always back to the dogs

Moose turns 7 months old today, so I actually have a good excuse to slam the blog with yet more dog photos. Sorry! Really I am. I haven't been able to find the time to craft much this week and it kills me to go day after day without a new post, so this will have to do. But! I have 5 days off from work starting today, so I promise there will be stuff to show soon. And then after that 5 days, I work 2 and then I am off 6 more days! And if you neglect the small detail that the reason for all this vacation time is to pack and then to move, it's like a mini vacation of free crafting time! So the plan is for you and I to think of it that way, and for Greg to pack everything himself and move us to the new house. Got it?

Ok so this is to show you what a giant Moose has already turned into. Moose is the monster on the right. Remember what I said up there, just SEVEN months old today!



And this was the two of them just 5 months ago! How incredible is that?!



This one is a bit embarrassing because now you know that we have a twin bed at the end of our queen bed just for the dogs. . .but they never actually sleep on it together so it was too good to pass up.



And just Bella because she is my bestest girl.



WIP skirt - trying to turn an old pair of jeans into something I will wear. Planning to add fabric panels to the sides that start higher up to make it flare out more, and I'm not sure what else. Fabric is that amazing animal print from my dear Sara.

G cake

On Friday Greg requested "yellow cake with chocolate ice cream inside and chocolate icing on top and oreos too" for his birthday dessert.







Inspired by Amy I thought I'd whip up a delicious homemade ice cream cake. Well. . . turns out it isn't quite so easy as far as form goes and certainly my cake wins no awards for looks, though it is mighty tasty and Greg is thoroughly enjoying it so that's what counts I guess. I only had square pans on hand but next time will make sure to get the round ones. It's basically a regular iced cake with a layer of frozen ice cream sandwiched in between the top and bottom cake layers. I lined one of the cake pans with saran wrap, added a layer of crushed oreos while the ice cream was softening, used a spatula to fill the pan with the soft ice cream, and then wrapped saran wrap on top and stuck it in the freezer. When my cakes were cooled and the ice cream layer frozen I just inverted the ice cream layer onto the bottom cake half and added the top cake half and actually only iced the top since I didn't have enough icing to do all the sides.

happy birthday g

i love you!

ps. can't wait for sushi and ice cream cake tonight.

repeat

After these I promise not to share more baby booties for a little while and to get some actual other crafting up here. This pair is the 0-3 months size and I was surprised that the tiny things were still easy to sew. Great pattern and I will definitely be making lots more of these in the future.



The Dyson is fantastic, though very heavy. I feel like I'll have to actually start going to the gym just to use it. But a house with that many fewer stray dog hairs (the suction is out of this world) is totally worth it.

A few things on my craft plate: combining two tops to make one that I will actually wear, freezer paper stencil shirts, sewing a skirt that I might actually wear, using www.behr.com to pick paint colors for the new house, and making a cover for my sewing machine (it's half finished).

suction

Tiny spools of fun tape from ebay, and little brown and blue dishes from a local Korean market.





This is the other pair of booties I mentioned before when I was testing the pattern. Ribbon ties on top, little hearts on the soles. Still looking for a thick felt source online. . .





Back to packing and cleaning. Even with 3 weeks to pack I don't think it's enough time with all the crap we have. Most exciting news of the weekend is that we're going out to buy a Dyson Animal vacuum in an hour or so. Can't wait to try that baby and be horrified at the amount of pet hair it sucks from the floors!

c o l o r

I am finally ready for color week. I started to play along earlier in the week but I was off to a late start and decided to just scrap it and throw out my colors all in one post at the end of the game. These are all from my photo archives, and it was really fun to scan through thousands of photos on Picasa with my eyes scrunched up waiting for each color to really stand out.

w h i t e



b r o w n



g r a y



b l a c k



b l u e



r e d




These are all things I like: flower pots, chocolate, outdoor art, fuzzy snouts and cold noses, baths, and traveling (photo was taken in Brugge, Belgium this past Christmas).

booties

I'm so excited about this free baby bootie pattern (thank you Heather!) I discovered via Loobylu. I made these two test pairs with scraps of regular wool felt I had in my stash (and some of my cute new trim), but I love them so much I'll be on the hunt for that thicker felt I've only ever seen in blogs, or thirfting for wool blankets and attempting to felt them. If anyone has a link to where I can buy thick wool felt please let me know! I think the booties are harder than it seems if you wanted them perfectly shaped, but I was happy with these practice ones. I have a yellow pair in progress that have a deeper cut to better fit chubby feet and then tie with a ribbon to keep them on. So many possibilities with these, and I think I'll try to enlarge the pattern to make some for me!

handmade girl swap

Handmade Girl and I decided to do a little swap to cheer up our mailboxes and she sent me an amazing package of goodies. I grabbed these favorites out of the bunch and ran outside to photograph them for showing off: sweetest blue bunny softie with floppy ears that I love and a teenie little body, adorable japanese-cute pencils and pens (and much needed - seriously I had on my list to buy pencils because we only have one crappy one and I always have to use it but I hate it. when I saw these in the package it was one of those coincidences that makes you laugh out loud), and the best of all - a rabbit container filled with trim and fabric. And not even pictured are magnets, stationary, white tea body products, and loads of candy. Such good loot!

Thank you P! I love everything and hope we can do it again soon. You should get my box soon and I hope it cheers you up too.

moose + jake

My friend who drove down from Portland for the weekend brought her little dog Jake along. He's about a month older than Moose and they were instant friends.







And a shot of just Moose so you can see how big he is at a little over 6 months old!

a rose so sweet

So my great friend in Portland calls me last night and says she's making a spontaneous roadtrip to SF this weekend to stay with me. This is very exciting! Tonight when I get home from work I start tidying the house and fixing up the guestroom for her. I remember that the roses in our front yard are in bloom and decide to go out and cut a few to put in a vase on the kitchen table. I choose the pink over the red and snip three blooms. . . carry them inside. . .hold them loosely and somewhat upside down in one hand in the kitchen while I grab the vase from a shelf with the other. . . vase in hand I turn around and something in motion on the floor catches my eye.

I look down to see a handful of bugs right under me scurrying around. A few seconds later when I have put two and two together and guessed that the crawlers have fallen from the roses I release my grip and let them fall to the floor with a shriek (when it comes to bugs I am a dramatic vocalist for sure). When they hit the ground and more bugs than I could count came flying out in all directions and started frantically running about all over the kitchen floor I could have fainted, but instead I screamed my head off and fled the room.

After Greg killed them he counted 18 little dead bodies. How could there possibly have been EIGHTEEN of these bugs in three single roses? I've never heard of such a thing. I took my camera outside to investigate, keeping a safe distance of course, and sure enough, the pink roses are utterly infested with these creepy things.







The red roses seem to have escaped the bug invasion, but I'm not about to cut any for the house. In fact, I may never take fresh cuttings from any rosebush ever again in my life.

a home of my own

Yes, yes, a house! Thank you for getting so excited for us. Sorry for the absence after dropping the good news - we've been busy signing papers and visiting our new house, and Greg has actually gotten a bunch of job interest this week and has 3 interviews, so we're feeling pretty good here. I don't know what to say about the house really, it's a cute house in Pacifica, the same little coastal surfer town we currently live in. Pacifica is right on the ocean and surrounded by massive green rolling hills so it's really pretty. We'll be on the ocean side of Hwy. 1 now, so great for views and beach access, not so great if there is a tsunami or earthquake as we'd likely be swimming with the fishes. We're a little closer to the city, just a 15 minute drive so that'll be nice since we both work here and hang out here. The best parts of the house are all outdoors - the deck, the great enclosed front yard with a wrap-around bench along the fence, the private hot tub area, and the dog run! It's a really great house for entertaining which I'm excited about. There is a ton of work we have/want to do though so I'm a little nervous about that since neither of us have ever worked with contractors before and most stories you hear make it sound like a nightmare. But maybe it'll be fun to fix up the house and at least we know we can do whatever we want and anything we do is increasing the value.

Moving date is July 8-9th! And the 9th is my birthday so I think a house makes for a pretty damn good gift.



If you can believe it I have actually done a bit of crafting lately. (P, don't look!) I can't show the pictures directly but you can take a peek here, here, and here at a few little things I've made for a swap.

we got the house!

i'll post more later today, but had to share the news and say thank you again for doing all those house dances for me. you must have done something right!

Easy peasy

So our friends had their baby a few weeks ago, a healthy baby girl. Mom and baby are home and feeling good, and our friend is in his final two weeks of the chemo/radiation treament and doing really well. I think having the baby home and the birth go smoothly has really helped him stay positive about his whole ordeal. And the fact that he hasn't gotten near as sick as he thought he'd be this far along. It'll be about a month until they do an MRI to determine if the treatment was effective so that's the next big milestone.

Anyway, I had wanted to get a silver picture frame with three openings engraved with the kid's names as a gift, but wasn't able to find something I liked. So I ended up buying a standard frame and using scrapbooking letter stickers for the names and some nice paper for the background (I can't stand those filler photos they use in frames, I always wish they'd just use pretty papers). I think it turned out ok.





And since you all are on this house ride with me, you'll be excited to know that we went ahead and made an offer on the new/second house and will find out by tonight what the deal is. Though be prepared - we are fully expecting some sort of counter, but are hoping it's something we can live with. It's scary, frustrating business this house stuff. The new house has a good roof, but a million other problems so it seems there is always something to keep you worried enough that you can't just be totally excited. Still keeping my fingers crossed just for the hell of it.