Dragon Day

A house 3 blocks from us was selling pumpkins all month. We finally got there today, and there weren't many left, but it was still overly exciting for FGH Dragon.

I could not get a picture of him standing still!




We had a candlelit feast. At least two of us. The third one was having toddler tantrums and didn't eat until later (I think he was holding out for pumpkin pie).
After we ate Peter carved a pumpkin with Freddy. Fredrik would not touch it and was dismayed that Peter was cutting it up. I've never seen such a pouty lip on him!
Still not sure about it.
This did not help. It was the scariest thing imaginable.

FGH and Handmade Scores

Happy Halloween!

We haven't planned much for this holiday.

I used to LOVE Halloween, dressing up was indeed a major part of my high school and college years. I think my favorite costume was a Ghostbuster, but I had a pretty kickin' Princess Leia costume too. This year I have art shows taking up a lot of my energy. After next Wednesday I should be able to rest easier for a couple of weeks. Peter is putting the final touches on his long paper for Law Review. Last I heard he had written over 66 pages. That's long enough to bind! Hmmm, that's a dandy Christmas idea, an handbound law review article. Anyway, his paper is due at midnight tonight, so we didn't even make any Halloween plans. FGH has a dragon costume that we'll put on for some neighborhood trick-or-treating. I suppose I should buy some candy, too, in case we get any treaters here.

FGH has had some major scores lately thanks to grandmas and grandpas:

First, a Halloween Cookie Play Date with Grandma Barb and Madi (and Aunt Bub (Bev)). They did really well for 1-year-olds!

Next, a fun quilt from Grandma Roz. The entire Very Hungry Caterpillar book is on this quilt! So much fun! Freddy is deep in thought about it:

And a stool from Grandpa Richard! It's adorable and coveted by this toddler. Major tantrums occur when he's taken away from "sink." Yesterday he helped me stir cornbread when I put the stool next to our island- with a small spoon to limit the amount of cornmeal flicked out of the bowl.

Zombie Award...Vote!

I entered one of my hand bound journals in the "BEST Zombie Award 2009" contest. Go to the link and vote for which journal you like best (mine!).

I used one of my prints to cover this book. The whimsy is carried out with an assortment of beads sewn to the front cover as I stitched the book together.

Thanks for voting!

Carrot Boy

Here's my little guy proudly standing next to his carrot-kill. I should have more prints in my shop next week.

What should I name these characters? I'm leaning towards something Old Norse such as Groa for the girl (meaning gardener) and Osten (meaning happy) or Blyn (strong) for the boy. I'm taking suggestions so leave some in a comment if you dare.

I have one more day at the art show in Dassel. I've had some good sales so far so thanks to everyone that has supported my budding business! I've made some good connections, met some new kindred spirits, and maybe even landed a spot at an art show taking place next Friday at a large accounting firm. I've never heard of this, being a country-bumpkin and all, but some big companies have their own pre-holiday arts and crafts fairs featuring work from employees or friends of employees. Employees are the main customers. Great idea! I'm a little intimidated by galleries with large commissions at this point, so these casual sales sound just right.

Well, off to tend to a huge pot of cabbage potato soup, switch the laundry, and crash into bed- exhausted.

Ze Elf Boy

The first elf boy drawing is nearing completion. I need to quickly finish my summer boys and girls so I can get going on the next season. I may just bypass fall for winter since that's what the weather feels like right now.

This little dude certainly looks a tad like my own little dude. And FGH loves corn. Not just sweet corn, but aCORNs and popCORN, all of which is "corn corn corn." The printer will be running hot tonight, my shipment of paper is coming in this afternoon and I am leaving town in the morning for the big sale. So print! fold! trim! stuff! label! I love it!

Art Shows Coming Up

I will be participating in some art/craft shows this fall/holiday season. I'm pretty excited about them. It's weird putting your stuff out there for people to judge, to love, to reject, to critique, etc. I'm excited, however, to see how the markets compare to the online community. For one thing, my prints/notecards will be able to speak for themselves. It's been hard getting the colors right for the web, and even if I get them close, they will be different on each person's monitor. There are select colors that are "web" colors, and my carefully chosen colors will be converted to the web color closest to it on the spectrum. I could have chosen web colors, but frankly, they were the greatest and the destination for my work is not on someone's computer desktop.

Back to the shows.

My first one will be in:

Dassel, MN at Levandowski Pottery

October 23-25

I will have my notecards and prints alongside my albums, journals, books, and my soon-to-be-finished accordion-style brag books. Jena and Aron are potters. There will be other artists as well including a stain-glass artist and a few others. I'll be at the sale on Friday 11-6, Saturday 10-6, and Sunday 11-3. Stop by!

The next is in:

Roseville, MN at Peggy's Holiday Boutique

November 6-15

I'm pretty pumped about this one. It's at the Roseville Skating Center. I won't have an official booth at this sale, but since it lasts so long, Peggy is going to use my stuff as "filler" as the sale goes on. It looks like fun, lots of traffic and lots of artists.

Thirdly:

St. Paul, Swirling Tree Headquarters

December TBA

I'm going to have a holiday openhouse here in December. I don't know if I'll have much left, but hey, it will be fun. A few of us are going to have some fun stuff to sell and some goodies and hot cocoa to sample.

In preparation for these events I ordered some real business cards and stickers. I'm pretty happy with them! I'm sticking a small logo/web sticker in each book's back cover and the business card is doubling as a hang tag. Officialness!

Bacon.

FGH sleeps in between us in bed at night, which has been handy during the insanely early cold snap we're in. We can leave the heat off since we can monitor his temperature.

Well, we did fire up the furnace today. It was getting to be very chilly.

Anyhow, every morning FGH wakes up and pokes Peter in the face and says in a chipper voice,

"Bacon."

That is followed by,

"Down! Down! Down!" as in downstairs, get me bacon NOW.

We haven't really had bacon all that often, so I'm surprised he wants it so badly. So, today I picked up some Nieman Ranch Bacon and he was gleeful during supper picking up all the pieces of bacon at once (and dropping some on the floor, of course).

Now this is a happy bacon baby:

He gets pretty excited about broccoli as well. He marched around with these for awhile today. They are from our CSA farmers, who, sadly, made their last delivery today for the season. We are going to go visit the farm next week...if there is anything left in the frozen fields.

La biblioteca

Community is funny. Chevy Chase is funny. The other guys and girls are funny, too.

Funny=

http://www.hulu.com/watch/97892/community-la-biblioteca

Elf-Girl Prints

Here she is! I thought this would be an easy project, but no, it took forever and there were so many steps. The good news is that I now have the PERFECT paper, which was hard to find. I tried 12 different papers! They are 8x10 and look darling hung together. All three prints are now in my shop and I will be getting 5x7 notecards in sometime during the next week. My sketchbook is filling with Elf-Boy pictures and Holiday elf cuteness so hopefully sometime between now and the holidays they will become official with their digital color and fancy paper as well. Click on each print to see a bigger and clearer version.