fancy fancy

Bee and I had another girly day. Our local bookstore had a Fancy Nancy party for little ladies in out community. It was exquisite (that's a fancy word for great). About 35 ecstatic little girls showed up, most dressed up Fancy Nancy style (ecstatic is a fancy word for excited). I was the only mama dressed up and Bee was the only one with Posh Puppy with her, but we are just fancy like that. The girls played a fancy bingo game, went on a scavenger hunt for different colored rose petals, listened to a Fancy Nancy story, and had muffins for snacks. They made a few crafts- decorated paper plate flowers, decorated paper bows, and decorated paper sacks with stickers, crepe paper, and ribbons. Bee and I even made a new friend who we plan to get together with to have some fancy summer play dates.

end of the rainbow

I went to this new-to-me fabric shop in Dunedin, called Rainbows End. Ahhhhhhh..... that's the sound the heavenly angels made when the kids and I walked in. There were rows and rows of fabric as far as the end could see. Next to the rows, they had additional baskets of fabric bolts. Here is a picture from their website.

They had designer fabric I've only seen online, high end stuff, affordable stuff, just everything I could have been looking for. They had a little toy area for the kids so I could be free to browse at my leisure. When I thought I had explored the whole store, I discovered an opening in the wall that led to an entire additional section of the store as big as the first, full of more fabric! It was overwhelming, but in a really good, you're in fabric heaven kind of way. I could have bought a hundred different cuts, but settled on three, two prints and one boring solid.



I have already made Bee a top with two of the pieces, and don't have a plan yet for the pink flowered. I apparently am not very good at matching up prints, I want to be, I just couldn't settle on cooridnating prints. They even have fabrics grouped together, I just could not commit. I will need to take someone with me next time who is good with print matching.



***As a side note, while searching online for a link to the shop, I found this picture of an actual end of a rainbow.... that can't be real, right?

edited to add: A quick google search and a stop at wikipedia has taught me this.... I thought it was something like that.

"The Irish leprechaun's secret hiding place for his pot of gold is usually said to be at the end of the rainbow. This place is impossible to reach, because the rainbow is an optical effect which depends on the location of the viewer. When walking towards the end of a rainbow, it will move further away."

What is that?

yep, I let my kids play video games this afternoon, and got a super good laugh out of it. I am not a fan of video games per se (is that how you spell that?) and we don't have a video game system, but we do have this joy stick (is that how you spell that?) that has old Atari games in it. I got it one year for Christmas and it spends most of the time closed up in a cabinet. The kiddos and I were playing board games this afternoon and Bee wanted the 'adult' game cabinet (it's not as scandalous as it sounds, I just don't want anybody to eat my pieces for master detective clue and Lou is pretty sure the stones that go with my mancala game are candy- plus that is where I store the past 6 years worth of family fun magazines). I don't know who spotted it, but they were pretty sure that this game controller could and should plug in somewhere. They seemed confused by the graphics, and frankly they made me laugh too. There was one game with a little duck trying to cross the road and not get hit my a car, it took all three of us to figure out what the yellow thing was. It was the favorite game since if you were hit by the car you just bounced back and could keep going. Do you have a favorite video game? ...bonus points if you can name the game on screen in the first picture, it was my favorite when we had an Atari.

free gift with your order

Free gift from my etsy shop if your order something in the next two weeks (through Tuesday, May 9th). Mention this coupon 'code' in the note to seller section: "Hocus Pocus." Bee came up with that one! Free gift is a lovely produce sack.

activity books

I saw this idea for little activity books over at 4 crazy kings and marked it for another day. I keep waiting for these ad booklets to come in the mail again, but last night I decided to just go ahead and make one on fresh paper. I actually ended up making 3! Bee is crazy for them now! Here are some pages from the activity book I sent her to bed with last night. We ended up with folding, finish the picture (flowers, princess, clown, house, bear, pumpkin, cake, balloons, tree, window), matching (socks and fish), mazes, and connect the dots (I tried some with letters and numbers but that just confused Bee).

roarrrrrr

I have a roaring lion at my house and it's all because of a new shirt. I mentioned that we went to IKEA recently. A new store just opened in our area and we made our maiden voyage. It was overwhelming to say the least. It was way too crowded but full of wonderful things I could have spent hours looking at. Next time I'll go back during the week and possibly without the kiddos. I did buy some fabric.



I used the bright flowers and dots on the left for a slouch bag, made a birthday gift out of the two center fabrics and a shirt for Lou out of the kid print on the right. I have several ideas for the kid print, but have only finished the lion shirt.

I used some iron on wonder under stuff on the lion area, cut out the lion, and ironed him onto Lou's paint stained shirt. Finally, I sewed on the machine a nice little outline. I added a few leaves to cover some additional paint. Lou had a super good time wearing it today and spent most of the day roaring! We had a rather messy dinner and I think we may need some additional cover up work if all the sauce doesn't wash out!

go boy go

We have a new animal rescuer in our house. Lou's doll, Boy, apparently was in need of a backpack. Either that, or Lou was stalling bedtime. I was working on a Diego pack for an order and just made a tiny little version just the right size for Boy. He is currently carrying around a toy frog and a spool of thread. Going to make a zip line...? It's hard to say.

Boy came from etsy this past Christmas as a gift from my mom and has been a dear friend to Lou. The creator of Boy was Dragonfly's Hollow. She was so sweet to work with and really helped make Boy just how I wanted him. I just really love etsy, not just because I sell stuff there, but it makes really great handcrafted items available to everyone. I certainly wouldn't have found this super sweet mom of 6 (5 to 14 years old) in TN who makes such lovely natural toys without etsy.

cake in a cup

Hubby came home with an idea for dessert. He had gotten one of those email forwards which described how to make cake in a mug. Lou did not take a nap today, so he went to bed super early, like 5:45 early! Hubby, Bee and I were free to make some after dinner cake, in a mug, in the microwave.

5 minute cake in a mug

4 T flour
4 T sugar
3 T oil
3 T milk
3 T chocolate chips (optional)
Egg
Cocoa powder
1 t vanilla
Mix dry ingredients in mug. Add wet ingredients. 3 minutes in microwave.

Hubby stares down the cake as it overflows from the mug.

I insisted we put it on a plate in the microwave, I was not confident that it wouldn't overflow.

I dumped it out so it could cool better.

Not the prettiest, but it was decent. We ate it without complaining! I make a really good chocolate cake, but it doesn't get made in a mug and takes way more than five minutes. Poor Lou didn't get any cake, and doesn't even know we had this fun time baking.