sweet magazine

I spent a good amount of time this weekend weeding out some magazines. It was hard. I love magazines. Especially lifestyle ones. You know the ones that have articles on better ways to eat and decorate and live. Reading them makes me feel like I am already doing these things they are recommending. I am already living better just because I am flipping the pages. Oh, and I get inspired to do so much: travel, clean, cook, craft - but later, right now I am looking at this beautiful magazine. And beauty is another thing that I love about a good magazine. The beauty of the objects, the layout, the design, even good advertising thrills me. Reading a beautiful magazine is truly edifying for me.

And there is a new magazine out now that is the ultimate. Sweet Paul is a food and prop stylist and crafter. He has a very successful blog that I have been reading for some time. This month he launched the first issue of his online magazine, Sweet Paul.

This magazine is beautiful, totally. It is filled with recipes and craft ideas that look wonderful and are also not overwhelming. I felt like I could do the crafts and recipes in his magazine pretty easily and I really liked that. The only thing I didn't like about Sweet Paul was that I couldn't hold it in my hand. But, after seeing a portion of how many magazines I can't get rid of this weekend, I think that might be for the best. I printed out some pages today and they looked great.

Take a look at Sweet Paul. I think you will really love it. I am excited for the next issue.

	look inside
Spring 2010

the adventures of mr fox and mrs polar bear

I stumbled upon these very cute photos on Flickr a while ago and quickly became a fan of Mr Fox and his friend Mrs Polar Bear.











They are photographed by tommy toast and he tells you all about their lives and daily adventures, along with other creatures from the "land of bed". I like his story telling.

Moments after uttering "Hand me my harmonica", Mr Fox was hot on the trail of Mr Completely Bonkers Raccoon - the Pied Piper! His ears pricked, and using his extraordinary sense of smell, the chase had begun.

Mrs PB, who had finally located her ear plugs, followed close behind. It took some time. Every so often Mrs Polar Bear's shrieking or humming would put him off track, but as the amplitude began to increase (proportionately to the square of their distance from the Piper), pursing his lips Mr Fox began to blow!

Beginning with Carnival of the Animals.. the little bears turned, looked and began to edge towards him, but the the Raccoon who could be heard but not seen reposted with Hall of the Mountain King. Mr Fox was losing them! He had to pull out all the stops. There was only one tune that could save them now. He was going to have to give the rendition of his life.

Only one tune could do it, and the one tune did it. Mr Fox's recital of Land of Hope and Glory was truly awe inspiring!

Vive la fox!

They are working on the global domination of Mr Fox and Mrs Polar Bear, along with their friend Mr Shaun, and you can help.

Cut out the images and take pictures of them in your town or on vacation with you. (You get bonus points for Holy Grail locations).

How cute is this? I don't know why, but I love something even more when it has little cut-out lines next to it.

for two

I love this idea from Martha Stewart. Such a simple and cute idea. You could send a valentine and a a favorite tea to a friend in the mail or you could have your own Valentine tea party and make these for it.

Speaking of tea, I updated my Flickr account to Pro recently and I am actually using it now. I created a set with just images of my little tea parties I like to do. You can see it here.

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!

we are santas elves

The shop has been busy for me and every night I have been going home to wrap up packages or make /post new items. Last night I posted a few one-of-a-kind left over blank notebooks. I will be doing more magnets soon. Hopefully this weekend I will be able to work on some gocco printing.

How is your crafting/christmas shopping going? I am almost done, but there are a few projects I have to do once the shopping is done. Usually I buy a lot of my gifts at the crafts fairs, but this year it was almost exclusively Etsy and Amazon and things I had collected through the years. In fact I don't even know if I will get to one, since I won't be selling at one this year.

If you are looking for some neat wintery art prints to give this year The Tiny Showcase just offered up a set of four that you can buy individually or all together. Their stuff usually goes pretty fast, so check it out if you are interested.