abby try again

this poor santa

So, I talked to my Mom yesterday and she told me she'd like to have some of my christmas cards and tags-which is great and wonderful. I told her that I'd send her a jpeg of some images and colors and she could pick out what she liked. So I also told her about this awful little santa I made and how he looks angry and/or very strange and sent an image of him just for giggles. Well, my Mom loves him and orderd two dozen tags! Ahh! He is so ugly-

Then, the more I look at him the more I feel bad for the guy. Poor ugly Santa! So I kept stamping and made enough tags to sell in my shop. I am still convinced he's ugly-but I feel like I've always been the friend of the ugly, weird and "unique". What do you think? Oh well. I also changed the number of tags in the sets because I thought it was better to order 10 or 12 tags at once than 5.  You can see them here.
***Also, Molly over at Mommycoddle is making these great buttons! Go Look-they are amazing!

holiday cheer...

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all. I hope you are all rested and recovered. I am a cheat and went out with some friends-I guess I should do things like this now before I have kids. I saw the movie "Rent" which will not be discussed here except to say that yes, I was a drama geek in high school, and no-the film could not live up to my high expectations. Anyway...
   I recieved the GREATEST package as a surprise this week from Lisa Duran in Colorado. She owns an alpaca farm and sent me the most beautiful lovely yarn spun from her alpaca.  THe package also included some hairpins from Momo, a patch from abby-normal, and some lovely cards. I almost cried when I unwrapped it-I have never got a gift that was so "me". Thanks so much! (here is a blurry photo)

I am taking part in Moki's stamp swap. Each person stamps a sheet of stationary on "something else" and mails it to Moki-then you get back one of each thing. Well, I have been playing around a lot and Friday decided on a little girl in hat, an idea which I got from my Japanese stamp book. Here's a shot of the assembly line of envelopes:

I sold a few things from my shop!! Yay! The only thing is that my paypal account was all screwed up and weird to the first two ladies (sorry Alison and Emily). But it should be all fixed now.  I made some more cards and gift tags for it shop here -look:

This has nothing to do with anything but James and I watched "Ruben and Ed" last night. Have any of you seen that movie? It is so crazy! We used to rent it all the time when I was ten-it is different seeing it now. So weird- "my cat an eat a whole watermelon". I love it.

Yeah...I'm going there

So call me a copycat. Lynn from Molly Chicken blog is so talented and smart! She made a blog post with links of all of the stuff she'd like to have for christmas from her hubby. I think that's a great idea so in lieu of Self Portrait Tuesday here is "what I'd love to have Tuesday" (yeah, I'm a brat-so?).
-I love all that Alison (Malisonian) sews! She has a cute little etsy shop and I want this, this, or this.
-Lisa's been pumping out the goods in her new and improved version of abbynormal (great name, no?). I love the small red pony tote and the shirts with the Frenchies are killer!
-this cute La Merise pad (another link yoinked from Lynn) anything La Merise is wonderful!
-A lovely Camilla Engman print
-the pattern for glampyre's one skein wonder
-a gift certificate to here (because no, you cannot pick out yarn and I'm sure do not want to)
-And of course-Japanese Craft Books-no link for this because you can get them the cheapest in Beaverton!
Thanks for looking !
Random photo 'cause I can't post without a photo!

haha-it's not random! It's an ad-a poor photo,too-but an add all the same! You can now buy  my handmade cards at my etsy shop! Go look-I lowered the prices and will be posting gift tags and more.

What I've been up to...

*Update* I just posted some sets of cards at etsy, an online store-check them out!
go here

(above: Cassie (my sis), me , my niece Brianna)
So I'm back and it's a bit nuts around here. After a whirlwind trip to California I became very ill and very busy at work. That left my free time for resting and the mess at my house to grow slowly larger as I tried to ignore it.  So here is a quick recap of the past couple weeks. James and I went home to California-Visalia to be exact. We met my sister-in-law, Tiffani, and my new baby nephew, Sean. They are both wonderful, and I am especially excited that Tiffany is a part of our family. (Sidenote; I have seven sisters and one brother-all  of  which are now adults so my family is gigantic!)

(above: my cousin Andrew and sister-in-law Tiffani)

(above: baby Sean yawning)
James' family is doing good and it was so nice to see them, too.

Here is James' Mom, Lesa, knitting as her Mom looks on.
I really enjoyed being at my Mom's house; she has so many neat things-here is one of my favs:

Her junk is truly amazing.  I love it!
Anyway, apart from trying to feel better I have been knitting and stamping. I made this scarf which is basically a variation of the purl scarf from "Last Minute Gifts".

Here are some shots of some of the cards I hope to have up for sale either tonight or tommorrow.

These are a little house pattern along with the words "home sweet home" in red.

These are scissors cards. I hope to sell the cards in packs of three with corrdinating envelopes for $5.50. There are many more designs- I'll be posting them soon!

Catlin Gabel Rummage Sale Part Two

Before  I begin round two, some stamping goodness:

I got a bunch of cotton tape at the rummage sale and have seen it look really cute with embroidery on it. Well, I didn't feel like investing quite that much time -so I figured I could stamp it. I love the way this turned out-and the new stamps have been from my own design-not the book-and I actually like them. Here are some of the things I'm experimenting with at the moment:

Sorry Mom! I should really not stamp on your mat-whoops. Anyway- I love the idea of the dala horse stamp-but I'm afraid it doesn't translate how I picture it looking in my head-oh well. As you can see, I have started on numbers and letters-and they are suprisingly more easy to do than previuosly assumed. I hope to make a whole set once I get some more materiels.
     Okay, I am being lazy. I am really bored with taking photos of this rummage sale stuff, but I do like to blog, I do like to have a record of what I do with my life, and I do like to show things to my family and then talk on the phone about them. Oh and I do enjoy the randomly sumbitted comments, thoughts, and ideas submitted by kind strangers. So here goes-

More fabric (too lazy to iron today)-(I love the bows one)

and some more fabric ( love the rose one)

Japanese stuff

and these mugs. I "heart" these mugs but I do NOT "heart" Huckabees. I'm sorry that movie sucked and I am so over the pointless swearing-really. Okay-bye for now!

Catlin Gabel Rummage Sale Part One

    Well, it just so happens that James and are lucky to have moved to Portland, where every year one of the world's largest rummage sales is held-the Catlin Gabel sale. Catlin Gabel is the name of a great independent (extremely expensive) private school and they have held this sale annually for over 60 years! It was at the Expo Center and oh so much fun. I think I will have to go back tomorrow since I didn't even look at the books, shoes, clothes, treasures, or toys. Thrifting has occurred on a regular basis around here-and I wanted to showcase all my finds-but alas-my camera ran out of batteries as I started to download my photos-so this post will be done in "parts".
   The photo above is of some of my finds:
1. glass vase purchased at the goodwill
2. mock glass vase thrifted downtown  (wouldn't it be lovely with some huge purple hydrangeas in it?)
3. tiny porcelain vase I got at the rummage sale for 10 cents-I want to put a succulent in it
4. Virgin Mary vase scored for 50 cents at the rummage sale-I collect these and have paid over $20 for some!
5. beautiful heavy glass urn bought for 50 cents at the sale
   The sale was a bit overwhelming-I needed to be more prepared; more money, some sort of cart, water bottles-seriously. Here are some of the many fabrics I got , none of which were over $2 (more in the next post):

1. this one is about four yards of heavy decorators fabric
2.a few yards of cotton
3. I'm not sure if I love or hate these pieces
4. daisies (sorry for the blurriness)
5. apples and daisy print
6. heavy canvas-like material
7. cute vintage cotton
8. this one has tiny polka dots
9.I really like to stare at this one :)
Today,  it's dark and rainy in Portland, and I am staying indoors cleaning, washing, ironing, cooking. It feels so nice to be home. I've got "Garden State" and "I Heart Huckabees" on Netflix and I'm looking forward to nesting. For some dumb reason (probably the scope of the whole thing) I took no photos inside the sale-but here are some shots from the car on the way home-I love neon signs.

Happy Hallow-Self Portrait Tuesday-een

So this month's Challenge is to take portrait's looking like somebody else. For those of you that know me-this is probably shockingly different. I usually wers no make-up, have short brown hair, glasses, and don't look half-sedated (I guess you can say I was trying a "come hither stare" but it just looks tired and cross eyed). Take the challenge-it's fun!