Weekend Wrap-up

So I turned what started as a bad weekend into a good one. My vending job did not go as well as...well, it was the worst. So Saturday I played hooky and spent the day exploring Kernersville, NC with Adam. We checked out the K-ville Indie Flea which was very cool. I knocked out a couple of Christmas presents there. I'm hoping to find a free Saturday in the next month or two to go out and set up my own table. Then we walked around the Honey Bee Festival. The weather was beautiful. Adam really enjoyed watching the iron works demonstration while I browsed the booths.
Tonight we wrapped it up by getting some end of summer chores done. We made pesto and cooked some eggplant to freeze for making baba ganoush when we need an appetizer for entertaining friends. I also tried my hand at making homemade crackers. This recipe comes from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I think they are going to be tasty and they were very easy and economical. I think we'll have fun experimenting with different herbs and seasonings on these. Tonight I just did a basic sprinkling of sea salt, wheat berries, and flax seeds.
In crafting news, well, I hope there's no where but up from here. I got a lot of encouragement from friends and then found this in my in-box tonight. This local blogger put one of my pendants in her weekly etsy treasury. Click here to check out her blog, especially if you're in the Triad area - she's got lots of info on the local scene!

Labor Day at Grove Vineyards

Took me a whole week to get to posting this. It's very hard to fit five days into four and I've been exhausted. I'm spending this weekend recovering!
So last weekend I did a craft show at Grove Vineyards and Winery in Gibsonville, NC. Crafts and spending the weekend on a farm of sorts? That's my kind of business! It was a beautiful weekend!Here is some of the vines. We were invited to pick and eat what we wanted. All of us vendors decided that "Niagara" was our favorite grape. They make a wine by the same name that's as good as the fruit. It had sort of a pear and pineapple taste to it. Needless to say, a bottle came home with me and I'll be looking for a vine for my garden!

Of course, the activities including shopping the great selection of arts and crafts. And tasting wine. They also had grape stomping contests that were fun to watch!

Starting Over

I've been hibernating for sure. Even from the internet. However, I seem to be coming out of it. Tomorrow is the first day of September. Of course that means we have a few more weeks until the first day of fall, and here in the Carolina's it will be summer still for every bit of it. But tomorrow marks the beginning of the end.
Here's a run down of the season. The very ambitious garden did not do so well. It was so hot that even if I had spent more time out there, it probably wouldn't have helped much. I spent some time out there tonight pulling up squash vines that never produced and digging up the very few potatoes that grew. The craft shows have not been profitable at all the last couple months. My table is still full of half finished projects, projects never started, and some projects have just been forgotten completely. The house is still a mess, sometimes feeling like it's going to come down around me. It feels too full so I've slowly been trying to sort through our stuff. No major house projects got done this summer either. I spent this last evening of the month having my first meeting with a personal trainer who confirmed that I'm more out of shape than I even imagined (take note people - just because you're thinner at 30 than you were in high school doesn't mean you're in better shape! Apparently my non-office job doesn't help much either. Our health is more important than fitting into our "skinny" jeans!). And looming farther out on the horizon is Adam graduating this semester and looking for jobs. While we would like to stay put a couple more years, we don't know if that will be possible.
This all sounds kind of negative doesn't it? Very much like causes for stress. But tonight I'm not feeling the stress, I'm seeing the opportunities. This is the last day of the last fully summer month. Tomorrow starts a month that will see us into a new season. I'm seeing a new season for myself as well. I see a more restful period for the garden, maybe only growing a few potted vegetables this fall and focusing more on tidying up (I figure that if I plant a full fall garden, that will insure that we have to move). I see me getting through sorting out the rest of the house and getting a few things done. I see a better craft show season as people start preparing for the holidays. I see proving to myself and the personal trainer that I can get in better shape and enjoying all the benefits of better health. I see employment and location questions finally being answered, and see the celebration we'll have when Adam graduates (I'm so proud of him!).
We shouldn't wish time away for sure, but neither should we stop looking forward to what comes next. And I think (and wish and try) we should wake up every day and "start over". Put yesterday down and see what we can do today. So tomorrow when I wake up, I'll be ready to tackle the day!

What To Do On A Sunday Night

We are wild and crazy. You never know what we'll do next. How about wrapping myself in duct tape? I've been wanting a dress form for awhile now. I had seen the articles on how to make your own with duct tape but that seemed like such a hassle. I was hoping to find a vintage one in good shape at a good price but was starting to get impatient after combing Ebay for months. I had moved my cursor several times over the "add to cart" button on Joann's Fabrics website. Ultimately I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money without trying the homemade method first. After all, it's about living simply right? Plus it seemed logical that this way would be even more true to my form than even the adjustable dress forms. So Adam picked up the duct tape yesterday and last night set to covering his wife in it. I have to say he did a great job and really put his artistic and technical mind to it! We used this Etsy tutorial and WikiHow article as guidelines. I still have to stuff the dress form now and I think I might "dress" it up a bit. I'll share when I get it finished.

Shopping Week Pt. Deux

Goodness, has a week already gone by? Where was I? The rest of my shopping adventures...Last Saturday I stopped by Lost In Time Antique Mall in Winston-Salem. So far this is my favorite antique mall in the area. My finds included a wicker stand painted robin's egg blue. I used it as a display the next day at the Solstice Festival - so cute!I also couldn't resist this old Brownie scouts handbook. I never was a girl scout or anything (I don't remember having the desire to) but it's one of those things that I wish now I had done. I liked the illustrations that went along with the activities in the book.











I also found some neat vintage trim to use in projects.

I finished the day with a trip to Sew Original to finally pick out my birthday gift (thanks Mama!). I love getting new fabric but it does mean adding to my stack of projects to get done! The first one is (hopefully!) going to be the dress in the top left corner of the pattern picture. The fabrics in the second picture are going to be a couple summer tops.

The Shindig is Almost Here!

I am so excited about this! Arts and crafts, vintage, music, food and beer?! What a great afternoon! I've been working really hard to have some new beachy, summery pendants and a few more wall hangings made with children's book illustrations. So cute! Come and see them for yourself! For more info go to http://mischiefmakers816.blogspot.com/.

Earth Day

I set up my wares last week at the Earth Day Festival in Center City Park, sponsored by Sustainable Greensboro. What a great time! I met lots of new friends, caught up with lots of old friends, and enjoyed a snack from Zen Cat Bakery (best brownie ever!) and my favorite Tea Hugger beverage. Good day! I hope everyone had a great and green week last week!

I'm In Love!

After the excitement of my article coming out yesterday in the News and Record Go Triad, I decided to celebrate with a little shopping. I went to visit my Indie Market friend, Susan, at her shop Wild N' Crazy Vintage. Okay, I was also procrastinating on the piles of work to do, but it's Friday night, right? Anyway, I LOVE this store! Why am I collecting vintage patterns to sew when I can go there and find the greatest dresses? After having Susan take no less than ten to the dressing room for me, I finally picked out these four (I was cheering when one didn't fit because they were all so beautiful, I needed something else to make up my mind).
I love the girl scoutish look of this one. I wish I could find that Etsy seller again who made the scout badges for grown ups!I love the big buttons on this one. It's easy, breezy and I can't wait to wear to the beach!
This one is a little dressier but oh, that blue!
I'm not usually a "pink" girl but this rose color with the tan is really nice. I think it'll work for multiple seasons. However, I think it's the lines of the dress that really get me.
And can you tell what season I was dreaming of while shopping? I'll give you a hint. They're all short sleeved.

I Think I'm Gonna Like This

Yesterday I finally broke down and got a new camera. I had been wanting one for a really long time but didn't relish the idea of spending the money. All the things I wanted to do with a new camera finally won out. Now, I knew that my five year old point and shoot was outdated and limited, but WOW, I'm really impressed with the pictures this one takes. I've been taking pictures of everything today. It even made me willingly do the chore of taking pictures of new stamp pendants. It was quicker, with better pictures, and less headache! Why did I wait so long? And what a great motivation to keep up with my online Photoshop classes!

Love Is in the Air

It's that time of year! I just dropped off some Valentine's pendants to Just Be.These are a few of my favorites.
I had taken a couple days off to have a long productive weekend but I'm afraid I'm stuck in snow day mode. It's hard to be motivated when it's chilly, there's a nice fire in the living room, and a stack of movies and magazines for entertainment! However, I'm ready for things to get back to normal. But normal isn't exactly what they're forecasting for this week!

Giving

As the news from Haiti keeps pouring out of our radios and televisions, I doubt that it's just me that has felt the pang to do something. Giving to our community, nation and world is something we all say is a good thing to do, but unfortunately it gets shuffled down to the bottom of the to-do list until there's a real crisis that we can see right in front of us. One of my New Year's resolutions was to give more but I'm very sorry that it had to be under these circumstances.
There's lot of ways we can give, not just with money but with our time also. I have a couple things here locally that I give my time too but I wanted to be able to give a monetary gift (however small) to an organization that works more on a national or global scale. We've all had a tough year and when it comes down to another expense, I know the daunting task of trying to cover it. But if I start adding up all I do have and expenses I manage to cover, I realize how darn lucky I am!
Then I thought, what if I trick myself a little to set aside money to give? My bank rounds up every purchase I make to the next dollar and puts the change in my savings account. It's not a lot of money but regardless of what I feel I'm able to put away, at least there's always a few dollars going there every week. I've been lucky enough to be able to sell a few of the products of my hobby, the thing that makes me happy and keeps me sane when I come home from my real life job. What if I took a little of that and donated it? Then I thought - wait! What if I take $1 from every pendant I sell this year and give that to charity? What about $1 from every item I sell this year? So that's what I'm going to do.
A non-profit that I'm very excited about is Heifer International. Instead of giving money to communities and family in need, they give livestock. Check out the link for the whole amazing process! This organization helps people all over the world (they were in Haiti before, during and since the earthquake), including the U.S.. Based on my records for 2009, I should be able to give some honeybees, some chicks, and a llama. But I'm shooting for the heifer!

Vintage Treat

For being so good at the doctor's office today, I did a quick run around Design Archives this morning as my reward. In addition to all the fabulous vintage clothes they carry, they also have a good supply of vintage patterns, notions, fabric, etc. I picked out these patterns thinking it might be fun to sew some clothes from the old patterns with new fabric. I tried to get patterns that looked relatively easy, so we'll see how it goes. I think my first step will be to carefully unfold the original patterns, make sure they're whole or at least fixable, and then I'll probably trace the original on to paper that I can work from.