It's blanket season around here

The autumn weather has definitely kicked in...it's almost too cold for autumn. I'm ripe and ready to begin my apple cider obsession for the season! A little late on the cider train maybe, but I like to wait until there's a definite chill in the air. The cold weather also means things are starting to slow down somewhat, until the holiday craft fair season rolls around in just 3 short weeks. Eek! I am at the point where I've got so many ideas for new things to do, but I can't start working on them until I get some stock of the old favorites built back up. Lots and lots of sewing hours are going to be logged this week and the following weeks - so if I don't update for a while it's because I've condemned myself to the craft studio for an unspeakable amount of hours.

Morning Coffee

I spent my morning drinking coffee (Seattle's Best Creme Brulee - YUM!) and writing in handmade Thank You notes for all of my birthday gifts. This afternoon will hopefully include a trip to the gym and the chance to start on a few new projects. Later today I am likely going to Micheal's with a new Ames friend that I met through Etsy! I hope you are all having a relaxing afternoon!

Birthday Bash

I am still recovering from all of yesterday's insane birthday food festivities! Joe and I had a wonderful brunch downtown at Olde Main and then we wandered around the antique store. I found a new beautiful Pyrex piece that I love but do not need. Our new hutch is currently overflowing with Pyrex! Dinner last night was at Ames' legendary Hickory Park and it was awesome! On Saturday we spent part of the day at Ledges State Park too. All in all it was a wonderful birthday weekend!

Mmm....fruit

It's pear season around our house! The kitchen is filled with them since I pick 2-3 newly ripe ones daily. I feel so lucky to have a pear tree in our yard, especially since these pears taste at least 10 times better than any pear from the grocery store. I'm not even sure what kind of pears they are. All I know is that when we bought the house, we missed pear season by 1 month so we didn't even know we had a pear tree until last year when we noticed them growing and couldn't believe it. Unfortunately we live in an area where there is quite a bit of foot traffic since we are so close to the hospital/clinic and last year I think a lot of people stole pears off the tree since we've already picked more than we had total last year and there are still plenty on the tree. I'm glad I didn't have to put a DO NOT MESS WITH THE PEARS sign out. Oh, and the most recent newfangled piece of technology at our house is a video camera. It arrived yesterday and resulted in this:

Less Than 12 Hours until HP Book 7!!

This was posted last week by a friend of mine and I think it's a good point, so I thought I would share since it's mere hours until the book is officially released: Tom Campbell, co-owner of the Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C., offered the following thoughts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in his newsletter, The Regulator Irregular: "This is the last Harry Potter book, and it will quite likely be the last time in any of our lifetimes that people will line up, in the middle of the night, all across the country, and all across the world, to buy a book. To 'see what happens next' in a story. The only other time this has ever happened, as far as I know, was with Charles Dickens more than 150 years ago when crowds waited on the quays in New York for the ship carrying the latest installment of The Old Curiosity Shop to dock, calling out to the passengers and crew, 'Is Little Nell dead?' "We don't yet know who is going to die in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but we do know that more than a million Harry Potter readers are dead to the real significance of this event. These are the people who ordered their books from Amazon, and who at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 21, will be home asleep, waiting for the UPS delivery of their book the next day, or two days later, or whenever it arrives. They are indeed getting a great deal on the price of their book, but sometimes in life you get what you pay for. And sometimes you also get an experience that is truly priceless, a once in a lifetime kind of thing." I definitely agree with this and I'm actually quite excited for tonight. I have read all the other books, but I never went out to pick them up on the release day. While I was out and about this morning, I noticed a line of about 30 people waiting outside of Borders at 9:30am!! I don't know if these were people who didn't reserve the book or if they're just that excited, either way, the madness has begun! I planned on going out at midnight to pick up the book somewhere since I didn't want to order online and wait for shipping, but I ended up placing it on hold at the library back in February after the release date was announced. Fortunately, I found out earlier this week that they are going to have a release party at the library and those who are the first on the hold list can check the book out at midnight! So I will be at the library at midnight then coming home to read until I can't read anymore. Where will you be?

Time Flies

This summer has been absolutely flying by. I feel like I just recovered from the last Craft Saturday and I'm already super busy working on the next one! Last week we got BUST magazine on board as a sponsor and I'm really excited about that. I've long been a fan of their mag and hopefully they'll get some more fans with the free mags they're sending. We're also assembling some gift bags this time around, so be sure to get there early! Much of my sewing lately has been focused on custom work for friends and family members. I have a few more projects to finish up and then I plan on busting out some new Monster Fashion creations as I have had some ideas a brewing. Custom owl pillow for Ashley:

I haven't been very good about buying fresh berries this summer but I couldn't pass them up the other day, and I've been craving ripe juicy berries ever since we ate this bowl of deliciousness. What goes better in new Pyrex than ripe berries?! YUM!

Thrifting Fever

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted! Who am I kidding?! I've been horrible at keeping a blog. Mostly because I have been incredibly busy, which is a good thing, and when I'm not busy with life stuff, I am busy reading everyone else's blogs! I have been up to a lot this past month. The 4th Craft Saturday happened on the 23rd. We went all out this time and had the event at a new venue and changed the time to 8am - 1pm to coincide with the Des Moines' Downtown Farmer's Market since it is located right outside our venue. We had a great turnout of shoppers and overall I think it went over really well despite the fact that nearly everyone looked tired from getting up so early to set up. I've also started consigning my work in an adorable looking store in Iowa City called White Rabbit. I can't wait to visit the store soon! For the past few weeks, okay so really since about the beginning of May, I have had severe thrifting fever...of the garage sale variety. I've gone practically every weekend and I've found some pretty amazing things so far, some of which came from the best garage sales I have ever been to. The kind where people who throw in the word "vintage" to describe their sale really mean that the sale is full of wonderful vintage items and not just one or two random items. A couple of my best finds from this past weekend include the Fisher Price Lacing Shoe with Play Family from 1965:

and a set of the Snowflake Garland casseroles added to my ever growing Pyrex collection:

Summer Love

Yesterday two of my favorite people were married in an amazing ceremony on a beautiful day. Congrats Pat & Ash, you two are great!!

This is all I've got for now...

Long time no blog...

Since the last time I updated, our city suffered from two major snow storms and it's finally starting to feel a little bit like spring around here. I was so excited at the small rain shower that happened this evening as I am anxiously awaiting a few good thunderstorms. Recently Joe and I traveled to 29 Palms, California to visit his family. Normally our trips involve some kind of work around the house (fixing things up or moving things into storage), but this was the first time our visit was like an actual vacation. We even took a day to ourselves and drove to San Diego to visit a few shops and hit the beach. Three days after we arrived home we had to go pick up our house guest who will be staying with us until this Saturday. I can't wait until things around here can go back to normal and I can actually get back to work. Looking through all of the pictures from our trip has me so inspired. The desert sky has so many amazing shades of blues...

Big Morongo Canyon Preserve - Morongo Valley, CA Pacific Beach - San Diego, CA

Snuggled Up

Me and the Rileybean snuggled on the couch. I've donated some Monster Fashion items to the auctions raising money for Tigger the cat. You can find out more about Tigger here and you can see all of the auctions here. Tigger's owner, Rani, actually moved into my spot in my old apartment in Chicago when I left to move back to Iowa. So I have met Tigger and must say he is quite a sweet kitty. If you've got some spare dollars, go bid and help out a kitty while getting some awesome art/craft items in return!

Adventures in Dog Sitting

It's been all about the dogs around here this week. We have been dog sitting since Friday for our friend's Chihuahua mix. It's been rather gloomy for our boxer girl, Riley, as this new little dog has taken to running around all over the furniture and doing all the things that Riley is not allowed to do. When she's not glaring at the new dog in the house wondering why he's here and when he's leaving, she's been looking especially sad. I feel bad for her so she's going to snuggle up on the couch with me tonight for a special treat.

Riley

Enid Collins + Jonathan Adler

I recently discovered Enid Collins and quickly became obsessed with her purses. The funny thing is, I had seen her purses before, but I never really thought to figure out who she was. Due to the extensive designs available on her purses, I decided to limit myself to one box purse and one tote purse. It took a lot of Ebay searching as there are a large number of her bags available at any given time, and they also vary a lot in price depending on the condition and design. This is the box purse I finally settled on:

There's a little wear and a couple of the jewels are missing, but I love it anyway. Last week while looking through the sale items on Jonathan Adler's website (sale is until Feb. 24!) I noticed he had a couple pillows that were a homage to Enid Collins. One had a couple birds on it that were definitely reminiscent of Enid's work and the other one (that is still available) has fish. I love the way he added his signature in the way that Enid would write the names of her designs:

Dreaming in letterpress

This weekend we went to a going out of business sale for a print shop in downtown Des Moines. The ad had said they had lots of binding equipment and letterpress equipment. We got there about an hour after the sale had started and found that they had already sold most of the binding equipment, but discovered most of it was too large for what we would be interested in using it for anyway. Then we saw it, the most gorgeous (and rather large) letterpress that I have ever seen, a wonderful old Heidelberg that looked to be in perfect condition. Next to it were drawers and drawers full of lead type along with other equipment including another older model letterpress. In my dreams we would have been able to afford the whole setup, but there would also be the problem of storing it and moving it. Now I am obsessed with finding a smaller more affordable letterpress that we could use for another hobby. I'm sure I will always look but never buy, kind of like I do with Heywood Wakefield furniture.

Craft Saturday

Craft Saturday is a bimonthly indie craft fair held in Des Moines that was started by Joe and I a few months ago. We had our first event in December and our second one this past Saturday. There are more and more people who are approaching us about selling their awesome handmade items and I can't even describe how excited I am about it! One of the reasons why I knew I would miss Chicago when I moved back here was that they had so many craft fair options to choose from and in central Iowa there were none. So Joe and I took a chance and quickly organized our first event just before the holidays. It was an incredible success and showed us that people here were definitely in need of a modern craft fair event. I am hoping the success continues to grow as I am thankful to have met so many awesome local crafters and craft supporters. Two of my favorite items (that I received in trades) from the last event are from two crafty ladies who each have their own business but share a booth and call themselves Bedhead Bazaar. single wallet made from awesome vintage fabric by Kris of Fern + Jane:

vintage photo Valentine card by Cori of Original Tilly