Best New Year's Eve ever.

Not that Kinsley hasn't already posted this or anything, but it's just better with the video. :) Now that I've conquered YouTube, and informed it that it will do what I tell it to, not the other way around, I thought I should end the year with something New Year's Evey.

Once I get the new camera acclimated to its job (which is to take pictures for me, not to make me figure out how to take pictures), you can see some rocking photos of my weekend at the Monkeybean Mansion. :)

In other fantastic news, I bought a plane ticket to New York today! The Tulane girls are headed to the Big Apple in February. :) Yahoo!

Y'all be good tonight, and have a very happy beginning to 2008.

Towanda

Wow, YouTube hates me. Some people (they know who they are) had best really appreciate this gesture, because it's made me want to throw my computer through a window. Now we remember why Sarah normally just links to videos! :) More Christmas spiritishness soon, I promise.

Makin' it.

You know that it's important when the Times cares about it, right? Like when my cousin got married.

No, seriously. Etsy made the Times today. It's an interesting article, and a long one (this isn't the Macon Telegraph, after all).

My weekend did not make the Times social page, but did include 2 parties, including one hosted by the owner of my favorite East Atlanta bookshop; the children's Christmas pageant at church (complete with "sheep" covered in polyester pillow stuffing); an unexpected trip to the zoo (in the rain!); and a night of scrapbooking in Decatur. Not bad for 72 hours.

Tomorrow I'm off to Plains - no President this time, though I did see him last Wednesday (whole blog post in the near future) - just in time to experience winter in Southwest Georgia. I know you're jealous.

Happy Monday.

Paying it forward.

These words came today, from the Feather, living it up in the Big Apple. Some of them are very involved old stories, so I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say it made me seriously cry & be very grateful for her. So, in the interest of the season, here are some wishes for you:

smiles, hugs, hot chocolate, chocolate kisses, mistletoe, cozy slippers, ladybugs, blue boxes, butterflies, peace, traveling mercies, cheese fries, milkshakes, Camellia Grill burgers, Newberry-medal books, whiskers on kittens, Mardi Gras beads, snowflakes, belly laughs, creek wading, notebooks filled with the best parts of great lectures, hot fudge, red wine, Milktray, a bridge in Prague, butterscotch lifesavers, handicrafts, prayers & starlight.

Because really, y'all, if one quarter of this came true for one quarter of the planet, it'd be an amazing day. :)

New residents

We have new residents here at the Little Yellow House. They arrived this afternoon. Unfortunately, like me, they seem to be dressed according to the calendar, not the actual outside weather. While I'm personally grateful that we haven't just had a miserable ice storm, I think the new residents might have preferred that particular phenomenon.

The new residents did come from a home further south, so it's possible that they THOUGHT they'd be more comfortable here. In order to try to improve their condition, I'm going to let them live in this particular wing of the mansion.


It's still anybody's guess whether or not they'll make it. We do appreciate the confidence of the kind souls who directed them this way. ;)

I spent the day at a scintillating math curriculum/school improvement meeting. Definitely one of those days that lets you understand how some people can go & live in cabins in the wilds of Montana. (Not me, personally, but some people.) We had to do a LONG math task, and I was able to recall functional notation (!), solving for functions (!!), and graphing said functions (!!!). You're thinking, "how does she use this in social studies training?" *crickets chirping* *tumbleweed rolling* *blank stares*

Happy Tuesday - weird weather & all...

Busted.

I found these in the cabinet last night when I was putting away the groceries. Yes, we are opening a Twizzlers store - didn't you hear?


On to the embroidery. This first piece is part of a surprise gift, so you don't get to see very much of it. It came out MUCH better than I anticipated, so there may be more of these in the future.

This is the ornament from the Craft Leftovers kit. I heard Kristin's CraftSanity interview, which sent me right over to her Etsy shop to get this! I love it. Everything is thrifted or reused in some way. The felt is an old sweater! This is almost done, just waiting on some additional blanket stitching, which I can now do myself, whoo-hoo!

This one is going to also have a little stick-figure sort of stable off to the left-hand side, but that involves multiple colors of thread, so it'll probably be this weekend before I'm feeling that patient. It is definitely going to be part of a pillow, as is the mystery embroidery up above. I bought my mom a cute Halloween pillow that inspired these, and we already had the tea-dyed fabric, so it seemed like the obvious choice.

In other news, they have installed a stop sign on our street! Very exciting, since it felt like we were living next to the Atlanta Motor Speedway all the time. Since we've actually already done that once, we weren't really feeling the NASCAR-type love. This sign has ALREADY reduced the unnecessary traffic on our street (which is sort of a cut-through), and really slowed things down. We were hoping for a speed bump, but we'll take the stop sign.

(Once you care about things like this, by the way, you know you are OLD.)

Happy Friday!

My newest friend.

This is Andrew. He belongs to Kinsley, Nick, & Ryan. He is really spectacular. He was born early Monday morning, and weighed 9 lbs. 11oz. (That's the size of babies in my crazy Eastern European family, so Kinsley is one brave woman!) I got to meet him last night, and see Monkey & Bean, which was also fantastic. (Photo by Kinsley, titled "Sarah & Andrew" on Snapfish, which is funny since my little brother is also Andrew, so I've been part of that set of names for the last 24-almost-25 years!)

There are a couple of embroidery projects coming down the pipe that you'll probably get to see tomorrow. It's amazing how quickly they're coming together. They are not, however, doing my laundry, which is terribly unfortunate. I'm also trying to find time to make some of these. They seem like they'll be easy enough to whip up, but you never know until you try...

Happy Wednesday!

Trees!

The long-awaited trees have been finished & photographed. First up is the black IKEA tree. Lindsey actually had the rather smart idea to put our folk-artish ornaments on it. (And please excuse all these photos - I often fail to plan ahead, so I had to use (GASP) artificial light to get these.) I personally like the way it looks in front of the fireplace.


This is the real aluminum tree Lindsey bought for me last year. Prior to that, we had a silver tinsel tree, which wasn't nearly as pretty (or as cool). Most of these ornaments are vintage, with a few vintage-looking new ones thrown in. Part of the reason for the folk art tree is that those ornaments look kind of ridiculous on this one. Eventually, we might get to have a real tree for our "other" ornaments, but that's way off in the future. When I take this down, you'll get to see the specially engineered holder for this sucker. (Buying one without a stand = $much cheaper$.)

Here are some of my favorite ornaments. The reindeer is a new one this year, bought during the McDonough Christmas Shopping Spree.


And finally, here is the button tree. The buttons were Lindsey's grandmother's, and the fabric is from Kimono of the Month. I went ahead & bought another styrofoam cone, because I'm quite sure I'm going to have to make another one. Soon. ;)


The green fabric you can barely see under the IKEA tree came from the Intown Quilters in "Decatur." (As in practically to 285, so it has a Decatur mailing address, but is nowhere near downtown Decatur.) Now I know what a fabric store is supposed to look like. HOLY COW. All that vintage-inspired/reproduced stuff you yearn for from Reprodepot & Superbuzzy? They have it. Along with rows & rows of batiks, Japanese fabrics, African prints, Amy Butler's patterns... WOW. It's enough to make you want to quit your job & make a quilt. They also have a really nice thread selection & cool toys from Clover. I actually showed a great deal of restraint, buying only the fabric I went for. (I will, however, be thinking of other projects soon, so fear not.)

Hope everyone has a lovely week!