a fairy tale....or is it?

years ago there was a beautiful little girl born into this world. she was full of spunk, creativity, giggles and love. lots of love! 

as time passed a brother joined this little girl and then a boy cousin. the three were good friends and compatriots in all things wee children did. they had adventures and fought imaginary foes. they ran around in their own imaginary world and played their own made up games. they even did the more mundane things of a child's life such as learning to ride bikes together, dying easter eggs and trick and treating 

and then as things do, things changed, unfortunately drastically and not in good way.  the three friends were forced to go on solitary adventures. the young brother went on a journey that forever changed him and his out look on life. the young cousin's adventure was a bit tamer but still had him growing up with out the comfort of his fellow compatriots. and the little girl? her adventure had her go through trials and tribulations. she traveled through dark valleys and she strolled along beautiful seashores.  all the while thinking that she had been forgotten by her childhood companions. 

*now with most fairy tales, we need a happy ending and i think this one has one. 

years passed and the little girl grew up to be a wonderful woman. still full of spunk, creativity and love. she had quite a few scars that she carried but she was strong and vibrant and still full of giggles. one day the young woman was able to be reunited with one of her young friends. the cousin. he was older and wiser and still a willing compatriot to all things young people do. 

i know a rather bland fairy tale. it is a brief and washed over version of what happened to our niece, nephew and our oldest boy. we are very lucky that we have been able to reconnect to our niece. she holds a very special place in my heart. can you tell?  

she has been working on crafting many wonderful things. 

from duck (duct) tape accessories

 to friendship bracelets 

and now she has begun on the adventure of quilling. 

i have been suggesting (translate that to lovingly nagging) her to start a blog. hopefully this little post will be the final push....i mean gentle reminder....(grin) to give it a try. when she gets her blog set up i'll let you all know about it and put the link on here.

Cheers!

well hello one and all!


hasn't it just been a long time? a year. wow! who would have thunk it?


to play a bit of catch up...and to just touch on some of the highlights of the year in crafting

in 2011 this wee beauty was able to come and join me in my crafting adventures. she is a 1935 singer 221 featherweight sewing machine. she purrs just like a kitten and can handle anything. she came with all sorts of attachments. frankly the attachments baffle me but are fascinating to play with. 


one of the projects we worked on was the Simplicity 2365 blouse pattern. we even used french seams on the pattern, a first for me. we used a lovely medium blue lawn fabric, that i found at a garage sale, of course. we even tried teaming up on creating a quilt for one of the young ones. it turned out rather wonky. i assure you it had nothing to do with my sewing partner, the 221, just me and my quilting abilities.


last year i also became fascinated with ball jointed dolls and tried my hand at painting a face on a hujoo berry style doll.

i realize in this form she appears a bit creepy. 

but i did have a lot of fun  helping her look like this

I apologize for the funky arm position. 

maybe she was trying to say "it took her this long to finally finish me." i realize the face isn't perfect. in this pic her eye shadow looks quite heavy, but in person, it isn't that strong. 

 my mum even got in the fun and knitted the lovely stripey socks. you can kind of get an idea of her towering height by the fact that she is leaning against my laptop screen, which is about 8.75" tall.

and then for Christmas i decided i wanted to try my hand at making  putz/glitter style houses. i  have never really worked with glitter. i loved the results of glitter but working with it can definitely be an adventure. trying to make sure one doesn't sneeze or that the young ones don't come up and try to explain something to you while using the standard sound effects.

 an over all lights out shot

i decided to color and glitter the bottle brush trees. as you can tell from the lovely pink tree in the left hand corner of the pic.

i even tried my hand with making a semi snow globe-ish type glitter house

complete with a wee deer.

all in all a fun and successful crafting year.

and for the crafts for this year? 

well so far I have tried my hand at making some peg/kokeshi style dolls. i completed one but then sent it to our niece and forgot to get a pic of her. duh! anyway's i'm working on another one and will get a pic of her. i am going to try my hand at making some jewelry using shrinky dinks,  inspired by this necklace and then this bracelet tutorial. i also tried my hand a some wire wrapping. (and yes i realize there is a joke in there somewhere) and followed this tutorial

as you can tell by the last three links i am still having fun with pinterest. it is my go to spot when i want to find inspiration or a yummy new recipe. it's also lovely if your friends or family are using it as an easy way to share things that you find on the net.  not that i'm trying to enable you or anything. heaven's forbid! (grin)

anyway it's been a hoot catching up with all and i am going to try and find a little more time to keep up with you all this year.

Cheers!

interesting or not

it's interesting what we come to realize in our years of life. in my soon to be 44 years of life i have learned and realized that love comes to you when you are not seeking it. that while money can not make you happy, it sure can make things a little easier. and there are some people, in this life, that are not really seen.

here is the background to that last realization. when i was quite small i seemed to have disappeared. my parents, family members and neighbors went on quite an extensive search for me. it even involved getting in vehicles and driving around the nearby streets. i was approximately 18 months old. i have been told that they looked, several times through our very small home, and yet they could not "find" me. after looking everywhere my mum walked into the house and there i sat on the couch drinking a bottle. quiet, safe and i suppose content. they were never able to figure out exactly where i had been or why i hadn't been seen if i was sitting there in plain sight. this same thing happened two other times in my life. once when i was a few months older, a little past the age of two. we had moved to pacific grove, to the house i wrote about in this post. there again i seemed to disappear only to be found later in plain sight. the last time that i am aware this occurred i was a young woman and was fascinated at the fact that i seemed to not be seen even though i was completely visible. i became tickled with the reaction of the person after i walked out of the same room we had both occupied by the only door in and out. they were shocked and surprised and a little startled to become aware of me following them. now i must admit i did not reply to the co-worker calling my name. i didn't think i needed to since they had looked straight into my eyes and i only assumed they had "seen" me. i assumed since they left the room they simply needed me to follow them, plus i was dead curious to see if they had not been aware of my presence. and by their reaction i realized that for what ever reason i was not present, or seen by them.

so why do i bring this up? well as of late i have felt that i am not being seen. or heard for that fact. i tell my children things and they do not hear me. I realize this is actually a very normal thing but it doesn't help. i will talk to my husband and then when i bring up the prior subject he is unaware for what i am talking about. i am for the most part ignored in the morning at my job, which really is probably for the best. and i have blogged, and posted things to facebook, and tweeted only to have the words typed float off into oblivion. i have been so very fortunate to have one loyal commenter, on this blog, the wonderful and knittingly amazing miss amybel. that helps remind me that i have not completely disappeared. this feeling of not being seen had been bothering me until i came to the realization that for what ever reason i was just not one of the people in this life that would get recognition. i found i was suddenly ok with that. that i won't mind not being seen.

and then i joined (?) pinterest. have you heard of this site? i had seen it mentioned on twitter but didn't know much about it. i then decided i wanted to have a visual display of things that i find on the web that interested me or wanted a snapshot of to have as a referral. i found the name and requested an invitation. at first i must admit i was a wee bit perplexed about what to do but found it very intuitive and easy to maneuver. i then found it to be quite fun to go searching for things to pin to my boards. i'm not sure if that is how others do it, but it's how i use it. most days i find it easier to look on the web than craft with the little ones. that way i'm not stopping a creative process to take care of the boys, but simply a visual process, which i find easier to return to. on pinterest you can search other people's board and see what they have pinned. if you like something on their boards then you can either like the item or repin it to one of your boards. from what i have seen there is no limit to how many boards you can create and no limit to how many items are on those boards. in pinning things to my boards i have rediscovered things i have liked, paper dolls, and have a new way to keep them fresh in my mind. it has made me try and bring out things that have bumped around in my noggin, like my vision of a craft room.

so how does belonging to pinterest fit in with not being seen. it doesn't really. it actually negates it. for other people have repinned things that i find interesting. for some reason this always shocks me. pleases me but surprises me. one reason is the fact that i had accepted the whole not being seen thing and the fact that i'm not sure how they find my board when there are so many others. i also find it interesting and fun when someone that has repinned something from me has something else on one of their boards that mirrors another one of my interests.

so i guess i am seen by people on a certain wavelength. which is still fine by me.

cheers!

i realize it's been said a thousand times before, but i really do hope we all have a good and prosperous new year. i know i could use one.

cheers!

merry merrys

 whether you were naughty

or nice

i hope you have a wonderful hoilday season.

cheers!

retro mummy:giveaway

doesn't this fabric just make your synapses sizzle? doesn't it just make you want to start creating something? it does me. head over to retro mummy's blog to check it out.

cheers!

in this house

do you ever have moments when you walk down memory lane? last night i found myself awake at 1:30 in the morn. what to do? i thought i could work on trying to finish up a few gifts, but didn't really want to turn on the lights. so i grabbed my laptop and went for a little jaunt.

in this house i can remember

taffy pulls in the kitchen with my mother and oldest cousin
listening to the radio while i played right below those two front windows on the porch
my father's garden that his boss told him shouldn't be as grand as it was
badminton games played in the street between my mum and her neighbor friend, mary
mary's first husband, shot, being a exceptionally tall man, at least to a wee girl, being very kind to us kids
stubbing my big toes till they bled due to the way i walked (hip dysplasia)
trying to hide my leg braces from my mum in, an oh so clever place of, the closet
eating my lunch of sardines, white bread and ketchup while sitting on the floor at the coffee table in the living room and watching match game after i had come home from kindergarten
playing with my sister and the other neighborhood children in the street
of walking down to the corner house, (a total of two houses away) after waking from my nap to let my mum know i was up and not being afraid or concerned
the hardwood floors in the house
the man next door keeping bees and always having to be quiet when you walked by his fences so as not to disturb them
seeing my first ghost
my mum winning a 10 foot stuffed dog that rode home on the top of our small car and sat in the corner of our bedroom
my mum making the three wise men from old wall paper samples
the back porch catching on fire because of a hot coal from a barbecue and thinking my dad such a brave man because he put out the fire
going for walks in the evening with the whole family

these memories were gathered in a period of about 5 years, from the age of 2 to about 7. amazing what we can remember. what can you remember from one of your childhood homes.

cheers!