My Simple Little Hobbies...a pondering

Dear Reader,


I hate going for more than a few days without blogging to you. I know it's trivial and you'd rather not read quite so much of me some days. I, too, feel the same about you. We do tend to blather and prattle on and on sometimes. However, there's a little sad spot I feel for some when I have seen weeks, or even months go by without a post from you.


This evening I'm thinking of all the pictures I have to post and yet not the time. My "enjoyable" hobbies are sucking the life out of me! I love each one and find it hard to put one down to take up another. But tonight I'm going to put the blog down and not think about it for a few days. I need to get caught up.


While I take this few days break I will be planning a spectacular gardening harvest post. Until I'm back, pencil me in for Friday, write yourself an amazing post on your blog, or get someone like How To Homemaker to do a guestblog, and take a break yourself. We deserve it.


Julie

Things I did while being bedridden

Frankly, I hate being sick. This time I have been told I have bronchitis. This disease is supposed to last around 3 weeks. My patience has lasted about 3 seconds. While I know I'm supposed to be a good girl and stay in bed, sort of like the women of long ago who would take to their sick bed and not emerge for a month later. I am simply incapable of such...solitude...reflective...stagnation. So instead I stay semi in bed but come up with very creative things to do while here. Hence, I'm competing against myself. So here's the list of winners:

The strawberry jam festival which I sneaked into the kitchen to perform. Please hop over to read that blog. It's a new business in its' infancy that can use all the views and follows it deserves. I lurve it.
I found this in the garden. As you might have read in the past I like to give my things odd names to remember them by. This is a squash. My first squash. A pesticide free squash. So it's name is PestiSquash. I thought he looked kind of like a goose. Without the head..wings..and feet of course. Oh...sneaking back into the house. Don't want to be seen wondering about looking too healthy.
I spent some quality time with my new bff, Youtube. I always thought it was bizarre videos of people looking to get famous, injuring themselves, making their baby laugh, dressing up their animals in outfits, or getting disgusting shots of their girlfriends working out to wii. But I also found a lot of instructional videos for people with an ounce of brain and semi crafting ability. I learned how to make this hairbow for Rowan. This one is unusual because it's sooo normal. The ones I make her are pretty over the top. Think cowboy hats with feathers and giant pink butterflies heading out on Rowan's head for a Rose Bowl Parade float.

Another project I read about and decided to take on was making homemade washcloths. These are made with 100% cotton and the one in your bathroom is probably 100% cotton. So they work the same. These will make great little gifts. They're very fast to make and will be sold with Mad City Chicks stuff. If you want some go over there and email them an order.

And since our day wouldn't be complete without my everblooming bff, Rowan. She's helping in the kitchen with her new apron. Drinking strawberry juice flavored with Stevia (tastes like strawberry koolaid). Notice the black mark on her arm....and the black and white paper on the counter, and the black marks on the counter.... Sharpie..permanent..marker.

*Thank you for my new followers (Leeanna). Marnie...I think the apple cider vinegar had the intended purpose since I wash my clothes in the rinse cycle with white vinegar. Hair was ultra soft and easily combed through. I was glad I was stuck in all weekend away from neighbors because of apple cider smell. Having problems with getting a good toothpaste recipe. Baking soda has sodium, so adding salt doesn't help. Adding liquid Stevia extract was a gagfest. Any more ideas?

Dumb Button...why won't you work??

You'll notice there's blog changes. I needed a new "outfit." I'm also trying to learn how to put buttons on my blog. This is going extremely horrible marvelous. It looks like the only way I will get a button on here is with a hammer. A real hammer. So if anyone knows a simple, and I mean simpler than all the google links, way to add a button let me know.

A Life of Luxury...

After the glorious day at the Farmers Market I decided to become deathly ill. Any illness I contract is quite deadly because it means one thing: I have to stay in bed. I hate staying in bed when I know there are a milliondee-twenty things I could be doing. And it's sunny.

I usually stare hopelessly at the ceiling counting the dust bunnies that live up there, and watching my life pass before me. I also did something that I, myself hate to do: I took a nap. That's right. I said it. Nap. I know other people enjoy, even love their naps, but I hate losing that time when I could be doing something really important. It's that whole midlife crisis thing of feeling that time is running out.

As of now I am still stuck in bed. End of day 2. Everything below the neck feels fine. It's the throat. The best part of this illness is that it's taken my voice. No talky talky. Unless I want the feeling of swallowing razor blades. So there's no voice when I try to talk and it feels like barbed wire and glass when I do try. It reminds me of someone who's playing a really bad recorder, flute or reed instrument. Squeak squeak.

Since I'm feeling better today, I decided to try and be a little more productive while watching movies all day. I watched one movie called International. It's about an interpol agent exposing the evil banking industry and blam blam blam, lots of shooting. I also watched Confessions of a Shopaholic. I felt a little woozily during that one and don't remember much.

I made what I will call a Scarflar. You make it by first messing up a project and then doing something to try and save it. So I messed up on this scarf and just decided to end it and start over on a different one. Instead of unraveling it I sewed a daisy button on one side and it buttons to the other side. Fold the top down and tuck in to whatever you're wearing instead of wrapping a long scarf around you.


Another plus about laying around in bed/house is that sometimes a beauty consultant will come around and give you a free makeover. Can you believe I got this fabulous look for free?! She knows just how I like my makeup.


Until next time, I'll be eating popsicles and watching more movies. I know the pic above looks a little wonky but I don't have the energy to fix it. So..meh.. whatever...

My Secret Life

About a month ago I wrote in a post about working on a top secret project. Today was the first day of trying out that project. This is what I've been working on and committing giant science experiments about....



I've joined a farmer's market. It's actually my two friends and I. One of them would say I've gone over to the dark side but at least there are cookies and they are organic. The other one broke her leg and is at home being a pirate and growing chickens.



But let me tell you about today. It was stupendously great. And boy was I nervous. And it was hot. Somehow we managed not to melt into little puddles, probably due to the lemonade lady parked next to us.



We met quite a few very nice people. The other vendors also came over and wished us great success and talked very passionately about mint.



So why did we jump into this farmer market business? There was something we kept running into. People saying how they would love homemade products but didn't have time to make them. We decided we weren't busy enough with work and family and started making some of these products ourselves. We told a few people about it but mostly kept it to ourselves. The ones we did tell perked up very interested and asked lots of questions. Then it was time to "put up or shut up."



Well, we did and it was a very nice success. We had many, many sales and raked in a ton of dough and I'm sitting on a beach in Mexico with my retirement money writing this. Not really. But we did have success. The customers were very interested and curious and pleasantly surprised to see us. I think we made the market more interesting. Kind of craft fair meets farmers market. People also liked that we handed out flyers with small bios, why we were doing this, and a list of resources we use. (It made us look all professional)



So now I can post that I am a part of Mad City Chicks. You can go visit the blog and read about our adventures in product making and markets we go to. We're also on Twitter and Etsy, though we aren't selling anything on Etsy, yet.



Next product? Toothpaste!!!

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Originally uploaded by julie felton

No Kung-Fu!

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Originally uploaded by julie felton

Seaworld

The other day we went to Seaworld. Jace's daughter is visiting from Missouri and this is the best cheapest thing we could come up with. I thought getting a fun pass and passing it on to my friend later would be a great idea until we entered the park and they fingerprint you to keep you from doing just such a thing. So unless Jace's daughter leaves her finger here then I will just have to let it gather dust until she comes down again.

Here we see the ride of terror in the background and couple of pictures of people that are seen more and more frequently as our bad eating habits catch up to us.

This is epic fail. This scares people. Do not ride your scooter while wearing your bathing suit.

Here's Rowan getting onto the Ride O'Terror. It moves about 2 miles per hour. The line to get on moves about -.0000001 miles per hour.

The guy in the blue shirt could not have moved any slower if he was asleep. You think I'm exagerating? There was less than 20 people in line and it took Rowan an hour to go through this ride. I was the smart one who did not get in line for this misery. I think Jace is going to file a complaint about this. I think the guy was angry because he had to work the ride all by himself and he let everyone know. People were begging to be let off this ride. I would've jumped.

There were a lot of kids who looked happy like Rowan. It was in the low 90's with high humidity. Mostly people were running from one shady spot to the next. We decided it was time to go to the water park area. Blessed relief. Jace bought "cokecon candy," as Rowan calls it. Then they left it sitting there till it was a rock hard deflated mass of sugar. Yum!

This is a group of girls that were standing in front of me blocking my view of the wave pool. They only like other girls...in that special way.

After I rode the roller coaster I took Rowan to the restroom and saw this sign. I'm guessing it's for the diabetics or heroin junkies. Don't shoot up in the bathroom. Go to the First Aid station.

We saw the Azul show last. We love this show. We missed Shamu's show time and told Rowan he went on vacation. Azul is way better. There's dolphins, beluga whales, acrobats, and birds. She really wanted her picture taken with the parrot acrobat lady.

Though I paint a grim picture of Seaworld, I really like to go there. These are just the quirky things that happen when we are there. I rode a roller coaster and wore my new bathing suit. I think I looked pretty good and no one screamed, "Shamu's escaped, Eek!"

We finished off the night with more sugar. This is my favorite ice cream place. Baskin Robbins, or Robbin Baskets as Rowan calls it. We think Rowan needs therapy because she asked us approximately 123 times if we were really stopping for ice cream on the way home. "Aagh! Rowan stop nagging us. You are having a big mouth and making bad choices!" *Sigh* Good times.

The Leftovers

I wanted to post earlier but something unfortunate happened. Rowan "lost" my cable I use to post pics on here. I know, I know, I told you she is well behaved and she is. She's also many other things. Inquisitive demon child and curious, and focused on many things senile . I have tired of this game of hide and seek..oh about the time when she was 1 and managed to hide the car keys behind the kickboard on a book case. Yeah, who does that? I gave up and purchased a new one which I will keep staple gunned to my head so I will know where it is at all times. I can just tell everyone I am a cyborg mom, which might be kinda fun.

I wanted to post pictures of our 2 sunflowers. They finally bloomed. The small one is around 6 feet tall and the big one is around 9 feet. They've been very beneficial with getting bees and butterflies to come hang out at our garden. It's also been a great flower to teach Rowan about flowers because it's so freaking huge.

The flower is bigger than my head. The leaves are bigger than my head.

I finally picked one of our ears of corn. It's gorgeous. Tastes a little sweet. I foresee fights over who gets the last ear of corn.

This is my update to the Hobby Lobby disaster. This was one of the patterns I was getting. I made Rowan her first apron. Awww..how adorable. Now get to work, Cinderella! She loves it and it was done with scraps from other projects. She matches the curtains and throw pillows. How very Scarlett O'Hara.

This is my other project I just finished. It's a throw pillow that I like to call a journey pillow. It's done using a blank throw pillow I bought at Walmart. I used felt for some pieces and left over fabric for other pieces. There's also a couple of buttons on there. The pillow basically tells a story about me and my two friends and how we are all tied together. It shows things we've done and things we're doing now. I can add things to it as time goes on. It's the most meaningful throw pillow in the house. I hope it inspires you to make your own journey pillow or quilt. Something I read in a crafting book is that it's not about making something perfect, it's about making it yourself and it has meaning.