Happy Site Friday.

Do you have the itching urge to buy more children's books all the time? As you pass the Barnes +Noble? As you surf the good ol' money hogging internet? After a good trip to the library? I do.

Well, I am a sucker for good picture books (no!) and I have always been bugged on Amazon when you can't search inside and see if it is any good!

Well, look no longer. Here is the perfect solution. Looky-Look is a website with the ENTIRE children's book for you to read. Yes. Page by page. You can even buy from their site directly once you have fallen in love with a new read. Brilliant.

Because the entire site is in flash, I have no pictures. (Even better to know the site is protected against the copy-and-steal kinda people).

But because I cannot leave you with a picture, I will leave you with this. An experiment I will let sit here so I can gaze at it every once in a while and decide if I like or not. Hmmm. It may take the weekend to ponder upon this one.

Which reminds me...Happy weekend! Happy reading! Happy Friday!

Recipe: How to make the most of a rainy day

1. Mix two of mom's best sheets tied with string and hair clips (for optimum tent making).

2. Add 6 or 7 batches of bristol blocks. (We prefer 7)

3. Quickly add in one hand written book (or a rewritten book of a perfectly good one.) Must have lots of glue pasted every where, scotch tape plastered to the pages and must have lots of crayon. Take out crayon from little mouths as necessary.

4)Stir well with every whisk in the kitchen. A toy dinosaur tail works too.

5) Add a few kisses and tickles and hugs and soon, it isn't so rainy and cold anymore.

Enjoy inside mommy's nice warm bed and have fun making a mess of it. You can always make it up later. Or just leave the bed messy for the next rainy day.

Enjoy!

Shop Update

Be back soon!

Well, I am closing my doors to the shop for a few days to catch my breath. I am learning that balance requires constant reassessing and reorganizing, and spring has brought in new reasons for both. I will be taking a vacation from the good ol' US Postal Service, and will be focussing my attentions on some new art work...for the shop and some other projects I am currently working on.

UPDATE: All items will be shipped out on April 18th.

I see artists all around me who seem to just "do it all." But then I realize:
They aren't changing diapers at 6:30 am.
Or playing dress-ups at 7:30am.
Or cleaning crayon off the walls at 8am.
Or feeding breakfast to two hungry toddlers at 8:30am.
Or going on library trips at 10 am.
Or doing 15 bajillion loads of laundry at 1 pm.
Or scrubbing bathrooms at 2 pm.
Or building wooden block villages at 3 pm.
Or going to the park at 4 pm.
Or making dinner at 5 pm and drawing a bath at 6 pm with kids in bed at 7pm.

Really and truthfully, I am up at 5 am to start my day just so I can get some "ME" time. Right now, naptime isn't enough time for 'catch up.' And with a To-Do list building (the good kind of "to-do"...the kind I want to get done) but not enough time in the day to do it, I am forced to take somethings off my list. My children will never be one of them. SO....I am taking "print-wrap-ship" from my list for the next few days. Ahhhhh. That feels really good to say.

I am not out of town, so if any of you NEED anything to be shipped before the 18th of April, please contact me. I am here, and am sensitive to birthdays and deadlines on your part. But all other orders will ship out on the 18th of April.

I will still be blogging a bit. But my packaging materials will be gathering dust for 10 days.

Now that I won't be licking stamps for a few days....let the creativity flow!

Cya!

Humbug.

Little moments. Little memories.

Hello friends,

I love weekends! Especially this weekend. "Conference Weekend" we call it. Twice a year, the Prophet of our church and other church leaders gather together and speak to a world wide congregation of Jesus and his teachings. Families and congregations from Africa to Sweden gather together to listen and watch all day Saturday and Sunday to the teachings from the scriptures as applied to our lives today...like how to find more joy in motherhood, etc. It is like a Mecca really, and I find it really cool that millions of people are listening and watching all at the same time. And, on top of that, our little family has the tradition of cooking lots of yummy food (swiss chard soup, homemade bread, slow cooked ribs, biscuits grilled asparagus, cream asparugus pasta, homemade granola and crepes with strawberries for breakfast) as cooked by my husband and kids a like. Ya. Whew! Well, I did end up making a cardboard stove for the kids when Kenneth started to saute. They didn't mind using "pretend" food, and I sure could have used it instead! But really, I am 'filled' in more ways than one!

And one more little happy note: I have new little pretties to add to the shop! I am really excited about this, and it has been in the works for a while. I was able to have them made here, and they turned out great!

Little mini cards with buttons on them for added cuteness. But these aren't any kind of card. They are meant to make those little moments: a note for a friend left in her purse. Or a note on your daughter's bed for her to see when she comes home from school. Or a note in a lunch for a little hand to open on a hard day at school. My mother was always leaving little notes for me as a child, and let me tell you...it made my day. These notes are for ANYONE. But, I would hope that these would encourage more note-giving between mother and child. Just an idea.

I will be posting these in my shop soon. Don't know if I will post them individually, or as a set yet. I sure love them! Hope you do too!

Happy Site Friday.

Happy Friday everyone. I am fighting a really bad sore throat, so I can't talk long. So we will make this brief (but not short!)

Mahar Dry Goods has been inspiring me for a long time. Something about their philosophy of beautiful play things for children really makes me wish they weren't an online store and that I could go and play in their showroom. Vintage with a flair for bringing back the old with a splash of new. I can't get enough of them! (Well, haven't bought anything yet, but not because I lack interest!)

Hop on over and get inspired.

Squirrel pull toy? Genious.

Recognize this? Inspiration for my Summer Tea Party.

Love these colors! Is it possible for a Robot to be pretty?
All the sudden "circus clown" isn't scary any more.And these boxes. I can't get enough of orange and blue!
Shadow puppets? Thank you!!!

So, reasons to visit:

1) Mahar Dry Goods regularly hires artisans to make exclusive products and toys for his shop, so you aren't going to find a lot of duplicates in his store.
2) Robert, the owner, is really nice (and evidently has a really cool wardrobe).
3) You will find lots of pretty things and wish your tax return has come already.
4) Robert also has another site...Junior Society...revealing the cool and unique world of children's culture and design.
5) His site is designed by the one and only Jen Corace.
6) You will wish you were a kid again.

Enjoy your weekend!

I really love nap time.

Addie just woke up, and I am letting her draw all over my white board so I can finish up these invites. I am telling you...I love it when my kids have good naps! I get most of my "art" stuff done between 1pm and 3 pm. I really should be doing the dishes or folding laundry, but when inspiration hits, my house comes second.

These will be available soon. I want to get another color variation down, as well as explore a few other paper options.

Here's a sneak peak.

OOOH! I hear Ian now...gotta go tickle babies! I'll be back soon!

Brought to you by the letter B

How do you get:

French+subtle+classic+vintage colors+modern+timeless+innocent ? Feminine?

So many of you have said...I want more BOY prints! Where are they? Oh, I agree! Where are they? I have been struggling to get some good "boy" prints out, and I have asked myself WHY??!! I have the most darling boy who inspires me every day! For some reason, it is just a lot harder for me to come up with something that I actually like. The characters in my art are very "gentle" which isn't often portrayed these days. But I have to be careful that "gentle" doesn't turn into "feminine." You know what I mean?

For instance: as a child, I could never tell if Christopher Robin was a girl or a boy. Thus my challenge.

But I think I may have hit a breakthrough on this one. I might actually be able to really get some "boy" prints out there! I like the orange and blue, the European vintage feel....but it definitely isn't "girly."

Gentle, yes. Girly, no. Horray!!

I won't post this until I have the other two to go with it: Avion (french for Airplane) and Chien (dog) or something like that. Haven't finished those yet...which means they are always subject to change.

In the mean time, little French boy is waiting to hang on someone's wall very soon.