terror in a onesie

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I started this Teresa Wentzler before Liza was born. I stopped to cross stitch something for Liza’s room and then just never picked this piece back up. After I finished the lighthouses, I asked the Craft Night Ladies what I should work on next and they all unanimously said, “THAT!” when I showed it to them. I’ve nearly got the main panel completed and will start on the border for it and then there’s another huge section of text and more border after that. I don’t see it being completed anytime soon and I’m likely to put it down and work on something else for a while to take a break. But for now it’s pretty satisfying.

This past summer I started an art journal and I’ve worked in it as I’ve had ideas and wanted to try different things. This is my latest page from this week. I always think the one I just finished is my favorite and this one is no exception. I’m sure I’ll love the next one just as much.

I bought new lampshades because the old ones were so bent and mangled that it was starting to be embarrassing. I was just going to throw the old shades away but decided to see what the kids would do if I let them play. They spent a solid 30 minutes walking around like this and all they did was cackle like fiends and run into things. And I wonder how the lampshades got bent in the first place?

I traded my friend Janelle a notebook for these awesome slippers. Liza walks around saying, “Oink!” endlessly.

Speaking of notebooks, I have 12 to the point where I can take photos and start posting them. I’m hoping to get that done this week after I return from Atlanta and seeing U2.

Yeah, I said it. U2 for my birthday.

It’s the second time I’ve gotten to see U2 and both times it’s been in October. So I’m a lucky girl. Doubly lucky because Stephen is taking off of work to stay home with the kids while I go hang out with friends and go to the concert. I’ll have much to post about when I get back.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Yes, I’ve been working on Etsy shop stuff but I’ve also been taking care of other things. How is that whenever I decide to embark on something kinda big the whole rest of my life decides to be busy and awesome and crazy and full at the same time?

The kids both have colds this weekend so we’ve been quarantined at home to keep from being contagious. I’ve spent the past 10 days reading the Sookie Stackhouse books (Gigantic thanks to Megan for having them all including the last one that she’d checked out from the library and loaned me!) I’ve also been working on Ladies’ Bible Study at my church that I am leading this semester (gulp!) and I’ve had to work pretty diligently to stay one tiny step ahead of the bright ladies in my class.

But for those of you who might be curious, here’s a photo of my notebooks that I’ve been working on:

The sheep notebook on the left stack is already spoken for but the rest will be up in my shop shortly.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

…wonder no more:

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Had a marathon stitching session last night and then finished up this morning. I’ve ironed it and emailed my client to say that it’s ready. Can’t wait for her to see it. I’ve talked about it and tweeted about it and you guys have traveled the road with me. This is a pretty awesome end to a pretty awesome week.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I started this small project before I began work on the lighthouses. Since then, I’ve only worked on this when we traveled. It’s been a great one to work on in the car. This past craft night, we had a full house so instead of cramping everyone else’s style with my large frame for the lighthouses I finished this for Stephen. Do you think he’ll be surprised?

Schrödinger’s pattern came from Greta at Larripin Labs.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

One more lighthouse to go and I am so excited to be nearing the finish! I’m contemplating my next project and what I might get done if I work as I’ve worked on this piece.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

What I’ve been working on:

…but maybe not so much today since Liza woke up grumpy and Eli’s ability to bug the crap out of her is up to gold medal proportions this morning. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to turn the day around. If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears!

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Saturday was my first opportunity to tape skits for DCTV, so of course there were vampires.

Fine, fine, we had vampire hunters as well. That’s Buffy, Alucard, Edward Cullen, Spike, and Mina Harker in that photo. Why were they all together? Find out in September!

(And thanks to Patrick for the cast photo.)

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve had the notebook crafting bug:

Click to see some of the other notebooks I’ve made over the past week or so.

So, question: Should I put up an Etsy store and start selling my creations?

I’m still hard at work on the lighthouses. I’ll take a photo after tonight’s work and post.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

You know how the other day I mentioned that I was working on a cross-stitch piece someone hired me to do? Well, that generated a fair number of questions I thought I’d answer in a post.

How did the person find me?
A long time ago, like around the time Eli was born, I was talking with the wonderful women at my local cross-stitch store and the topic came around to people looking for people to stitch for them. I mentioned that I’d be interested in that kind of work. I left my name and number and about a month ago I got my very first inquiry.

How did I decide what to charge?
Everybody told me to charge hourly. I thought about it quite a lot. Hourly is certainly the way to go in most endeavors like this. I looked at some of the work I’d done previously and did some calculations. I came to the conclusion that no one in their right mind would pay me an hourly rate to cross-stitch, there’s just too much time involved.

I decided to do a per job charge, depending on the complexity of the work and what materials were or were not provided. I love stitching and as long as the pattern is something that I would most likely do without getting paid, the money is just fodder for my ever increasing stash.

It just so happened that the dollar amount that I came up with in my head exactly matched the dollar amount that my client came up with as well. I considered that an excellent sign and took it as an indication that I should take the job.

Am I going to be able to get it done in time?
We set a date of the end of September. My client wants to give it as a gift so I am working very hard to make that September date. I’m actually doing better time-wise on this project than I do on my own stuff. I know I need to spend a certain number of hours per day working and I haven’t been skipping very often. There are five lighthouses and a compass rose in the pattern and I have one lighthouse done and have more than half of the compass done as well. If I work as I’ve been working the past few days, I’ll be able to finish the compass today.

Does having a set deadline take the joy out of the work?
I haven’t found that to be true yet. Ask me again at the end of August.

I think I’ve covered all the questions people have asked. If you have others, post them below and I’ll answer them.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

The list is long but boils down to this: trying to acclimate to Eli’s last summer before school starts.

In an effort to keep things light this summer, I didn’t schedule any camps or lessons of any kind for the kids. Ironic, since this is the first summer Eli’s been old enough to be eligible for most activities that run in the summer. Instead I opted for just hanging out with our friends, especially the ones with pools, and getting Eli extra time with Josh before they go to separate schools in the fall.

We’ve gone and developed quite the schedule anyway. Mondays we play at church. Tuesdays are my morning off. A girl from church is coming over to keep the kids so I can run errands or grocery shop alone, which is a mother’s nirvana. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays haven’t quite settled out yet but will be some order or combination of going to the Botanical Gardens, spending time with Josh and his family or having Hallie over so the two of us can experiment in the kitchen.

This summer is already more bittersweet than I expected it to be. Eli is so ready for school, I’ve been saying it for a year now. And yet. And yet. It seems a giant corner to turn. A street he will go down mostly without me. I thought I would have NO problem with that. I’m looking at the couple of months until school starts and I’m wondering what else we can pack in before he goes.

The big news around here is another dishwasher leak. The first one, Stephen and his dad repaired in a day and cost less than $20. This time, the part wasn’t in stock so today marks a week of me washing dishes. It’s still not going to cost very much to repair the dishwasher and Stephen can do it. The bad news of the story is the slow leak ruined the kitchen floor. I had the folks who installed the hardwoods send someone to look at it and he gave us an $800 estimate. We’re thinking about replacing the hardwood with tile since this is the third time in seven years we’ve had water damage somewhere in the kitchen.

In crafting news, I’ve been working on a cross-stitch for hire job. It’s a lovely set of lighthouses that I need to get done before October.

And making notebooks for folks. I’ve made and given away a few and made a few more. I especially like making them now that I have an actual paper guillotine instead the 1-sheet cutter I used when I first started the process.

(Yes, I know Narwhal is misspelled. They’ve sent me a new card to replace that one.)

So all in all, shaping up to be a really busy summer. I’ll make sure to take my camera to the gardens this week so I can post some new photos.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

When Eli was Liza’s age (around 2) he was decidedly uninterested in coloring. He did not want to play with paper or crayons or markers or paint. You can well imagine how sad this made me. But I dealt with it, thinking he would learn to be creative in other ways.

I got the book The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections for Christmas. And while it has some fabulous projects, I’ve still been a bit stymied on how to encourage Eli and Liza’s creativity.

This week I think I’ve finally figured it out.

My side of the office looks like the craft tornado hit it. I’ve been on a new tear of making Artist Trading Cards so there is paper, stamps and stacks of materials on the floor and I have tools all over my desk: watercolor pencils, glitter glue, paper cutter and drying cards. Several times this week Eli has asked to work on a ‘project’. (Wonder where he’s heard that word?)

So what I’ve figured out is: what encourages them to be creative is to see me be creative on a daily basis. If I’m working they want to get in there and make something as well.

Check out Eli’s feet in this photo!

This afternoon Eli wanted to make a picture for his best buddy Josh. He got in the office (behind the baby gate–Liza is never allowed in the office unsupervised) where all the gear is spread out and started working:

Liza and I sat in the hall so she could draw with markers:

Sitting in the hall with Liza telling me what color each marker was, I had the moment where I wondered why all of our days can’t be like this.

While I was writing this post, Liza pulled a flower pot off of the piano and made a giant mess. So the moment has completely passed and we are back to normal around here.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

by Eli

Once upon a time, there was a green-headed robot. He was lonely and very sad. But…he had no friends. But then one day, he met a purple-headed robot, Joe.

“How do you do, Joe?” said Sparky. (Mom, the purple-headed one is Sparky.)

“Good!” said Joe.

“Good!” said Sparky.

“But we don’t have any more friends!”

“You’re right!” said Sparky.

“We better go to the enchanted grove to get one.”

“Let’s go!” They said. And off they went.

When they got there, they found two other robots. The yellow-headed robot was Speedy. The blue-headed robot was Eddie. So they became best friends. Really best friends.

The End

Thanks to Kat for the cool make-your-own robots. (Boy do you know this kid or what?)

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

When I was in high school, I wanted to be a pretentious art school student but I was hampered by attending a regular high school with my good and very nerdy friends. In order to gain my pretentious art school street cred, I made all my friends participate in my daily creation of Lunch Deceased.

Lunch Deceased was half found-treasure sculpture and half performance art. I gathered up everyone’s left over lunch trash (McDonald’s packaging, cafeteria Styrofoam, and brown bag effluvium) and stacked it as high as I could. My lunch companions were allowed to add to the sculpture but I held divine right to nix the addition if it didn’t fit my ever changing vision of the day’s work. Each day the title for the work was “Lunch Deceased” and then a number. I seem to recall a very complex numbering system involving the date and the number of items divided by how many days until the weekend. I don’t remember the exact calculations but it added up to a suitably pretentious title for each work of “art”.

It was silly and made us all laugh and I recall my friends humoring my ridiculousness with much grace.

I’ve thought about Lunch Deceased quite a lot recently as Liza has taken to creating Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner Deceased on a daily basis. This usually involves shredding the food she didn’t eat into crumb sized pieces. She smashes those pieces with her cup and examines the bottom of the cup. She then scrapes the bottom off and starts over. Repeat until I am so disgusted I make her get down and clean up the squishy mess.

Part of me is glad to see the tradition live on and part of me just wishes she’d move on to the next developmental milestone. Regardless, watching her create it everyday has brought back many fond memories for me.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

What are thaumatropes you ask? Thaumatropes are Victorian spinner toys. In this case they are also Eli’s birthday party invitations. I got the idea from my new favorite author Ester K. Smith. The thaumatropes are from a book called Magic Books & Paper Toys. You hold the strings, twist and see the robot open and close his eyes and mouth. Eli is obsessed with them. While I was working on them, he claimed all of my prototypes and goofs.

You can also see the buttons I made as party favors in the foreground. Eli can’t decide which robot he wants to keep for himself. I have this sneaking suspicion that I’m going to be making four or five more buttons for him to keep for his very own.

I have gotten a ton of crafting tools (the button maker! and a Bind-it-all!) and books at Christmas and since then. There’s going to be many, many craft/making things posts in the days to come.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Today we did some painting since it was way too cold and snowy to go outside. Here are the kids in action:

Click the photo for more painting!

Also, here’s a photo I got of the kids watching tv. They aren’t often that still that close to one another so I had to memorialize it.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve got six graphic design projects going right now and most of them are paid work. I’m working on making way too many Christmas and birthday presents.

It is possible that in October I got a little overly ambitious about Christmas. I’ve made it so I’ll be working every night on hand crafts from now until Christmas Eve. It’s fun. I enjoy it. And truthfully I think I’m more productive all the way around when my plate is full. The downside is that I’m so busy I don’t have any stories to tell and I can’t show photos of what I’m working on because everyone I am making presents for reads this blog.

That’s what I’ve been doing. What about you?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We were full of the busy yesterday and I managed to get photos of big chunks of it.

First thing was playing with the doll house:

Click the photo to see more pictures.

In the afternoon we were off to hang out with our friends at Hallie and Remy’s house. I made all the girls t-shirts that say “Future Huntsvegas Girl Scout Troop”. They turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself.

Click the photo to see more pictures.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We were outside at the playset one afternoon this past week and Eli requested I tell him a story. He’s always making up stories so I guess he decided he needed a break from all the work and wanted to hear someone else’s made up stuff.

I might be crafty with a glue gun and paper or even upon occasion fabric or other materials. I think I can cook decently and do a few other things nicely but I am not a storyteller. I guess it is the practical gene in me. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read. I just don’t seem to have the ability to make this stuff up.

So I started telling him the story of a boy named Kreeli who fought a dragon and saved his friends, LukeDuke and Burwill, and his sister, Bliza. Yeah, after that story I was out of juice. I didn’t have much to begin with but I was tapped out after the dragon.

But as in all things with kids, the thing that you most want to disappear becomes the most favoritest thing they can imagine.

Every night this week I’ve had to tell a Kreeli and Bliza story. Sometimes I slip and say Eli and Liza and he reminds me that these kids names are Kreeli and Bliza. I guess he has to maintain the wall or something. I’ve tried to keep the stories fantastical but the last couple of nights they’ve deteriorated into rehashes of the day or previews of the next day. He doesn’t seem to mind as it netted him pancakes this morning since Kreeli had pancakes last night in his story.

The nicest part of this is that it allows me to reinforce stuff we’ve discussed during the day. Kreeli never kicks other kids on the soccer field. He’s kinder than that. Kreeli always watches out for Bliza and takes care of her. Kreeli always does the brave thing, the kind thing, the smart thing. So while in the beginning it was annoying for me to do, it’s starting to grow on me.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed today. I realized this afternoon that I have about 17 frying pans in the fire and I’m trying to keep my hair from burning as well.

School has started back and I always forget that, even for pre-school aged children, the wheel starts turning again come fall. Eli and Liza had their two days of Mother’s Morning Out this week. Things were great except for lunch time, which I always thought was the easiest subject. We bought everyone bento boxes while we were in Japan. Cool, right? Wrong. Eli’s cup leaks so bad he isn’t allowed to return to school with it. The teachers in Liza’s room were confounded today by how her bento box stacks. I’m only slightly worried about the stacking training Liza is receiving from these sweet ladies since her box is keyed and will only fit together one way. I guess next week I’ll just go back to good ol’ American plastic bags and hormone-coated sippy cups.

This week also brought our first week of soccer practice for Eli. We returned home on Monday from Kansas City and Stephen took Eli straight to soccer practice. I took him tonight since Stephen needed to do some work at home. I think Eli’s going to have fun and I’m completely impressed that the coaches are teaching them actual fundamentals of the game, but I can already tell that the schedule is going to kill us. Games are on Saturday — wait for it — at 8:30 a.m. Everyone groan in chorus with us. I know that soccer is going to be great for him and he will make some friends that he will hopefully go to school with next year, but holy cow, 8:30 on a Saturday. And that’s what time the game starts. We have to be there between 8 and 8:15. I guess it’s also good practice for getting him up for school next year.

We also brought a lovely parting gift from our trip. All four Granade children have colds. Liza had it first, so I’m guessing it’s from when she licked the floor at the Nashville airport. Now Eli has it, and even Sam and little Noah have it. When I talked with Joy today, she wondered if we would be able to get together and not share germs before the kids are 15. I’m guessing it ain’t gonna happen. When Eli sneezes he sounds like a squeaking mouse. When I told him that in the car on the way home from soccer practice this evening, he nearly fell out of the car laughing.

Stephen is preparing talks for Dragon*Con. His involvement gets larger every year. I expect in about five more years he’ll have staged a coup and taken over the whole system. I’m guessing that when that happens, there’s going to be a sharp increase in the number of SciFi authors invited. I’m proud that he’s found his niche there and is having a good time, but the alternate schedule around our house for July and August while he is prepping makes for some crazy late nights. That schedule in combination with the above mentioned children’s colds is not a good thing. You might ask, “Misty, why are you staying up with him? You aren’t going to Con so why not get some sleep?” My answer, this Con anyway, is “Michael Phelps and Beach Volleyball.”

Next is work. Wha? Yes, I have some work going on right now. Some is Dragon*Con related; some is regular church stuff. Today I spoke with some folks for a new short term freelance job which I’m hoping, if I do a bang up job, will turn into more freelance work. Regardless, this first piece is cool and I’m excited to get to work on it. I actually used this morning while the kids were at MMO to do work. I sat at the computer for multiple hours in a row and worked. It’s amazing how much I can get done when I’m not tending my chicks.

Lastly, I have turned into a one woman craftapalooza. I’m working on the birds. Still. I made the first batch and then realized that I wanted to give a few more. Then I added to that list and then I just wrote down the names of pretty much every woman I know because I thought it would be a nice gift to get so I wanted lots of you to have one. So if you haven’t gotten a bird yet, you probably will. Be patient with me, though. I’m working on them off and on since I am also making a purse (pictures forthcoming as progress is produced), cloth bookmarks, paper bookmarks, storage containers from recycled tins (if you have any, I want them!), a new DIY planner for myself, and I’m in the process of updating my work portfolio so it looks a bit more cohesive. My latest brainstorm is to collect plastic lids off of bottles (soda, OJ, milk, etc.) so that I can carry them to Eli’s school for an art project. (OK, so I saw this on one of the crafting blogs, but I don’t remember which one so don’t yell at me for not having a link.) I’ve always found it funny that when I am busiest, I feel energized to work on projects for myself.

If I have two coherent thoughts to string together after all of that (and my usual child rearing and house chores) all I want to do is watch Dr. Who or sing songs from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I find it really funny that my two favorite actors right now are men with very expressive foreheads. I’m sure that says something about me but I don’t think I want to examine it too closely.

Anybody else out there obsessing about anything or enjoying their own chaotic life?