Snowy Day!

Dear Reader-
This blog, my stores and my home are all located in the South. Raleigh, North Carolina to be exact. This means we must at all times be prepared for severe winter weather, extreme snow conditions and the resulting cabin fever. I have taken steps to make sure my family will not suffer if we are trapped for extended periods in our home; we have a good stock of pantry staples on hand, bottled water, plenty of warm blankets and lots of craft materials to keep us all busy.
Thank goodness I am prepared. The National Weather Service predicted a possible 1/2" of snow this morning; last night school was put on an immediate 2-hour delay. The morning dawned with absolutely no snow or ice or even a stray hailstone. Did I mention it was 33 degrees outside? Yeah.

BUT luckily I had the materials ready to help my family through the agony of two hours of cabin fever. We made pancakes. We read a book. Then, we Decopatched some letters. While I am a fan of the Aquapro Glue Varnish in this case we just used plain old Mod Podge. The letter won't be outside or exposed to much wear-and-tear, humidity or touching.

Cleo tore the Decopatch paper up onto small pieces and then applied Mod Podge using a brush or her fingers. She smoothed the paper nicely around the paper mache letter.



Cleo is seven, and her letter turned out quite lovely. Her younger sister is three and she could have done this project as well, but Nora is quite finicky about getting her hands sticky. Cleo shares my love of textures, even goopy, sticky, gluey ones! Nora provided lots of advice and offered wet towels about every two minutes.

The project was finished just in time to get dressed for school. I hope you are enjoying your snowy days!

All materials and supplies are available on line here. The paper mache letters are not listed on our website, but you can contact the store and we are happy to ship any letters or words to you. Good luck on your next snow day.

Nora's Chocolate Shop

My daughter, Nora, has a game she plays almost daily. She makes chocolates out of play-clay and puts them in these empty Escazu chocolate boxes and papers we always seem to have lying around. She then sets it all up and I have to come make a purchase. We discuss which of her sweets are dark chocolate and which are milk chocolate. Which are spicy. Which are filled with nuts. I have to call her Danielle as that is the owner of the chocolate shop we frequent. Nora tells me to have a nice day and then I pretend to eat the play-clay treats. If I am too enthusiastic about pretending to eat them, Nora reminds me that they are not real. Since her previous career aspiration was to be a cat, I am excited about this current turn.

Changes at Panopolie

We are adding a second classroom at Panopolie. We are doing this with a half-wall made of shelving and some curtains and a bit of this-and-that. It will look great when we are finished and it will allow us to have more private parties (a big deal, especially in the winter months) and classes at our largest store. It also means that we get to rearrange the entire store. I am saying 'we' but what I really mean is 'Tracey and her staff' as the store manager is the one doing all the work. I get to pop in and say helpful things like 'please move that entire display seven inches to the left' or something else just as annoying and nit-picky. I am pretty sure that Tracey does not like having her nits picked, but she is so good at her job that, honestly, I don't get to do much picking! My main contribution to this endeavor so far is saying yes and providing new furniture from my magic supply of flea market goodies. There will be some heavy lifting required, thankfully my business partner (a.k.a. my husband!) will be able to handle that with ease.

We are going to have a family day at the store this Friday and do the bulk of the heavy work. Yes, that means that I will be there with my husband and both children. It is a family business, and that means that sometimes the girls get to help dad and mom drill holes in the walls and hang up fancy chandeliers. They love it, don't worry that they are being worked too much. The girls do a small amount of work and then pretend either to be customers or store workers. The games are similar; if they are customers they go around with baskets and fill them up with beads and supplies. Then the girls like to give me the baskets and switch to pretending to be store staff. I pretend to be their supervisor and tell them that we have a new shipment that just came in and it needs to be put out. They walk around the store and 'restock' the items they put in the basket just a few minutes ago. Sometimes we have very serious-sounding conversations about reordering items or mailing items to customers. If you see me giving instructions to a six year old to pull an order for the website, you will know this game is going on. Do me a favor, ask the six year old to help you find the Toho beads, that will make her very happy.

Mother's Day

We celebrated Mother's Day in one of the best ways possible; we played in the garden all day. I weeded and trimmed, and my husband worked all day to make me a new coop for my chickens. Since the old coop is a 80+ year old shed that is past rickety this is such a swanky upgrade for the hens. The tin roof and the wire mesh came off the old coop and aviary, as did the door!

My mother started a tradition when I was in high school of asking her teens to spend all day on Mother's Day working in her garden. For her it was a great way to get big projects done with a minimum of griping and we teenagers loved the fact that it was a 'free' gift. Screened porches got painted, fish ponds cleaned, bushes dug out and replaced, trees trimmed. We had a good time and began looking forward each year to the day and the work we'd do. My own husband joined in the work when he was still only a boyfriend and he worked so hard my mom told me he was a keeper! Now I get to enjoy the same day in the garden, although my own daughters pitch in at their own scale; they make sand cakes, or have wagon races or make fairy houses in the bushes for me. Someday they'll cut down a tree or repaint the lawn furniture, but not yet.

My daughters played so joyfully in the garden all day, friends came and went and all had a good time. The children were giggling and laughing so hard and we periodically brought out new snacks or beverages to keep them going. In the late afternoon my neighbor showed up with paints and paper and we all sat at the picnic table and made paintings. I realized about 20 minutes into the process that some of the paint my youngest was mostly finger painting with was acrylic paint, not fingerpaint. A l-o-o-o-n-g soak in the tub got her squeeky clean and I am not going to think for even one second about what substances are responsible for those intense colors in the paintings she made!

The new chicken coop is almost finished. The perch and feeder need installed, the water can hung at just the right height. Over the summer we'll add a small enclosed room for winter, new perches and maybe even a sliding hen door to the yard. My whole family be at the Henside the Beltline Coop Tour this weekend, checking out all the fancy and regular coops and maybe next year we'll put our new coop on the tour. The girls will be ready with the sand cakes.

The Henside the Beltline Tour de Coop is Saturday, May 16th from 10-4. You can come pick up a map at Ornamentea on Saturday; bring a few cans of food or a cash donation for Urban Ministries food pantry. More information can be found here.

Getting Ready for CHA

I am off to the Craft and Hobby Association trade show this weekend. It's a big show with aisles and aisles of cake decorating gear, scrapbooking supplies, knitting yarns, sewing do-dads, model trains, fine art supplies; if it's crafty, it's there. The show is HUGE and overwhelming but also really fun. I like looking over a big display from a company that makes nothing but snaps or specialty styrofoam shapes and wonder at the possibilities.

This year I am excited but I am also a bit nervous. I haven't traveled away from my girls in a long time; I have actually never been apart from Nora for more than a day. She's going to be o.k.; she has her favorite person (Dad) and her second favorite person (her big sis) but still...I am trying to talk to the girls about going away on 'my trip for work' in a matter-of-fact manner and since Cleo is now six that is easy. Six year olds are all about matter-of-fact.

me: I will fly on a big airplane.
Nora: why you fly on a big airplane, not a tiny airplane? (Nora's favorite word is 'tiny')
me: because California is really far away and I need to fly on a big plane to get there
Cleo: Mom, California is not really far away, it's right next to the Pacific Ocean. China and India are really far away, California is just on the other side of the country.
Nora: (excited!) Yeah! Mom, you can take a tiny airplane! A teeny tiny one with a mommy airplane next to it.
me: (gulp!) yep, I can check into that, maybe I will try to ride on the mommy airplane.
Cleo: (disgusted) there's no such thing as mommy airplanes, machines don't have mommies

what I am really thinking is that it is WAY too far away...too far for kisses and finding dolly shoes and making banana animals. But then I realized that Cleo's world is big enough to have places further than the ones I am headed to and that is a good thing...it makes me seem like I am not so far away.

The second thing that makes me nervous is my wardrobe. Stop laughing. You know you'd be doing the same thing. I have so few outfits that make me feel 100% great and none of them are warm climate trade show appropriate. I know there is probably some How To Attend A Trade Show site out there that recommends 'comfortable clothes' and suggests jeans and a tee shirt but honestly, that would make me feel like a slob. Business suits would work, but I don't have ANY or the appropriate accessories. I am shallow enough that I like to have a consistent look day-to-day at the trade shows so that I can carry the same tote bag. I have been turning my closet inside out with attempts to find the 'perfect' outfits and I even visited my friends at Galatea and bought one new, soon-to-be-favorite outfit. I think I might lay it all out on the bed tonight and make my husband give me his opinion. That will make him want me to go far away so I stop obsessing about what to wear.

Snow!

We just MIGHT have snow here tomorrow. This is big news for us in the land of cotton and sweet potatoes. I grew up in Ohio and in my first few years down South I was a bit mocking of the local tendency to run to the grocery at the first rumor of a flake but now that I have acclimated, I love it. A snowfall of any measureable amount will fill the streets in my neighborhood with sliders and skaters and walkers of all kinds out to gawk at even a minor change in the familiar landscape. We meet and greet and chat and laugh. It is a day off, a holiday. I have to say that I am now the first in my family to cross my fingers and wear my lucky shirt when snow is predicted.

This is a dilemma, though, with the stores. We may be able to get to work, but then again, if my Southern Belle staff can't drive themselves to work and my customers shouldn't do we really need to be open? Beads aren't medicine. Fancy ribbons aren't food. You don't need what we sell. I tend to embrace the day off and take it for the gift it is. I play with my children, take walks, sometimes do a bit of work at the studio table if time permits. I know that there are customers who think it's funny; we hear a lot of the 'well, I am from New Jersey and we never thought to close for two inches of snow!' but I just say, hey, you are not in New Jersey anymore. Put on some warm socks and ask your neighbor to teach you how to make a decent biscuit. The rest of us are going to go for a walk and act like fools in all this snow.

These photos are from an ancient snow event...that's my Nora Lou, barely seven months old but sticking her tongue out to try to catch a snowflake as she watched her big sis do the same. Those riding toys are in our backyard; one of my many follies indulged by the husband years before the girls were part of our family. Then the toys were 'Yard Art' and ridden only by tipsy, adult partygoers, now they are ridden frequently by smaller, gigglier jockeys. I hope I get to take some new pictures tomorrow. My fingers are crossed.

Makes my heart sing...

I had a little company in the studio. The girls just got to work on their own beading projects. After a few minutes I just sat down there with them...

The work of a toddler

Nora, peeling a carrot for bedtime snack tonight.

Oats! Mom's little secret...

It is summer and we are having a very relaxed time. We didn't do any camps or lessons or organized activities at all. For the most part, it's been great. We have gardened and drawn, felted and sewn, read book after book and played a million games of dress-up. Some days, today for instance, I would have given my fingernails for a giant glittery camp fairy to show up and transport my crabby children to riding lessons or cooking camp or even to story time at the library with a patient baby sitter so I could just, please, cook dinner or make a phone call or even pee by myself. Today the giant glittery fairy did not show up. I asked my two year old "What can you and your sister do that will be quiet and fun?" and she said, in her infinite two-year-old wisdom "play with oats." Yep, that is about a cup of dried oats being measured and spooned and even eaten. You can't see me peacefully chopping squash, folding socks and dancing to some music. You also can't see the carpet that is covered in oats, but trust me, it was worth it.

If you see that glittery camp fairy, tell her I don't need her after all.

Fine Art, Popsicles and Bad Mommy

We had our opening at Locopops Thursday night. The paintings were very well received. The critics were, you could say, impressed. Or they were just enjoying their pops.

The funniest thing was the expression on all the faces of the 'regular' Locopops customers who were a bit confused watching us all talk about the paintings.

After the opening we adjourned to a nearby establishment (the Player's Retreat, we are that kind of swanky gals) for drinks and french fries. In this picture you have proof that I am a bad mommy. Nora has a glazed expression on her face caused by her watching Mollie eat a whole plate of french fries. Or that expression could say 'gee, my mommy fed me three pops and now french fries in a bar-what's next?'

The next day she ate a balanced diet with no fried foods, took two naps and played with wholesome, handmade toys all day. Not a pop was had.

*we all love the PR as it is the place Janet used to get drunk, the place Libby used to work, the place Galen used to love to play darts and many, many more reasons.

Getting time away from the business...

I was looking at the photos tonight. We did have a great time on our vacation. Nora learned to blow bubbles:




























I decorated my friend Charles' hat with a big felt flower that made it very warm:





























Cleo did some really brave waterfall exploring. She was up a bit too high for Mom's comfort level but I restrained the voice in my heart that wanted to shout "watch out, you'll slip" and she did just fine.





























I did some very simple and very pleasing (to me) stitching to some of my assortment of thrift store sweaters.
























My husband, Galen, even finished his own crafty project. Watch out, folks, next thing you know he'll be helping you at the work table. As long as your project is finishing a leather craft kit from 1976 you'll be in good hands.

























We had such a great time, it was relaxing and easy and now, after being home for 6 days we are caught up on the laundry and have unpacked and put away everything, even the beads and paint and paper. I am still finding pine needles in odd places, but that could go on for months.

Since my husband and I both work in the business it is hard to take time off in a big chunk. If you work for someone else there is a sense (at least there was for me) that my vacation was owed to me. Even if I had things to do, I still was fine leaving when my time off was scheduled. When you work for yourself there is not that sense of someone owing you anything. There is, instead, a sense of you owing time and energy to the business, the staff, the customers. At least, for me there is. We are also always so far behind what we would like to have accomplished that there is a big sense of being too busy to take off. There is always something you could be doing to make the business better. Our list ranges from cleaning the gutters at the store to creating sample boards to finding a new, better supplier for something we need. Our good friends, Charles (with the adorned hat) and his wife, Nancy, were the ones that first proposed this annual trip and we just booked it in the hazy glow of January. That's why this trip works. We book it so far in advance. We can't back out or get too busy, we go. In the end, the gutters wouldn't have been cleaned even if we had stayed home that week. If you are in business for yourself, how do you make yourself take time off? How do you keep yourself operating at a sane level throughout the year?

Cleaning off the studio table

This is what my studio table looks like today. 9:15 a.m. I am going to excavate the wooden surface somewhere below all that crafty goodness TODAY. I am packing for our annual week-long cabin trip where I always take way, way too much in the way of craft supplies. This year I am planning on taking:

*journalling and book arts supplies to work on our vacation journal
*crochet hooks and yarn to help Cleo with her crocheting
*embroidery floss and a few garments that could use a patch or decoration to spruce them up (but no sewing machine or embellishing machine, do you see the restraint I am practicing?)
*wool roving and pipe cleaners and beads and ribbon to make felt fairies (oh, and I have to pop by the store and get a bunch of replacement needles for the felting tools, too since I will be teaching new felters to use them)

I know I will drop a few more items into the box as I am packing. Actually, just now as I am typing this Cleo and Nora are going through the markers making a can of 'going on vacation' markers. Ok, so add paper and children's scissors and a few glue sticks...

Anyway, look for a post tomorrow with the CLEANED OFF table. I may add a few pics of some of the other attractive areas in my studio as a treat.

Breaking down at the Bead Show

We did the Jane's Fiber and Bead show here in Raleigh this weekend. We had a great time, with our usual crazy booth with the parasols way up in the air and mix-matched table skirts. We handed out 325 cloth tote bags to show attendees and I met a bunch of beadfreaks who wore their shirts. It was really fun. Nora and Cleo helped us set up on Saturday and came for the break down too. In response to the many folks who have emailed me or told me they want to see 'more Nora' I am posting a couple of pictures of her today. Got that, Shirley? Here is a photo of Nora really enjoying a giant cookie (vegan, she can't do butter) and then there's another one of her saying "car inside, car inside!" as she watched one of the other vendors drive their van in to load up. That was probably her favorite part. Wait, no, the cookie was her favorite part.

Why are we handing out cloth tote bags? Well, I realized last year that I could take a bit of the money we were spending on display advertising in the national publications and put it toward these tote bags instead. The bags go to beaders or crafters and are just perfect to fold up and keep in your purse. They'll replace disposable bags and are a great reminder of your favorite hobby (and favorite bead store!)Really, the big magazines won't miss my little ads every now and then and the folks who get the totes do seem to appreciate them. I have seen them in use at the library and the grocery store, so I know they are getting used.

The one thing about the bead shows that really makes me scratch my head is that I always hear folks saying "I didn't know there was a bead store in Raleigh." Huh? You took the time to come to a bead show and you haven't, say, opened a phone book and looked under 'beads' yet? That confuses me. Do folks really say, "Oh, bead show in town, I haven't ever thought of beads until just this minute. Here I go!" Do they?

Felted play mat fun

It's cold outside and we made the most delicious egg noodle soup today. Cleo mixed the eggs and flour and rolled the noodles out all by herself. She cut them too, which is why we had a big mix of sizes and shapes. While the soup was cooking, we worked on our felted play mats. I have been really inspired by the recent issue of Living Crafts but we made our play mats using the pre-made felt sheets and the Clover needle felting tools.

You can see we did tiny streams, bushes and bridges. Trolls can live under the bridges and we even put a few fish in one of the streams. Cleo did a lot of felting on hers, Nora did too but I took all the needles out of the Clover tool and she just went crazy pressing it into the felt mat, the floor, her sister. She loved it. My husband walked into the room and said "Um, I am pretty sure you did something to that to make it o.k. for my nineteen-month-old to use it on the couch, right?" He's come a long way.

When you felt images like this onto a sheet you use just little bits of the roving. It is very economical. Also, as a good friend told me you just can't make anything ugly with wool. It somehow always looks good when you are done.


































How did we make those fabulous egg noodles? Here's the recipe. No measurements, don't freak out, you just can't mess these up.

beat two eggs until mixed

add enough flour to make a ball of dough (stir it with a big wooden spoon and if you want to be just like Cleo talk a lot about how we don't eat raw eggs but raccoons do)

divide the ball into four equal dough balls, roll in flour

put a dough ball onto a floured table, roll out until it's about 1/4 an inch thick and cut into strips with a table knife

put all the cut noodles into some broth cooked with celery, carrots, corn, spinach, onions and lots of garlic, add salt to taste and cook for 10 minutes

YUM!

NOTE: as of 12/20/2008 we no longer sell these felt sheets. Sorry, they were swell but we had to import them in giant quantities from the Kingdom of Nepal and they just didn't sell very well. We no longer have any in stock. Try sheet felt from high-quality upholstery stores.

free class went well

Ahh, so I taught a free class on Friday night. We have a free class once a month and I used to teach it all the time but this is the first one I have taught since Nora was born. It was fun, I taught a project from the book and used the directions. The folks that signed up were brave, they had no idea what the project was as I can't show photos of the book projects yet...Everyone's project looked pretty good. It was a bracelet with dapped filigree and a cabochon set into the filigree. I went home and made a few changes to the directions based on the input from Nancy and Elizabeth and other folks in the class.
If you have your own store, I recommend teaching a free class every now and then. I get a different group in the class than our usual registrants. Some take it 'cause it's free, some like the idea of a 'surprise' class (we don't announce the free classes with much lead time at all so you have to register QUICK!) and some folks will come out just because I call them and talk them into it. Not matter what, it's a fun way to spend a Friday night.
These pics are of Nora offering me some assistance today on the book. As you can see, she is already eager to bead.

Crowns!

Ha ha! I had so much fun on Saturday. I made a crown with my friends Laurel and Denita. We hung out in the back room at the store and just went nuts with the glitter, velvet leaves, wire, birds, feathers, charms, tiny hands and everything else. We took up the whole giant table that we usually have 8-10 people use for classes. It was a tremendous mess...
Here is Nora looking like a little wood pixie in Laurel's Autumn Queen crown. She loved it. Denita made a Glittery Queen crown with a bird and velvet leaves-and a glittery chicken wire armature! I made a Queen of Dreams crown that is a bit, um, dark. It does have tiny disembodied hands...but I liked it!
We are going to have a crown making slumber party at Panopolie. I am so excited thinking about all the other types of crowns we can make...oh, we were inspired by this book and it will be in at both stores really soon...

Amy's Dragonflies

Our power went out in a big storm tonight and I tried to put two really hot children to bed for about an hour until magic daddy showed up and somehow got the big one down so peacefully. We had been sitting and sweating first in the big bed, then in the living room, then on the porch, then back in the living room. I swear, right before he got home I was trying to figure out how we could all lay with our heads down on the tile in the bathroom.

After he got home I went for a walk with baby N and let the dark and the crickets lull her to sleep. She loves flying insects and we saw a moth under a neighbors (working) porch light and she went nuts. She calls all flying creatures 'pitterfies' but it made me think that a nice flying dragonfly might be just the thing to add to her above-the-changing-table menagerie.

I saw these at the Crafter's Flea Market and got busy and didn't get back to buy one or seventeen. Imagine a whole tree filled with these? ahh...

Visit Amy's site and see more of her dragonflies.

Katie Hacker mentioned me!

in her blog...

check it out!

wow, she's pretty famous here in the bead world so now I am feeling pretty fancy.

Ok, gotta go read a book and change a diaper!

watching my demented troll

It's four in the morning. For some reason, Nora has decided that she must, Must, MUST be awake and wandering the house at this hour. We have a good friend visiting and our house is small so in the interest of maximum quiet I am sitting here in a dark living room while she wanders around commenting on the objects she can pick up and identify in the inky room. No lights. I don't want to wake her up. She is cackling like a troll. I kid you not.

Here is a picture of her in the daytime. Although she's cute in her jammies I couldn't work the camera at this hour if I tried. She is changing the invisible diaper on that dolly and saying 'pans, pans, pans' which is her version of pants.

Walk for the Cure - Team Beadfreak!

We had a great time at the walk today and it was fabulous to see so many people there. We got up early and Cleo decided on matching pink dots for her and her baby sister. You can see they were still a little sleepy as they ate their bagels!Galen and I walked the one-mile fun walk with the girls and with Heidi, Mark, Spencer and Heidi's mom, Penny. Penny is a two year survivor of breast cancer and one of the inspirations for Team Beadfreak this year. We also walked for Michelle, Jayne, Denise and so many of our family, friends and customers.

Here is Penny walking over the finish line!
I didn't ever see any of the other team members, they were all walking or running the 5K and that group was HUGE. We watched them taking off from the starting line for about 30 minutes. I will post some photos here later when I get them. Those pink tank tops were LOST in the general color of the day. Cleo said 'this is just a big pink walk!'
If you didn't yet get a chance to donate to team Beadfreak, you can click here to go to Libby's donation page. Somehow, she sent her donation page link out to everyone, so my family and friends all donated to her. It made me look really slack, but it all goes to the same cause. Libby was our team captain, too, so in addition to getting all the donation credit she also got a gold pin that says team captain...we may make her wear it at work every day!