Super secret surprise summer sale!

Wheee! September 1st 2009 between the hours of 9am and 9pm PST, prices in my Etsy shop will be reduced by 20%! Yippee! One day only, get em while the gettin's good...

Werkin, werkin...

After three solid weeks of teaching summer camps for kids, I was pretty stoked to have the following Monday off. HAHAHAHA children! Teach yourselves things today! (Although you guys can see some things they learned during Eco-Fashion Camp week on HasBeen Design's Blog and Jewels and Gems) But then it set in that....I have the next two weeks off. I will certainly need this time to follow Hannah's wedding dress along at an exponentially quicker pace (it's taking shape, yay!) There are also some things I need to prepare for, such as teaching German to middle schoolers, but other than that, the time is MINE! Muahahaha. It does feel a bit strange though to go from working full time with a fairly normal schedule (French full time: 35 hours a week) to having...two weeks off. Back to the basement for me! (Which means more dresses for you...) YARR.

P.S. Don't let my expression confuse you. I'm not sad. I'm just trying to concentrate on dressmaking and future plans instead of Edward Cullen and Bill Compton.

I love my bruuuuutherrrr

As a belated birthday gift for our grandma, my mother decided upon adult portraits of my brother and I to cherish for posterity. After perusing Kelty's blog and admiring all of her lovely photos, she was sold and we set up a shoot. Easy enough right? All we had to do was show up. My mom simply requested that we don't make any "goofy faces." We all know it's not that difficult to make me laugh. It's just that my brother has plenty of time to practice. He's been present for twenty three years of my existence and we dedicated much of our childhood time together to silly business (remember playing eskimo/coat monster and tucking Kirby under the afghan to aggravate him?) as well as unintentionally cultivating a rather complicated yet strikingly similar web of "extrapolation humor" trajectories.

Turns out, "goofy faces" are much tougher to avoid than one might imagine. We tried our best to get some classy portraits in, but it's hard when he goes to grab a shirt from the car and comes back with a giant red scratch on his forehead; "Is there a scrape on my head?" "Uh, yes, what happened?" "A tree branch hit me." Or, Kelty tries to take playful shots of us running down a hill, so he leaps into the air to grip a handful of willow branches expecting to swing gracefully to a stop (we did this as children also) and RIPS an entire cluster of tree into the meadow. It started off nicely enough...

And then he starts making faces like this:

Which makes me start doing this:

Which leads to this:

Yay! We're adults. Happy birthday Grandma!

But...I always get like, weird teddy bears when I do the search...

Several people I've been talking to about Etsy lately have commented on the fact that they have a difficult time finding the gems. One even mentioned that she's always looking for blogs that suggest favorite Etsy finds to their readers. Considering I spend copious amounts of time browsing the goodies, checking out the competition, marvelling at the creativity and leaping from favorites to treasuries to blog articles and back, it finally dawned on me that it's time to share the wealth. Boom! I'm not sure how I'm going to organize it, but now included in my blogging content will be Etsy finds from yours truly!

#1: BlueSkyBags
I just ran into this brand new shop today! I remember making a janky plastic satchel crocheted from plastic bags that I grocery shopped with in Germany but...this girl's got it down. Cute little purse shapes with funky buttons and color schemes, it's great. Click on the picture to check it out.

I woke up this morning and I was a new human being.

I had a terrible nightmare about political unrest and my brother. I opened my eyes anticipating violence and experienced only a peaceful, sunny morning with two and a half hours to spare before work. My meat suit felt fresh and flexible, my grey matter was molten and magnificent and OHHH THE DRESSES! I promise you, they're coming to the shop soon. I prrrrrooooomissssse!

Languidly lolling in LA

For most of my trip to California, my little conscience voice nagged me. "I could totally live here, San Francisco is way more poppin than Portland. I miss the vegetation in Northern California. My friends here are ultra rad..." and so on and so forth. I was even feeling completely awesome on my overnight Greyhound bus ride from San Jose to L.A. (12:40 AM to 7:10 AM, woot!). Smiling gently, I partook in one person sleep yoga serenly shifting from side to side, feet on the footrest, feet off the footrest, right foot in the aisle, left knee bent, switch! Left leg straight, right knee bent....all the while the trundling southward together with every possible specimen of American society in the inky blue night. Then I arrived in Los Angeles. I began sweating the moment I exited the bus. After only a few hours of 100+ heat in the smoggy SoCal metropolis, my little conscience voice spoke once more. "GET ME THE CRAP OUT OF THIS TOWN!"

Don't get me wrong, our weekend was rockin. Lorrainne was an amazing hostess and our days were filled with Korean Spa, vintage dress and beach bliss. But actually desiring a return to Portland was a good note to end on.