a color (instead of a stain), or do an outrageous color (bright red comes to mind).

OR… I could leave it. Which I am inclined to do, because honestly, I quite like the color as it is!

Some other chair redos i’ve seen around design blog-land:

absolutely beautiful things:

steamed artichoke studio:

shelterrific:

um…. I guess I am giving myself another hole in the head.

Because I wanna make a quilt for Jocelyn! Wheeee!! It all started because Ethan has a very thick, flannel blanket, that he calls his “warm blankey.” It’s very simple, just 2 pieces of flanel sewn together with a very very thick batting in between, not even quilted, just tied off with yarn.

Jocelyn is not so good with keeping the blankies on her. She just seems to run a little hot (gets hot easily), while Ethan runs cool and loves to be WARM (this is the boy who wanted to wear long sleeves in JULY). So she often kicks off the blankets in the night, and while that was fine in the summer, it’s getting colder now, and this morning when she climbed into bed with us her poor little limbs were so chilly.

I’ve tried to teach her how to sit up and pull her blankets over her in the night if she’s cold, but whenever I check on her, she is always curled up into a little ball with nary a blankey in sight.

So I thought I’d make her a big warm blanket similar to Ethan’s, only bigger, so that it falls over the sides of her bed (harder for her to wiggle out of!)

She requested “Pink, mommy. Pink.”

So I must oblige! I had a fabric in my stash that I just love love love and bought with the intention of making a blanket for her with “someday” .. well, today seems to be someday! Hmm.. but it’s not flannel.

Well, no matter, I’ll just make it nice and thick and warm, doesn’t have to be flannel for that, right? I got to thinking how to use this fabric and thought that a simple quilt with square blocks would be just the thing, maybe some more pinks and a couple greens to set it off – what could be sweeter than pink and green?

Here are the fabrics I bought today, along with the one I already had (the first one), piled onto my scanner. The top two are making me crazy with love. All of them really, but those two especially:

I mapped a sample out just to get an idea of what it would look like — the squares aren’t super representative of what it would look in an actual quilt, since in the picture, the fabric squares are actually only about 2 inches of fabric when in actuality the squares would be double or triple that, so the pattern is kind of missing … but it’s enough to give you the idea.

I’m loving the pink and green. Maybe a white fabric to toss in very sparsely as well would look good?

So I was thinking about the finished product, and I am not pre-washing any of the fabrics, as I am hoping it will shrink up and give it that nice, puckered vintage feel — but to get that, it will have to be quilted, not tied off (like Ethan’s is) and will need a thinner batting (rather than the super thick warm batting Ethan’s has)…

Wait a second here..

original idea:

• quick,
• tied off,
• thick,
• warm,
• flannel,
• big.

Um… project has morphed into:

• quick pieced squares,
• tied off quilted, maybe even machine quilted,
• thick, thin and puckery/vintagey
• warm — thin can still be warm!,
• flannel quilting cotten,
• big.

Ahem.

Well, I don’t care. It’s going to be fabulous!

Let me tell you a story about a girl who had her finger in a lot of pies.

Ok, that sounds dirty, I’ll just talk about me and all the crap I’ve been trying to do.

THE ONE THAT ACTUALLY PAYS
First off, I’ve had a freelance gig. It has been somewhat strenuous, as I have a full time job, 2 kids with soccer, a husband, and a household.. I used to do quite a lot of freelance, when I didn’t have kids, and then when I had kids, but stayed home with them. So when an old friend of mine called me up and asked if I was interested, I told him bluntly that it would really have to be worth my while. I knew that the hours spent on a freelance gig would be hours spent, oh let’s see, not sleeping, not spending time with my kids, not seeing their soccer games, not seeing my husband, not taking care of my house.. and I knew that it would wear me out! So they made it worth my while and I jumped on board. I’ve been cranking on that for the last few weeks, with a big push this last weekend. Now, little bits and bobs pop up, but it’s finishing up nicely. Overall, I’m glad I took the gig, because it is going to translate into the new couch in the basement! The one I can’t decide which color it should be! Yippee! (My latest plan is to scout out the floor models – if the Lichen is on closeout, then they’re going to be getting rid of the floor models too, right??)

THE BABY CRAFTY
A few weeks ago, there was a joint baby shower for 2 ladies in the neighborhood who were expecting.. Correction, 1 was expecting, the other delivered prematurely at 32 weeks. (At the time of the shower, the baby was still staying at the hospital at the NICU, but now she is at home with her family.) So for this shower, I had 1 baby blanket done, and the other partially done, and somehow I got it into my head to make bibs from Amy Karol’s Bend the Rules Sewing book. It was lots of fun, and I’m glad I did it, but I am NOT glad for deciding to do all this the DAY BEFORE the shower. I was kind of stressed out about it, and that’s never a good thing. It makes you think all about the fact that you can buy a 4pk of bibs at Target for $1.99, and that’s never a good thing to think when you’re making something handmade! Oh, and another thing – Did I remember to take pictures? NO I DID NOT. What’s the point in making handmade gifts if you FORGET TO TAKE PICTURES?? Oh right, the joy of giving, blah blah blah. 🙂

THE BASEMENT PAINTY PAINTY
The basement is an ongoing project. James finished the floor with astonishing speed and verve, and as such, I told him that if he would prep it, I would paint it. He hasn’t finished prepping it, but that’s ok because I don’t think I’ll be able to get around to painting it until November.. and that’s only if I can decide on a paint color by then.

MORE CRAFTY! THIS TIME WITH FURNITURE!
I also bought 2 chairs off craigslist about 2 months ago because I liked their bones, and wanted to try my hand at recovering. It’s a good thing I had planned on recovering to begin with, because they STINK. They reek of dank musty smoke to high heaven. I spent one afternoon several weeks ago pulling staples out of one of the chairs, and at the end of the day, I dropped everything I was wearing into the wash immediately, and then went and got in the shower. It was that bad. So now, 1 chair is taken apart and stripped down to the foam, and the other chair is sitting in the garage in all it’s stinkiness, waiting to be stripped. I am even thinking of stripping the wood and painting them. My thoughts: white, chocolate brown, or turquoise. I’m leaning towards the turquoise. Oooh, or bright red. Super glossy! Fun! The color they are now ain’t bad either. I have pictures, I just haven’t gotten them off the camera yet (STORY OF MY LIFE!)

THE HIGH PRIORITY CRAFTY SEWING PROJECT!
And LASTLY.. and now, most importantly… We have halloween coming up! Which means I have 4 weeks in which to construct a suitable Belle costume! Which I predict won’t be nearly enough time! I even purchased the satiny yellow fabric a few weeks ago. I have looked at the directions numerous times and feel that I am in way over my head. I guess we shall see.

So, yeah. Projects, projects. Lots of projects. Lots of projects for me, for me.