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.

(Almost) Just in Time for Valentine's Day

Valentine's 2011 that is! I know we're all sick of looking at hearts by this time but I promise I didn't start this project as a holiday one. I just got kind of excited because I thought it was going to be finished near the holiday, but alas, if you look closely at the heart you'll see that it is still just hanging on by pins. Waffle knits are more difficult to applique due to their stretchy nature. At least that's what I've found in my limited-to-this-project experience. I am pretty proud of myself for the sleeves though. This was an old t-shirt that I cut the sleeves off and made long sleeves to go on it. No pattern, just freezer paper template made from tracing the sleeves of another shirt. It worked surprisingly well! And only took a couple tries (I went from thinking I would have extra fabric when I finished to realizing that I had just enough). I still can't believe that I bought the fabric. I've never been a pink or heartsy kind of gal, but it was just too cute sitting on the clearance rack at Joann's!

It's the Little Things

I've been complaining that I'm over winter, over the snow, over the sogginess. This afternoon after the snow melted in the front yard, I realized it was covered in these teeny tiny blue flowers. Spring will be here before we know it!

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!

Sweetie's Grand Adventure

So here's the more detailed story if any of you care to know it. I thought that after Sweetie's appearance in the newspaper and her being mentioned on a couple of radio shows this morning, that I should elaborate a bit.
Friday afternoon we were in the house when we heard Spooky squawking. That's what she does, so much in fact that we didn't look outside to see if something was going on. That's how she got her name, you know, because she gets upset if a leaf falls too close to her. So that was mistake number two (the first being that we had not clipped their wings since the chicks hatched- this is a learning process remember). The next mistake was not going out until after dark to close up the chicken coop. Adam locked them up and didn't think to count how many were in there (why would he?). So Saturday morning Adam went out to open the coop (We let them out everyday to wander around the yard. Keeping their wings clipped keeps them from hopping the fence but that idea rarely occurs to them anyway, being perfectly happy being close to their food, water, and shelter. At night, they put themselves to bed back in the coop with no help from us.). Only three chickens came out. When you consider the place of the chicken on the food chain you might understand how we assumed the worst from the start. We were upset, but for the most part, we took it like farmers. We said it was a shame since she was the pretty one, the sweet one, and then we went on with our day (I have spent the last couple days trying to explain to my city-centric friends, who assume our relationship with our chickens is like our relationship to our cats, why we're not devastated and trying to explain to my more rural friends why a missing chicken would make a good human interest story).
Sunday morning I got a message on Facebook that Sweetie was seen the morning before by our neighbors a block away. We quickly got dressed and drove around the neighborhood hoping to spot her. We came home and I posted a message on our neighborhood list serve. A couple hours later our neighbors called and said they could hear her squawking but couldn't see her. Again, we drove around and walked around with no luck. Another neighbor called later that day to tell me that another neighbor reported a couple of hens in her backyard on Saturday, one matching the description of Sweetie. So apparently she had made friends. Maybe there's a roving gang of chickens and Sweetie has just fallen in with the wrong crowd.
Yesterday, Dioni Wise from the Greensboro New and Record called Adam after seeing our message on the list serve. That is how Sweetie got into the paper. And apparently into at least two radio show's morning conversations.
So here we are rolling our eyes, muttering "chickens" under our breath, which has sort of become a joke around here. We're hoping she's alive and well and that somebody will see her and call us! And for my part, I'm hoping that this is Sweetie's 15 minutes of fame and not mine. I'd hate my legacy to be that I lost a chicken!

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!