Happy Birthday, Belinda!

I just wanted to give a shout out to my sister, BELINDA (a.k.a. MARIA BELINDA, BIN, BOOM BOOM BELINDA), who had a birthday this past friday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Here's a photo of Belinda pulling our baby sister, CYNTHIA, on a cart that my dad cobbled together with some old METAL ROLLERSKATE WHEELS and a plank of wood. I remember those metal skates being super dangerous...woo! This was taken in the backyard of our house on Norwood Place, in Orange, California - one of the first places we rented when we first moved to California from the East Coast. This was in the early 80's...that SEPIA TONE is for realz!

Sketchbook Sunday

Strawberry Shortcake art that I drew as a child., originally uploaded by sugar-cookie.

My parents came for a visit recently and brought a box of my art from long ago. I love looking at the old notebooks the most so far. I have lots of drawings I made of our toys and some that I copied from scratch and sniff stickers. Remember those?

As a child, I loved Strawberry Shortcake! I still love her, but I love old school Strawberry Shortcake. I am not too sure I know alot about the new Shortcake, but to me it is not the same. Above I wrote all the characters names and their pets. Strawberry Shortcake and her cat Custard peek from the bottom of the page. I think she is imagining a strawberry shortcake or ice cream in the thought bubble. I am not sure.


One of my favorite characters is Apricot. She had a pet bunny called Hops-a-lot that I drew here. I think these drawings are all from 1982 or so and that is when I was in first grade. Hops-a-lot was done in pencil on notebook paper.


Raspberry Tart had a monkey called Rhubarb. Here I drew her in my notebook on page three. I love the combination of black and blue ink, too. My brothers and I would draw with almost anything we had on hand. I even have drawings in my notebook that are done in erasable ink. What a great medium!

After posting these drawings to flickr, I was asked to join the Growing Up Strawberry Shortcake: 1979-1985 photo group. Wow, looking at that brings back lots of memories! I can smell those dolls now!

Operation Cutify - Craft Room Storage

This past week, Missy's parents were in town for the 4th of July weekend...we decided to finally tackle the fugly CLOSET SPACE in our CRAFT ROOM (which also doubles as our INSTRUMENT ROOM). The space was once a very long and shallow closet with sliding doors at one point. When we bought the house, these doors were inexplicably missing, exposing instead two slap-dash shelves and two horizontally-placed poles that were bowed under the weight of too many outfits being hung on it. The shelves and poles were removed before I realized, "wait! I have to document this!". Missy's dad, John, used a crow bar to remove the supports that once held the poles and rickety shelves. Much to his chagrin, the supports were sloppily nailed into the brick wall, which is actually the back our fireplace:





Next, the rails that once guided sliding doors were removed. The trim was sanded down as well as various holes and cracks in the closet space that were spackled, before painting. While the spackle dried, Missy's dad revived a pair of INTERIOR LIGHTS that hung on ceiling in the spaces sandwiching the brick wall:









Missy celebrated our progress before we called it a day...the next morning, Missy and her mom, RITA, painted the closet. The back wall and trim was painted the same color we have been using on all the other trim around the house - the one unifying element in all our brightly-colored (and soon-to-be brightly-colored) rooms. They tested out the LAVENDER colored paint that will eventually cover the rest of the room, applying it to the wall around the trim of the closet:















After the paint dried, John expertly installed an ADJUSTABLE SHELF SYSTEM that we purchased from HOME DEPOT. The parts were super affordable and luckily for us, they had pre-made shelves that pretty much fit the spaces perfectly, saving us from have to have shelves specially cut:









Voilá! Spiffy new storage space for our crafting supplies, merchandise, and instruments! Now for the really hard part...re-organizing all our crap and putting it up on the shelves in a way that is sensible and somewhat pleasing to the eye...stay tuned!

Nilla Sixty-Two

Nilla in relax mode., originally uploaded by sugar-cookie.

Well, we had a nice visit with my parents this past week! We had so much fun, but those days just flew by so quickly. I still had more projects to do with my fam... Next time, right?

Here it is Nilla day again, so here is your weekly dose of our beloved kitty! This is a great picture of how Nilla can get really relaxed. I love the look on her face. She is relaxing on a cardboard box, one of her favorite things ever, in the sunshine.

Flossy Says Thank You

I was checking my favorite design blogs this morning, as usual. Much to my surprise Design is Mine and The Small Object both featured my Flossy the Pony Bobbin on their blogs! Thanks so much, Summer and Sarah!