Say hello to 2006!

I hope this coming year brings great things for everyone!

New Year's resolutions? Nah. I just try to make continuous progress although I have to say that I love the feeling of a "clean slate". 2005 was OK. I want 2006 to be great. We shall see!

Presenting Ana!

Well I said I'd be away from blogging until next year but I couldn't resist presenting my little creation. I picked the name so it would be easy for my 2yr old to pronounce. I finished the doll before Xmas as I had promised myself but I just finished the sweater last night.

I have to say that I'm pretty proud of myself. She does have a lot of imperfections but I think she turned out nicely considering I've never doned anything like this before. I will have to say that the seam ripper was my best friend. I made the stiches shorter than the standard length because I wanted to be sure she won't fall apart but that meant that if I made any mistake pulling apart the darn thing was so much harder to do! What a pain! She doesn't have a green top as was my original plan. Just her sleeves are green. A couple of more pictures with more details can be seen here.

Like I've mentioned before I admire people that can sew really well. Now, I REALLY admire their patience and tenacity. Ana doesn't look anything like Hillary's dolls but I definitely got inspired by them.

So how did the recepient react? She actually got the doll a couple of days before Xmas because my kids watched as I made her and I didn't want to confuse them with the "Santa brought you this -- But wait? I saw you make it Mom" dilemma. I showed the doll to my 2yr old before she had a face and she gave it a great big hug. The next day I embroidered her face and when she looked at it again, as soon as she saw the face her reaction was: "Wow, COOOOL!". Priceless. Totally picked up that expression from my 5yr old son.

Now, it turns out that my 5yr old wants me to make something for him. Ummm. So I asked him what he wants and he said he'd like a green dinosaur. Sooo, one dinosaur coming right up! His birthday is Jan 10th so here we go again. Where to find a pattern or idea for that? Any ideas?

Busy but relaxed

A Little Hut block prints
Originally uploaded by A Little Hut.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. We had a lot of fun. The family was together and the kids had a blast. Now back to the getting other things done. I've been working on A Little Hut web things. I want it to be up by Jan 1st! I've been going at it for the last couple of days but just getting over Xmas was like a big weight off my shoulders. We will be having a small New Year's party at our house but it won't be as stressful.

I won't probably won't be posting again until after the new year so I just want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and safe ending to 2005 and great tidings for 2006. 'See' you all in a week!

Christmas eve is here!

Xmas cards sent, shopping done, gifts wrapped and the marathon is over. Now all I have to do is finish the cooking for tonight's dinner. The kids are excited and can't wait! It's been a crazy week but here we are ready for tomorrow. We don't have a white Christmas here but it's a beautiful sunny day and everyone is in high spirits.



I hope that everyone's Christmas is wonderful and that the happy times with family and friends make up for all the running around that is usually done this time of year. Enjoy every minute of it!

Just keep swimming!

Swimming, swimming, swimming. Fa la la la la la. Ok that's silly but that's how I feel. Just thought of Dori and her great advice. She's Nemo's friend for those of you that haven't had the pleasure of seeing Finding Nemo 1000 times. :)

I have all my projects half started: xmas cards, little C's dolly, craft project for tomorrow's little D's kindergarten party, and more than enough design projects. Thankfully I have a wonderfully understanding and patient husband! He even helped me with the first part of the craft project. How many times have you seen a grown man gluing popsicle sticks together and cutting out green felt? :)


Xmas cards phase one complete.


Dolly starting to come alive. Now to sew. Scary!

Short post because time is obviously of the essence! Ta-ta!

Reaching a breaking point!

So much to do and so little time. I wrote out a 'to-do' list and it's quite scary. I'm starting to reevaluate some of the things on there. I want to enjoy the season and not be as overwhelmed as I am now. A big item on there is a project that I've been meaning to start for quite a few days and haven't gotten around to it. I don't want to put it on the backburner because it's a present for my daughter. I absolutely LOVE the dolls that Hillary makes and I want to try to make one myself. Crazy - yes! Wishful thinking - yes! (she's a genius!!!) Since I am definitely not a sewing person and I've never done anything like this before I am completely using her dolls as inspiration.
Hillary states in her blog that anyone can use her ideas as long as it's for personal use and not to profit from. I for one will never enter the sewing world as a business so she doesn't need to worry about that - plus the basic fact that profiting from others' ideas is just one BIG UGLY no-no!!! That would be a discussion for a whole other post. This is going to be a complete trial and error thing. I know, I know great idea to try something like this with only 12 days to go and stressing about so many other things. I'm trying to think of it as a fun thing to do between all the other things. If I finish great if I don't she'll get it a little later. I really admire those that know how to sew and wish I could do it better. My biggest project ever was a bag that I made to carry around all sorts of things when the kids where a little smaller. Wish me luck with this new project! :)

Surprise - Illustration Friday

In keeping with my last post I decided to draw a little something about how getting surprises in the mail is always so nice. This was a quick drawing in pencil with a little color added in Photoshop.

My first gift!!

I just got this stainless steel card holder (with mini stainless steel magnets) from a dear friend today in the mail. Totally unexpected - love those kinds of gifts. She also got our family name engraved in the middle. Love it!

I started visiting some design blogs that I haven't read in a while and discovered a really cool one - Design Spotter. Very cool stuff but nothing I'd really use. Looking at all this makes me want to run out and really go to school again - this time it would be industrial design. But a third BA? Maybe not! Although I could get a masters I suppose...hmmm.

It's funny how I fluctuate in my tastes. I really love the modern aesthetics of things found on a site such as that but would never really use them in my actual home. I really prefer to live among things made of more natural materials such as the ones found in a place like this. The Blancaneaux Lodge is my favorite. I would just die to go there for a few days and then be able to bring some of that stuff into my house!!!! Ahhh to dream.... For some reason this also brings memories of the place where we spent our honeymoon. The hotel doesn't look anything like the Blancaneeaux but it just came to mind... maybe because hubby is out of town. :(


What a random post today!

Blue - Illustration Friday

This is my first submission to Illustration Friday. When I saw the theme for this week (Blue) I immediately thought of this block print that I made a while back. I printed copies in black, a reddish brick color and blue. The blue prints are my favorite. I would've preferred to submit recent artwork but I really don't have time to work on anything new.

It's a wrap!

So here I am a day after my HGTV and crazy weekend experience feeling relieved and relaxed. The HGTV thing was a definitely a lot of fun but a lot of work as well. The crew was at may house from 4pm until 9:30pm and we worked pretty much non-stop. Lots of retakes, lots of little glitches (camera batteries, me messing up, etc) but lots of laughs as well. They were really nice people and they helped me out a lot.
One of the guys said that I looked like Rachel Ray (food network) on camera! He-he...

The biggest and basically only downside to this whole experience is the fact that I ended up sounding like Demi Moore to the nth degree. I was really hoarse and my voice kept cracking. I've been fighting a bad cold since last week. At least I had a voice to speak of! I had ZERO/NADA/ZILCH voice on Saturday. Needless to say I was pretty much assuming that I'd have to cancel the whole thing but I got most of my voice back by Sunday morning.

My co-star was my miniature schnauzer Otto. He did great and was going crazy around all the newcomers in the house. Poor little guy I had to take him to the master bathroom so that he'd let us record without distractions. He's just SUPER friendly with everyone. Not much of a watch dog that's for sure!

The photo above is a layout of a few of my cards that I set up on a wall of my study. They took shots of the cards as filler stuff I suppose.

I don't find out until Feb when my segment airs. I'll post the date when I know what it is for sure.

Now to return to real life and all my real life deadlines!!!