Priceless

Thank you Liana at Mixed Plate for bringing this video into my life.  I especially love the shiny yellow pants.

Consumed by life and oh boy is this really cool

Ok first off.  Sorry for being MIA for the last stretch.  I’ve literally been consumed by life.  Life  took me over and swallowed me up for a bit, but I’m trying to regain a bit of control over it.  I think my whole life needs a bit of spring cleaning and I’m on a mission to refresh and rejuvenate, my mind, body, spirit, soul, and my house.

Anyway onto other things.  This is REALLY cool.  Not sure if you’ve all seen the new movie trailer for the planned movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things are by Maurice Sendek which is directed by Spike Jones, but you HAVE to watch it.  It looks really cool and I now have another new movie obsession for the the Fall — scheduled to be released October 09.

Ok also.  How bad ass am I for embedding this video into my blog?  Seriosly I’m really proud of myself for doing this without having to ask Robbie for technical assistance.  Today I rock.

The obsession with Coraline continues

Ok so I was so excited when I heard Coraline was coming out, even more excited to see it, and absolutely can’t wait to buy the DVD when it comes out just so I can watch all the behind the scenes stuff about the handmade goodness in the movie.  But this… THIS I am so excited about.  What an unbelievably smart marketing tactic.  The makers of Coraline sent 50 mystery Coraline boxes to 50 bloggers across the sphere.  You can check many of them out here.  If I were the recipient of one of these goodies I would have talked about it 6 ways to Sunday.  What a great way to reach out to influentials and get them excited about the movie.  It’s something we can all learn from in our business endeavors as well.

However, I’m also excited to see how others are taking this idea to a whole different level.  My Little Mochi came up with a great idea for an indie craft mini-mystery box swap where crafters could sign up to participate in the swap. You can see where these amazing crafters have taken this project/challenge in the Coraline Mystery Box Flickr pool.  Super neat.

I’ve been meaning to post this

Robbie took Mazie to the beach one Saturday when I was suffering from the nasty cold that seems to have plagued everyone this year.

Can’t wait for it to be warm enough to dip our toes in the water.

This is really a great idea

Ok maybe I’m behind the times and you all have one of these, but I NEED one. It’s the Eye Fi and it allows you to upload photos directly from your camera to your computer or social network sites via your wireless network.  No cables.  Pretty neat little gadget if I do say so myself.  Also their website is very cool and really made me sit there and learn about the product.  The only potential downside I see is that, unless I’m missing something, it probably uploads the photos to your computer or sharing website at the file size and resolution at which they were shot and sometimes that is pretty hefty, bogging down sites like Facebook and blogs.  If anyone has insight into this neat little product, chime in — I’d love to hear real life experience using it.

Spats are back

That’s right folks Spats are back.  I’m not sure I could pull of Spats but it seems like they are back and I think Mazie could pull off the kids spats by Our Yellow House shown bottom left.  Here are some lovely knit Spats I found on Esty, listed clockwise below in case you feel the need to adorn yourself with some spats.

Efia Fair Christina Spats

Chimera Crafts Spats and Legwarmers

Bella McBride Brunswick Spats

Our Yellow House Kids Spats

Spats you say? What are they? A shoe accessory worn in the late 19th and early 20th century. The spat is worn over the shoe but under the pant leg. Historically, spats were also worn by women, under a long dress.

For more spat inspired goodness, here is a new shoe from Fluevog born from this wonderfully innovative program they have going called Open Source Footware, where they have invited customers to submit shoe designs.

Spring fever projects and my creative space

Thought I’d share my a couple of my spring fever projects today and what’s in my creative space.  Truthfully not feeling all that creative today because I’m SICK AGAIN! I’m going to have to scrub my entire house with Thieves Oil to disinfect it as I’m sure we are just recirculating these bugs.  However, it is a relatively warm day here (50’s ish) and sunny so it’s lifting my spirits.

Spent way too much on yarn yesterday, but excited about the projects on the docket.  These lovely pastels are for some bunnies I’m making — One for the bunny contest at Seed Stitch Fine Yarn and the others to fill Easter Baskets.  I’m not going to give up the pattern I’m using for the bunnies until after the Seed Stitch contest.  Don’t want to tip my hand.  When I’m done, I’ll show you the finished product and share the ingenious pattern I found online.

The sage green, which is hard to see the exact color way in this pic, will be for this great pocket zip vest from my new Debbie Bliss book. How cute huh?  Thought I’d make it in a gender neutral color so should we have a boy in the future it can do double duty.  I think Mazie will love stashing all sorts of treasures in these pockets.

All this yarn is Rowan All Seasons Cotton and I LOVE it.  It’s my first time knitting with it, but has a nice hand and is easy to knit.

Stepping back, I’m also spending the morning on the computer seeing what others are doing, finding inspriation via my tweeters, and looking forward to reading my new Mix Tape, which arrived last night.  Yahoo!

Nothing makes eating sweet treats sexier than this

I’m in LOVE with this photo.  I found it though guest blogger, Amy Doobleh-vay and Little Alouette, at LilBee who attributes finding it at It’s Mary Ruffle and I believe the original source is A la discotheque.!’s Flick file.

Anyway, forgive me all those involved if I’ve mis-credited the work or the source.  I was just so draw to this photo I had to share it with everyone here.

God I’ve missed this

We’ve had a long standing and closely guarded tradition in our family of serving a special cake to celebrate birthdays.  My paternal grandmother passed down a recipe for something called Fairy Cake.  It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.  Although my mom equates it to a “blitzed torte” by which i have no idea what she means, I still think she’s not seen anything like it either and she is a much more experienced cook than I.  When I moved out of the house my mom bought me my very own “Fairy Cake Pans”, basically two round cake pans, but in our house there was little else we would ever use them for.

It’s a fairly persnickety cake to make and requires a special, never disclosed trick, in order to achieve success.  So even if you were able to obtain the recipe by stealing it out of our cold dead hands, you still might not be able to make it. You can see how much we cherish this cake in our family.

Alas when I was diagnosed with Celiac disease, this cake was pushed to the side because we did not yet know enough about how to modify the recipe to be GF.  Years have gone by and I’ve resigned myself to having something else to celebrate birthdays with, all the while longing for some Fairy Cake.

Well with my birthday approaching, my mom lovingly started experimenting so I could have Fairy Cake this year on my special day.  She came up to watch Mazie for us this weekend for our first overnight away and surprised me with one of her experiments.

I know you’ve never seen Fairy Cake before, but it looks just like this.  It’s basically a thin layer of egg-y cake with a meringue on top, sprinkled with coconut and baked.  Two layers like this sandwich a thick whip cream layer.  Just heavenly!

Success!

Just how I remembered it.  Thanks Mum!

An Army of Frogs

For Valentines day this year, I made an army of frogs (this is an ode to a line in a song by Debbie and Friends).  I found this great pattern from the Purl Bee and it brought back nostalgic memories of a similar frog I played with at my grandmother’s house.  Her’s was made from scraps, just as these are, with a corduroy belly and paisley back.

For a Valentine’s day touch, I gave each of these lovelies a little wool applique heart.

I couldn’t post this until I delivered the last one to my new godson, who was the recipient of the blue frog.  Each of these is filled with lentils and has two little jet black beads for eyes (sewed on extra tight as to not be a potential choking hazard).

It’s been like the sick ward at our house, so apologies for the delay in posting.  I’ve not had much energy to talk about my crafting, cooking, homemaking, and new cool products, although there has been some going on and will continue to keep you guys updated.  It’s a snow day here as well and I’m enjoying the suprise day around the house with the family although my poor husband who managed to fend off our germs for so long has finally sucumbed and is feeling rotten.  I’ll have to try and whip up some soup tonight for him.