I made this harvest basket for Rhythm of the Home, a beautiful website with wonderful sense of seasonal play, warmth, connection and celebration. There are lots of nurturing, loving and mindful activities to enjoy.

Click here to see the full tutorial.

Happy September!

I’ve spent the entire day adding fabric scraps, pieces, patterns and the like to my shop. Ahhhh, it feels good to let go. I still have a box that I’d like to send to Iraqi Bundles of Love and I still have a big load of fabric in my collection, including lots of vintage linens, and lots more scrap. How does a girl acquire so much stuff!  (I know,don’t answer)

Figuring out the shipping was the hardest part. If an order has multiple items, the price of shipping can go up quickly because of the weight of the fabric, and such.  So I tried to keep shipping as reasonable as I could, hopefully not having to pay extra on my end, or you on your end.  So, if the shipping was way more than it needed to be, I will gladly refund the excess.

Also, international order are welcome, but expect shipping to be $11 or higher.  Just shoot me an email if you are interested and I’ll give you a special quote.

Thanks for letting me share my goods. I hope they get some good use by people I know love to craft and sew as much as me.

I had the day off from work and spent the day with a friend.

We went to the farmer’s market…

enjoyed the scenery…

had some lovely tomatoes in our lunch…

and played with my friend’s new kitty who has no name. Any suggestions?

Then I came home and had fun manipulating my photos.

Hope you had a lovely day too.

We are finally enjoying some rainstorms in Az. It has been a long, dry and very hot summer. I have been waiting and waiting for the monsoons, and they are finally here. My favorite part is the beautiful accumulation of lovely poofy clouds.

I am still working on photographing my de-stashed fabric.  Soon, soon I will share all my goodies.

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And lastly, I am announcing the winner of An Awesome Book:

The winner is Susan who said, “I’ve had my eye on this book for a while now. I think my 3-year old is ready for it!”

Thank you to everyone who entered and to Dallas Clayton for such a fun interview & giveaway.

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I really am having so much fun with the color challenge, I will be sad when it is all over. Gosh, I hope this isn’t the last week! We are nearing the end of August aren’t we?

There was also a theme thrown in this time: sea.  So ocean scenery for this piece. Kinda goes with my mermaid from last week and the mermaid in my bathroom.

Also, I couldn’t do a color challenge without also making an inspiring flickr mosaic first. Click on image for photo credits.

I am in full force clean up mode around here. I’m doing so well too. Usually when I clean up my craft room, I really don’t end up throwing anything away. I just sorta reshuffle it into new places. This time I am looking at each piece of paper, fabric with new eyes.  I’ve had some of my fabric for ages now and am having a hard time remembering why I bought it in the first place. Some of it, my vintage linens for example, I just have way too much of.

I have 2 huge bags going to goodwill, 2 huge piles of trash and a table full of fabric I’d like to send to a good home. I’m not sure how I’m going to do it, but I may put it all for sale in my etsy shop (or my old one) and just see what happens.  I have loads of large vintage linen pieces, around 35 x 48 inches big–more than shown in the picture. Plus, big pieces of random fabric and scrap bundles too.  I’m hoping to have everything in my shop sometime next week, once I figure out how to ship it as cheaply as possible so everyone can get a really good deal. Sound good?

As the summer activities start winding down it’s time to start getting out the books and doing a bit more reading.  Dallas Clayton, the author and illustrator of An Awesome Book, and I thought it would be a great end-of-summer treat to give away his very awesome book!

I am super excited to share this really fun book with you. It’s about dreaming big, and you know I love that!  My kids  and I have read it a hundred times, so we came up with some silly & fun questions together.  Mostly they are about dreams and bedtime and reading.  All good stuff.

Big thank you to Dallas for sharing a little bit about himself and his dreams. You can watch a short video about the children’s literacy foundation that he set up around the book here, and read An Awesome Book online for free. Also check out  the mural he was commissioned to make on a children’s clothing store this month. It’s pretty rad.

Just want to share these real quick, before they get used, abused or lost.   The frog one in the top pic, is from last year. I made two more, one for back up.

You can see the instructions on how to make them HERE.

****Wait! Before you go, stop by and check out my awesome interview with Dallas Clayton and enter for a chance to win his Awesome Book!****

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As usual, the sewing request start coming in during the first week of school. Of course, I am happy to oblige.  I’ve been wanting to make the little snack baggies and napkins for a while and was excited to get the request. I’ve also been asked to make new place mats for lunch time. I’ll be showing you those tomorrow.

Today was the first day that I was able to experience a bit of pure quiet. Both the kids were in school for 3.5 hours of Q-U-I-E-T. So strange, so weird and oh so lovely.  I had enough time to pull out the paint and start this painting.  Yesterday and today were a half days for the big guy, but the little guy will continue with 1/2 days until January.

I had some time this afternoon to finish my painting for the Creative Color Challenge.  I dove right into the soothing, lush and dreamy color of turquoise.  I decided to paint a mermaid and silly me didn’t actually read the new twist on the challenge. We were allowed turquoise, white and black, but also a metallic: silver, gold, bronze or copper.  I would have totally added gold to the crown had I known this, but now my paints are packed up and it’s almost dinner time. Ah, well. Just try to imagine a gold crown.