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School is out!  And for the next few weeks, it looks like Sugarwings will be spending some time here with me while her parents work.  We thought there would be an opening at her new school in June, but oops! I didn't follow up to double check before she lost her spot at the old school.

So, we are going to be doing lots of crafty things for at least 2 or 3 days each week while she is here with me. And I am hoping to take her to some gymnastic and dance classes, plus hire a tutor to work with her before Kindergarten starts in August.

This project was entirely her idea, not mine. Maybe I won't have to come up with plans, sounds like she could be in charge of that, not me. 

She read in her story book about kids making a fairy doll, so she found sticks laying around that were the right sizes for a torso, arms and legs to make one herself.

I was in charge of hot glue and ribbon to attach all of the limbs, then she picked out scraps for me to glue around her fairy to make a dress.

We added  wings from a hobby store butterfly, and she cut a Tinkerbell face out of her coloring book.

Next came lots of glitter.

And more glitter.

Then a bit more.

If you are looking for a good investment, buy stock in glitter. I see a huge jump in glitter consumption coming this summer.

It took quite a few applications of the coveted sparkly stuff till she was satisfied.  She'd stop, hold it up, and study it for a while, then add more.

Yep, we are definitely related.

When the glitter level finally met her approval, she picked a petunia blossom to add for the dolly's hat and her new best friend was ready to play with.

Thanks for all of your input about blogs. I don't want anyone to think I am contemplating quitting! No way. I'll still be typing away my ramblings long after people have stopped reading them, its become my diary of sorts.

Two art retreats I went to this year both had this topic come up and I hated to think that blogs were considered passe.  I'm glad to hear from my friends that we don't agree with that sentiment!  Yay, blogging!

Kim out did herself with her latest party.  Oh my. That lady knows how to embellish every detail with sweetness and beauty!

Everywhere you looked there was something even prettier than what you'd just seen. An explosion of gorgeousness!

She plans down to the smallest detail and it all pays off in how smoothly her events run.

Yet, she is welcoming, friendly, and seems to be having a good time herself while she is at it.  The perfect hostess!

I was thrilled to have my painting as a backdrop for photos by the Fancy Farmgirl, my pal, Tiffany.
(yes, I had trouble keeping my eyes open for photos, as always!)

So, I told everyone just to give up and photo-shop some googly eyes onto my lids.  Picmonkey didn't have any, though.  I subbed buttons. I think that works nicely. Especially since they are Tiffany Blue.

We all had fun posing for pictures, and I was glad that my roomie, Lori, convinced me to borrow her extra black dress. I'd only packed jeans to wear. After Birdsong, I was BEAT, and didn't really care what I packed. I was thinking comfy and relaxing. But it really was a formal affair for the first evening, and it was nice that Lori had something with her that she could talk me into wearing.

I had the wrong shoes, and hairy, pasty white legs, but I still felt festive.

Lori is a good friend, and was a fun roomie. She even brought a gift for me to open in bed when I woke up on Saturday, for my birthday! 

It was the best birthday! A few of us rented a car and went downtown to shop in the garment district, and they all took me out for a special lunch.

One of my favorite parts of travelling is trying local restaurants, and this one was quite the treat. Really glam, I felt like I should be seeing movie stars around the room, but was having so much fun with my friends I forgot to look.

 

 

Lori and Andrea

Hitting the downtown wholesale areas was a good idea, all of us found some tidbits for our artwork.

I'll have some photos of the projects I made later.  The classes were fun, I learned some interesting tricks and came home with completed items that I was happy with and am already using in my home.  That is a plus! Not a single, "hmmm, what am I going to do with this thing?" piece.

  I like them all.

Dear Kim surprised me with this Tiffany's box inside a Tiffany's box as a thank you for the banner I painted.  Its a precious little thing, that will be a treasured memento of the weekend. Not that I need something to remember it by, It was a remarkable trip!

 

The kids have some new pets out at the yurt, a flock of baby banties. (Silky Bantam chicks)  These are the fancy kind that look more like llamas than chickens, and are super cuddly and friendly, since they have been hand raised and live indoors.  Yes, they are house pets, till spring and a new coop can be built for them. In the mean time, they have a chicken wire encased dome over a giant, sand filled litter box to live in.

The family stayed here with us at the cottage most of the week, so we could all be a team in nursing our Sugarwings back to health, and I was really tempted to bring the chickens back with us when we all drove out to the yurt to visit and feed them, but I had a feeling that Twinkle would have enjoyed their visit a little bit too much.  

And so would the kittens. 

We are building an area for chickens at our own place, but we won't have house pet chicks, ours will be big, fat, laying hens that have their own house and a fence to keep the dogs out.  We plan on letting them roam around the yard to keep fleas, ticks, and chiggers away from us during the summer, but it will only be when the dogs are indoors.  The chickens will have to learn to take turns with the dorkies on yard time.

I am so excited, day dreaming about a chigger free summer…. Oh, what lofty dreams I have.  I can't imagine the joy of going bug bite free for the season.  Years ago, I raised birds and they really do the job. Then I decided to transform the chicken coop into an antique store, which was great for a while, but has not been in use for a few years now. Time to fill it back up with bug eaters! The fresh eggs are just a bonus for me, its the pest control quality of hens that excites me.

While I am enjoying this extra mild, no-snow winter we are having, I'm already dreading the on-slot of spring time bugs that a mild winter means.   As much as I hate snow, I love to have those pesky biting bugs zapped by ice.

Notice that both grand fairies have a favorite bird? This one is Marshmallow and seems to enjoy her cuddles.

I like Phoenix, the ginger one. I think the other is Licorice.  There are a few more orange and black ones, but only one white, and that is the fur ball that both girls seem to want to latch on to.

 We've had a nice time with all of the kids staying here most of the week.  Sugarwings is an energetic, little force of nature and doesn't like to be told not to run and play. But her injury is a serious one and she needs to rest it for the nerve damage to heal properly. So, we've done our best to entertain her while keeping her down. 

 She has spent a lot of time in her "force field" as she calls it.  I made up a fort under the dining table with lots of pillows to lay on, and her portable DVD player to watch endless movies on.   I've crawled in there too, with a good book (I'm on book 4 of Game of Thrones), and its pretty cozy.

One day, we all decided that we had to get out of the house before cabin fever set in, and we spent a day junking in Topeka.  I was on a quest for vintage necklaces to take apart for my Birdsong 2 project and its surprising just how many beads you need to make up 25 kits plus a couple example necklaces.

My goal is to use only vintage materials, so I can't simply figure out what I want to make, then order the supplies. I have to make sure that I have plenty of supplies before I design the piece.  My thoughts on kits is that they should be complete with everything that is shown in the example, so I've searched high and low for just what I needed for the project.

I think that after a few junking trips, I've got enough to get started on the creating part.  There are pearl beads in cream, white, ivory, taupe, and tan.  Crystal beads in aurora borealis, clear, amber, and pale pink.  Plus some hand carved mother of pearl ones too.  As well as a couple of surprise elements to make the pendant extra fun.

There is room for a few more people at our gathering if you are interested in joining us!  I'll have photos of the 4th project up soon.

And please consider that the Valentine Wreath class is still on schedule for Saturday, Jan. 28th at 10am.  We'll make a wire wrapped wreath, topped with vintage goodness and two nesting love birds. There will be lunch, treats and supplies for making Valentine cards too. 

$65 for the whole day

$100 for two if you want to come with a friend!

 

 

Sugarwings fell yesterday while at her cousin’s birthday party at a big indoor playcenter. She has a broken arm and is now going into surgery.

She has been much braver than I have. Her therapist father and nursing student mother have been great. I just cry.

When the Dr. asked her how she was she said she was ok but her grammie was not.

Earlier in the day my husband gashed his leg open with a chain saw. He is doing better and our fairy baby will be soon.

I'm still on my never ending task of Christmassing up my house.  Just when I think its done, I do a bit more.

Nothing big, or complicated. Today I stashed glittered stars in my potted plants on the windowsill.

And sat out a little angel.  2 minutes and I was done. And it makes me smile when I wash dishes.

This little cabinet has been sitting on my counter waiting to be decorated every since the remodel and I have not put it to use yet.

Now, its happily filled with little putz houses.  There went another 2 or 3 minutes of decorating time!

This one was just about as quick.  I had this feather wreath (from a garage sale), and after I hung it up, I was thinking it was looking a little molty.  So, I grabbed a bagful of millinery blooms and stuck them onto it with pearl head pins. One pin for each flower, so it will be easy to take apart when I put the wreath away.

One more speedy project was adding a set of feather angel wings to this lamp.  I tied a crystal to it too, this one was one that we made in the Romantic White Christmas online class last year, the back of it is covered with a vintage image and glitter.

Jen Rizzo is having a holiday party, I'm linking up there today.

And please leave a comment here if you'd like to win a Cuff bracelet or Dress Form tutorial.

Altimount Illinois has the coolest old junk/antique store! I need to go dig some more before I hit the road.

Well my vacation is ending. Today I am driving back to Kansas and back to work. I eased the transition between being with all my fairy friends in Asheville by stopping to see my sisses in Indiana.

And the best part there? Craft day! We made Halloween creatures, witches, goblins, and spiders.

Here is Sissy’s hat and spider along with my spider.

Her witchy hat is made of sparkly felt over which she sewed vintage beaded chiffon trim she found on our junking day.

Our spiders are from the same box of vintage goodness her piece of trim came out of. Mother of pearl and rhinestone buttons with wires twisted thru the shank on the back. We then Slid jet beads (from her same box of treats) onto the wires and bent the ends. The heads are a flat bead with two old rhinestones added.

Well, time to hit the road. If I can find some good antique malls along the way home I’ll post from there too.

 

On Friday, Sugarwings and I had a Girl's Night Out.  We got all dressed up to go to the local community theater to see a play about pirates.  Before it was time to leave, I double checked the theater's online site to see when we needed to be seated and saw that there was a costume party before the play! Now, how did I miss that before, that is the kind of thing that we just love to do!

 

We had about 15 minutes to devise a costume that looked piratey.  What we came up with is kind of a shabby chic, princess, cowgirl, gypsy pirate, but she loved it.

Especially since she had a treasure bag hung on her belt that held some jewels and a half a roll of Lifesavers.

She also raided my jewel box and put on an armload of bracelets and a few necklaces.

The cowgirl boots were the only boots we had in her dress up closet, and were  a few sizes too big, but she insisted that they were just right.  Of course, they ended up in my purse, and I carried her most of the night because they kept falling off every time she took a step.

She was entranced by the play, and thinks she won the costume contest, even though she didn't.  She was so enthralled by the show she let her "Shiver Me Timbers" float melt and forgot to drink it. 

  I'm hoping the theater will have more kid's productions, this was a blast for both of us.  

So, Friday ended much nicer than it started.  I got up early that day, with a fistful of dollars, and all the garage sales circled in the ads, finally heading out for some thrill shopping, it has been months since I got to scour for junk.  Even though there were only a minimal amount of sales listed in the paper, I was up at 7 am and ready to hit them.

Instead, I walked out the front door into the breezeway and saw this mess!  (it was even worse than pictured, I took the photo after picking up a bag of ripped up trash)

We'd had our own pirates over night.  Coons came through the window to raid the cat food.

That is my curtain and the rest of the window's weather stripping on the floor.  They tore the screen right off its frame and shredded it.

We've had trouble with raccoons in the past (I've walked right into a herd of them in the pitch dark, lurking in the breezeway, waiting to eat me- now I turn on the light before entering the room at night) so, I keep the windows closed out there, but since its been 104 degrees with a heat index of the surface of the sun, I cracked it open a a few inches to let out a bit of steam. 

Who knew that the marauders could get through such a small opening?

The destruction they did seemed unwarranted for the small amount of food that they got. I think they were mad there was so little there for them and they wanted to teach me a lesson.  They got a handful of cat food (stored in a plastic jug with a lid on it) and two juice boxes from the cooler. There was no good trash for them to eat, they just ripped the bag open out of spite.

You'd think that these guys might have barked while our home was under siege. They bark if a bunny comes within a 100 yards of our house or if  a leaf falls from a tree. Although, even if they had warned me, I doubt if there was anything I could do.  Coons intimidate me, they show no fear and always win a stare down contest when we get into them.

At first I was sad about these curtains, but then, I realized this was just the reason I needed to redo the room and get new ones.   Its been this bilious green for years, and I've been wanting to redo it, just haven't done it.

Now, of course, its too hot to even think about, plus I'm still knee deep in tags.  But I'll start the hunt for the curtains and that will lead me to the right colors for the room and I'll be thrilled to get it painted.  I chose this green the day a beloved puppy died and I wanted something physical to do, and a color that was bright. So, not a lot of thought went into the color, I just grabbed a bright can from the store (oops paint, which someone else was smart enough to turn down), ran home and started to paint to take my mind off being sad.

The thing is, I just don't like living with brights too much. I prefer soft backgrounds.  So, time for a change. And when I get the new curtains up, I'll keep the windows all the way shut to protect them from pillagers.

I'm continuing this giveaway. The prize is a  dress form tutorial.  If you have already purchased one of the $15 classes,  (thank you!!), then I'll send you a kit of vintage goodies instead if I draw your name.

 

If you are here to see my studio tour for the 3rd annual Where Bloggers Create party, please look HERE

For newer posts, please scroll down. 

We are back from our family fun getaway in Utah and when I returned I was greeted by three overflowing tubs of packages!

Sugarwings was here to hang out with me most of the day so I’ve only managed to unpack, open, sort, and admire the contents of one tub.

I’ll be checking out the others and editing photos from the trip tomorrow. But for now I just wanted to pop in and say “hi” and thanks for the kindly studio comments.