At Recess~

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I miss my girls on Flickr and Etsy so much!

This weekend, a group I've been working with and I will launch an important website.

But I am beside myself with excitement to think about when I can return to my other life of adventures in cuteness!

I hope you're all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as always, and swimming in cuteness 24 hours a day!

Mwah!

Ah-choo!

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We're living in a dustbowl. ( * o * )

Even though it looks as if not much progress has been made, progress really has been made! The dust is oh so challenging, but the end product will be so worth it. Fortunately, all dollies and treasures are not sneezing though, because they're safely in hiding.



This photo shows all the walls that were moved for one bedroom, bathroom and the laundry room. We just ordered the stair balusters and contemporary doors. I'm so excited that this bathroom will have a checkerboard pattern of black and white shiny marble (or is it granite?), which has always been one of my favorites.

The two photos below are of my sister's house, who used our contractor/team before us. We've been waiting for them for quite a while. They moved a tiny bathroom in her foyer to open it up. Brett also does beautiful woodwork, which she was able to take advantage of. She had a big space at the end of a hallway, which was perfect for the cushioned bench he built for her.







Nothing will be better than to escape all this chaos and get back to making everything frivolous!

I hope all of you are up to something fun and cheerful. Mwah!

Demolition Eve

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Bright and early tomorrow morning, the second phase of our remodeling begins. It's so disruptive, and such a mess, but envisioning the "after" will put any woman in a good mood!

I "paced" a lot today, wondering if I had everything ready to go. But my way of pacing is often fiddling with fabric, pens, or whatever I can find. This little bunny was born today, and her bright lime green felt has her named "Margarita."








She's about 3" tall, and has a cloth face with painted eyes.

Sweet dreams!

Happiness Is Mending

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Obviously, I am lying.... happiness is being all FINISHED mending!





I've always taken hemming/mending to our seamstress, but since I've promised my husband to not spend extra money right now, I was procrastinating hemming a pair of his pants for about 3 weeks.... when I realized he couldn't be wearing corduroys this spring, I knew I better get them done. They are cute pants so they were fun to look at, at least. This designer uses colorful contrast trim, and as his linings too. He's unbelievably expensive, but I got these with a great discount.

Seriously, the only wife and mom tasks I wanna do are the creative ones. Look at these party favors by Bekah ("fullofbliss" on Flickr). Valentines for her kids' classes.... aren't they unbelievable! Make sure to look closely, at all the details. Look at the little bears' feet, notice how all the bunnies are accessorized differently, and see how those iPods are actually boxes of conversation hearts. Bekah is so cute!








I recall being on auto-pilot when I had assignments like this with my own kids, just loved it! Costumes, treatbags, party invitations, posters, science projects--they'd just go to bed because I'd inevitably go overboard and need to stay up till 2 AM to finish. I can't imagine ever rising to the level of Bekah's creations, but it got me thinking about not letting myself be so selfish about hemming a pair of pants. When my husband drops everything to help me with something, I need to show a better attitude I think!

So here's to being happy to do all the boring things we need to do as wives and mothers.

Cheers!

Representing No One

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***To everyone that visits my blog sometimes, you'll probably notice that what I wrote today hardly sounds like me. Since I've been nicknamed "Sunshine" for many years (for my cheerfulness and silliness), please forgive my uncharacteristic anger today. I'm still Sunshine, but today I'm feeling more like a mother just trying to protect her cubs.

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It isn't often that I find a day in which I'm inspired to create nothing. Nothing. I don't even remember the last day I felt like this actually.

First of all, Bush couldn't have left soon enough. And like so many others, I am thrilled about the freshness of our new President and all the excitement of repairing so many outrageous failures these last few years. Psst, I admit I was secretly hoping for Hillary, though. :o)

Now, almost overnight it seems, all my liberal and conservative loved ones nationwide feel disillusioned by their "party". When has that ever happened?

A while back, I was delighted to receive the stimulus check from Bush. That's nice, I thought at the time, and didn't think much more about it.

But later, I realized it had successfully stimulated nothing. Just another Bush failure. Then I began to consider our economy more deeply.

Next, when the first "bailout" package was proposed, I actually spent long hours in organized efforts to oppose it, since various business people I knew gave outstanding arguments against it (more often than not). Actually, I was first convinced when DH, who's been in the automotive industry for nearly 40 years, remarked to me that one of the biggest solicitors for government funds was GM, a company he fully knew had been mismanaged and faltering for years. He told me that any government funding they received would simply delay their likely dissolution only, and would hardly "save" their corporation like everyone was being led to believe. Darling Mister explained that before GM even sees a dime on any of their vehicles sold, thousands of dollars first go to retired executive pensions, the UAW, etc. Dang, that certainly would be wasted government funding then. The other automakers have similar pension, etc. requirements also, but GM was notoriously in the red the deepest. Now I see why DH was rather ticked about these CEO's flying in on their fancy carbon tootsie-print flyers. Thankfully, he doesn't work for GM.

At any rate, none of that mattered in the end, because, just like the BILLIONS that simply vanished for Katrina aid (can you imagine?), countless companies and banks cannot account for again, BILLIONS received from Uncle Sam (ultimately YOU and I, of course). So did Bush's bailout #1 help our failing economy? No.

So now we are supposed to be pacified again? With our so-called representatives passing an even more astronomical "bailout"? A "bailout" that is literally a jumbled mess? A bailout that has so many components that aren't related to creating jobs? Just how foolish can we be? Millions of dollars designated for one of my very favorite museums, the Smithsonian? I am hugely supportive of the arts, but jobs are what we need! J-O-B-S. I'm no economist, and I'm no mathamatician. But why would we throw more money at a problem that other money we threw at it didn't help? And why would we toss this second wave of hard-earned money without the proper oversight to protect it? Especially since we released Bailout #1 with virtually no accountability measures, resulting in the billions just "lost"?

Can you imagine other countries laughing out loud at our bumbling Congress, a Congress that can't even make sure this damn "stimulus" is read and understood before it's presented?

Yeah, we need to do something. Yeah, any fool would realize we do need a stimulus. How about $200B for immediate relief now, and see how it goes? This is beyond insulting to our intelligence, and very troubling to the future of our precious children.

With one of the most promising Presidents to ever be elected in our nation's history, I never believed that I could care less about that whole event now. Both parties have shown themselves to be bickering, manipulative, double-speaking, greedy, and 100% phony "representatives" of us, We The People. I don't know enough about our two-party system to understand how, but I think our citizens would do better to start their own party and just tell all of Washington to f*** off.

I'm signing off before I start swearing 10 words for every 1 that's meaningful. Then I'm going to find some kind of happy photo to add later hopefully.

XOXO
Annette

Your Inbox Is Empty

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Have you ever personally received this message? Maybe I'm naive, but I can't imagine anyone receiving that message. Ever. I surely never have!

It's just so difficult to keep up with regular mail, e-mail, phonecalls, you know what I mean. But my mom regularly receives this message, just ticks me off, hee hee. This illustrates the degree of organization in her life. If it was medically possible, my darling mother would possess a severe allergy to clutter. Any kind of clutter, even e-mail. You know how parodies about people often highlight familiar sentences like John McCain was constantly saying "My friends"? For my mother, it would be "Well just get rid of it!" So funny.

This is on my mind tonight because I'm currently quite behind on paperwork and correspondence. Makes my high-strung self even more high-strung, don't like that. It's about the only thing on my to-do list for tomorrow, so tomorrow will be a wonderful day!

For now though, sorry I don't have any show 'n tells for myself lately, but I will again soon~

In the meantime, here is the cutest little wall-hanging she made? Those "sweaters" are really small. When she first showed it to me, I actually laughed. It just struck me as so funny, but funny like adorable.



Now we're nearing about 1 1/2 months until my mom and dad come home, halfway there!

Roses Are Red, Violets are Blue....

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this poor dolly needed something pretty for her head!






This otherwise beautiful dolly had an exceedingly unattractive hat on her pretty little head. It even had shirring like the lining of a coffin, ick! At any rate, I'm a snail as a seamstress (thanks Mom, my constant-do-over trait comes from you, lol).

Finally, I think her new winter hat came out sassy and cute. There is permanent gathering at the back of her neck like a ruffle (forgot to snap photo). I cut the mink trim from a vintage coat I bought years ago, and I have used almost every last piece of it! I bet I've put the stuff on 50 projects by now. Off topic: real fur is so astonishingly gorgeous, but I am so sad how it's harvested. It's heartbreaking. Please think twice about buying new.

Also bright red are enormous fire engines.

Last night, I came home about 10:30 and when I pulled in the garage, I smelled a pungent burnt smell either in the garage or very near outside. DH stepped outside and agreed it was signifcant, but we couldn't find anything. He was hesitant for us to call 911 because we couldn't see anything and it was late for sirens to be sounding. I'd never forgive myself to ignore something like that so we compromised. I called the police and asked for a squad car to check it. About FOUR minutes later, DH peeks out the front door, "yup, here comes the big dogs." So loud! So bright! So flashing!

Meanwhile, I'm happily married, but I still have eyes, lol. These three guys were darling! And men in uniform are just cool. It didn't hurt that they were so considerate and thorough. And 4 minutes, impressive!

I digress. All was well, and we woke up with our house intact.

Digressing further, this morning's news reported that Denny's was serving Grand Slam breakfasts free till 2PM, nationwide. My oldest son burns major calories, besides the fact that he hunts for "free". Lord knows where he got that from because my husband says I hunt for the retail price. :o)

I knew Matt would be in class so I texted him. "Thanks Mom! I was already there with about half the team." (college baseball)

At 1PM, I get another text: "Hi Mom! I just had my 2nd Grand Slam breakfast!" OMG. I feel guilty that he sniped another, but I couldn't help laughing at his glee.

My other grown bundle of joy sent me this e-mail:

"Mom, I thought you'd like

this."

Short and to the point, hee hee, but I'll take thoughtfulness in any form. This video is only 30 seconds and he was very right that I'd like it.

Change the batteries in your smoke detectors regularly. :o)