I’m home and relatively back on track soooooo….
Without further ado: the winner of the My Old Stuff Kit #3 giveaway is:
Comment 12 belongs to Chas!
Chas, I know I have your address somewhere but please send it to me again via email or PM and I will send out your prize ASAP!
Thanks to all of you for your fun, useful, and often humorous ideas! Some of them don’t apply to us just yet but I will file them away for later!
There will be more giveaways soon!
… New York, New York!
I don’t know about overly large apples, but I do know the “city that never sleeps” did a great job keeping me awake for almost all of my birthday weekend. So much for getting some much-needed rest!
We dropped the little man off at my mom’s house in Maine for “Gram Camp”, flew out of Portland (Oh, how wonderfully different from flying out of Logan!) and arrived in NYC on Friday morning after battling a hideous trek from JFK to our Times Square hotel.
We were pretty exhausted after only getting three hours of sleep but managed to go out to shop the Upper West Side and the garment district before grabbing a slice of pizza and making it to Avenue Q. Avenue Q (for those of you who aren’t theatre junkies like I am!) is a ridiculously clever musical performed with puppets (think Jim Henson) and a lot of adult themes. Some of the song titles include “The Internet is for Porn”, “If You Were Gay”, and “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”. I’ve been wanting to see this show for years and it was worth the wait!
After the show we wandered… a lot… before settling on some excellent Chinese and Thai food at 11:30pm.
The next day we got up and hit the TKTS booth to see what we could score for a matinee and then headed to SoHo for a delicious brunch in a tiny restaurant. I had the best bacon I’ve had in years… it literally melted in my mouth! I am going to be seeing that bacon in my dreams… little strips floating around in my head…
We then hiked over to Purl SoHo, a *gorgeous* fabric and fiber arts shop. I spoiled myself and bought some new pretties to sew with.
We barely made it back in time to see American Idiot, the rock musical from the band Green Day. We were lucky enough to catch one of the last special shows that featured the lead singer of Green Day, Billy Joe Armstrong, starring in one of the supporting roles. This too was a great show, although obviously very different from Avenue Q. The music was awesome… Billy Joe was surprisingly great as well. Money well spent!
We recovered from the day back at the hotel for a while, then headed to Little Italy for dinner. We wandered for what seemed like forever (this seems to be a “thing” with us…) before settling on a corner place on the main street.
At this point I have to confess that we had some wine. A lot of wine.
See… this is what happens when you take pictures after drinking. Friends don’t let friends photograph drunk!!
I swear I thought this looked just GREAT when I took it ::eyeroll::
Then a little Caprese salad…
And…uhh… remember that wine? At this point it was in full effect and I completely forgot to take photos of the rest of the meal. Ryan ordered some insane tortelloni in pancetta cream sauce and I had a steak with risotto and we split the dishes.
The only thing that sucks about New York is that by the time you get “home” the wine has worn off.
We had grabbed some cupcakes from the world famous Magnolia Bakery for dessert later that night. They were good but frankly I like my OWN more! I found them dry and the frosting was too sweet.
We left in the morning with too little rest, aching muscles from walking, and great memories in our back pockets. The trip back to Maine was uneventful, we picked up The Boy, drove back to MA and pretty much collapsed.
I give this birthday weekend two thumbs up!
Now if only I had another weekend to do nothing but sleep…
Attention Ladies and Germs: I am currently getting my booty kicked by the awesomeness that is New York City. I am running on three hours of sleep and after spending the day traipsing about the garment district, Times Square, and the upper West side I am BEAT. And in about 20 minutes I somehow need to start getting feeling back in my feet so I can hoof it a few blocks to see the fun (dirty, dirty puppets!) of Avenue Q!
I will post the latest giveaway winner after I have had at LEAST another 5-6 hours of blissful slumber. Or when my feet fall off and I am forced to stay in my hotel room… whichever comes first.
It’s reveal day at A Cherry on Top! This month I had the pleasure to work with Be My Valentine by We R Memory Keepers. Check out what I managed to do with PINK (gasp!) in my article.
I’m all set to send a little love…
Remember that post about how much I love snow days?
Yeah, just kidding.
This week we had two more storms. *Normally*, my husband works from home but this week he had to travel for business. So, not only were the O and I on our own, but we got robbed of having Ryan home with us. Booo!
It really fights one’s sanity to be cooped up with a 13 month old for multiple days. I didn’t have my designated snow shoveler/car clearer-offer husband around to dig us out so poor lil ole me had to resort to doing battle with the white stuff all on my own. We did manage to get out (again, thank you 4WD!) but most of this week was spent inventing games that entertained Owen for all of his 10 minute attention span. :-/
For this giveaway I wanna hear your best games, activities, or sanity savers for entertaining a young toddler! I will give you till Wednesday, which is when we are getting our next “snow event” (wth is a snow “event”!?! The newscasters are getting desperate here…) to get your comments in and then I will pick a winner.
Annnnnd….. GO!
Oh CHA, how I love you.
The 2011 Winter Craft and Hobby Association trade show is coming up at the end of the month and while I won’t be going this time around, I am still stoked to see all the new products about to hit the market.
Today begins the reveals at Maya Road, one of my most favorite companies ever!!
I’m going to need these:
And these:
AND these:
And, yeah, about a million other things.
As I previously mentioned, Owen’s lady friend Laila had her tea party birthday last Saturday. Naturally he needed to be dressed like a little gentleman for the occasion!
I know I am setting myself up for a lifetime of hearing about how I traumatized my kid by dressing him up in adorable outfits. But I just *neeeeeeded* to make him a sweet little pink linen bow tie for the party! He was a good sport, though, and didn’t even try to yank off his tie or hat. I’ll get him trained yet!
Just wait ‘till I show these to his first girlfriend. Bwa ha ha!!!
I did NOT need a reminder of how much fun little girls’ clothes are!! As much as I love playing dress up with my little guy there is just something irresistible about tiny, ruffly, billowy dresses! And girls get all the options. Don’t ask me why clothing manufacturers haven’t gotten the memo that *boys like to dress well too*! And we don’t need sports references or camo on every. single. thing.
Ok, phew. Glad I got that out.
Anyway, Tuesday is my best friend’s daughter’s first birthday! How lucky are we that we had our first babies only five weeks apart!?
Today is her tea party birthday and I’ll be bringing this fetching little frock for her. I loved making this simple sundress! I can’t wait to see her modeling it this Spring.
I chose “not pink” because there seems to be an overwhelming deluge of pink and purple in girls’ clothing. Variety is a good thing.
I added little pleated pockets on the sides. They kinda make me want to squeal in delight!
Back in the day there was nothing, NOTHING, like waking up to a snow day. I remember that somehow the magic of bad weather made me capable of waking up early to check the school closings when normally I could sleep through a herd of elephants in my room. And you wait… and wait… to see *your* school scroll across the bottom of the screen and finally you see it and kick in excitement and burrow back into the warmth of your blankets to blissfully sleep the morning away. Ahhhh.
In elementary school we would pretty much hit the hills for sledding all day, with breaks for hot cocoa, thawing our fingers and toes, and drying our mittens and boots by the fire. Somehow the pain of snow and ice chilling us to the bone didn’t matter… because it was a *snow day*!!
Late, in high school, my best friend and I pretty much used these days as excuses to do absolutely nothing. Who didn’t!? We would call each other and watch cooking shows all day, commenting on the food and chefs. Well, we were a little weird like that.
Although I stay at home with my munchkin now, and I don’t get quite the same joy from waking up to see ALL that snow, I still get giddy on snow days. My husband works from home, I get to bake, and the silence of more than twelve inches of snow is wonderfully peaceful.
Today, we’re up to 17” already! Owen is feeling a little cabin fever but Ryan is heading out to dig out the cars (yay 4WD!) so maybe we can brave the roads later… that is, if anything is open!
Meanwhile… Lemon Poppyseed Streusel Muffins were in order:
And here’s what we’re lookin’ at:
Stay warm, everyone!
No, that’s not a typo! While waiting for my latest box (ok, boxes!) of scrapbook supplies to arrive I started making a list of all the sewing projects I want to tackle this year. Oooooh boy. I am in trouble!
First up was this quilt! I hadn’t made a quilt in several years and this one was a good one to get back in the game with. I have a confession to make. I love the way quilts look but I get super bored about halfway through making them. There. I said it.
Which is why I chose to make this design from Moda Bakeshop, with its minimal top stitching. ::wink wink::
I used a layer cake of Moda’s Chrysalis fabric. This stuff is gorgeous! I’m going to have to figure out what to do with the scraps now!
Yeah, I know, it is super cheesy!!
But Daddy needed something to display at work and I was just *dying* to put messy paint all over my active toddler’s feet. 
The new year brings new inspiration from the gals at A Cherry On Top and Scrap That Baby! I just know some of you have made resolutions to scrap more in 2011 and these prompts are a great way to get crackin’ on that!
Check out the huge list of challenges at ACOT here!
And the current prompt at Scrap That Baby is to scrap a layout of your Holiday Baby. Layouts are due January 14th and don’t forget that there is a prize for our monthly winner!
