Flying Monkey

Here's the flying monkey I've been working on. I know, it's not blue, but it's a monkey, and it has wings! LOL

I actually took a webkinz shirt and kind of traced around it to make a pattern. I just made a vest out of felt cause I have never made sleeves yet.

I sewed the blue felt vest,together first, then worked on the designs on the front. I cut out a design out of the red felt, then sewed it on the white felt and then cut it out. Kind of like a shadow effect. Then I sewed that onto the blue vest.

For the hat, I just kind of made a pillbox type hat out of felt, then did the same thing like I did with the vest for the design. Then stuffed the hat and sewed it on the monkey.

For the wings, I took gold wire and shaped that into wings, then took some white kind-of-sheer backing that we use for embroidery and sewed it onto the wire. Then cut the wings out following the wire.

Sew the wings onto the vest and we have a flying monkey!!

Music & Lyrics

I just LOVE the movie Music & Lyrics. I mean who can't enjoy seeing Hugh Grant sing an 80's pop song?? LOL

Cute Bento

That has got to be the cutest bento box I've ever seen! I was Stumbling today and found this link: http://www.zuzafun.com/kids-food

It has some way cute bento boxes on them. I know if I had little kids they'd be lucky if they got a rice ball in a box, let alone one shaped like a cat. LOL

Halloween

Can you believe Halloween is on Friday? I'm having a hard time adjusting to how fast time is flying by. And this weekend is the DeAnza Flea Market again. I'll have nothing ready cause it just snuck up on me. oh well, I just go to spend time with my cousin anyway. We always have a great time catching up.

Marc Ecko Tote Bag

This is my Marc Ecko bag. I just love the design of it. And I just think the graphics are really great fun! It was on a really great sale too. I've been wanting a tote bag to carry around cause my purse always seems to be so small. But I do have to make some pouches to carry the small stuff inside.

This is the stuff I would LOVE to paint and create. I guess I should get creative and get crackin'!

I'm exhausted!

I just spent the last 3 days shopping with my sister and niece. And boy, am I tired! Who would have thought shopping all those hours for 3 days straight would make my body sore?? LOL

They wore me out! I felt like such a guy. By the time we got to Macy's at the end of the day, I was SO ready to find a chair and just sit. And that's just what I did. And I swear, they shopped for another hour! LOL I'm glad that they had a ton of fun. :)

I did find a really cool Mark Ecko bag on sale, which I LOVE. My sister wasn't too thrilled with it cause it had a skull on it. LOL I love his stuff cause it looks like a huge tattoo. :)

But I think I can not go to a mall for another couple of weeks.

Hawaiian Nachos

Today we were shopping at Takahashi Market in San Mateo, and they had the most interesting dish... Hawaiian Nachos. I wish I had taken a picture of it. :(

What are Hawaiian Nachos? Well, you start out with tortilla chips, put on a layer of Kalua Pork and then Lomi Salmon. And then you add a sort of secret sauce on top. The sauce is the same color as say a 1000 island dressing, but it is a bit spicier without the pickles.

And you know, it was really good. Lomi Salmon is pretty much like a salsa. You take salt-cured salmon and dice it, then you add tomatos and onions. So it looks like a salsa.

It was really surprising how good that was, so if you're in San Mateo, check out the Hawaiian Nachos at Takahashi Market.

Shopping, shopping, shopping

My older sister and my niece are in town, so we have spent the last two days shopping and more shopping...their favorite sport.

Kiana has always wanted to go to Steve and Barry's. If you don't know what a Steve and Barry's store is, it's a casual clothing store which has clothes by Sarah Jessica Parker, Amanda Bynes, and Venus Williams. They have a lot of great clothes for really great prices! They feel that you shouldn't have to pay high prices for fashion items.

The clothes are all under $29.99. I've found a lot of great finds there over the year. Last year they had an outfit by one of the people from Project Runway featured there.

Kiana loved the store, she's in the photo above with her hands full of clothes to try on. :)

We also found another store today called Plato's Closet. They are a unique recycling store...ok a thrift store. But they stock high end clothes for really great prices. The clothes I looked at were all very clean and in great condition. And they were named brands like baby phat, abercrombie, roxie, and a lot of other really great brands. I found a couple of belts that I'm going to use for my jeans purses. Many items were from $5-$30. I think a few jackets were a bit more. But my sister found a really great jacket for $10!

My sister and niece are power shoppers. I bow to them, the shopping goddesses! LOL

No new projects today

I haven't had a chance to make anything new in the past few days. Just cause I've been researching some things on the computer and my sister is coming for a visit, so I have to actually organize the spare room in case she decides to stay over.

But here's a picture of Oreo. He loves sitting on my lap when I'm on the computer and uses the desk as a pillow. I think it would be uncomfortable, but I'm not a cat. LOL

I'll probably be back to creating in a day or two. Hope you all are having a good week!

More Book Arts Jam Photos

Here are some more photos of some of the books that were at the JAM. There was so much more that I couldn't take photos of, but these are photos of the ones that would share. :) I think they're pieces are so beautiful! And I totally LOVE the dinosaur book!!

You all will have to come out to the show next year, it's an awesome show with lots of great information!

Book Arts Jam

Today my friend Karan invited me to go with her to Book Arts Jam in Los Altos. It was SO cool to see all the different books, and how the artists turned regular items into the coolest books and other altered items.

I'll post more of the items tomorrow. I just got back from watching the Fremont Flyers play two games tonight. They lost the first one, but won the last one! They're getting better!! I'm so glad for them!

But I'm exhausted, so I'll catch up with you all tomorrow!

Ten Feet at Island 98.5

Ten Feet was at the station my cousin works at today! I LOVE them, and I was so excited to hear them on the radio. They need to come to California to sing. :) Enjoy!

One more thing... ER Spoilers...

Ok, I know, I haven't blogged in 2 days and now I'm all chatty. LOL But did you watch ER last night? OMG, it was so sad! It was Abby's last day on the show. So it was like she was saying goodbye in her own way. I'm so glad that she and Kovac were able to gracefully drive away together in the sunset, and not die in some horrible accident!! Those are getting hard to take. I mean Greg wasn't my favorite character, but I didn't like seeing him die.

The part that made me sad was when they opened the door and showed all of the doctors that left the ER's name plates on the wall. How sad was that??

I haven't watched Project Runway yet, but I know who won. And I'm really happy that she did! :)

And on Grey's Anatomy...

I am glad that George is a Resident now. He was getting really sad as a second-time intern. And it was really sad that he didn't celebrate with Lexi. He's kind of a dork. Callie was really cute today. :) I'm glad that she's moving on with her life. Izzy still gets on my nerves. That whole dermatology internship thing cracked me up. Do you want some water with Raspberries?? LOL

Anyway, that's my TV update for the week. I still have to watch Chuck and Heroes. Love those shows!

And if you're in Hawaii, my favorite band, Ten Feet, is supposed to be on Island 98.5 in the morning. If you're not in Hawaii, you can go to their website and listen online. I just love their new CD!

More fun pictures

Sorry that I didn't get to blog much Wednesday or Thursday. I haven't taken photos yet of what I've been making. I'll do that in a day or so. But I thought I'd leave you with some really cute icanhascheezburger photos.
Hate that blue screen of death!
Aren't they cute??

Phil and I

Here's a photo of Phil and I at a friend's wedding. Can you imagine, we've been together for 12 years now. And friends for longer than that. I'm so lucky to have him and his family in my life. :)

The Birds...

It always cracks me up when I look up over at the neighbor's roof and I see a line of birds waiting for me to feed them. It SO reminds me of the movie, The Birds. LOL The first time I saw them, it kind of creeped me out. Cause who remembers watching that movie as a kid and running like heck when you saw a group of birds anywhere. I sure did.

LOL

I really do love feeding the birds and watching them come into our yard. I'll post photos when I take more.

Shari Carroll's blog

One of my friends in the world of Rubber Stamping is Shari Carroll. She's an artist for the company Hero Arts.

I just love her pieces of art. She's posted on her blog: ...my world some of her samples.

Please check them out, she's wonderful!!

Ken's Red Bubble

My cousin Ken is very much into Photography. I just learned that from Facebook. :) And he signed up for a site called Redbubble. I guess you upload your photos and then people can purchase the pictures as cards or prints.

He's photographing places around Kauai. He's very good, especially since he's just starting. I loved the above photo and the one of his dog Kimo.

Check it out: http://www.redbubble.com/people/pentikal

Pajama City

OMG, how cool is this! Adult footie pajamas! What a cool thing to have during the upcoming winter months. There are so many times I wished I had some footie pajamas, and here they are!! LOL They have lots of great colors and patterns. Go check them out!

http://www.dancestore.com/pajama-mastercart/pjc-index.html

R2-D2 Cake

Ok, so it's not really R2-D2 because as we all know R2 is really blue, not red. LOL But A very nice R2 unit cake! But you can see the real R2-D2 cake here: http://www.markjosephcakes.com/

This site here posted the making of the R2 cake:
http://www.bsideblog.com/2008/06/making-the-most-amazing-r2d2-c.php

So, how cool would that be to have an R2D2 cake?? Yes, I'm a BIG time Star Wars fan here, and I've been in LOVE with R2 since my cousin Tina gave me my first R2D2 plushie way back in 1977. I still have that plushie. :)

Will have to have one of these for when I turn 50!! LOL

Swarovski Crystal Earrings

Here are 2 pairs of earrings I worked on today. I've been fitting in making earrings between cleaning, designing, and watching my new favorite show NCIS. Who doesn't love Mark Harmon! LOL

I forgot that I had these findings, and I thought I'd make a couple of pairs of earrings to sell on etsy. I made myself a pair of these with dark blue crystals that were so beautiful that I thought someone else might enjoys these as well.

Will post more as I make them! :)

Mele Kalikimaka

My cousin, JrkJr, just posted this on his website www.jrkjr.com. I thought it would get us in the Christmas mood. LOL Now we have to all get crafting! Only 2 more months! YIKES. :)

logo for a pee wee football team

Here is hopefully our next project. It's a logo for a pee wee football team in Fremont called the Rams. Philip worked on the logo yesterday. The photo was really small, and when it was blown up to the size we needed, the edges were kind of grainy. So Philip actually redrew the logo in paint shop.

The above logo was our first try, and as you can see, thread quality makes a ton of difference! We used thread above that I'm guessing wasn't the best quality. The bobbin thread kept getting pulled up from the bottom. Plus we learned that on our machine, when you load a bobbin, make sure you put the machine back to sewing speeds. LOL That makes the sewing a bit erratic as well.
This was our second attempt. We went to Jo-Anns to get better thread, and the quality showed! Not as much bobbin thread from the top. The parts that do show was because I didn't figure out about the sewing speed till I was partway through with the blue.
And here are both together, it's a bit hard to see, but the top one has a bit rougher look to it than the bottom. I'm learning that I need thicker stabilizer on thin material. Plus buy the best quality thread. It totally makes a difference.

Tote bag

Here is one of the tote bags that I made. I actually gave it to my mom. It was really fun to make and so super easy! I wanted to do a bit of extra sewing, so I sewed black to the bottom. Made the top colors kind of pop.

Modcloth.com

While on Icanhascheezburger, I found a cool site: www.modcloth.com
There are a lot of fun things on the site, one is this really cute space rubber duckie. I love all the fun rubber ducks that are coming out, and the space one is very cute. Looks like a NASA duck!


This panda pan is way too cute. Love the panda's face! they should make a cover that has panda ears! Wouldn't that be awesome??
And I love stuff by tokidoki! They're just so cute! don't know why I'd want them, but they're really cute. Love their little faces. :)

Check out their site, there's some really fun clothing items, tote bags, lots of retro looking things.

More Coffee Sleeves

I spent today making more coffee sleeves. This is what I have so far. I figure it's a little bit of stuff for everyone. I have to make a couple more 49er ones for my cousin and sister, but for the flea market this might be a good start.

I'll be onto Webkinz Sleeping bags now!

Flyers Jacket

Here is one of the Jackets I embroidered. It was fun trying to place the embroidery on the jacket. Since we don't have a small hoop, we have to figure out how to hoop things without hitting the snaps in the middle, and still having the logo in the correct place.

With the larger jackets you could go to the right side of the opening and miss the snaps when hooping. On medium sized jackets, you have to begin the hoop to the left of the opening to miss the snaps and to not hoop on the ribbed material.

So, a light shined when I realized...duh! Just move the embroidery over in the program. That way I could place it where I wanted to.

I love learning the process of embroidering!

I'm Finished!!!

I just now finished embroidering the 15 jackets for the Fremont Flyers. YAY! They have a tournament Saturday, and practice tomorrow, so it's great that they'll get to use them this weekend. I'll take a photo of them tomorrow and show you how they turned out. It was a bit of a challenge trying to hoop the Medium size ones.

I started off with the XXL ones for the coaches, and worked my way down to the size Mediums. It's like a puzzle, trying to figure out how you're going to miss snaps while hooping. I realized I can move the embroidery in the hoop to adjust for the placement of snaps.

I'm just glad there were no mishaps!

And another thing I'm excited about is I've had my first sale on Etsy! I always wonder if anyone else will like my pieces. And I always am happy when someone does. It gets me excited. Kind of like when I would draft things on paper, and then see it in real life. The first time I saw the Air bearing slide I drew back from the machinist, I was just in awe! LOL

Thank you to all my friends for all their encouragement and support! I love you gals!

Reusable Coffee Cup Sleeve

I saw this on a sewing website, and I just had to make one. It's a reusable coffee cup sleeve. Since we're all trying to be green, and not consume a lot of paper products, this is a great idea for people who go to coffee shops and get coffee.

The material is this really fun cat material I've had forever.
Ok, so I don't go to Starbucks much. So I thought I'd try it on one of our drinking glasses, it's a pub-sized beer glass. And it fit! I'm so excited, I think I need one for around the house to keep my drink cool.

I used that fleece inside that you use on potholders, so it should insulate your hand well. I'll have to try it out tomorrow. :)

I'll post more when I make more! :)

My first Jeans purse

This is my first Jeans purse. I am starting to recycle old jeans and thought this pair would make a cool purse. I added a belt that I made out of the same material I lined it with. Plus I made a flower out of that same material and cut leaves out of a pair of green jeans that I had too.
This is what the lining looks like. I had to hand stitch it in cause my sewing machine couldn't handle the thickness of the jeans and lining. And I made a pocket on the inside too!!

I'm very excited to make more now! I'll post them as I make them.

Machine Embroidery Lesson number 1

So, we've been having a bit of difficulty with the bobbin thread showing up on the top of the embroidery pieces we've been doing. The one in particular, the Flyers logo.

On the Orange part of the Logo the white bottom thread would pull through the fabric. We went to thicker stabilizer, and that helped a bunch. And I tried moving the needle tension too. And I couldn't get the right tension/.

So, by happenstance I decided to be a bit lazy on one of the practice runs, and I left the Red Sulky thread in the machine. I figured it was only practice, and I'd adjust the color later. But after it embroidered, we noticed NO Bobbin thread!

Could it be that simple??

Turns out that yep, it was that simple. LOL Not only did we not get any bobbin thread showing through, but the quality of the embroidery was 110% better.

So, solution, no embroidery thread from Wal Mart anymore. Only Sulky or that Gutermann thread for us! I didn't think that thread would make that much of a difference, but it does.

Webkinz Quick Draw

I'm so excited! I actually won the Webkinz Quick Draw! I mean I usually don't even do those cause I'm always thinking to myself, "Who the heck will actually win that?" And then even when the numbers were coming up I kept thinking that this number will be off by one, or that one.

But I thought too, OMG, I'm going to be so close! LOL

I just had to take a screenshot cause I couldn't believe it myself! LOL

I won the beach table, and I have a beach room, so it will fit in very nicely!

Now I'm going to do the quick draw all the time!

Fall TV

I'm so excited that the Fall season has started! I'm a big TV junkie, I admit it. I love when the new series start.

So far, I've enjoyed Dancing with the Stars! OMG, don't you love Lacey and Lance Bass? They are such a breath of fresh air. I loved their first dance, even though Len didn't. I think you have to do something a little bit new in the dances.

Heroes was awesome! SO worth the wait. I won't ruin it for anyone who has DVR'd it. But OMG, it was the best! I was so bummed when we had the writer's strike. They ended last season so abruptly. I have to have my Hiro and Ando fix! Those two are my favorites in the show. And the preshow was great too!

Of course I loved SVU. I'm glad that Finn isn't going to go anywhere. He's one of my favorite characters. I'm still bummed that Adam Beach is gone.

And did you watch Knight Rider?? I loved the fact that now Kitt is a transformer. LOL And I gotta get one of those mega computers. I would DIE if I had 3 screens and could move stuff from one to another with a touch of the screen.

I still have to watch the rest of Grey's. But ER was so good! And sad!

Are you excited about the new season, and what was your favorites??

Enjoy the music!

I decided today to add music to my blog. I have gone to different blogs and noticed that some people have added music. So I thought, "What the heck!"

I have been listening to my cousin on the radio, and I've really liked some of the music they're playing. I'll add more when I figure out what other bands I like.

If you don't want the music, just hit the pause button and it should stop. And to change songs just click on one of those listed, and it will play.

Enjoy!

Crafter's Zone

I joined a new crafting group a few days ago called Crafter Zone. They found me through Twitter, so I went to check out their site. I really like it. The people have been really nice. And there are many talented people on the site. And you can sign up for different groups depending on your interests. I really like that.

Here is a project that Keiki Gifts, Crafts & Activities posted on her site:

Friendship Chips
Such a very clever idea for kids to trade with each other. I love the different chips she's made.
Here's the link to her site: http://keikigifts.brighterplanet.org/

Purple pearl bracelet

I spent a couple of hours today with a friend of mine that I met through the store. She wanted to learn how to bead, so I we had a simple beading class today. Just the two of us, it was really fun beading with someone and not by myself.

I made this bracelet from the purple/maroony colored pearls that she had, and I added some fire-polished beads and these really pretty pearl colored beads. It turned out pretty nice. I'm keeping this one! LOL

We're going to try to meet a few times a month to bead. It's nice cause she's just over the bridge from me.

Happy Monday!

Yesterday was a nice day. Started off watching the Flyers play a softball game. They didn't win, but they are playing much better then when they started this year. That's a plus!

Went to see my mom and ate some really great BBQ Chicken Bento from the San Mateo Buddhist Church. I look forward to that every year cause it's just so good!!

And I went to see my 2 Aunts in San Francisco. We had to time it right so that we wouldn't hit the 49er after-game traffic. It's always nice visiting with them.

Other than that, just resting up a bit. Not a very creative weekend for me, but I did a ton of stuff outside of the house, which is good. Found homes for my Shonen Jump magazines...yay! And will continue to find more treasures in the house. But will be more creative on Tuesday!!

Plug for Sadie...

Saturday Miss Sadie will be singing with her band in San Mateo at St. Matthew's church on El Camino. They're having a Country/Western fundraiser, and she's going to be performing there tomorrow night.

She's awesome! So if you're around the area, check her out. I think she's there at 7pm.
www.myspace.com/sadiebrown

Art by Wendy

Are these not the cutest kittens you've ever seen in a painting?? OMG, I was doing my etsy surfing, and found this wonderful store with the most beautiful paintings...Artbywendy

Of course I love all of her paintings, she has the best mermaid, fairies, and dragons. And you know me, being the CCLDTS, I love the kitties most of all.

If you haven't seen her art yet, check her out. And check out all the other artists at the etsy site. They are making the most wonderful things! From time to time I'll post something here that I truly love!

Blogging on Martha Stewart's show.

Yesterday's Martha Stewart's show was all about blogging. Now you all know I love to blog! And it was really neat to see what everyone does with their blogs.

Here's a link to Martha's blog:

http://www.themarthablog.com/

Thank you Tina for telling me about the show!

My first cat used to do this:

more animals