Christmas is Coming!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!!  Seriously, I love me some Christmas.  The decorating, the baking, the gift wrapping.  It's fantastic. 

It's always a little shocking when, on November 1, stores start putting up the decorations.  Starbucks rolls out their holiday cups.  I am legally obligated to start drinking Peppermint Mochas (I know, they are available ALL YEAR now, but they taste better at Christmastime!).

The kids are working on the Christmas lists.  They know there's no Santa, but they'll pretend for now.  The girls, at ages 13 and 11, I know that they know and it's all *wink wink* Santa's coming, heh heh.  But the boys, age 9....  I'm still not convinced either way.  So, we all play along. 

Besides, I kinda like being Santa.

I've started signing up for local craft fairs, and I've got one every weekend for the rest of the month.  Yowza.  Fingers crossed that this is a good idea!?!

Getting in the mood with some straight up Christmassy goodness.  Bring on the mistletoe!!

The next endeavor

Going to be listing some wedding-specific items soon and see how that goes.  Hoping to do mixed dozens, for table decoration (yeah, like at my wedding, because they were awesome), and also possibly as wedding favors.  Or both!  How great would it be to have table decorations that double as wedding favors?? 

 

Pretty, yes?  Yes!

Sets would all be custom order, to your specifications for color, style, etc.  Which means I get to shop for more pretty papers hooray!!

A day in the life

6:30am:  Alarm.  Ugh.  Check to see if the girls are awake.  Amelia is making tea- good.  Vivian is in bed, sleeping, with her clothes and jacket on- nice effort.

6:45:  Clean up dog pee.  The glamour starts early.

7:00:  Check Facebook, Etsy, email, etc.

7:15:  Girls out the door.  Eat banana muffins (yum).

7:30:  Get boys up.  They don't give me too much trouble.  They eat an entire loaf of banana bread.  Wow.

8:00:  Shower.  Fast.

8:20:  Boys out the door.  Dry hair.  Try to look reasonable.

8:30:  Kiss husband goodbye.  Off to work.  Decent shortcut via low bridge (good).  Stop at Starbucks (bad).

9-5:  Desk job.  Look busy. 

5:08:  Home.  Record time!  Hit all the green lights, no trains, no drawbridge.  Yesssss.

5:35:  Husband is out tonite, but kitchen is clean.  Bonus points for husband.  Get dinner on the table.  Tacos.  No bonus points there.  Clean up kitchen.

6:15:  Take Viv to Bellevue for Karate.  Yuck, Eastside.  No traffic, so overall good.

7-8:00:  Shop for pretty papers in Bellevue!  The only thing I actually WANT in Bellevue is pretty paper.  Paper spree ensues.  Also walk thru Crate and Barrel and have too-long conversation with possibly-crazy person about silicon baking cups.  Mmhmm.  Run into Safeway for frosting and sprinkles for bake sale cupcakes.

8:15:  Pick Viv up from Karate.  Still in Bellevue.  Gross.

8:25:  Re-enter Seattle airspace.  Breathe easy.

8:30:  Make 2 dozen cupcakes for bake sale tomorrow.  From a mix- no bonus points.  Mix is left over from The Wedding Cake- bonus points for thriftiness?  Give self bonus points.

8:45:  Chase kids into bed.

9:15:  Kids actually in bed.

9:15-10:59:  Cut pretty papers into tidy little rectangles for making candleholders.  There are some gorgeous designs here.  Like, GORGEOUS. 

11:00:  Yawn.  Bedtime.  Write day's timeline on blog.  Go to sleep.

Sweet dreams, my crafty minions.  We get to do it all again tomorrow. 

Oh my!

Well, at the urging of the always amazing Cristina (Goddess of Paper), I entered our paper flower escort tags in a Wedding DIY contest.  The hardest part was writing out the process.  And what a process it was!

Like I say:  Any task can be accomplished with enough friends and enough wine.

Enough said.

So, our lovely tags were featured today!  I'm not even sure if that means we're in the running to win anything, but it already feels like a WIN!  

Ruffled Wedding Blog: DIY Paper Escort Tags

Go team!

The more you know

Did you know there was a spacecraft named Clementine?  It's true!

Spacecraft Clementine

Fancy.

I love them so

I do!  I love these dang things.  I was showing them to J the other day, and it was pretty much "Oh, and this one.  And THIS one!  OH and THIS ONE!"

I love 'em all.

Saturday

Plans to sleep in foiled by three frisky dogs at 7am.  Oh well.  That's why God gave us coffee, right?

At least one of the dogs looks like this:

That amount of cute takes the edge off at 7am.

Saturday will bring some crafting, some thrifting, lots of photographing.  Hopefully outside.  Weather looks like it might even cooperate.  Visiting with friends, going to fetch cupcakes from the amazing Alex, my #1 prop provider.  Dinner with Alex, my #1 smile provider.

Saturdays are full of possibility.  What's on your agenda?

Soundtrack

The soundtrack to my creative evening.

I could use his umbrella today, too.  Welcome to winter, I guess.

So, how you doin', my crafty minions?

Let them eat cake!

Or cupcakes at least. 

A long weekend of thrifting, cleaning, and creating.  And here they are, my new cake stand collection.

I'm kinda in love with them, I won't lie.  Look how tiny and cute!  I'm a sucker for tiny stuff. 

Hope you like 'em as much as I do.

Now, go buy one for your grandma.

Crafty Clementine on Etsy

Must be genetic

You've gotta love a kid who asks "Is it OK if I make something fancy for breakfast?"  Then brings you a crepe with homemade strawberry sauce.

That Amelia.  She's a good egg.

Jealous?

Sneaky

New papers.  Fun fun fun.  Will be adding new designs to the shop soon.

Sneaky preview for you, my lovely friends!

Is this thing on?

OK, the etsy shop is open.  Let the mania begin.

Crafty Clementine on Etsy

Click click click!  More to come.......

Gettin' serious

OK, now we're getting serious with this whole crafty thing.  I'm gonna go pro.  And by pro, I mean a completely amateur foray into the world of selling crafts.

Should be interesting.

So far, Crafty Clemetine is my name, and candles are my game.  I started making these lovely little candle holders for, you guessed it, The Wedding.  A couple here, a couple there, I thought.  But, like most aspects of The Wedding, one thing lead to another and it grew until it was completely out of control.  In the best possible way.

I think we ended up with over 150 candle holders, all handmade by yours truly.  Because why not, right?  It was actually really fun.  Hunting for papers.  Measuring and cutting.  Listening to music and drinking wine.  Taping and gluing.  Packing and stacking.  It was very Zen, really.  Solitary, quiet.  Unlike most things in my life.

So, now I've returned to my candle-making roots.  I've signed up for a craft fair.  I've prepped an Etsy shop.  I've gone on a paper-hunting excursion and I've laid in supplies.  I'm fired up and ready to go, hey hey, ho ho.

Yeah, I was a cheerleader, but that's our secret, k?

Anyhoo, here's what I've been working on this weekend.  More, and more, and more to come.

There are even gift boxes.  With logos.  C'mon.  We're gettin serious up in here, people.

Welcome to Crafty Clementine, friends.

A slippery slope

It all started out so innocently.

My lovely friend Cristina is a designer of all things paper.  She's a goddess.  I can't overstate it really, and as much as it makes her blush, I'll say it again:  Cristina is the Goddess of Papergoods.  Now the world can know.

So, in planning this whole wedding thing, I thought (innocently) "Hey, let's ask Cris if she would design our invites!"  Something simple, handmade, personal.  Easy peasy.

Then we all started talking about it.  Turns out it's a slippery slope from simple to completely, insanely over the top.

We slipped.

Cris flew out from Winnipeg to work on ideas and go paper shopping.  We lived at Paper Zone.  We obsessed over fonts day and night.  Cris tea stained paper.  So much tea.  So much staining.  I made faux wax seals.  So many seals.  So very faux.  Cris's mom sewed each and every invitation.  Yes, sewed. Because, you know, just gluing things together isn't good enough for us.  Oh no.  Hand dyed, hand sewn.  So many hands.  So many hands.

Cris flew out again.  And again.  Thank god she works for an airline.  We shopped, we printed, we edited, we glued, we cut, we perfected.  So much perfection.

I'm not gonna pretend it was any sort of equal sharing of the workload.  Cristina made these invitations happen.  One by one, stitch by stitch.  We ended up with piles of tags, papers, seals, ribbons, and keys.  Oh, the keys. 

We got the girls together- my wonderful bridesmaids- and we got wine.  Wonderful wine.  And we assembled.

And just like that we were done.

They went into envelopes.  And.... off they went. 

I think Cristina cried when she said goodbye to them at the Post Office.

A lot of work went into these invites.  So much work.  But better yet, a lot of love went into these invites.

So, so much love.



You can see more more more of Cristina's amazing paperwork on her blog:  http://kindredesprit.blogspot.com/

She's crafty

I guess I never knew I was crafty.  I don't have any "artistic" talent.  In short:  I can't draw.  And it always felt like, Well, that's it.  I can't draw, ergo, I'm not crafty.

 All that changed on a windy afternoon in San Francisco when my charming and adorable boyfriend of 4 years asked me to be his wife.

Aww.  We're cute.




Six months later, we pulled off a wedding that I would dare call a DIY Extravaganza- and I do not use the word Extravaganza lightly.  It was a labor of love, and we had the help and support of a multitude of ridiculously talented and, as luck would have it, crafty friends.  When I look back, I can't even believe what we accomplished.  Extravaganza.

It started the way all wedding planning starts- drooling over other people's stuff.  Cakes, dresses, centerpieces, good lord there's more wedding stuff out there in the world than much else, it seems.  Overwhelming?  You bet.  But as we looked and looked and talked to friends and looked some more, the lightbulbs started going off.

We could find that ourselves.

We could make that ourselves.

We could make that ourselves, but better.

And that, my friends, is when I discovered:  I'm crafty.

Don't worry, I'm going to tell you all about it.  But there's a lot, so let's pace ourselves, k?  We worked hard.  We copied some stuff, we invented some stuff, we modified and we started from scratch.  But we did it.  And it was perfect.

Extravaganza.

I'll hum to you Sweet Clementine.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Clementine.  What's that all about?

"Clementine" is a song by The Decemberists.  It's my song.  Don't argue; it's mine.  It's not their best song, really.  It might not even be my favorite.  But it's mine.  Why?   I don't know.  It found me one day, and it hasn't left me alone since.  It follows me around like a little puppy dog. 

Here, see for yourself:
Clementine, by The Decemberists

It's pretty, innit?  You can sing along, or you can dance real slow.  I like to sing harmony in the car, but that's our secret, k?  The best part: it's a sweet little song with a big effing curse right in the middle with zero apologies.  Man.  It's like a metaphor for my life.  This song... it's me.

Me, I've got a pretty little life.  I've got four amazing kids.  I've got a brand new amazing husband.  I've got a pretty house with a garden out back.  I've got a good job with benefits.  I've got friends I love and who love me back.   And right there in the middle, there's a crazy ex husband and some messiness and the big effing curses that come with parenting four kids and living a life that's not as pretty and simple as it looks on the outside.  And you'll be getting zero apologies for that.

Clementine isn't my name, but Clementine is me.  A few years ago I went so far as to get a big old tattoo that says "Sweet Clementine."  True story, check it out:

So, now you know about Clementine.  And if you stick around, you'll know about me.