crafty fanny

day brighteners

Oy. I woke up this morning feeling slightly fuzzy-headed after one too many glasses of wine at Maggie's birthday party last night (my sweet puppy girl is 1!) and was just not feeling today.

That is, I wasn't feeling today until I discovered two of the most amazing things on the internets:

1. A blog that is dedicated solely to decorating with turquoise. WHAT?! For reals, y'all, what hasn't anyone told me about this before?

(all images via the uh-maze-ing House of Turquoise!)

2. Say it with me: Giraffe. Wall. Decals.

I can't decide if they should go in the kitchen or in my soon-to-be-redone office/studio (leaning toward the studio), but (best part alert!) you can get them in turquoise!!

And just like that I've come full circle.

Big thanks to Christine at Brunch and Apartment Therapy for rocking my day!

Now I have a kitchen to clean.

to cape or not to cape?

So, what do y'all think about the winter cape?

(from Anthro, of course)

Here are the reasons having a cape for the winter would be cool:

1. The ability to hide a popcorn belly after the movies.

2. Sherlock Holmes wore a cape. Word.

3. Secret equestrian life? Yes, please!

4. Optional hand exposure? Brilliant!

5. Hello! Superheros. Capes. Superheros. Capes. My Fanny Fantastic cape doesn't really match most things, but tweed goes well with just about everything.

And honestly, y'all, (and my bff Laura will totes vouch for me here) I wanted a cape at the end of last summer! Last summer! I am such a freakin' trendsetter.

Stick with me, peeps, and I'll show you the whole world!

random question: old cds?

Here's a random one for you: what do you do with old cds?

I've been on a pretty big decluttering kick lately where my philosophy is this: if I even wonder at all if I should keep something, it gets tossed. I'm sure this will bite my in the butt later when I'm needing some random sweater that I haven't worn in years, but so far it's working just fine.

I like having more open space in my drawers (ha! that sounds dirty!) and on my shelves. My goal is to have on completely empty drawer. Somewhere in the house. Just so I know it's there.

Last night, I came across some old cds and I just didn't know what to do. All of my music is saved on my computer and (really should be) backed up. So once you have it digitized and backed up, is there a reason to hang onto the actual discs? Besides that you might play them in your car at some point? I don't have one of those fancy pants ipod plug ins...

So what do y'all do? Keep or toss?

my random bits, aka, my balls!

Ah...We've finally made it past Mercury's freakin' retrograde! Doesn't it feel so good?

I woke up yesterday with a raging headache, but after an Excedrin migraine and a pot of coffee (a combo I don't necessarily recommend since it left me feeling like I might jump out of my own skin) I felt so jazzed about the coming months I could barely contain myself. Surely this didn't have anything to do with my insane morning caffeine intake, right?

So, without further ado, here are the random bits and pieces I'm working on, or, as I like to call them...my balls:

{hehe, get it? Balls?! As in balls in the air?}

• custom printing options for the shop. I am so very excited about this and will roll our my first design this week! 
• a non-birthday party for Maggie (she turns 1 this week)!
• a new website with a fresh new design! I'm working with the amazingly talented Jess Swift on this! Cause she's awesome! 
• a new monthly newsletter
• development of what is sure to be the best present ever! For reals, y'all! I'm going to try to get on this this week...stay tuned!
• fun changes over at Spring including great new opportunities for guest posts and inspired life spotlights...which I'm sure all of y'all would be great for! 
• did I mention I'm Mati Rose's new intern? omg you guys, working with her is so super fun and inspiring!
• more cooking! and cooking videos for the blog! I've actually been attempting to write my own recipes (super hard btw)
• research for a super-secret-but-don't-worry-you'll-be-the-first-to-know project I have up my sleeve
• oh, and all the normal life stuff of work, painting, making cards, friends, family, blahblahblah

Phew! Are you still with me? Can you see why I've been so anxious for communication to become normal so I can get on all this?

Stay tuned friends! We're gonna have some crazy fun months coming up!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!

holding out for September 13

Well, friends, since Mercury is retrograde until the 13th, I'm laying low. I seriously think I need to just stop communicating with people altogether!

It's becoming quite comical.

Case in point: I was emailing a friend over the weekend about dinner plans and kept wondering why she wasn't responding. Turns out I was actually emailing someone in Kansas who had her same name. In Kansas. Luckily said person in Kansas let me know...but for reals?

Oh, and if you're wondering where my blog sidebar went, it's now living at the bottom of the blog. Not on purpose. It's just what happened on Friday.

Awesome.

Tim's folks get in town today, so I'll most likely be staying quiet for the rest of the week (although it's not like you'd understand anything I was saying anyway), but I hope y'all are having a good week and are able to hang in there until next Monday.

Together, we can get through this, I promise.

PS. In news that is decidedly awesome and waaay more fun to talk about than Mercury retrograde, today is the last day of my Labor Day sale. Click here to experience the greatness: 40% off all prints and cards and 20% off original paintings. Whoo hoo!

when things fall apart...

You know, I try my hardest to be so very positive on this blog. It's all about being happy, living your happiest life and I am a damned cheerful person, so it usually is very easy for me to find something positive to write about.

Except for today. Can we please just take a break from all the happy happy joy joy and talk about how my weekend was a bit of a shit-show? I had so many Serenity Now moments that I could probably apply for monkhood this morning.

Oy. Mercury is currently retrograde until September 12 (September 12?!?!?!?!) and I was feeling it all day Friday and Saturday. And not in a good way, let me tell you!

According to my source, Since Mercury rules communication, it's said that everything goes haywire [during Mercury Retrograde] in that area -- emails get deleted or bounced back, mail is returned, calls go out into the ethers.

So here's the scene of a typical interaction this weekend.

Friday. Paper Store. Mercury Retrograde...go...

ME (to customer): Yes, this is a nice style of album. We currently have this one in either brown or green.

CUSTOMER: Ooh good. I really like it. I'll take it in red.

ME (smiling): Oh, I wish we had it in red. Unfortunately, the only colors we currently have in stock are brown and green.

CUSTOMER: Oh, that's okay. I'll take blue then.

ME (deep breath): No, sorry, we don't have it in blue right now for this style.

(Looks at customer, patiently waiting for her to catch on. She doesn't)

ME: We currently only have it in brown and green. You'll need to choose on of those two colors. 

CUSTOMER: Oh, so no orange? I really like the orange color too.

ME: Um, nope. Just brown and green. Like I mentioned earlier.

CUSTOMER: Oh, got it. So I'll take it in red then. 

Y'all. For reals. I felt like I was speaking to her in German or something. I wish I could say this conversation was an exaggeration of what actually took place, but really, I spared you...the actual convo was about 3 times longer that what I've transcribed above. 

And it really went on and on and on...all weekend long. It went on so much that I just started going with it. I'd approach people knowing that they wouldn't actually understand a word of this crazy language I was speaking and that things weren't going to come easily. And laughing at it all actually made me feel so much better, although I don't know how it made everyone else feel!

And that's all I've got! See? I complain! I'm not just roses and sunshine all the time!! I promise! 

PS. Happy Monday! I hope your weekends were much much better than mine! xo

last weekend...ups and downs

Happy Tuesday, Friends!

I'm happy to let you know that I have a whole ton of blog posts lined up for you...in my head! That's right, they're in there, but are just waiting for a big ol' brain dump to get them onto the page. Or screen. Or whatever you want to call it.

However, Tim and I are heading out of town for a couple of days, so you might just have to be a wee bit more patient. Can you handle that? Pretty please? Ok, thanks!

To tide you over, I did want to share with you the story of my weekend, though, and some things that I learned. This post will be without pictures (you'll see why in a minute) but hopefully words will suffice!

The weekend started out like any other. Tim sailed Friday night and I worked late and then spent the rest of the evening relaxing with Maggie. We went to sleep without incident, but Maggie woke up in the middle of the night needing to go out. This happens every once in a while with the puppy and it's really no big deal. Until...

When going to put Maggie back into her crate after taking her out, Tim ran into a metal poke-y part of said crate...WITH HIS EYEBALL. Y'ALL. (Can you now see why there are no pictures in this post?) And, yes, you read that right: eyeball.

Um, can we take a moment to talk about how this is not an ideal thing to have happen at 3am? Or really at ever?

Needless to say, the next 2 hours in the emergency room were not the most fun I'd ever had. Luckily, Tim is going to be fine (he saw a specialist on Monday) and his vision won't be affected, but it was still a less-than-ideal thing to happen. Although, I'm so grateful that he's okay.

What surprised me the most about the whole thing, though, was that I didn't really freak out. Looking back on what happened, I so should have freaked out (grossness, y'all, it was grossness) but as I was driving us to the hospital, I was shockingly calm. Maybe it was my sleepiness, but I think that it might have also been that I realized that my freaking out wasn't going to help the situation. At all. In fact, all it would have done was make things worse.  Whoa. Profound, isn't it?

You're welcome.

And here's the up of the weekend: Tim came to pick me up from work on Sunday with an amazing surprise on his roof rack: a new (to me) adorable super sweet bike! With a basket! And a low center-bar thing so I can ride in a dress!! And it's green! With pretty white fenders!

There's no picture of this because 1. they're painting our house and I'm afraid to interrupt them to open the garage door to pull the bike out to take a picture and 2. my office is a mess and I can't find my camera. But I promise, pics soon!!! 

I love this bike, friends. It's my easy-rider, farmer's market bike. With a basket. It's the bike that I've included in the "vision of my life" that I put out to the Universe sometimes when I feel the need to refocus myself and really envision where I want to be going. And Tim made it happen. I am silly with joy over this!!!

I hope that y'all had FANTASTIC weekends! I'll be back Friday with a good confession (about my grand plan) and will find my camera so I can take some pics of sweet Maggie as she sees Lake Tahoe for the first time!

Oh, and I do have a pic of the eyeball. If you really want to see it, let me know in the comments and I can email it to you.

how I conquered my Google Reader

Like many of you, my world changed the day I discovered Google Reader. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head when I realized I could have all of my favorite blogs in one place. And when I discovered a new one, I could just subscribe. So easy. And it would just tell me whenever something new was posted. Like magic! Like good old Google-powered magic.

And then one day, I logged on and realized I was subscribed to hundreds (wish I was kidding on this!) of blogs and had 1000+ items in my Reader! 1000+! Google Reader stops counting after 1000 posts 'cause they know you shouldn't try to get through that many.

Since that day, I've been trying constantly to win the battle against my Reader. I've gone through and strategically and unapologetically unsubscribed from blogs that I don't read often. I've attempted to put a module on my home page so that I can try to keep up with things periodically as they come in. But it always gets out of hand. There's just too much good stuff out there to look at, too much pretty on the internets that I want to see.

And just one day away would create a Google Reader monster. And I, being the over-achiever that I am, would feel so guilty, like I had let all of these blog authors down, buy not being able to read everything. But, oh, I would certainly try! I would try and try and then an hour or two would go by. And then I realized that there must be a better way to do this or else I would spent the rest of my life just reading blogs. The rest of my life, y'all.

So, are you dying for my solution? Can't wait to hear what I did to finally keep the Reader under my control?

My secret weapon: I use the "mark all as read" button all the time.

Here's my process:

1. I usually log onto my Reader as a type of reward for getting something useful accomplished. And I always give myself a time limit. Or I'll read things while eating breakfast or taking a quick break. Limits are key, people!
2. I check out how many total new items are waiting for me. Sometimes this is a low number like 7, in which case I'll just click on "all items" and go through the list. But sometimes, this is a crazy number like 347 or 1000+. In these cases, proceed to step 2.
3. When the number is high, I skip reading "all items" and scroll through the listing of individual blogs on the left-hand side. I then only read the ones that are very important to me. Artists I love, real-life friends, people who never fail to inspire me. Those are the ones I give my energy to. If I've been away from my Reader for a few days, this usually will take up most, if not all, of my allotted time.
4. Then I go to the top of the page and "Mark all as read." Yes, this is bold (hehe) and the first time I did it, I found it slightly terrifying, asking myself things like, "Oh, but what if there's something that I'm about to skip that is amazing, life-changing? What if I miss out on the coolest thing in the world?"
5. The key: Once you've gotten rid of everything, or actually right before, realize that your life is complete as is and reading blogs is only an enrichment, not a completion. Right? Don't we all have enough in our lives that missing out on a few blog posts isn't going to be life-altering?
6. Repeat as often as necessary.

Do you have any tips for keeping clear of online clutter? Please share in the comments! I'm sure we could all use them!!!

flying cars...yay or nay?

Tim and I have a bet going. It's a life-long bet on whether or not flying cars will become ubiquitous in our lifetime. I say heck yes. Tim says no way!

I honestly cannot even recall what the stakes are.

Given this bet, you can imagine my excitement when Tim alerted me to this piece on NPR last week talking about a new form of a flying car recently approved by the FAA!!! What!?! High five, y'all! 

So what do you think? Chime in: flying cars in our lifetime: yay or nay?

PS. Oh! I'm also very excited to let you know that the lovely Erin Robinson is offering up a giveaway of one of my affirmation prints this week! Click on over and leave a comment before Friday to win an inspirational print of your choice!

happy Monday!

Nothing says Happy Monday better than a baby giraffe, right?

I've been really trying to get beyond the cuteness of this little guy (found via A Cup of Jo), photographed by Sharon Montrose (available in her etsy shop) and write about something deep and thought-provoking like my struggles with opening up to being an artist or my plans for the future. But, alas, I cannot.

So happy-baby-giraffe-Monday. Sweetest thing ever.