ob-sessed

I don't know what I would do with them. AND I'm slightly allergic to wool; it makes me itch. BUT I want baskets filled with these little dudes. They're just felted wool beads. I found them in several places on etsy. This particular shop, Krita, also sells a rug they've made out of them, that I think would be super cute in a kids room (or my office...)

me no do math good

Last night around 3am, the curtains that I sewed last week, fell off the wall, nocking Nipper's bedside lamp onto his head and smothered him in curtains. Oops. He and Jack, who now apparently just sleeps with us, because we have become those freaky "family bed" people without really meaning to, went right back to sleep. I mean the kid has his own room...with a bunk bed, and a goldfish and everything!

But then I was wide awake. Thinking about how I need to fix the curtain rods, and check to see if the button company received the artwork for the "I love you Taco", and "Me llamo Gringo", and " Hola Whitey", buttons we'll be passing out at the NYTVF, and how I need to figure out how to get two more tickets for our Tuesday night screening because it's already sold out, and a dear friend from Boston is coming, and why is everything electrical breaking in our house, including: Nipper's macbook, our flat screen, the kitchen wiring... and why is the downstairs bathroom smelly again after a whole summer of no bad smells, and should we get a tankless water heater, or build a deck, and can I live for one more year with no closet, and I need to pay the credit card, and clean my desk, and how I need to wash Jack's puppies because they went to school with him, and are probably covered in cooties, and how I wish Jacks pokey fingernail wasn't digging into my arm, and how depressing and totally lacking in his usual irony Jonathan Franzen's new book is... So basically I was up.

I wouldn't have been in this predicament if I'd just paid attention in Ms. Nesper's geometry class. Our curtains are floor length and the mattress being on the floor and up against the wall, they get tugged on a lot. I've been trying to finish the headboard project, which would safely tuck them in behind the headboard, never to be pulled on again. But I didn't measure correctly, and now I don't have enough fabric, and the girl who I bought the original fabric from on etsy is sold out and... THESE ARE MY PROBLEMS???!?!?!

Did I mention Jack didn't cry when I dropped him off at school on Friday?

mini me - and Nipper - and Jack

The Nipper Knapps au bois

Doesn't it look Wes Anderson (ish)

As we were wrapping up the pilot, I had to start thinking about our title card and show opening. I think I would henceforth like to be Mrs Nipper Knapp Family Creative Director. Is that too much to ask? Nipper had decided it would be a cold open with no opening song or credits. But we still had to have something that identified the show title. Hum. One day I saw that Broke-Ass Bride tweeted about cute cake toppers. I clicked the link and it led me Urastarhouse's shop on etsy. OH MY GOD PEOPLE. It was like I'd been struck by lightening. I knew in an instant what we were going to do. We were going to have little wooden us made! We were also going to have a Luchador made. Doesn't your family have a luchador? Ours is named Frank. Oh yeeeeah. Here is her listing for our custom couple. Have you ever seen anything like it?

Heather was super game when I contacted her one night like 3 minutes before our deadline. "Hey can you make me this custom family with a Luchador, and can they be in these clothes, and can you beam them here, because I should have shot them yesterday?" Love a girl who can work in a pinch. Not that I know anything about doing anything in a pinch. Here are the pics from her etsy shop. And my pics of when I opened them up when they came in the mail like it was Christmas morning. 

How cute is she with her moo cards and her old fashioned yarn?!

Yes, we are having a Luchador named Frank raise our child. He's very nurturing. 

They have Tostada Tuesday and race pill bugs in the yard

We are a happy family

hello shoes!

bunny shoes!

Uhm, if you have a daughter, or a friend with a daughter, or really cute feet of your own, you need to see this etsy shop. It's called Hello Shoes and the shop owner has a four year old daughter named Clover, which basically makes me love her and want to be her best friend. I'm fixin to get a pair for Jack's little friend Cleo who will be 3 in a few weeks. But how to choose?! I mean what little girl wouldn't like a pair of Marie Antoinette cupcake shoes? But the bunny shoes are sort of the greatest thing ever. Also I think if you could say a three year old has her own style, the green ice cream cones are right up Cleo's alley. 

Marie Antoinette cupcake shoes

I wish I could wear these cheery rainbow ice cream cone slippers

I mean seriously. I want to put a tiny pair of feet in these and eat them!

The weekender

For Nipper's, ahem, 40th this year, I bought him a proper weekend bag. It's Jack Spade, and it's not prissy or fussy or shiny. It's manly and durable and just the right size. Problem is, I don't have a proper weekend bag. I KNOW! How ever do I wake up in the morning and get on with my life? Don't despair. I'm working on it. In my search for the perfect bag, I found this from Studio Cherie on etsy:

Come to Mama! 

Lucky me, she sells them, and she also sells the patterns! I have so much pretty fabric in the pink man cave that I can now actually see. Maybe I'll make one, maybe I'll make two. MAYBE I'll start making them like crazy and have an etsy shop of my own! Uh-huh. As soon as I learn Final Cut Pro, finish my Lady Gaga video, finish my lap quilt (which is coming along nicely), learn to make a gourmet meal my whole family will eat, sew a dress from a pattern for sewing class, oh yeah, and find time to go to work, and sleep. No problem. Should be done by 2011. Of course that leaves me with no time to actually go anywhere for a weekend, but I won't let that stop me. 

While you're there, check out these little clutch purses she sells for bridesmaid gifts. So cute. I would have loved one of these to match any of the taffeta get-ups I've worn as a bridesmaid. I don't have an evening bag either. Stop it! I KNOW! How could someone who goes out to dinner twice a year NOT have an evening bag. So maybe I'll order one of these too. Or maybe I'll sit in my pink man cave and sew 10,000 of them. You know the drill

smidgebox

Look at these adorable fabric buckets in Smidgbox's etsy shop! I want giant ones to hold bits of fabric and yarn and embroidery floss in my pink man cave. (pictures coming soon)

With my new zig zag stitch sewing skills, I really should make them myself, but then who's going to paint the bathroom and feed the family?

I don't want to brag, but...

I had so much fun at sewing class last night, and perhaps so much pinot noir and sant agur that I dreamt OPRAH wanted to feature my blog on her show. Yeah, that's how good sewing class was. Never mind that less than 100 people read this thing regularly. I was in such a state of post craft giddiness, that I dreamt she sent one of her minion to tell me that she thought the way that I was always sandbagging everyone was really hilarious (and SO thought provoking) and then she showed me how she was going to cut the piece together. The segment for some reason involved a small African child getting what looked like a paraffin wrap at a spa, and some crafty Pippi Longstocking lookalike tweens in Belgium, who wore hats, that were commenting on my blog. I guess you have to be sort of megalomaniacal in order to be an actor, but I had no idea that my subconscious was this naive. Kind of refreshing really. Most nights my dreams have to do with people making snide comments about my muffin top, and unintelligible scenarios, where I'm in my old high school, but it's NOT my high school. You know the drill.

So sewing class... My friend Betty, who is the uber talented owner of this etsy shop and this etsy shop, mentioned that she was teaching some little girls to sew. My inner dictator burst out of it's shell, and started telling random people all about it, before I asked Betty if she was A)wanting to B) willing to C)wondering if I'm an insane person who will one day leap from my roof shouting I AM A GOLDEN GOD. SO after I had a whole gaggle of ladies on board, I contacted Betty and thankfully she said yes to a big girls sewing class with wine and everything. YAY.

We descended on her house last night and besides learning how to using use the zig zag stitch, and make a pattern, I learned about saint agur cheese. My new/old friend Geri, who I hadn't seen since, I don't know, 1989 (when I was 3, no really...) came bearing the most incredible assortment of cheeses and cookies, and one of them was this saint agur, which I'm sorry I keep talking about in the middle of a post about sewing but holy shit, I DEMAND that you all go out an get some and then get back to me, because I don't know how I made it 35 24 years without it. Of course, now I'm going to have to be extracted from my house by Dick Gregory, but who cares, you only live once.

Ok, so we made tote bags, and even though I hated my fabric when I got there, and thought it looked very Mrs Roper-ish, once it was all sewed together, I actually think it looks kind of jcrew-ish. This is the bag I'd take if I was wearing all white and going to a clambake. I'm also wondering when I became such honky.

Happy Friday!

I think you'd better sit down for this

I was sitting at home, minding my own business, letting my turkey rest, when I stumbled into this shop on etsy. It's called KnockKnocking. Ok, I didn't stumble on it. Etsy featured them on their front page. Have you ever seen anything cuter than these? No. No you haven't. I want one on every door in my house, but I know that would come off as sort of mental, so I'm going to have to narrow it down. One for the front door, and maybe one for somewhere else in the house, but where? The stinky bathroom? Maybe if I put something really pretty on that door, no one will notice that they are suffocating.

Here is this super talented girl's blog, and here is her flickr page. I'm smitten!

Now, I need to figure out why it is that Austin has so many mad crazy talented crafty girls. Is it something in the water?