Pretty Princess Puppies

I finally found five minutes to blog. I downloaded the pics from my daughter's camera as I've used it a couple times lately since my camera is dying a very slow death and when it finished downloading all 2042 pictures (seriously), I found this pure genius. Oh girls, I love your creativity and passion so much. There's some other genius on there too that I'll share. Barbie and Ken are back in the convertible again. Look out!


 
 
 

Yesterday I needed an outlet....

In the process of catching up about the summer months, I don't want to get behind on current events so I'll be double posting for a bit.

Yesterday was my sweet kinder's first day of school! No, she did not wear anything that I made her. lol! I've taught them the art of the second hand store as well and we're all Value Village and Goodwill junkies now. Here she is putting her backpack in her locker. Bestill my heart. sigh.
 
I had a bit of a breakdown. I was the mom in the hallway sobbing. I have found myself doing that a lot lately. There's a lot of emotion still pouring out of this girl right now! Anyway, I was sobbing in the hallway. Here's the story:

I ASS-umed I'd be able to stay with her in the morning for a few minutes since that is how it worked with Miss Mia's kinder teacher. Another piece of the story is that we (Cannon) didn't get the same teacher Mia had. Which we (I) wanted. The other teacher's really are truly fabulous. I just didn't want change. I liked it the way it was and I wanted it to be the same. And blah blah blah about me... for now.

Cannon was a bit thrown off when I couldn't stay with her. I could see we were either in for a total meltdown or, not, but I had no way of knowing which way it was going to go down. I just had to quickly walk her in, say goodbye, give her some big hugs, kisses and bubbly supportive words and off I went with an "I'll be here for lunchtime!". Two minutes later she was up in front of the classroom introducing herself with the biggest smile on her face, the stress of moments before totally forgotten. And I was in the hallway sobbing and throwing a temper tantrum of monumental tantrums. In my head at least.

On the outside I was just whimpering a little, but in my head I was stamping my feet, banging my hands on the lockers and screaming, I WANT IN! I WANT TO STAY! I WANT TO BE WITH HER EVERY SINGLE MORNING. I WANT WHAT I WANT AND I WANT IT NOW WHETHER ITS GOOD FOR ME (or her) OR NOT! and beneath that was this slight little voice, saying, you know this is best, you know she is fine, you know you need to get your arse home and work every day and not be here bugging your baby who is completely fine without you.

I needed an outlet and I had options. This is what I came up with:

1. I can go home and watch all of Season 1 Project Catwalk which is the UK version of Project Runway that I just got my hands on and eat ice cream and candy bars all day. Oh, the joy of getting my hot little hands on Project Catwalk episodes!!! But somehow this seems like a huge waste of time on my first fine day with both kids at school.

2. Go to Costco. Yay. Said with my most doldrum voice possible. Maybe I could do laundry all day too. And clean bathrooms. That should cheer me up.

3. Run on the treadmill for hours on end. THIS was a big contender. I love my treadmill and I've been neglecting her. I ran for months during the Summer of Stacie (which I'll get to in future posts) to fit into a pink bridesmaid dress and it worked! Until I brought home the rest of the wedding cake after the wedding and proceeded to eat the whole damn thing. Okay, J and the girls helped, a little bit. I ate it and I gained every pound back and it was GOOD and I don't regret it one bit. Now I'm ready to lose it again. Until the next whole cake falls into my lap! And I'll eat that one too without regret.

4. Call Justin and bitch. DING DING DING DING! Winner! My poor husband. Good thing he thinks I'm sexy.

So I called the Mr. at work and sobbed and had a little fit and told him I knew that I was having a fit and I didn't know what the hell to do with my day now. And you know what he said? "Honey, go home and create something beautiful for our house." Sometimes I think he actually knows me. hehe! Oh boy, he hit a nerve. I immediately knew exactly what I wanted to do and I went home and did THIS:

 
That there would be a piece of thin wood paneling that we took out of our kitchen when we tore out the built in refrigerator that was here when we moved in.
 
So, I know it's not fancy and might possibly look like a 10 yo painted it in art camp. Keep in mind here that I've NEVER PAINTING ANYTHING BEFORE IN MY LIFE. Besides walls and furniture. I've crackle painted a desk once. And painted squares onto a wall with an elaborate grid of painter's tape once. But this mixing, and making things look like real things. Nope, just started yesterday. I like it. It worked. I was HAPPY as a clam when I went to see Cannon at lunch and now this is in our living room. :)
 

Oh, Summer, where have you gone???

Hello all!

Ahhhh. What a wonderful summer it has been, standing in stark opposition to the last year. I won't go back into last year, because, well, it is finally behind me. I was carrying it along with me for quite awhile and I've finally ditched that baggage and moved forward. Kung Fu Bambini is very officially closed. I may or may not dabble in finishing some old collections someday and I could care less either way right now. Whatever the future holds, I do not now know and I don't want to speculate. Let come what may!!!!

I do want to share a little history of just the past few months that I've been in blog-hiding and soul-recovery. I'll do that post by post alright? These pics are from June. I finally got up the energy to break out the sewing machine, but only for my girls and a very small batch for friends and a little local show. It was nice. I whipped out a new pattern in one day.... the Easy Peasy Pinny we're calling it around here... and I made the girls lots of them in different variations. This one is a classic Amy Butler/Denyse Schmidt combo of mine that I call Capri. The girls also scored some Disney princess versions made out of a Disney shiny fabric from JoAnn Fabrics that I never thought I'd buy in a million years, but those sweet faces. Those sweet "pleeeeease mama" faces. At least it is made by me and made WELL. And I have to admit they are darn cute. Luckily for my ego and my hope for the girls' design sense they don't seem to love their princess versions more than my fabric picks :)

 
 
 

Heather Bailey Pop Garden Strikes Again!

 

I can't help it, it just works! I tried really hard to use other fabrics for this project. Not because I didn't want to use Pop Garden, I just didn't think it worked... and then when it came down to it, everything else I had just didn't give me that WOW, POP that I wanted. This most certainly did. Thanks Heather! :)

I found this treasure on Craigslist about three years ago when I moved into my first and most amazing studio space. You can see it hiding in the back of that last (really horribly taken) photo of the studio from 2006. It was $20 and a complete pain to get from the west side into the studio, but completely worth every bit of effort. Three years later it is finally primed, painted and de-co-rated. It's now the proud showcase of some of my bird collection and some amazing 4 and 6 year old art work.

Don't worry, my fabrics are already safely folded and placed into another awesome china cabinet that I got for free and painted up. Pictures of that will come someday :)

Before:
 

Primed, first coated and testing prints:
 

In the beginning:
 

A Crafty Week... with Running

I've been doing it! Running, that is. That treadmill and I have become close friends. I can now seriously give you an estimate of my level of patience in parenting for an upcoming day based upon how much time I've had on the treadmill. The scale isn't moving yet (DAMN YOU SCALE!) but it's been worth it for the positive effect it has had on my attitude toward being awake :) I think part of it might actually be the complete screaming of music that I do during the hardest part of my run. It's very invigorating. Thank you Darkbuster. Click at your own risk.

We've been crafting at the Craft house. Fitting. I'm starting to crave sewing again, so it is a good thing that Stacie and I are cleaning out the basement so she has a proper place to sleep while she is living here and so that I can get to some creating again! I still haven't picked a path. Will it be little girl skirts? momma skirts? pillows and housewares? If you know, let me know, k?

For now though, it is playdate tank top designing. Mia has a friend that loves that I make some of Mia's clothes. Yesterday we had a playdate after school and this is what the girls came up with. They completely came up with their own designs, cut out all of the pieces (after several frustrated attempts, I helped a bit with the birds) and they placed them on their shirts with the spray tack glue and they helped me decide how they'd be stitched on. We did all three of these in the short hour long playdate. Not bad!

 
Mia, age 7; Q., age 7; Cannon, age 4

This morning Cannon helped me start the teacher appreciation and Mother's Day cards. Simple free-stitching on cardstock. Super fun! I've never done these before like this so I was doing some experimenting with flowers and leaves. Not bad at all!
 

This card on flickr was actually my original inspiration but I couldn't get to the box of grosgrain ribbon in my craft room... we're still moving around in there... so out of laziness I got something I actually liked a little better for the occasion. Sweet.

I *heart* making things. Swoon.

100 days of Treadmill and Etsy!

Welcome to the most boring 100 days of your life. ha! I have a goal. Probably THE most ambitious goal I've ever embarked upon. I plan to spend at least 20 minutes on the treadmill and list at least five things on Etsy, eBay or Craigslist every single day for the next 100 days. College degree, p'shaw! THIS is going to be tough!

Day 1, today, April 14th, 2009... 40 minutes on the treadmill, a couple of miles and about 300 calories. I had the program set on the lowest possible setting and I about died. Hooray!

You see, my body currently hates me. I have been sick for over two months now. My dad's death seriously knocked the wind out of me, and then the CPSIA kicked me while I was down. After getting back from a wonderful weekend at the beach last month I vowed to start giving my body sleep. I thought it would like that. I went from 4-6 hour nights promptly up to full 8 hour nights. Still sick. Then, I thought, fine, you can have vitamins.... one women's daily, one beta carotene(because my eyes hate me too) and at least one Emergen-C pack. Still sick. So this is the final straw. I'm exercising (and possibly eating a vegetable or two). If this doesn't work, then it can go ahead and piss off. I'll go back to drinking excessively and eating bon bons for breakfast.

Let's see what happens, shall we?

MARCHing on... Dewalt Compound Miter Saw

So what if it's April. P'shaw! I MARCH to my own beat, thank you very much!

Hello sweet power tool friend of mine,

Everyone, this is my Dewalt Compound Miter Saw. DCMS, this is everyone. Please excuse the disaster of a garage around him. Keep in mind, I'm still working on my COMPLETE LIQUIDATION of Kung Fu Bambini that will be happening this month and our house is plastered with tubs of chenille bedspreads, vintage linens, trims, fabric, light fixtures from the warehouse/studio AND the store, mannequins, ay ya ya ya ya! It's hard to breathe in here.

 

Justin and I purchased this handy power tool many years ago when we bought our first house. It was one of our first power tool aquisitions. At the time we invested in this bad boy to help us put in all new floor and crown molding in our house and to cut all the snap together flooring that we installed in our great room. The Dewalt has seen many projects. Most, not as artsy crafty as this one I suppose...

Our Dewalt is a "compound" miter saw. This means that it can make compound cuts. In the first pic you can see a dial along the front of the saw. This dial allows you to change your flat angle. It physically pivots the blade and base slot where the saw blade cuts into the wood on a horizontal pivot. You can see me cutting a straight cut through my shims here:

 

What makes it "compound" is that there is another lever on the left hand side (out of frame, sorry!) that allows the blade to tilt from right to left on a vertical access. Tilt your head from left to right... now imagine your blade tilting from left to right. This allows you to make a compound cut. You might be cutting a 30 degree horizontal cut and a 30 degree tilt... this is how you get exact cuts for joining crown molding.

 

For this project I only had to make very simple straight cuts to get the shims to the height that I wanted. Whalah! Shims cut to about 12".