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!

Ne me quitte pas - squared...

Lindsey's at the DeKalb County Social Studies fair till late so I'm making one of these & watching The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Yes, it's in French, but it's still good. (By the way, thanks to Sarah for giving me crafty ideas that I can do after work, with my brain on autopilot.)

This is THE song from the movie. The "ne me quitte pas" part, which translates literally as "don't leave me" is heart-wrenching.

Almost as heart-wrenching as this, the ultimate in French love songs. (Ignore that translation - it's rhymed to make it seem like a song, but you lose a lot of meaning.) Gahhhh - it's like Romeo & Juliet, it's so emotional. It's very smoky-cafe-in-the-50s, which could equally have been the 30s, with Hemingway brooding in the background. (Read The Sun Also Rises, & you'll get it, I promise.)

My favorite part:

Moi je t'offrirai (I will give you)
Des perles de pluie (The pearls of my tears)
Venues de pays (That come from places)
Ou il ne pleut pas (Where no one cries)
Je creuserai la terre (I will break the earth)
Jusqu'après ma mort (Even after my death)
Pour couvrir ton corps (To cover your body)
D'or et de lumière (With gold & light)
Je ferai un domaine (I will create a world)
Ou l'amour sera roi (Where love will be king)
Ou l'amour sera loi (Where love will be law)
Ou tu seras reine (Where you will be queen)

Explain to me why people aren't writing lyrics like THAT anymore. HMMMM?

Awwwww

1) I got to meet Owen; he is darling.

2) This is sort of not even close to how pretty it is in our backyard:

Our neighbor has a tree whose leaves have turned translucent yellow, but I can't get a picture of them from outside, only through the window on the sunporch, and you can imagine how well that turned out.

3) For those of you lurking out there from New Orleans, you'll love the Bud's Broiler part of this, and I KNOW it will make you think of me. :) It will also make you cry. (That warning is for Caro, so she won't read this at work.)

Eraser

Eraser
Originally uploaded by splorp