my turn

This is a little preview of this week's recycle project. ;)

Yesterday, I was tagged by Whitney and Jonathan at Brown Sugar Design to post eight random facts or habits about me, and then tag eight other bloggers. Here are mine:

1. I hated wearing dresses as a child. My mom would have to literally drag me into dressing rooms crying my eyes out to try on new dresses. I think the first time I bought a dress/skirt on my own was when I was about 20. Now I love wearing a lot of skirts. Making one of my own is on my new sewing adventures to-do list.

2. I used to be extremely organized and neat. After having kids that changed. It had to or I would've gone crazy. Don't take me wrong. Disorganization still drives me nuts. I've just learned that an impeccable home isn't something that's possible 24/7.

3. My favorite place to de-stress and get inspired is a bookstore. I LOVE an afternoon in a bookstore by myself!

4. My hubby proposed to me after only 3 months of dating (2 of which where long distance). It's a LONG story but we had actually met as teenagers and never dated back then.

5. Colombian connection: My husband and my parents are from my Colombia. I was born in New Jersey (haven't been back since I was 10 - so no Jersey accent here). I graduated from high school in Colombia so I don't have an accent when I speak English or Spanish.

6. Unless I'm really sick, I must doodle, craft, design, draw or make something with my hands every day or I get really cranky. Making/designing something is like my yoga of sorts.

7. I'm terrible at drinking anything. Water is the worst (except at a restaurant for some reason - but it does need to have extra lemon and no sugar). I need to work on that.

8. We try to only speak Spanish at home because we want the kids to be bilingual like us. That's definitely easier said than done.

I'm tagging:
Sally of Shim and Sons, Kathleen of Cake + Pie, Nicole of Freshly Blended, Jessica of How About Orange, Heather of Skinny laMinx, Lara of Kirin Notebook, Alison of Six and a Half Stitches, and Gennine of Blog de la Nine.

good things

We had a wonderful weekend. It started off with the baseball game we went to on Friday night. There was only a little problem. It's difficult to enjoy a game when you need to entertain a 4yr old after she states, in the middle of only the 3rd inning, that she's ready to go home! Thank goodness for a little pad and pencil I found in my purse. She doodled (like mother like daughter!) and played waitress taking our orders for the rest of the game. Whew! Crisis averted.



Saturday we had two birthday parties to go to and I stuck to my guns about giving handmade gifts. My initial plan was to make everything way ahead of time and at a leisurely pace. That plan went up in smoke because of me being sick for most of last week, remember? So I got up early Saturday and worked at a crazy speed to get done in time. I was inspired by Sally (who isn't?) and her applique projects to make two totes and t-shirts with their initials on them (one girl and one boy). I forgot to take a shot of the t-shirts...

Stripes for a boy...



Something a little more feminine for the girl...



When I checked my mail box in the afternoon I was so pleasantly surprised to find two packages for little ol' me. One from Zoe and another from Heather.

I got this beautiful print from Zoe because I won her blog anniversary contest! I wanted to kill the people that stuffed the big envelope, that just happens to be labeled with a big PLEASE DO NOT BEND sign, folded in half into my box. Arggh! But thank goodness the print isn't damaged. Thank you so much Zoe!



Heather sent me the tea towels I'd been pining for at her shop, a pin and a magnet - as a thank you for interviewing her for Crafty Synergy. I love everything! Thank you so much Heather!



Even the packaging is special. It's banged up but that's what makes it unique. It has traveled from Carmen in Canada, to Tiel in Australia, to Heather in South Africa and now to me. I can't wait to send it to someone else with some lovely goodies inside.





Sunday we had my parents over for the afternoon and just caught up on things over lunch which was made almost entirely by my hubby. :)

Then today I find that I owe another thank you to Natalie from Craft. She has included me in her list of crafty blogs to check out in her post about her BlogHer experience. My blog list is so long that I fear to go down her list and find more great blogs to read!

Speaking of Natalie, while I do some things this morning I'll be listening to her and other crafty ladies in Jennifer's most recent Craft Sanity podcast that features a session of the BlogHer event. I may not have mentioned it before but Jennifer's podcast is wonderful!

late night with paper

There are two things that I've done for a long time: go to bed late and play with paper. The first is just in my genes I supposed. My youngest brother is the same way. It's great to work in the silence of night time. The latter is something, that come to think of it is also something that I've been pre-wired for. I remember when I was little if I bought or was given a colorful pad of paper I would resist the urge to use a single sheet. It was too painful to use the paper on something trivial but it was also painful not to use it. Am I the only one that went through that?

So, last night, as everyone is sleeping I just got this urge to make something with paper. This time I was sitting at the kitchen table and decided to make a chair. No idea why. I made it just because... no real reason. It's about 1.5 in (approx 4cm) tall.

These are photos that I took this morning with better light (although it's gloomy yet again!)





These are the photos that I took last night at the kitchen table with the help of the overhead lamp. I like the shadows.



One last photo to show scale. I got my Craft magazine yesterday - fun reading for the weekend!



Like I said it's gloomy here (sorry Julieta!) soo... it looks like another rainy weekend. Fortunately we're going to see the Astros play tonight so we're going to have some indoor fun!

Have a great weekend everyone! :)

fresh off the press

This is a logo and corporate identity package that I finished for a client. They wanted something very conservative and corporate but modern at the same time.