My brother came over for dinner last night. Daphne hadn’t seen him since right after Christmas, and of course, really didn’t remember him. She spent most of the evening pointing out to him that his shirt was blue. And since she had an audience, she was such a little ham. When my brother was leaving, he asked Daphne if she wanted to ride in his truck. Daphne immediately started talking about ice cream. It took us a minute to figure out that she was associating going out the front door (we always go out the back to the garage) and the word truck, to the ice cream truck that occasionally goes down the street. No, Daphne, your uncle doesn’t drive an ice cream truck. Although in her mind that would have made him the coolest uncle ever!

My first attempt at a Kanzashi style folded fabric flower.

Ignore the felt dot in the center. That’s just to hide the messy ends until I can make a covered button. Hmmm… not happy with the results. Maybe I need to break down and buy Kanzashi in Bloom? Or maybe I’m just not meant to fold things (just ask my husband how I fold laundry, hehehe). And I SUCK at origami. And at least paper creases and stays when you fold it. But I’m going to keep trying, especially after seeing this photo from Flickr user Georgiapeachez. Love this. The Kanzashi flowers look like vintage 50’s/60’s flower pins (which I happen to collect).

Just some fun/crafty links I’ve saved lately:

A custom made BSG Number Six red dress. Ok, you really have to have the right kind of boobs to wear this one, or some miracle stick on bra.

A Hello Kitty granny square. I’m in love. I’ll add this to my list of things to crochet.

DIY silk screening from the Naughty Secretary Club. Silk screening, along with jewelry making and knitting, is on my list of things to some day learn how to do. Then I think about the start up costs and just say forget it. But pantyhose and an embroidery hoop? I could do that.

In love with this tree mural featured on Ohdeedoh.

Baby clothes quilt. I should do this. Really.

Marshmallow treat pops. You know I have no patience when it comes to cake decorating, so the Bakerella cake pops will just never happen in my house (even the cute Hello Kitty cake pops). But I could totally do this marshmallow pop, and I can see how easy it would be to customize them with various holiday sprinkles and M&Ms.

And to wrap it up… 2 IKEA slipcovers. One for the Poang. And one for the Antilop high chair. I need to do both of these!!

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Sorry about that. I had to scream. If I have to take Daphne into the office for one more day, I’m going to lose my frakking mind. Luckily Chris is taking care of her tomorrow afternoon, which should be my last day in the office.

As I mentioned before, I have been working for my father since late August. Just a temporary thing, filling in for one of his employees who is overseas. And since it was a last minute, temporary thing, I brought Daphne to the office with me. 8 hours a day. 5 days a week. Yeah, that was pretty crazy. Learned my lesson.

I had an entire bag full of toys, crayons, coloring books, craft stuff, balloons, balls, DVD player w/DVDs… which kept her occupied for the first week or so, plus I played with her frequently throughout the day, so it wasn’t like she had to entertain herself. Then I made the mistake of letting her play a Dora video game on nickjr.com and suddenly that’s all she wanted to do. That, and drink soda and eat chips from the break room. And run through the warehouse, yelling so she could hear her voice echo, and try to climb up on the forklift. Yeah.

The next big problem? Daphne refused to nap in her Pack & Play, or with a pillow & blanket on the floor. This doesn’t surprise me too much. Daphne will only nap in her crib, or in her car seat. She won’t even nap on the sofa or in our bed. And Daphne is a good napper at home, easily 2 to 4 hour naps a day. So, without the benefit of a proper nap, Daphne was crabby as hell in the afternoons. She’d finally fall asleep on the way home, around 4:30, and I’d put her down for a short nap. Of course, that meant I had to wake her up way before she was ready, otherwise she’d never go to bed. Again.. crabby time. Both of us are worn out after a month of this.

And I won’t even go into Daphne’s new thing… spitting out whatever she’s eating and using the chewed up food to “paint” on things. I swear, it’s like I’m taking care of a wild animal.

Looking forward to October, sleeping in, going to the park and getting Daphne back into a routine!!!

For my photography friends out there, how often do you go back and re-edit old photos? I will occasionally go back and play with one of Daphne’s baby pictures, now that I’m better at Photoshop. When Daphne was a baby we shot with my old Canon point & shoot, and our Nikon D50 in an automatic mode. Hehehe. For those of you with a dslr, please do yourself a favor and get out of Auto or any of the priority modes. I’m not saying my photos now are great, but I do think I saw a big improvement in my photos as soon as I started to shoot in Manual.

This pic of Daphne was taken in our cave of a living room in B’ham, with my Canon. Argh. Horrible. And to make it worse, I think I actually edited this one in Lightroom. See the vignette? What is it about new photographers and the vignette? I totally abused those when I first started to learn photo editing. I’m getting better.

Daphne at 4 months old. Her first pigtails! And here’s a very quick re-edit:

I still have some work to do, but at least the exposure is better. And I did a little color correcting (how did she end up with Fremen eyes in the original?). And for the most part, I am not of fan of heavily edited eyes. You know what I’m talking about… the photos you see where the eyes have been brightened and sharpened so much they don’t look real. I wanted to lighten her eyes just a touch, so you could see the funky sectoral heterochromia thing she had going on in her eyes at the time. And I also took out some of the pigtail shadows, but still need to work on that area. I wish I would have kept the original SOOC photo. My digital asset management sucks.

But it’s a start, right? We’ve taken thousands of pictures of Daphne, but have printed just a handful. I need to go back and edit our favorites from the last 2 years and get them in a photo album!

I’ve been a little obsessed with owls for the last few years. Maybe because my mom collected owls when I was kid. So, when I saw this recipe featured on Craft magazine’s blog last year, I bookmarked it and finally got around to making it today with Daphne. Aren’t they the cutest?!?

So fun! And to keep with the owl theme, I made this felt clip for Daphne last week using Lil Blue Boo’s owl applique pattern, just reduced 50%.

Speaking of my mom’s owl collection, when I was in elementary school I made her a ceramic baby owl in art class. I made him dark, dark brown and when it came time to paint his eyes I was puzzled. I couldn’t make them black, because they wouldn’t show up… so I made them orange/red. And you know what it looked like? A Jawa (Star Wars). Truly the ugliest thing ever. Just to show you that my craft projects haven’t always worked out.

I was excited to read that October is Scrap Buster month on Sew Mama Sew! And would you like to see why? I got this in the mail today:

Scraps! Glorious scraps!

Over 50 prints. Lots of Heather Bailey, Amy Butler, Michael Miller, Sandi Henderson, etc… you get the idea. My husband asked me, “You actually spent money for scraps?” (I didn’t spend that much) Why, heck yes! Now I have lots of material for appliques, fabric flowers, hair clips, pins, covered buttons, pockets, headbands. And I seriously need to make a pincushion. Can’t wait to dig in and play.

What are your favorite things to do with fabric scraps?

All of Emma’s necklaces on Glee. I’m a sucker for any retro/enameled flower type jewelry.

This print from Etsy seller Tascha. I had a tuxedo cat named Jackie and she was the best cat ever. This was before we realized I was allergic to cats. Tascha also has some great Frida Kahlo prints.

Fabric leaves from Etsy seller JaneJoss. Love, love, love these.

And this is hilarious.. stroller covers/Halloween costumes for little ones. From Etsy seller mapletree2000.

Plus any and all toddler boots. Riding boots, suede, cowboy, ankle, patent… unfortunately all of Daphne’s fall/winter shoes can’t be boots.

What are your favorite things right now?

You might notice some of my photos missing, mainly pics of Daph. I’m in the process of changing most of my Flickr photos so only my contacts marked as Friends and Family can see them, and will need to update the individual links on each post. Yeah, that might take a while. Anyway, friends, family and loyal blog readers… if you haven’t already, make sure and create a free Flickr account and add me as a contact so I can reciprocate.

- Finally got to see (500) Days of Summer. Loved it. Quirky, funny, artsy.. my kind of movie. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was adorable. It might look like a chick flick, but it’s not. Really. I’m a complete traitor to my sex in the chick flick dept (unless it’s smart or Austen). I’d rather claw out my eyes than watch a rom-com with Katherine Heigl. Even my husband liked this movie. 2 thumbs up! Also 2 thumbs up for the fish tacos and margaritas we had at Berryhill’s after the movie. Nom nom nom.

- Sometimes I forget that I drive basically an aluminum foil wrapped shoe box (xB). When I’m playing my iPod at a perfectly reasonable volume, I think the entire block can hear it. No sound proofing. Which is OK, unless I’m listening to a particularly embarrasing 80’s song. I frequently get looks or smiles when I pull into a parking lot, and I’m not sure if they are laughing at my music choice or at my car. And what is up with people who feel like it’s OK to ridicule your car? I would never walk up to someone with a tan SUV and say, “I wouldn’t drive that car if someone gave it to me for free.” Even though that is EXACTLY what I think. Along with… “Do you have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find your car in the sea of tan SUVs in the parking lot. How original, frakking lemming.” Bah! Of course, I would never say those things, because, well, it’s not that funny and most importantly, I’m classy. And because if I started on that path I’d also have to start saying things like, “You named your kid WHAT?!” In the last two days I’ve seen two little girls named Carter and Anderson. Why, parents? WHY?

- True Blood season finale… a little disappointing in a way. I don’t always like big cliffhangers, but the last 30 min were a little dull. Glad the maenad story is gone. It went a little overboard for me and there were several times when we had to fast forward through a scene because it was just nasty. For those of you who haven’t seen True Blood yet, I think it’s the best thing on TV right now. Love all the characters. And in what other world can a chainsawing redneck be absolutely brilliant?! It’s just not possible. (And I realize I’ve lost everyone who hasn’t watched the show this season) But a warning, don’t watch this with your kids. It’s definitely an adult show. (It’s a little surprising to me what they will show at 8pm on a cable channel these days. Remind me to cancel my cable when Daphne gets older.) And I say that, because once I offended a friend by suggesting she watch Amelie (one of my favorite movies). She came into work the next day shocked at the nudity in the film (Hello? French film, rated R?). Which makes me laugh and laugh. I think there is 10 seconds of nudity in the entire movie. And it’s more funny than anything. So, viewer beware.

- Still trying to get used to the suddenly curly hair thing. It’s more wavy curly, than ringlet curly at this point. I’ve worn it natural a few times, usually when I just don’t have time to fix it and get tired of a ponytail. The other day I was looking in the mirror while adjusting my necklace and thought. “Oh no. Your hair looks like an Albrect Durer self portrait, but with bangs. And maybe slightly less wormy. Slightly.” Yeah, need to work on my curl activator/scrunching technique.