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...