woohoo!!!

so just a riding a little high at the moment and have to share!  Handmade MN is having a spring market (read craft show) at the VFW (because how awesome is a craft show at a VFW!?!?!?) on Lyndale on May 8 (just in time for mother's day!) and as such we have been busy contacting newspapers and magazines to try to get the word out.  One of these is Metro Monthly, and the guy running the story chose just a couple artists from our group to take photos of our wares for the article.  I was one of the chosen few!!!  I'm feeling pretty excited!  Etsy can be such a hard place to advertise given the incredibly high volume of sellers (particularly jewelry sellers) so it's nice to get outside recognition that people think what I'm doing is cool enough to take pictures of for a magazine article.  So I'm feeling a little giddy with excitement...although that giddy feeling may be just because I'm a little high off the resin fumes...production has begun again now that the warm weather has returned!

so much for my new leaf...

I know, I know, I said I was going to write more...clearly I'm failing.  I heard blogging got addictive, but I think I just don't have an addictive personality.  Which I suppose is good and bad...I mean, I'm not an alcoholic or a crack whore - good.  But I also can't get addicted to things I would like to be addicted to, like eating vegetables, exercising, or wasting your time with my  inane thoughts - bad.  Maybe if there was some sort of competition involved. Turns out I'm not addictive, but I am competitive.  Exercising for example...I tried to be one of those people that just can't get through their week without running at least 10 miles, the only way I could do it was to sign up for a half marathon last year because then I had other people to beat.  I refuse to let some young girl in her baby pink terry towel sweatsuit that says "PINK" across the ass win (not that I saw any of these, but boy, if I had!  she would have had a run for her money! ha ha - "run" for her money). And  yah, yah, feels good to be in shape, feels good to to not have a muffin top...but turns out I love fried food...so given the choice, fried food wins hands down...it's my favourite food group after ice cream.  But put some sort of competition in my path, and it's on! So in order to get myself out running again after this long, snowy, icy winter I've signed up for a 10K at the end of May...it's doing the trick.  If only there was a blog race....or a battle of the blogs...or a blogmania, blogfest, blogarino...

There probably is, but without a competition for me to go and find one, I'm too lazy to look...

travel mania

I went to New Haven this weekend to visit my husband (he's on sabbatical there for the semester), and the night before I left, I had a bad feeling about my flights.  I couldn't check in online, the website cited "changes to my itinerary".  So I got to the airport at 5:45am, when I should have checked in for my flights from MSP to Philly to New Haven, only to find I couldn't because "my flight has been cancelled" according to the screen.  Crap!  Ok, well only the Philly - New Haven leg was cancelled apparently due to the impending snowpocalypse on the east coast...which is curious seeing as it wasn't even supposed to hit that far north...but whatever...it was cancelled.  So, okay, I had them reroute me to Boston knowing I could take the train from Boston to New Haven with relative ease (plus I really love a train ride, so secretly I was a little excited by this).  But then we had to de-ice in Mpls, so we were 45 minutes late leaving...I only had an hour layover in Philly...you do the math.  I was convinced I was going to miss my connection and that the universe was conspiring against me seeing my husband for the weekend.  How was the Philly airport you ask?  A blur.  I sprinted the length of the terminal over to the next one and was a hot mess boarding my flight with minutes to spare.

I think airport workers must recognize that glazed look people who are about to miss flights get. This panicky, focused energy that narrows you to tunnel vision on the all important task of finding the best path through the throng of painfully slow moving people...and even the ones moving at a pretty good clip are in your way.

I was flying back to visit my family in Calgary a couple years ago and flew through Toronto...landing late and having to pick up my bag, clear customs (which is notoriously slow in TO), get over to the domestic terminal, clear security, then get to my gate at the farthest end of the terminal all in 45 min.  Impossible you say?  No, but definitely not pleasant. Again, I ran.  Got to security and forgot to take my belt off, so set off the dectector.    The TSA agent realized I was late and instead of making me take off the belt and go through again, just asked me to open up the belt buckle.  In my glazed, panicky, tunnel vision state I misunderstood, and undid way more than just the belt buckle.  The security line got a nice look at my panties...

And to top it all off, as I ran to my gate, I somehow managed to drop my boarding pass along the way...

don't you wish you were here right now??

Don't get me wrong, I love winter.  I love the snow, I love skiing, I love playing shinny (pick up hockey) saturday mornings with my friends.  But I also dream of warm beach vacations...

This was taken in Kalkan, Turkey on my husband and I's honeymoon 2 summers ago...beautiful!  this is what I'm dreaming about right now....

ha ha ha!!

So I was making this necklace this morning...
and realized after I had finished the entire thing and tried it on for size that I had f%$&ed up.  Somehow I made it not even...which clearly won't do...so I had to make it again.  le sigh.  But it reminded me of this gem, which makes me laugh...enjoy!
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln  be forewarned, if you are sensitive to swears, avoid.

Valentine's is just around the corner!

Some fun valentine's finds I enjoy!  I made this using the poster sketch tool...and now I'm sharing it with y'all seeing as I never get a treasury spot....

Enjoy!

fashion statement

I'm a groomsmen (that's right...groomsmen! yay!) in my brother's wedding this summer.  And it was decided that I would wear a black version of the bridesmaid dress (which is actually super duper cute...go figure!).  I had a dress fitting this morning...and lucky enough for me the dress shop is only 5 blocks from my house.  So I, of course, just walked to the appointment this morning.
But, this is Minnesota.  It is winter.  It is 3F, -9F with windchill (-16C/-23C for all the non-americans and scientists) outside.  It is cold, but it is sunny...aka it's-not-as-frickin'-freezing-as-last-night-walking-to-my-car-after-work-where-my-nose-hairs-froze-within-30-seconds-of-being-outside.  So, like any good Minnesotan (nee Canadian), I wore thick wool socks this morning for the walk. Let me tell ya...nothin' says sexy like a cute knee length dress and wool socks.

Spice girls

I discovered a blog written by a friend of mine yesterday...and could not stop reading!!! www.baby-mamas-drama.blogspot.com  I have been a bit lackadaisical  on writing on this one, but I think I'm turning over a new leaf and I'm going to attempt to write more.  This is not a new year's resolution or anything, so I don't need to be penalized for having already failed, but I also can't write that often about crafting.  Not that it doesn't take up most of my spare thinking time, it does.  But mostly because who wants to read those thoughts?!?!  So, I've decided/been inspired to write more about my random musings outside of crafting...hence the slight change to the blog title.  Here goes....

While I was getting ready for my day job this morning I was thinking about my hair.  I love my hair.  It's short (longer than ears, shorter than shoulders) and kinda punky cute.  I used to have long hair (shoulder to slightly longer counts as long in my world) and cut it off about 2 years ago.  Partly inspired by a friend who I totally have hair envy of and partly because I needed a change.  The one thing I miss is being able to pull it back into a ponytail when I'm having a bad hair day...there just isn't that option with short hair...like 2 days ago, where I realized a couple hours into my day that oops! I had not completely rinsed all the conditioner out so the back of my head had this weird greasy feel to it all day....at least it was soft.  But a ponytail would have come in handy...for that and for playing sports...short hair does get in your face.  If I was a spice girl, I guess I would align with sporty spice...although really I strive to be scary spice. Because come on, who wouldn't want to wear platform boots and leopard print pants!?!? Really.

Holy Crap....

I had an item make it to the front page of etsy!!!  How cool is that?!?!  The views on the item went from 5 to 150 in the span of like half an hour!!  So at least more people know my shop now!!  It's so hard to get a shop noticed in the sea of etsians...especially when I'm not exactly the best promoter...welcome to one of my new year's resolutions...

Ok, so this is the item...but I don't know why the picture is sideways...just turn your head to the right to see it properly.

And, I got a convo from somebody yesterday asking if I do wholesale on my wine charms...so maybe that will pan out into something too...although I'm still undecided how I feel about wholesale, but I guess I'll never know until I try.

Okay, I think I'll just ride high on these for a bit...

YAY!!!!!!!