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I’m hoping this shows up in The Spastic Crafters Feed :)

Post since moving spastic crafter code from feedburner into wordpress blog.

Posted on WOM wordpress, hoping it’ll show up on Spastic Crafter’s feed.

This is a new post on WOM WordPress after I’ve moved the Spastic Crafters feed to WOM WordPress.

Jenny: ” I think he’s aware.”

Kam: “Ah where, ah where, can my little dog be?”

[I added "- HowTo" at the end of the title after publishing.]

Woah. I stepped away from my computer for a couple of days and, I guess, just forgot to come back. How’ve you all been?

I can’t even say that I’ve been busy with interesting craftiness, mostly just end of summer chaos.

In fact, the only thing remotely creative that I’ve managed is a set of produce stamps. For this project, the hardest part was drawing the originals; carving them was a cinch. Seriously, stamps are such a satisfying project.

Because I was going off of Stefanie’s great idea and stamping on my homemade produce bags, I had to do a bit of research about how to keep the designs colorfast. I found that the ColorBox brand is permanent if you iron it (I used the medium setting for 10 seconds).

Another good thing about this brand is that it doesn’t bleed like some of the cheaper ink pads do.

And the best thing about ColorBox… they’re just so purty.

I bought mine on sale at Michael’s for 40% off and considering all the colors that it comes with, I’m super happy with the purchase. Now I’m thinking that I need to head back and pick up the earth tone set.

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Related Posts
Personalized Bookplate Stamps (this has links to stamping supplies)
Cheap & Easy Produce Bags

Recently, Jaden‘s favorite movie to watch is The Triplets of Belleville. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as a kids’ movie, though. It’s really dark and weird and well, yah, you’ll have to watch it yourself (plenty of it on youtube). But, what can I say. All of our kids love it too.

So, of course, she chose that as the theme for her birthday. For the cake, Aurora decided to cover a sheet cake with frog pieces. Once again, hard to explain if you haven’t seen the movie. (Though if you watch from about 4:05 on this link, you’ll get the gist.)

We all sat down to sculpt them out of gumpaste, but Jenny was the only one who was able to make anything presentable. My frogs were so ugly that I squashed all of them and made tadpoles instead. And even those managed to look more like sperm than tadpoles. Aurora’s attempts were a bit better, but still, Jenny kicked our butts on the frog sculpting front. Then again, she’s awesome like that (in a very ‘perfectionist, keep going til it works’ way, while my personal style is more along the lines of ‘meh, good enough’).

And guess what, I’ve got a Don’t Do What Donnie Don’t Does for you. Don’t leave a bunch of gumpaste figures out in the garage during a rainstorm without first double, no, triple checking that your roof doesn’t leak. Because ours leaks. And I had no idea that it did. And I actually cried when I saw this.

(And for those of you who are wondering why I would put these in the garage… here’s my reasoning. We have a naughty cat and I didn’t trust her to not eat these. I thought of putting them in the oven for safe keeping, but I was sure that someone would turn it on without realizing they were in there. Most likely me. No one goes in the garage, so I figured they’d be safe out there.)

So my wonderful sister came over the next day and re-sculpted a cake full of frogs. Isn’t she sweet? And I think the second batch turned out even better than the first.

And while she was re-making them, Kam was nice enough to give a tutorial for just how to make this frog. We used cocoa to keep them from sticking and also to give them a nice “fresh from the swamp” color. It totally worked.

Aurora whipped up a sheet cake with some brown/pink cream cheese frosting and we just plunked the frogs down on it.

And this last picture… technically that is one leg and one arm, but I stuck them in there like they were a pair of legs.

Don’t tell Jenny.

Note- I’m closing the comments on this post because I’ve been getting a ton of spam on it for some reason. It’s all been in Japanese, which I find pretty amusing. But well, I’ve got zero tolerance for spam. If you’re interested in commenting on this, feel free to email me.

Thanks.

Originally, I wrote this post focusing on many of the things in my life that are, well… less than ideal lately. Not really to complain, but because I find it all rather amusing. And just as I was about to hit publish, I happened to hop over to Flickr and find some beautiful pics that Jenny took at my house in the very areas I was complaining about. It’s amazing how much beauty she was able to uncover by simply focusing on it.

It also made me think about our mom, who could walk across a dry field of grass and emerge at the other end holding a bouquet of wildflowers. Her ability to do that always amazed me.

So in the spirit of both full disclosure and unashamed optimism, here are seven things I am not proud of (and a few things that I am)…

Background Info- I’ve been preparing for a multi-family garage sale and getting ready has used up all spare time, space and energy.

1) I wrote most of this last Wednesday, and am just now editing and posting it.
2) I was just looking at a video from Sunday, and I can see that I was wearing the same t-shirt that I currently have on.
3) I have a patch of thistles in my backyard that is almost as tall as I am.
- Those thistles did create a lush green background for some of my favorite flowers, though.

4) When I woke up with a sore throat today, my first thought was, “Ah, I can postpone that damned garage sale.”
5) The state of my living room, dining room and laundry room. That picture shows the living room and part of the dining room. I know. It looks like a crazy person, no, a pack of crazy people lives here. (Feel free to click on over to Flickr for a fun Eye Spy game of crapulence.)
- Just out of frame of that picture, though, are my orchids, which I’ve managed to keep alive and blooming for many years.

6) I had removed a couple of containers full of old leftovers from the fridge and instead of immediately emptying and cleaning them, I forgot them on the counter. They’ve started to bulge menacingly and I’m worried they will soon explode. I’ve actually considered throwing all of it away, containers and all, because I feel that the situation is beyond my ability to deal with. And each hour that passes makes the situation that much more dire.
(But I think I may be over-reacting here.)
7) I walked around with peanut butter in my hair for several hours. Jenny insisted on taking a picture of me before she told me what she was laughing at. And I let her.

And the final thing that I’m happy with is the family of volunteer flowers (sweet peas, violas and snapdragons) that are growing out of the rocks in the back yard.

So, here’s hoping all of you can focus on the flowers and not the weeds.

And thank you, Jenny, for helping me to do just that.

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Let the beauty we love be what we do.
-Rumi

Thought you all might enjoy some pictures (ok, a ton of them- but it was next to impossible for me to narrow them down) from the wedding of our friend Chula, who you can’t seem to take a bad picture of.

Seriously, how gorgeous is she?

Jenny and Brad have been friends with her family for quite some time, long before they moved into the same neighborhood and she began babysitting Kam. He adores her and gets so excited whenever he gets to see “Chu-wa”. It’s no wonder, as she is one of the absolute sweetest people ever.

Her side of the family is Cambodian, so there were lots of traditions to follow. Although, as one relative explained to me, this was actually a shortened version. Back in Cambodia, it lasts 3 full days, instead of the one and a half days of near constant activity that this one entailed.

My favorite part was the blessing ceremony that took place the night before the wedding.

(Joey and Kam preferred the view from above since it was easier to see everything that was going on.)

The day of the wedding, we walked from their house to the reception hall, carrying plates of food and presents.

I had no idea how heavy a plate of mangoes and lychee fruits could get.

They had two wedding ceremonies that day and then fed us some of the tastiest food ever. We loved it and our kids loved it, but the three other Americans at our table passed on most everything that was served, even the jell-o that, I swear, tasted like chocolate.

How sad for them.

By the end of the night, the kids were on stage dancing in front of the strobe lights, the girls twirling and shaking their booties, the boys doing the robot.

(Joey never again gets to tell me that she’s shy if she can get on stage and do this.)

All in all, we had a blast.

More pictures can be found in Jenny’s Flickr photostream.
Cambodian Buddhist Blessing Ceremony
Wedding Day