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fashion smashion

Truth be told, I lack the fundage to delve into fashion to the degree that I'd like but I do love to shop and definitely have a look that is my own. You know you have a look when friends and family are always pointing out things and saying "that's totally a shirt/skirt/dress". When that article of clothing is something that you like too, it's pretty flattering to hear.

So I've been experimenting with Polyvore. Head on over if you want to know more about it. The very fashionable author of (Into) the Fray has been posting about it for a little while and she is definitely exemplary in her style. I hope I look half as cute in my clothes as she does in hers.

Anyway I made my first set and I think it really is representative of the sort of things that I'd wear on any given day. Not very exciting but definitely an accurate reflection of me (if you know me). I'm going to experiment more - it's fun and I can put together things that I'd wear in my fantasy world where I'd never be judged for taking risks with my style.

Here's the set if you are too lazy to click thru:

thoughtful work wear by reesemcg

stockings

I whipped up some Christmas stockings last weekend in an effort to try and make it look festive in our house. We don't have a tree because I'm paranoid about Fenix trying to climb it and potentially pulling it down on himself -- not worth the anxiety!

So we hung garland over the the doorway, wreaths on our front door and in another spot inside, and the stockings are hanging above the mantle.

The stockings were really easy to make. I bought a yard of blue and gray felt and a quarter of burgundy felt along with a spool of burgundy satin ribbon. I drew the pattern freehand on a big sheet of paper and then used my Olfa rotary cutter with a scalloped blade to cut out the pieces of fabric.

I cut the letters freehand and then stitched those onto the blue front panel first. Then I stitched the front and back panels together with a regular old top stitch - sandwiching a strip of ribbon folded in half between the two to make a little loop for hanging.

I finished it off by making a pompom from some variegated scrap yarn that happened to match perfectly!

Here they are, waiting to be filled:

Birthday shout out from Ohdeedoh

One of our favorite blogs, Apartment Therapy's Ohdeedoh, posted a birthday shout out for Fenix today.

Check it out here!

christmas comes early

I gave J one of his bday gifts a little early (his actual bday is 12/15). we had decided to hijack the tail end of Fenix's party to celebrate J's birthday as well. Our friends were giving him gifts so I decided to give him his big gift (a Wii). I guess he got caught up in all of the gift giving so he gave me one of my Christmas gifts early.

These wooden hoops from Leviticus Jewelry:


I love them! They feel so light on your ears - I kept touching my earlobes all through the next day to be sure that they hadn't fallen out.

Now that I have these it's kinda piqued my interest in other wooden jewelry items. Check out some of these:

from etsy seller carpedraco


from etsy seller ZsBcreations


from etsy seller effiehandmade

Happy Birthday Fenix!

This birthday wish comes a day late because I was busy preparing for and celebrating Fenix's 1st birthday yesterday. It was a really terrific party. He was so happy and appreciative - couldn't stop smiling.

In Fenix's honor, here are some pics from the first days and a couple from the party:

brand new:


1 month:


6 months:


a year old!:

surely it is made from solid gold

I was browsing Ohdeedoh and I came across this post about Lisa Mahar the owner of Kid O.
The post featured photos of her beautiful town house and links back to an article on New York Social Diary about her. I'm not too jazzed about her points of view but I definitely see some value in a few of the things that she had to say.

One thing that really caught my attention was this photo of her children's beds:


I love the simple design of this bed! Your toddler can't fall out because of the high walls, the entire unit is very low to the ground and on casters so it can be easily moved. Upon further investigation I found that the bed is sold online at Generate. All for the low, low price of $1399.00.

Why does a little kid need a $1400 bed?! I'll never know. I asked J how much it would cost for him to make a replica and he said about $200. Ridiculous. Fenix is getting the homemade replica.

shopaholics of the world, unite and take over

We were out doing a bit of retail therapy today. After visiting my friend in her cute home I got inspired to work a little bit more at making our home look inviting and warm.

After Fenix came we really got lazy and stopped putting any effort into making things look nicer around the house. It's terrible and it really shows.

So today we went out and did a bit of shopping. The primary goal of the trip was to purchase a gift for Fenix's first birthday. We got something very awesome for him but I'll post a picture of it when I write about his birthday party (next weekend!).

I also stopped at Anthropologie to see what goodies were on sale and I was definitely pleased with what I found.

Dishes marked down from $10 each to $1.95:


I also picked up some really beautiful tea towels to replace our generic, dingy ones and a ceramic citrus reamer because we broke our old one - all deeply discounted.

After Anthro we moved on to World Market where we picked up a loveseat (also a sleeper sofa!) for just $399. It matches the sofa that we already have and it will fill the void left by the large and uncomfortable leather chair that we recently sold on Craigslist.

I still have a bit of shopping to do - a few things to put in Fee's and J's stocking, presents for J and our friends and a few more items like new throw pillows and a less intrusive coffee table but that'll all have to wait til the next paycheck! Feel free to share your sale finds in the comments section. Happy shopping!

How was your holiday?

We just got back from Portland this afternoon. Our thanksgiving dinner was a demonstration in excess. We also managed to work bacon into almost every single dish which is both deplorable and magnificent, no? Portland is such a great city, I can really see us living there.

So we brought the dogs down and they had a good time too though Noodle managed to o.d. on wild mushrooms and got violently ill in the house. That was disgusting, sad and funny all at the same time. On Friday we went down to the Pearl to do some shopping. I had high hopes to buy some cute clothes or housewares but everything I loved was too expensive (what a surprise :-/). We ended Friday night with drinks and several rounds of pool at a new lounge in Alberta called Soi Cowboy - the space is cute, the bartender is friendly and the food is very delicious.

That about sums up our holiday. I hope yours was full of good food and good times.
In parting I leave you with a pictorial review of the weekend:

noodle wearing rudi's wig:

on a nature walk:

fenix, ready to put away some turkey:

do me a solid, huh?

hey all,

please do me a favor TODAY... go here and vote for David Cameron. he's one of the talented authors of the USSMariner blog, which has been a faithful companion of mine for many, many years. He's got the chance for a $10,000 scholarship and for a dude that's currently in school, that's a big deal.

please please please go here and vote for David Cameron today, before the voting closes. do it from work and again from home if you can!

thanks all,
j

hand made, mcg made

photo: me knitting a baby hat whilst still pregnant, august 2007

So apparently handmade gifts are super trendy this year. I'm feeling kinda good about this because it's always been really important for us to put a personal touch on the gifts that we give to our loved ones.

My friends are very creative people and I feel lucky to have received handmade gifts from them. But the good news is that you don't have to be creative to make nice handmade gifts. They can be really easy and in most cases none of it requires a lot of work or money to execute.

Last year we gave away homemade vanilla extract, pregnant belly salve, lip balm, infused whiskey, rosemary limoncello, change purses made from upcycled leather, mulling spices (for wine or cider), and things knit by me

This year we plan to give away more whiskey and mulling spices to folks that didn't get any last year as well as more hand knit and home sewn items.

What are you making this year?

Another sweet Modish giveaway!

I've been a Modish fan for quite awhile now. They have giveaways on the regular and the handmade loot in these packages is always pretty fabulous.

Look at all of this awesome stuff:


This month features a two part giveaway the first of which has already been posted here.
I urge you to go check it out and follow the instructions to make an entry. Maybe you'll win! Oh and while you're at it, add Modish to your RSS reader.

To get you motivated I'll leave you with a photo of my sweet child hamming it up for the camera.

it's over!

let's see... what else we got? there's so much in the news today. how about this
great slideshow of front page of many newspapers....

did you vote?

We did!
Now it's your turn. Then go get your free stuff including this from Babeland.

I found it!

the evolution of our home digital storage system continues, with some significant progress made over the weekend. i was even able to find the pic I referenced earlier.

now go vote!

Happy Halloween!

from an extremely uncooperative gnome named Fenix...

updates and such

So a lot has been happening over the last two weeks. I haven't talked about it much because frankly it was a lot to process and I've been pretty emotional about it.

The company where I was working laid off most of the people on my team. This came as a devastating surprise to some people while others were just happy to get severance pay and the time off to aggressively look for another job. I would have been cut too but as it turns out I gave my notice just one week prior so the layoffs afforded me a much needed week long break in between jobs. Oh yes I guess I didn't mention that on a positive note, I got a new job!

I'm really excited about my new job but I should also let you know that now I am a full time employee. This is the only downside really. That and the fact that my awesome friend no longer works there and I was REALLY looking forward to sharing a work environment with her - but that is a story for another day. Anyway, I've been having some real sadness about being away from Fenix for 5 days a week. I know a lot of parents do it - hell, J has been doing it since Fee was 2 weeks old! But I... I just always envisioned that I'd be a SAHM and now I'm not and frankly it sucks. I know with time I'll feel better about it. I know that Fenix is doing great with his daycare provider (she is WONDERFUL). And I know that financially this is really the right decision for us as far as planning for the future is concerned.

So with all of that said I will say that I am thankful for the time that I did spend with Fenix at home. This has been the best 11 months of my whole life.

not disgusting vegan cookies

In spite of my obsession with eating high quality, non-processed foods, I really do not have any desire to ever be vegan. I have done it in the past and I was miserable. I thoroughly enjoy things made with eggs and dairy and can't see myself giving them up unless prompted to do so by circumstances beyond my control. The thought that I'd never have real cheese or yogurt again is too much for me to properly contemplate.

So anyway I know someone that works hard to be a good vegan and so I decided to bake some cookies for her. In the past I've had vegan cookies and they run the gamut from totally inedible to pretty damn delicious. The best vegan cookies that I've had were peanut butter cookies so I thought I'd go with a recipe for those since they have a reasonably high chance of turning out great.

And so I set out to find a good recipe - as it turns out 101 Cookbooks has a decent selection of vegan options so I went with the peanut butter cookie recipe that I found there.

The dough is pretty loose so I did refrigerate it as recommended in the recipe notes. I also experimented with using a variety of cookie cutters both large and small. I found that peanut butter cookies are pretty rich so it's best to keep the cookies on the small side.

I sprinkled some with sanding sugar before they went in the oven and that gave the finished cookies a nice crunch. The texture of the cookies is soft and dense but not at all crumbly or chewy. I froze half of the dough right away and am looking forward to spontaneously baking up a pan full to cure some future late night cookie jonesing.

then vs. now

ok, so, um, at 5 days...



and at ten months...



he's quadrupled in weight since birth! wow.

hey baby...

fenix can't go from sitting to standing without flipping over to his front and crawling forward until he finds something to pull himself up on. so... during a photo shoot today he was flipping over and I saw - I hoped - for a shot to develop... so I waited, at the ready... and not only did the shot materialize, but I snapped it right when i wanted to and the exposure and all that was right. the result? hey, baby... check it out: