Meet Isabelle’s new dolly, Maggie! She is inspired by Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. Remember my original idea was to use felt for the hair? Well that didn’t work out. Isabelle kept kept taking it off, calling it a hat. I don’t know what she did with it so I went the yarn route. The strands are all painstakingly sewed down. It was hard work but absolutely worth it, it’s a better fit.

I remember when I was little, I loved playing with dolls with removable clothing. So with that in mind, I made this dolly with removable clothes, using velcro.

I also did removable shoes. That might not have been the best idea. Isabelle keeps taking the shoes off saying, “oh no!! HELP! Shoooooes!” and wanting me to put them back on.

Isabelle likes her Maggie doll. But she doesn’t see it as Maggie. She just says, “dolly”.

Back to the drawing board? Ahh…forget it. Isabelle likes her fine enough to dance with her even though she doesn’t call her Maggie.

Posted in: Family, Finished Project, Sewing, Softies
14 Comments

Alan’s off I don’t know where. It’s not that he disappeared, it’s that I can’t remember what city he’s in. He’s somewhere six hours south of us at a paintball tournament. He left yesterday morning. I think he took his computer with him and maybe he has internet access so I’m going to post a bunch of our beach pictures so he can miss us even more than he already misses us.

We went to this beach in Pacifica with Olinda. The night before, Isabelle kept bringing sewing thread to me saying “kite!” I dug a kite out from the garage and she ran around the house happily with it trailing behind her. So we decided that a trip to the beach was in order. We could do some kite flying and sand throwing.

Isn’t our kite pretty? We couldn’t manage to get it very high into the air though. Other people had no problems with their kites. Our kite sucks. I guess it just looks pretty but isn’t as functional, though I swear I remember flying it really high before.

Maybe it wasn’t windy enough for our pretty sucky kite.

Isabelle didn’t mind. She had fun playing with sand. She always does. The only thing is, she doesn’t like it under her feet at first. It took her a while to agree to have her shoes taken off.

I don’t know why she’s so picky about how the sand feels seeing as she’ll lie on it. She gets it everywhere, even in her diaper. How does she manage that? It probably didn’t help that at one point she fell into the hole Alan dug. I missed it but Olinda said it was hilarious.

Only picture of me. I really need to remember to get in front of the camera and not always stay behind it.

And the video (password: izzybear):

Beach from Kuky Ideas on Vimeo.

Posted in: Family, Isabelle Video
4 Comments

I still have photos to go through from the beach and the zoo but there are so many of them I’m procrastinating. And for some of you this may be more interesting.

I don’t know about your Joann Fabrics, but the one near me has a sale until Saturday for Simplicity patterns. They’re only $0.99!! A limit of 10. I should have gotten more…

Isabelle usually gets antsy while we’re in a fabric store so it was meant to be a quick trip. I knew exactly what I wanted. I planned ahead. I looked through the patterns online and jotted them all down so we could just dash in and out. But then Isabelle saw the aisle full of crayons, paints, and books.

I grabbed her a couple of books and she happily occupied herself, flipping through them. She was surprisingly well behaved. Usually the fabric store bores Isabelle to tears, even with the distraction of books and crayons. Well not this time! I was actually able to leisurely go looking through the fabric aisles. Sadly nothing really called out to me. I got a few yards of seersucker, some yarn and black felt to finish Isabelle’s Maggie doll and that’s about it.

Then we came home. I avoided going through all the older pictures and instead took new pictures of my new patterns just so I could tell everyone who reads this, there is a sale. Isabelle thought she was a more interesting subject to photograph and got in the way.

I would have to agree.

Posted in: Family
4 Comments

I have beach pictures, zoo pictures, and sewing to show but just thought I’d pop in and share a little drawing and a video. This little clip been sitting on my desktop since October! It’s one of those little clips that I think, oh I’ll put that up tomorrow. Or next week. And next thing you know, five months have gone by. I’m a goober. The password again is: izzybear

Headbanging Good Time from Kuky Ideas on Vimeo.

Posted in: Illustrations, Isabelle Video
6 Comments

Look who has joined our household, Bonnie! Bonnie comes from Nichol.

She gardens to Allison Kraus. Her garden is full of wildflowers and every day Bonnie picks dandelions and brings them to Violet, her elderly neighbor.

Hee hee, I love the stories Nichol makes up to go with her dollies.

I went ga ga over Bonnie, remember? Well Nichol contacted me and said she’d do a trade for a print of my drawing. So that is how Bonnie came to join our household.

Ok we didn’t really fight over Bonnie. I would never pull on Bonnie’s arms.

This is what really happened: Isabelle’s eyes absolutely lit up when she met Bonnie. She said “BUNNY!!” with her arms outstretched. I said, “no. It’s mama’s dolly”. Isabelle squealed, “dolly!”. And I handed her over. I’m such a push over.

And don’t ask me what Isabelle was doing here. I don’t have a clue. Maybe she was trying to convince Bonnie to do headstands with her?

Ok let me take Bonnie off my lap. Yes she really is sitting on my lap right this moment as I’m typing. With Bonnie in my lap I thought, oh I must have Angst too. But I just checked and Angst is already sold. You snooze. You lose.

Talking of bed, I’m off to bed. I’m still trying to figure out how to get back in the habit of posting and drawing. But you know, it might have to wait for next week. Alan’s on vacation again and sorry Olinda, there may be sporadic posting if any posting at all.

Posted in: Family, Illustrations
3 Comments

Isabelle turned another month older on Alan’s birthday. Here’s our monthly family picture.

She’s getting so tall. She can reach the pedals on her tricycle now.

And I know she hasn’t had little chubby baby fat legs for a while. They’re skinny little girl legs. But in this picture it’s soooo apparent.

And finally, a video I’ve been meaning to share from last month. I turned away for a second and Isabelle had grabbed my camera. Not a cheapo I don’t care about camera, but my camera that I love and use all the time. But instead of grabbing it away from her, I just held my breath, hoped for the best, and grabbed the camcorder. And here’s the video (totally worth the feeling of terror to capture this moment on video). Password :izzybear

My Little Photographer from Kuky Ideas on Vimeo.

She enjoyed playing with my camera so much and it was so cute that I dug up my old i-zone Polaroid camera. And now she plays with that instead. She stands there saying “cheese“, “snapping pictures”, and working the little switch.

I’ve been trying to get a picture of her doing that for a month. Every single time she does it, I grab my real camera, and try to take a picture. But once she sees the real camera, of course, she wants to hold the real thing. She stops saying “cheese” with the little i-zone and tries to chase me down to get the real camera. Finally…FINALLY today I got this picture of my little wannabe photographer.

Go to month twenty nine.

Posted in: Family, Isabelle Video, Monthly Family Picture
6 Comments

Did you miss us? I haven’t posted in over a week. And I haven’t drawn much either. It felt very weird not to have a daily drawing. I feel out of practice. And when I sat down to draw this, it felt strange. It was nice to take a break but now the drawing habit is broken and I don’t know how to get it going again. I don’t know if I will. But anyhoo…what we’ve been up to…

Alan was on vacation last week for his birthday. What did we do? We made plans and didn’t follow through! We’re good at that. We wanted to go to the zoo, to a farm, and do other kiddie activities. But we didn’t make it to the zoo or to a farm. We did manage to go to Australia night at the library.

Australia night at the library. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? It was stories from down under. Ok. Not really that exciting. My active imagination just blew it up to all kinds of crazy proportions when in reality it was just a woman reading books. No boomerangs or didgeridoos or bushmen with Australian accents. Just stories and make your own toilet roll koala.

Isabelle was NOT interested. We couldn’t get her to sit and listen. Even if they had didgeridoos and boomerangs or bushmen, she wouldn’t have cared. She was much more fascinated with the scissors on the tables. Who wants to listen to stories or even color more than a little scribble when they can cut with scissors?? Real scissors that mama doesn’t usually let her touch. So who mostly made this koala bear (or penda beer as Isabelle calls it)? Me. Isn’t it bea-u-ti-ful?

What else did we manage to do? Go to the park. We like the park. Where besides the beach do we get to throw sand everywhere and water…well sand?

And oooh what else? Dinosaur cake. Made by me. Or dinosaur cupcakes…whatever they’re called.

I’ve made two dinosaur cakes since I’ve last posted. Where are the pictures of the cake? Didn’t you just read me write, I suck at decorating cake? The pictures are tooooo sad. You do not want to see them.

I made the first cake in a rush with a recipe I’d never tried before. My brain wasn’t working and I couldn’t figure out how to put the dinosaur together correctly. And for some reason I didn’t think logically and turn the mold over to compare. I kept flipping the cake pieces over back and forth trying to work it out. DUH! I failed miserably. All that trouble and they didn’t taste that great. Well of course Isabelle didn’t care that it was ugly and that the cake wasn’t great. She was just happy that it was cake with FROSTING and that there were candles.

But I had to have something yummy so tried making it again but with a recipe I knew. But wouldn’t you know it? I forgot to spray the mold and the cupcakes stuck. I mangled them all popping them out. At least I managed to put it together correctly. But they didn’t taste as good as the last time I used the recipe. I wonder if the dinosaur mold is the reason.

And the other big thing we did? We bought a new car. We are now a two car family again after five months with only one car. And where’s the picture of that? I can’t get it together to take a picture. I keep remembering after Alan’s driven it off. I mean it’s taken me three days to write this post and it’s already too long, so another day.

Posted in: Family, Illustrations
6 Comments