on to the new year

Christmas was nice and went too fast. I wish I could have spent more time with each member of my family. We often have theme Christmases and this year the theme was the 60's. Some of us dressed up (I wore a vintage psychedelic mu mu and looked a bit like Mama Cass!), we ate vintage food like fondue, deviled eggs and chex mix, played the gift game with presents from the 60's and watched a family slide show from the 60's. Here is a neat pic from the slide show of a family Christmas, probably before my time.





My father made that cabinet/shelf thing the TV is in. Pretty neat idea, I think.






Here is a Christmas tree from a couple years later. My father would flock them in the driveway. I like this one because it shows the relentless sunny Christmas weather of Southern California through the living room window.




This Christmas we had snow in Portland. It was the first time there has been more than 1" of snow in Portland on Christmas day since 1937. By the time we left my parents house it was almost all gone. Here is a shot of my parents backyard from that afternoon.


I hope you all have a wonderful New Year!

This week I will be posting some new printed items in the shop!

Its Christmas Eve!

Almost Christmas

It is hard to believe that Christmas is so soon. Every year I feel like I don't get enought time to enjoy the season, to do Christmasy things. I wish there were two more months between October and Christmas. (I would gladly give up July and August.) This year my gift buying was almost done by Thanksgiving and I yet I still had a long list of things to do.

I decorated my place slowly the last couple of weeks. There are a couple of pictures here. I am hoping to take more before it all comes down. Every year around this time I start craving the days when I can put stuff away, when I will have the time to clean and declutter. I also really find myself drawn to white and silver. It is the color of the new year. Last year I made a New Years tree. I really liked it and I hope to do one this year, but I may just want to take it all down asap.

A New Years tree is my own invention. I take off all the ornaments and colored lights and put on only silver and white ornaments and little white lights. It looks so fresh and nice and it is a nice way to enjoy the tree a little longer without having all the red and green christmassy stuff around. (I got all my silver and white decorations 75% off after Christmas)

I have found myself leaning toward white things lately. Here are two neat things that I saw recently.

On the blog Happy Mundane, Jon took some old ornaments and spray painted them with a white metal primer. The result was really neat. They look like they could be poreclain:
















Have you tried the new Etsy feature Pounce yet? Holy mackerel, is that addictive! You get to see all the things that have most recently sold. Through Pounce today I saw these neat vases. I am very drawn to them. They kind of look like the white painted brick in my apartment.















Hope your Christmas is shaping up nicely!

role playing

How great are these finger puppets? In case you are not sure the answer is super great. These are the perfect gift for a serious fan. The Etsy shop has Harold and Maude, the Royal Tannenbaums and Rushmore!



and she even captured one of my top favorite lines in the film:

There was a time when I could totally could have done all the lines from Rushmore with these finger puppets.

To come clean, the movie finger puppets I would actually get the most out of?

Anne of Green Gables
The Goodbye Girl
White Christmas (and they would be singing!)
It's a Wonderful Life

But, I could make a pretty good showing with The Wes Anderson Film finger puppets. This is the kind of thing I wish I would have thought of. But, really abbeychristine does a better job of it than I would.

What about you? Which finger puppets would get the most action at your house?

no one ever heard of a skinny santa

There is yet another ridiculous campaign from the fat haters out there that says Santa should no longer be fat. Along with the Pillsbury Doughboy's slimmer body and the push for the Cookie Monster to eat more vegetables, this is yet another bucketful of stupidity.

Thankfully, some smart people got together to make a stink about it and get some good done as well! This is some great activism!

If you believe Santa belongs on a sleigh instead of a stairmaster, sign the petition. Your support will do more than Keep Santa Fat. For every signature, DVA Advertising and Public Relations will donate a pound of food to America’s Second Harvest to help feed the hungry in our communities. And DVA will keep donating until we reach 50,000 pounds of food. Help feed the cause on behalf of the North Pole’s finest.

HELP SANTA STAY FAT!

napkin sets

I just added some screen printed napkin sets to the shop. Hopefully more screen printed things to come before Christmas!

the merry christmas wreath

Have you put up your Holiday Decorations yet? I am seeing lots of neat decorations on blogs and I haven't even really thought about doing mine yet.

These however have really inspired me. They are so beautiful and have excited me to make my own version, maybe during the quiet months of January or February. I know I won't be able to make it look as good, but I want to try.

These are from Constant Gatherers Etsy store.





It is a good reason to buy neat yarns. I don't knit, so I never have need to buy yarn, but there are always such beautiful handmade yarns on Etsy. Like these from hobbledehoy:



This weekend I should be able to put the printed tree napkins in the shop!

printing

I printed some napkins today. It was fun to gocco again. I really like the way they look. These will be in the shop later in the week. If you can't tell from the side, the image is of trees.

Figure 8 #3 review

I got a new review on Feminist Review for Figure 8, this one for issue number 3.