Roses Are Blue...

The Good Book

LOOK what Alana gave me for my birthday!  Do you all own this yet?  Have you all pawed, I mean, paged through it yet?  It is the most wonderful collection of crafts and tips and how-to's and colors and photographs and projects and inspirations and really, really, really clever ideas...really clever...and holy craft rooms, Batman! 

That Martha.  I would kill for her staff...

So, I am trying to plan my first project but I can't decide if I want to start with the shell lights (page 208) or the bottle cap frames (page 271) , I mean, since I have so many of both of those things lying around.  Then again, the silhouettes are super cute too (page 239) and I have an attic full of photographs...

My son, on the other hand, had no problem deciding his first project.  He went straight to the origami candy dishes (page 215) and made four of them in the same amount of time it took me to research a few different epoxies online.  And no, I haven't decided which epoxy to buy yet either.  Because that, of course, depends on which project I do first...

I Feel Like A Cup of Tea

Funny, you don't look like one.

When Alana and I were little we had a book that we loved called Arm in Arm (you can read the whole book on that link!) by a wonderful author/illustrator named Remy Charlip.  It is a book filled with little nonsense verses, endless stories, one act plays and the most wonderful line drawings with rainbow fill where everyone and everything is smiling.  I could get lost in the book for hours just looking at the pictures and imagining myself warm and cozy in the big rainbow bed with the snow falling outside...*sigh*

So there is a 10 line play in Arm in Arm that Alana and I used to act out regularly (when we weren't driving people crazy with the story of Pete & Repete or Ask me If I'm A Boat) called Tea Party with Mrs. Haggarty and Lady Agatha.  I always wanted to be Lady Agatha because even though she was kind of dim she was very pretty.  Alana always let me, of course, because she loved me. 

Hey...wait a minute.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I started thinking about Alana's birthday gifts (I needed to get an early start since her Christmas gifts were 3 weeks late...) so I was looking in my bookshelves and I came across Arm in Arm.  Before I even got it off the shelf I knew exactly what I wanted to embroider for her.  I only wish I had done it on a wall hanging instead of tea towels because I'm afraid she might not use them (or maybe I'm afraid she will use them and then I'll have to kill her).   So finally the wait is over (a real drawback of early/on-time gifts for sure).  Today is Alana's birthday!  Happy birthday to you,  happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Alana...happy birthday to you!  Would you like to join me in a cup of tea?