Nifty Tips!

aimless direction posted some really neat tips. thought i would share. from ways to reheat pizza so it isn't soggy to a tip to make sure your dryer's motor doesn't get burnt out (this is a pretty neat tip....i don't have a dryer but i'll be filing it away for the future).

and i got the wii fit today!! this thing is seriously awesome! if you need a good kick start to losing weight....this will DEFINITELY help! exercising is fun!!!

Curse Broken!

i realized last night that i forgot to post one more thing. i actually won something! i should mention that i've been convinced that i've had a curse on me when it comes to winning anything. i blame it all on grade school. my teacher was having a drawing to win an alf poster and we had to write down a number between 1 and 500 and i somehow (not sure how) saw the number she wrote down on a piece of paper, so i cheated and wrote down a number as close to it as i could without looking suspicious. ever since then, i've never won anything. maybe there's an expiration date on the curse? darn alf poster. anyway, yeah, i finally won something! yay me! it was one of the giveaways on funky finds. such a wonderful blog! i've found so many awesome shops and artists through them. when i got the email that i had won, i was seriously shocked. i've entered their giveaways a few times, and if you've entered one before, you know that you can enter as many times as you want. i only entered once for this one. i was kinda busy so i told myself i would go back and look some more, but never did. ahh, enough blathering...here's what i won:

the cutest set of spring toadstools from craftsty. they seriously are just too cute! they'll look perfect on one of my bookshelves. i think i might send a couple to my mom. she'll get a kick out of these.

Life Is Good

happy memorial day everyone! hope you all had a nice long weekend. i know i did! we spent the weekend upstate visiting some friends and their oh so adorable baby girl!
also, last week willie went to the HOW design conference in boston and he brought back a few goodies. one of my favorites...these posters for some paper company.




i'm just LOVING them! they're gorgeous! i'm thinking they would be perfect in a baby's room. so i guess we'll just put them away for now. we don't really have the space for them.
also, here's an in progress pic of my current wood piece i'm working on. a nice tiffany blue.

so very close to being finished. yes it looks familiar. i really loved the tree i put on my tote so i decided to use it on another project. i'll be changing it up a little bit though.
and then i actually finished a painting i've had in mind for a bit. not really sure what i'm going to do with it. i bought a canvas pad at michaels and i'm not really sure how to finish this off. the canvas is starting to unravel on the edges.

AND after seeing the tutorial for creating a repeating pattern (i lost the link...was it on design sponge?? i know everyone's seen it at this point), i was super excited to give it a try. a couple of years ago, i applied at FIT. i wanted to major in surface and textile design. i didn't get in. i should say though, they didn't say no. they just felt that i need to "beef up" my portfolio a bit. so i was supposed to go back after i did that. i just never did. what a quitter i am. anyway, i do still love the idea of creating my own patterns. so this tutorial just made me insanely happy.
here's one i did just kinda doodling and goofing around:

i haven't been able to see what it looks like as a repeat because i don't have a scanner yet. so once i can scan it in (taking pictures is just wonky) i can play around a little bit more with it.
and last but not least, a few small things i picked up at a thrift store upstate this weekend.

this is very exciting for me. i'm always extremely jealous of everyone that can just hop on over to a thrift store and find things like this. unfortunately, i live in new york city. so thrift stores NEVER carry cool things like this. and if they did, i'll guarantee you, they wouldn't be $1. i didn't have much cash on me (didn't know we were stopping into a thrift store) so i couldn't buy as much as i would have liked to. they had ALOT. loads of old buttons on cards, alot more thread on wooden spools. so many neat old buttons in baggies. costume jewelry galore. it was a beautiful thing.
so there you have it. i'm also working on a bit of a schedule for posting. i'm trying to give posting daily a go. and i figured a schedule would be fun. i know it sounds restrictive, but it really isn't! i've seen a few blogs do it, and i like the idea. i still need to figure out a couple more days and i'll be good to go.

Goings on

i had such a productive weekend! i've got so much to show and tell....but willie's in boston right now at a design conference and he took the camera with him. so it'll have to wait till he gets back wednesday. again, jumping back and forth between projects. but i've at least been finishing them.
my sister finally got her geisha doll i bought her from japan. i was afraid it had gotten lost in the mail. so i'm very happy about that. that's not exactly something i can replace. but i can't post a picture of it until we get our hard drive fixed.
been doing alot of cleaning too. trying to get the apartment all spic and span before the hubster gets back. much work to do. i've been lazy this past week with cleaning.

Mmmm mmmm good

i just realized i completely forgot to post a picture of my april etsy purchase! oh what an airhead i am. anywho, i've been wanting to get some home made bath stuff. after looking at sooooo many yummy pictures...seriously, some of those handmade bars of soap look good enough to eat!....i decided on GudonyaToo's whipped clean body wash and body milk. what really sold me was the scent. i am a HUGE fan of donna karan's delicious. i absolutely love the stuff. so when they compared their scent to that...well i just had to have it!

it really does live up to the description. it smells soooo delicious...couldn't help myself.

Mothers Day

You are such a beautiful person. Happy Mothers Day! I love you mom!

Missing

so the week started off with willie calling me at work to tell me that he thinks the hard drive is dead. the large external hard drive we bought as our main storage device. that holds all of our pictures. almost 10 years worth of memories. this was the beginning of my week. he's tried different ways to access the files but it's a goner. so now we get to look forward to paying someone $1200 to recover everything. really? $1200? but i can't lose those pictures. so yes...eventually we'll pay it. it'll take some saving so for awhile i won't be able to post any old pictures.
i did finish my buttons for the button swap. decided on a giraffe because i was worried about working on something so small. i figured a giraffe is pretty easy to identify even if it's features get a bit wonky.
these are my first embroidered buttons. i'm happy with how they turned out!

then i've got a small art quilt i'm working on and another small art piece, both still in progress. i'm having alot of fun with this art quilt because i'm not really planning. just kinda winging it. i'm trying not to overthink it too much.

and the other art piece involves fabric, glue and eventually polymer clay.

and i have another hatchling waiting for it's shell to be beautified. i do have an idea for that as well. so, keeping busy.