Jessie Needs

Please forgive me because I don't know where I saw this.... but there's a meme going around where you google "(your name) needs" and see what pops up, and I thought, "Hey, I've got nothing better to do right now than f* around on the computer for another ten minutes - I'll give this a whirl"

So here, in chronological order, is what "Jessie Needs":

Jessie needs expert legal and investigative assistance outside the State of Missouri.

Jessie needs experienced owners who have dealt with nervous or semi-feral cats before so will understand exactly what they are going home with.

Jessie needs to acknowledge what she did and take responsibility for it.

Jessie needs a sammich.

Jessie needs new handle bars for her chopper.

Jessie needs some help.

All Jessie needs is a home, leash walks and no strenuous exercise or play.

ooh, that was strangely fun.
I'm tagging Sarah M. and Melissa. Take that!

xoxo

Done!

Well, folks, the baby quilt is far from perfect, but I made it myself:


... and it's done!

xoxo

(owl)

happy weekending, lovelies!

xoxo

Locco for Gocco

I know that sounds strange. It's not even how you'd spell the word 'loco', or crazy, en espanol. But it is the name of a class that Paper Source used to offer here in Chicago. You know, back in the day when a Gocco machine was readily available for purchase.
Now I'm sure you all remember last fall (you have all of my posts memorized, right?) when I wrote about the plight of the discontinued Gocco. Shucks, I even signed the petition to bring it back!




Well, friends, it seems as though my prayers (and that petition) did not go unanswered. The Gocco is now being imported from Japan and sold at Paper Source, my beloved paper emporium. Of course when I heard the news, I immediately gave notice to my husband. Would the new and improved big daddy of all Gocco machines not be the very best 32nd birthday gift a gal could hope for? Indeed, my friends. Indeed.

So I urged my husband into action. I was fearful that the Gocco crazed "weirdos" (as the kind lady in the Paper Source demo calls them) would storm the stores and deplete their supply. I urged Jack to act now, as supplies were surely limited. He would have to act fast to ensure delivery by October 24th, my birthday.

And it is the result of those actions that allows me to boldly state that I am the new and extremely proud owner (yes, it came within 24 hours, folks) of the big daddy Gocco PG6 machine. Hallelujah and Amen.

this many

Happy fifth birthday, little man. Yes, you're this many fingers now (a whole hand!).


I love you love you love you.

xoxo

Tuesday Morning

A little sugar to mix with your coffee this morning:

(isn't it sweet?)

xoxo

a summer weekend recap

24 balloons, 36 beach balls, 48 cupcakes, 6 large pizzas, a water slide, a bouncy slide, and 25 kids in my backyard...

as well as Big Al, a 200 pound tortoise (and a smaller tortoise named Tank who really liked eating my new grass), a kimodo dragon, an albino snake, an alligator (which I held in my arms), and two really happy birthdays.

Then, a night out with friends, some amazing risotto and an even more amazing key lime tart, a couple glasses of wine, and seeing Cirque Shanghai at Navy Pier. The following day, absolute rest and some embroidery. And a couple of new books.

xoxo

Work on works-in-progress Progresses

More swimming lessons, more pee-wee sports, more tumbling, more embroidery. It's become a bit of an obsession:


I finished this little piece and decided to turn it into a bib. It ended up being one of the largest projects I've undertaken thus far. The debacle that ensued requires that I name this piece "The Five Hour Bib". Yes, friends, five hours. But that of course includes the embroidery.



I transferred this sweet little pattern using a new but vintage-looking pattern from Aunt Martha's onto some cotton fabric I had lying around. Then I embroidered it. Then I added on some iron-on vinyl to make it wipable.

For the reverse side, I pieced together some patchwork using fabrics that mimicked the colors of the embroidery. They ended up all being Katie Jump Rope fabrics from Denyse Schmidt.

Then I quilted the bad boy, something I had never done before. The hardest part, for me, was to sew straight lines. It's not my strong suit.

Okay, so next I pinned the front and back together and sewed 'em up. Then came the hardest part of all - getting that damn binding around all those curves.

The end result? Not so bad:


And then it happened. I thought it might happen eventually. This is the kind of thing that happens to other people. But to me? To someone so young and vibrant? Yep, to me. I got the quilting bug.

I sat at my table yesterday and meticulously cut square after square of fabric. I wasn't even really planning to start a quilt - it just happened. I kept pulling out pile after pile of fabric and going, this will look good. Oh, and look at this one.... until I was facing a pile like this:

I'm going to make this into a baby quilt for a special little someone. I've already pieced the whole top together, and I'm going to embroider some soft flannel for the back (I'm thinking a cute little owl?). And then I think I'll make my own bias tape using one of the fabrics in the quilt.

Is there a QA group out there somewhere?

Have a happy weekend, lovelies.

xoxo

a dark and stormy night

There's a thunderstorm outside, and I'm so happy. I love a good thunderstorm! I also love a good grey day. No one believes me, but grey days are my favorite.


I was never tagged for the 'seven strange things about me' meme, but since I've already told you about my love of dreary days, I'll tell you some more peculiar things about me:

1. I already told you, I love grey days. They make me happy. Get me a soy no-whip mocha and a Bookstore on a rainy day and I'm in heaven. Really.

2. I prefer odd numbers. For example, I always buy fruit (like apples or oranges) in a quantity of five or seven. It would be just plain weird if I counted grapes or blueberries.

2a. (I'm kickin' it Dewey Decimal Style). I love ellipses, italics, parenthesis, and exlamation points. You'll just have to bear with me.

2a1. Now you're going to notice every ellipse, italic, parenthesis, or exclamation point in this post. And it's going to bug you.

3. My middle name is Hale. It was my great-grandmother's married name. I was really embarrased by it when I was little. Now I love it. It's even my son's middle name (and also my dad's). By the way, my lineage on my father's side includes the Hills, the Hulls, and the Hales.

4. The new season of The Hills premieres on MTV on August 13th. I sometimes watch it while I'm on my elliptical. I just thought I'd share that with you, kind of like a public service announcement for all things teen pop-culture.

5. I don't cook. I can cook; I just choose not to. But I do bake. I taught myself how to bake (and how to sew) while I was pregnant with Olivia.

6. I never took a real art class in high school or college. Just the required intro-to's. I wish I had known then what I wanted to be when I grew up. I'm actually still working on that...

7. I sleep in socks because my feet are always cold, and I change into nice, clean, fresh socks right before bed. Sometimes I wear my husband's socks. And in college, I went through a phase where I refused to wear matching socks. Ever.
Socks are good because dirty feet drive me bonkers!

That's it?!? Seven strange things? I think I could go on. But I don't want to bore you.

xoxo

Designed for Chubbies

My friend Melissa called me a couple of weeks ago from a garage sale. I think she was jumping up and down, she was so excited. She said this sale had Jessie written all over it. I was grabbing my keys and getting ready to meet her there when she told me she was out of town.

So she did the only thing she could think of: She bought just about everything she thought I might like, and delivered it to me upon her arrival back in town (good thing it was a road trip because there was a lot of good stuff in her trunk for me).

She bought three bags of vintage patterns for 75 cents!!!
Most of the patterns had been cut and used, and would be really hard for me to piece back together to actually sew, but the packaging itself is awesome.

I think this one has to rank up there in my top ten:



In return for all my loot, Melissa politely asked me to make her a shadowbox. I think her exact words were "Cough up the diorama, bitch! That was the deal."

So I made this bad boy using fabric, vintage notions and spools of thread, wire, old miniature things (the mushroom and the snail), contact paper, millinery flowers and embroidery floss.
And a bird.




xoxo

Daily Candy

1. shoot, I need one more..., 2. Vintage Lamb Planter & Little Bo Peep, 3. Yard Sale Finds, 4. Untitled, 5. lemony cupcake, 6. i love that tree!, 7. quilt is done!, 8. 2nd print, 9. WIP - dollquilt, 10. detail, 11. Old Wooden Spools of Thread, 12. Patchwork Pillow, 13. patchwork coaster, 14. patchwork hop skip jump, 15. Log Cabinish Patchwork Pillow - close up 2, 16. Pojagi - Korean patchwork project

Seven

Happy birthday, angel pie! You are the sweetest, smartest, most creative, beautiful girl, and I love you to pieces.

xoxo, mom

working on...

putting together a baby shower for my sister-in-law::

Eating my favorite summer salad every day(organic baby greens with apples, goat cheese, dried cranberries, walnuts, and balsamic vinaigrette)::


Embroidering some projects for my own kids (Olivia designed the shirt - "I want a guitar with wings on a PINK shirt"). Embroidery is my favorite project to work on while I wait for the kids at all of their summer lessons. So far this week, I've sewn at the pool, in a gymnasium, at the library, and in my car outside of gymnastics class::

Making birthday gifts::

and baking with the kids::
My daughter has had her eyes on those ballerinas from A.Bel Emporium for a month now. I finally took them out to put on her cake (she'll be seven tomorrow - we'll have a low key dinner tomorrow night, and her big party is the next weekend). And she can't wait to pluck them out and play with them!

I've also been working on cleaning up my studio, as always. I'm thinking of doing a tour for you when it's all cleaned up. We'll see if I can make it presentable.

xoxo

p.s. I heart (sweet) comments. Thank you so much for taking the time to leave them. Please look back in the comments section for my reply -- Blogger makes it quite difficult for me to track you down otherwise. But if you send me an email directly, I promise to get back to you.

show and tell

Olivia drew this for me a couple of months ago, and I smile every single time I look at it. Where I have to look at a picture of something to even try to draw it, Olivia draws completely from her mind, and her attention to detail is amazing. Her gift is incredible.

I asked her a couple of years ago if she wanted to be an artist when she grows up. She said, "I already am an artist."

Moreso than I will ever be. That's my girl.

xoxo

a not so brief recap of adventures in Minnesota

Okay, so this is the blog equivalent of me sitting you down in my rumpus room with an RC Cola and forcing you to watch 400 slides of my family vacation. Could someone please get the lights for me?

Slide 001:
a gumball machine at Mall of America. My family loves it when I carry around my big-ass camera and take pictures of things like gumball machines.

Slide 002:
Did you know there's an entire theme park inside the Mall of America? There are roller coasters, a water ride, all the usual theme park rides. BUT INDOORS. And that's why I love it: No heat, no mosquitos. And no heat. It's not hot in there. Other than that, I'm SO over Mall of America, but the kids love it, so we go every single time we're in Minnesota. We eat at the Rainforest Cafe (yech!) and ride the rides and sometimes we visit the aquarium. There's also mini-golf, a wedding chapel (my mom used to own it but recently sold it and now owns a prom-gown shop in the mall), and a college, among other things. All in Bloomington, Minnesota!

By the way, I used to work in the mall. At multiple locations, actually. But not at the same time.

Slide 003:
Some lollipops

Slide 004:
Off to the beach. Last year, we went to the same beach on the same weekend before the 4th of July and they had the same sandcastle-building contest. Except last year, we built sand castles just for fun and left before the contest. The following week, we saw a picture in the local paper of the contest winners, who had merely added on to the castle we had left behind. My kids still talk about it.

We didn't let it happen again this year: We totally destroyed the whole thing before we left the beach.
Sweet, I know.

Slide 005:
I took Olivia for a mani and pedi:

Slide 006:
We celebrated Olivia's 7th and Jackie's 5th birthdays. They designed their own cakes. Olivia wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and sunflowers and her name in pink cursive.
Jackie wanted an orange cake with reptiles on it that said, not 'happy birthday' or 'Jackie', but rather, "I'm NICE" -so that's exactly what they got:

Slide 007:
Some croquet. I felt so...snooty. It was fun!

Slide 008:
We so absolutely exhausted this boy that he fell asleep just like this:

Slide 009:
I did some antiquing in a cute little town with my mom:

Slide 010:
And I did some embroidery:

Slide 011:
We took the kids to see a dinosaur exhibit in Rice Park in St. Paul (kind of like the famed Cows on Parade in Chicago, only...you know, Dinosaurs. In Minnesota):

Slie 012:
But the kids had to find grandma's dinosaur. I say that because my mom actually sponsored a dinosaur and it will go live in her backyard when the installation is complete. The artist added a little caterpillar on its back in remembrance of our little guy.


And of course, there's more. I took 400 pictures over the week. But you look antsy, so let's adjourn to the wet bar; I'll make you an amaretto stone sour and we can listen to some LP's.

xoxo

home again, home again....

...jiggity jig (and with a new keyboard, too)!


xoxo