Back To The Drawing Board

The last time I posted, it took so long that I drew my empty teacup and my mesquite chocolate chip cookie while I was waiting. And then I waited some more. Not my best drawing, but I was interrupted by some late-night revelers (my children) and had to go regulate. Then I lost interest in the drawing and just wanted to eat the cookie. And that's the end of this story. I know what you're thinking...not ANOTHER construction workers drawing. But this one, ladies and gentlemen, is different. I was lucky enough to be parked at such an angle that the building actually LOOKS like a building. And I had to preserve the moment. You can see windows, and even doors. The sad thing is that construction workers are rather boring. They just sort of walk around and point to things and argue with eachother. Which is exactly was these two guys are doing (guy #2 is the round hat you see at the bottom middle of the page. I ran out of room). But the good news is I have decided not to draw them anymo...

Mireia has gotten back into the habit of wearing things like her 2 piece bathing suit and sleeveless dresses around the house. It's way to cold for that here. So I decided to suck it up and finish making the dress I started for her last year in the middle of the blizzards. She picked out the material herself, so don't be too hard on her. After all, she was only 1.  This year she decided it absolutely needed lace at the bottom so I added some for her. As excited as she initially was about the dress, she was really upset when I tried to get her to wear it instead of her Tinkerbell costume. Hence the unhappy look in this photo. No Regency-style dress can ever take the place of sheer mesh and lots of sequins, no matter how warm it is.

I finally bought a little Moleskine for myself and am trying to draw every day in an effort to get better after all this time. So bear with me until the drawings get better, ok? I decided to start while waiting in line to get Lina from school. The construction workers were out, like they usually are, and I thought what with the architecture it would be a good place to start. The longer I drew the more I realized that this is the most whacked out building I've ever seen outside of Sarah Winchester's house (not that I've ever been there). There's all these walls that don't really serve any purpose, and lots of pointy rooftops and panels, panels, panels. I hope it makes more sense when it's done but if the current inside of the original is any indication, this is going to be one massive labyrinth. I can't go to church without getting lost. Sad but true. The next day I was farther down the line and the sun was in my eyes so annoyingly that I could barely see. ...

     My youngest decided to be Alice in Wonderland for Halloween. Rather than buy a new costume (we already have one, but it's too big for her), I decided to make her one. One that is not a glowing shade of fake material that you can't even wash when your kids get it dirty. A real dress. So I let her pick out material from my stash. The fabric she chose was originally intended for a Cinderella dress for my oldest. But my mother never made it for her and I didn't know how to sew back then. But that's another story.       I tried to take the easy way out and just buy the pattern at the store. As luck would have it, they were clean out. So I spent some time looking through those big catalogs trying to find something else that might work. I found a project runway dress. It has various pieces that you can mix and match. It was pretty easy to make, I must say.      And then, since I had decided to make a separate pinafore (why would Alice ha...

This is Lina's birthday cake. I admit, since we are packing and doing the million and one things necessary to transition to another state, that I cheated on this one. I really really was going to do it all by myself. And then I realized that that was both stupid and crazy. So I bought ready-made buttercream roses and butterflies made out of feathers to decorate the cake, rather than making them out of fondant like I was going to. But I did paint every rose with sparkly pearlescent glitter powder, and carefully placed lots of edible blue pearls all over the cake. If you want to know why there are both blue and pink roses, it's because Celina wanted blue ones and I thought pink would look better. So I compromised.  I put the pearls on there because I remembered my own mother putting those magical silver nonpareils on my cake at least once in my youth, and they were sooooo good. They were also apparently toxic, and now almost no one makes them anymore. So I thought pearls would b...

Ok, so I started this last year when the girls watched a lot of Sound of Music. There is this one scene where Julie Andrews and all the kids are in a carriage (during the song Do-Re-Mi) singing. The scene struck us as odd since it's the only one in the whole movie that they wear orange and purple (they wear yellow, brown, green and blue mostly). Anyways, Celina loved Louisa's dress in this scene. And being the nice mommy that I am, I offered to make her one like it, particularly since she's so picky about what she wears. And looks like a homeless Punky Brewster most of the times. A dress would be a welcome addition to all those jeans and T-shirts. Problem one: THE DESIGN I looked in the book that accompanied the movie, I looked online, I looked everywhere and nowhere could I find a still or a sketch of the costume or even that scene. It's so short I guess it's really not worth mentioning. So I took the remote and paused the movie while I studied the dress.   Lou...

I considered throwing in the towel. Really. Maybe I was getting too old for this kind of stuff. But then a quick online trip to my old friend, John Neal Bookseller revealed that somebody else was selling their size online and it was pretty much guaranteed to work. So I bought it, tried it out tonight, and although it was a bit of a rush job, it seems to be working! Back in business. I can't believe how LONG this takes.... It's hard to tell from the photos, but it is OH SO NICE and shiny (it is 23 karat gold, after all).