Ethan is here!

A little late in posting, but Ethan Sumner was born on September 2 at 12:42pm via emergency c-section. Weighing in at 9 pounds, 8 ounces and measuring 21.5 inches, our little boy wasn't so little! Welcome baby boy!

My horoscope

I haven't read my horoscope in a really long time.  For some reason I decided to take a look at it today on my "My Yahoo" page.  This is what it said:

Someone interesting -- no, absolutely fascinating -- is right around the corner, just dying to meet you. You, of course, are always game for different folks -- especially the kinds who have brains. So when this new person arrives, you'll probably want to clear your schedule and make sure you have time to spend with them. Do it! Oh, and don't be surprised if this thing goes on well into the coming weekend, too. Enjoy!

Well tomorrow we'll be scheduling an induction for the new baby to be born.  I'd say that's a fascinating new person to meet who is also dying to me meet me, wouldn't you say?  

Missing In Action

My has it been a long time! You can tell things got rather busy around here, can't you? It all really started with baby man's birthday party invitations. Once those were done we moved into planning the party, then making the cake (which I think took about four days), then the party itself. Add on top of that a trip to Long Island, a weekend in Edison and Staten Island, a couple of visits to Monmouth Park, and mix in baby man music classes and trips to the park and the indoor playground at the mall and we've been busy! Of course that also takes into account the days of exhaustion surrounding all that activity.

The summer is going quickly, and while that's a good thing, I'm getting a bit stressed about being ready for the new baby. Our plan is to move things around in the basement (almost done) and then move my office to the basement (not started), then move E's office to my office (not started) and make E's office the new baby's room. And it hit me that this week we're 32 weeks along! That means 8 weeks left, if we go to term (which I don't expect to... just a gut feeling). Now it all would be a bit easier if baby man wasn't so clingy these days, but he just won't let us out of his sight, and even when we're still in his sight he needs to be in the same room. So he will stand and cry at the gate to my office. So the logical step would be to do things during nap time, right? Yeah, it would be if nap time happened regularly, lol. But sometimes nap time will only take place in the car, or (more likely these days) Mommy and baby man take a nap together. So that leaves night time, when he's in bed. Again that would work if he went to bed before 10pm and we weren't wiped out by the time he's asleep! Lol - it's all a challenge these days. Today was a huge exception to the rule - Baby Man fell asleep in my lap at 7:45 and didn't take too much prodding to fall back asleep when I got him up to his crib. Of course that was because his only nap of the day was about 45 minutes long, if that. I can't say what the night will bring because usually the night after a fairly nap-free day isn't usually a restful one.

Anywho, that's the very quick update in a nutshell of where I've been! Not much crafting has been taking place, in fact the last thing I created was the thank you card for Baby Man's birthday presents. All of which are still sitting, waiting to be written. Terrible, I know. I feel awful about it and will be working on them tonight as soon as I get off the computer. But I did feel the need to jump at the chance to have some computer time while Baby Man sleeps and E is out at wrestling. (Speaking of E - he just got home.)

So let's get to the good stuff.... some highlight pictures of the past few months! (Pictures to be added shortly)

Classic Toddler Bed

What a great-looking toddler bed! It's the Classic Toddler Bed by Oeuf. Unfortunately it's way out of any sort of price range we might have. But baby man's crib transitions from a crib to a toddler bed to a full-size adult bed - we thought ahead! But I saw this on giggle and loved the design. Ahhhhh, when we win the huge lottery tomorrow night we'll get it!

Baby Man's 1st Birthday Invitations

I've been working on baby man's birthday invitations for about two weeks, off and on. Mom has been helping a lot - thanks to her everything was cut on the Cricut and then run through the Xyron X Sticker Maker. (Yesterday she helped consolidate my address books into one and started typing up the address labels for me - a huge help!) They cards are really cute and coming out exactly how I pictured them. That doesn't happen often! Here's my workspace in the dining room. This way I can keep an eye on baby man while he plays in the living room and keep working at the same time.



And now a sneak preview of the sample I made initially of the card... the finished work is a little different... you'll have to wait for the final in a few days!



I do hope to get them out in the mail on Monday. It'll all depend on how much I can get printed today to take with me for my weekend of cake decorating with the girls in upstate NY!

Extreme Sheep Art

I found this on Cute Overload.  It's amazing!

More F1 Promo Pics Coming Soon!

We've been working on a few more promo pics for tomorrow's Force One show here in EHT. I'll be posting them after the weekend.

In the meantime, here's a happy springtime photo of Baby Man meeting the mini Easter Bunny for the first time. We'll use this to celebrate the first day of spring, despite the snow we had this morning!


In other news we've both been working on our portfolios and E's is pretty well set. In fact he went on a "cold call" to our local baseball team to see about taking photos for them. They were very happy he stopped in and will most likely be using him for all sorts of things. Meanwhile I started printing my own portfolio sheets but of course I'm not happy with them (since mine are a little more involved than just printing one photo per page) so I will probably be redoing a few. Thankfully I didn't get too far. Once mine is done I'm going to start approaching local photographers to see if anyone needs any outside photoshop freelancers. I also do need to find a good (and cheap, if not free!) online portfolio site. At least in the meantime until I can get a real website done for us. Stay tuned - you never know when Calais Photography will finally have its own website!

Illustration Friday - Intricate

My first submission for Illustration Friday! I'm pretty excited to finally do this.

The topic is Intricate - when I saw that I immediately thought of henna / mendhi tattoos. That was my inspiration for these two paisleys.

Goals

Seems I'm not doing too well on one or two of my art goals! I haven't done Illustration Friday yet... need to get off my butt and do it already. It's been getting harder and harder lately to do much of anything - between being tired all the time and chasing baby man around the house (baby gates are in the very near future, once I find the certain types I'm looking for). But as the weather warms up I think we'll be spending more time outside and wandering; I'll be taking my sketchbook along for the ride!

On the positive side, I'm planning on taking baby man to the Rodin Museum on Friday. That is, if the weather holds up. It will be his first trip to an art museum!

Bachelor

I haven't watched The Bachelor in years, I think Mary and Byron's was the last season we had any interest in. Unfortunately today you can't avoid hearing about what happened last night on the finale and the "After the Final Rose" episode. I just have to say I think the whole thing is deplorable. It's bad enough to dump one girl for another just 6 weeks after proposing (nevermind the 30 girls he whittled down in the first place) but to involve your young son in the whole process is horrible. He isn't going to understand any of the hype and publicity stunts. The whole thing just makes me ill. If I had any inkling of wanting to watch any future seasons, this killed that interest once and for all. And that's all I have to say.

NWA Force One Pro-Wrestling Promo Pictures

We had a great night Saturday at the wrestling event. E got so many great shots, it was nice and bright in the high school gym (in Barnegat) that he was able to get some amazing photos. It was our first time really selling our photos too - at the last show E took a few copies with him and asked one of the vendors to sell them for him to see how they would sell. Three sold that day. We sold 6 on Saturday with requests for more wrestlers. Two wrestlers sold out with people asking if we had more. It's looking really promising! Seeing that it went so well I thought I'd share what we've been doing. E takes the wrestler's photo, I silhouette it and add the background, create a logo if the wrestler doesn't already have one and then add the F1 logo and our copyright.

Jason Gotti - "before" photo:

Jason Gotti - "after" photo (with his logo):

Repeat Offenders - "before" photo:

Repeat Offenders - "after" photo:

Millionaire Ted - "before" photo:

Millionaire Ted - "after" photo:

White Lotus - "before" photo:

White Lotus - "after" photo (with his logo):

Ryu Lee - "before" photo:

Ryu Lee - "after" photo:

Panther - "before" photo:

Panther - "after" photo:

Judas Young - "before" photo:

Judas Young - "after" photo:

We have a bunch more in the works and definitely need to print more of certain wrestlers who were specifically requested. I'm looking forward to the next show to see what sells this time!

It was a very busy day for us and it all went very well. In the morning E had an event at work where they made a boy with muscular dystrophy an honorary employee of the store. Baby man and I were there to take pictures of the event.

On a related note, baby man did great at the show. Unfortunately I did have to take him into the bathroom to change him one time - on the floor since it was a high school with no changing table in the bathroom - and he's terrified of public bathrooms. Ever since our trip to Long Island back in January and his experience in the bathroom at California Pizza Kitchen (really loud music and very echo-y) he has been so scared of toilets flushing in public bathrooms. Whenever we're at the mall we have to use the family bathroom, which I don't mind at all since it's nice and quiet and private. But that wasn't an option on Saturday so after his awful reaction I changed him behind my table instead - of course he decided to poop three times that night! Other than that he had a great time. He played and ate and watched everything. And of course he flirted with every female who paid any attention to him! As usual he fought going to sleep and didn't even act tired until it was all over, after 11pm. As soon as he was in the car, though, he was out.

I'll leave you with a dorky picture of me setting up our table.

Brunch and Baking

This past weekend we had family over for a Sunday brunch.  Mainly we were just gathering to have a family get together, but it happened to coincide with my birthday (the week before), Valentine's Day (the day before) and Presidents' Day (the next day).  So it was an all-encompassing celebration!

D&M brought my birthday gifts with them since we were supposed to get together the previous weekend to celebrate but due to illness we weren't able to visit.  They gave me two great books, a very generous "gift certificate," and the tea kettle pictured below.  Isn't it the coolest?  I'm so excited to get rid of my silver tea kettle that stains the second you look at it and was covered in grease spots that would never come off.

In honor of Valentine's Day we picked up (cheap!) these placemats and this one little dessert plate.  They looked great against the red table cloth E got on clearance back in December.  Of course we couldn't pass them up when they had both turtles AND owls on them!

Here is my semi-failed attempt at pie crust.  I did cheat and used pre-made refrigerated dough.  But for some reason this first crust shrunk in the pan.  It's a little hard to tell in the first picture but the side view tells the whole story.  I had to start over since the quiche filling would have poured over the side of this shrunken crust!  I really do know how to bake,  really I do!  

Of course one could argue I teach cake DECORATING not cake BAKING. Doesn't really apply to pie crust, does it? I didn't take a picture of the finished quiche, but it turned out pretty well.  The new crust was a little well done, but for a first attempt at making quiche I was very happy with it.  It tasted great and that's the important thing.  

I did break a cardinal rule of entertaining with this brunch: I made three recipes I had never made before. But they all were definitely edible. I'd even verge on saying two were really good. Of course there are things I would change (using the crock pot liner for the creme brulee french toast since the edges burnt and cooking the pie crust a little less so it didn't brown so much when baking the quiche) but all in all I was happy with the results.

Now to prove I really can bake - here are two pictures of cupcakes I made for E to take to work earlier in the week.  They are raising money for the MDA again this year - selling shamrocks - and this was for an internal fundraiser with the employees.  The cupcakes were yummy, though I cheated and used both boxed cake mix and canned icing.  But when you're making cupcakes at 9pm the night before (and after bathing and getting the baby man to bed) I think cheating is allowed.

I did go to the store after E's lunch break to check out the rest of the cupcakes made by others.  I'd say everyone did a great job and they raised over $100 so it was definitely a success!

Glass Fountain Pens

Image courtesy of the website The Writer's Edge

I have one or two glass fountain pens in my possession... somewhere.  I used to love the feeling of writing with this type of pen, needing to stop every so often to refill the pen by dipping it into the ink bottle.  I collected inks and bottles, never using the bottles because they were too nice to mess up with the ink.  At the time I also had to keep all my letter writing items in a portable box and any ink that wasn't in a sealed container would have made a huge mess over everything.

I'm thinking the glass pen would be fun to use for drawing.  I have a hunch where they are... unfortunately that hunch is the basement and that is the black hole of our house.

Snow Day

The view from our front windows yesterday afternoon.

We don't get very much snow down here "in these parts." So when it does snow and actually sticks to the ground, I get pretty excited.  Of course it means we stay indoors these days, but I'm sure next year I'll be begged to go out and play in it.  Baby man has only experienced the snow from the warm side of the window so far, and I think he's happy with that for now.  

The view from the back windows.

Model Man

our 2009 super bowl invitation

Baby man has become our model for most everything these days. With his infectious smile (most of the time) and cooperative spirit (again, most of the time) he has been a great model for both our holiday cards and now our Super Bowl invitations. We've decided to try to get him into real modeling and see what happens. Of course, every parent thinks their child is adorable and perfect, but when people continuously stop you in the grocery store - and elsewhere - to tell you how cute your baby is, you start to think it isn't just you.

The search continues for a real, reputable baby modeling agency that won't demand our money the second we step in the door.

Carrie and Friends

As a Sex and the City fan (one who would do nothing but glue herself to the couch those Sunday nights) I'm embarrassed to say we just watched the movie this weekend. Granted it had to do with the fact that we bought it on blu-ray and haven't been able to watch anything on the blu-ray player for months due to a dying projector bulb.

I have to say I was so pleasantly surprised. I had read everything I could get my hands on when the movie first came out, and I was sorely disappointed in what everyone was saying. So I was somewhat expecting to be very saddened by the movie and totally disappointed in all the story lines. As a sappy, silly girl I was so happy that everything ended on a high note. Yes it was all pretty easy and yes it's all silly, but I wasn't looking for an inner meaning here. I was just looking for a happy ending for some of my favorite characters out there. I certainly got that!

Of course something has to be said about the fashion. As with the show some clothes were hits and some were misses. I liked Charlotte's wardrobe the best, which is rather surprising to me. Of course Carrie had some doozies, but oh how I wish I had her shoe closet.... both the closet that Big built for her and contents!

So all in all, after expecting disappointment I was so happy at the entire story. I really enjoyed it and will be watching again - after my planned marathon of all seasons and all episodes.

Save Handmade!

As someone just starting out in the handmade selling biz, this news is rather distressing.  Sure it won't affect my prints, journals, paintings, collages, or any paper art,  but who knows where it could eventually lead?  It could affect my etsy store with the bibs my mom has made, and it would definitely affect the stuffed toys I've been thinking about making.  Baby Man may be the only one who ever sees them.

An excerpt from the article:

The January 20 2009 deadline for millions of American homecrafters to object to a new law requiring expensive testing of their products, is approaching fast. Child-products without certificates proving they have no lead content, will have to be scrapped.

The new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act – passed hastily to bar poisonous foreign products – also will require millions of American homecrafters to have each of their products tested at huge cost, ranging from $500 to $4000 per product – including their old stock which was manufactured before this law had even been thought up. See law here

Formal complaints against this act must be lodged before January 20 2009 Comments must be labelled: Section 102 Mandatory Third-Party Testing of Component Parts'. Lodge complaints here

Without the CPSI certificate of compliance, millions of homecrafters selling their products on EBay, at fairs, in home-shops and at charity shops face conviction under this Act, which goes into effect on February 10 this year. Convinction carries tens of thousands of dollars in fines and potentially even jail time.

It seems so many things are done in haste these days, with no thought to the small business out there. Please, lodge your complaints and help save handmade.

New Year, New Blog

In an effort to follow through with my main 2009 resolution to SIMPLIFY as many aspects of life as I can, I have created this new blog.  Yes, I know, how does creating another new blog simplify things?  Here's how:  everything will be posted here, save my Wilton teaching info - that will be the only blog to remain separate.  So, any daily challenge I give myself, anything about life in general, art, work, etc will all be written about here.  No more blu tatsu here, life there, art everyday somewhere else.  It will all be here!  I'm still deciding whether to combine all previous posts on the other blogs here or just start fresh here.  If I don't combine them all I may leave them up and dormant, or export them to my computer and keep them in my own archives.

So,  here I go - time to simplify as much as possible!