Sugar Shop

Butterfly Release, Big ($75 Fabric Gift Cert!!!) Giveaway, Blogversary!

Jumpy kid loves bugs. Not just finding and watching them but he loves to learn about them. We have books and watch the discovery channel and he is enthralled and will then tell everyone what he knows. The last couple of years we have raised silk worms in a shoe box in his bedroom. It's amazing and so simple!

This year we decided to do butterflies and ladybugs. We ordered everything we needed from Here . The catterpillars come in a jar and once they form their chrysalis then you move them to the butterfly treehouse (the thing that jumpy kid has on the lawn). Then once the butterflies emerge from their cocoons you feed them fresh flowers and sugar water for a few days and then it's time to release!

Ready...

Set...

Giggle....Set....

Go!

Goodbye butterflies, take care of our flowers...we love you! Good lord this child can pull my heart strings.

We also raised lady bugs which I have to say was a way more interesting. Only because we all know the cycle of the caterpillar to the butterfly but do you know the cycle of the lady bug? Who knew these beloved little creatures have an amazing life-cycle too. Please go google it or better yet order your larva and habitat from the link above. As soon as Steve and I saw the larva we both said "Oh my god, I didn't know those turn in to lady bugs. We have seen the little alligator like bugs through out the years and never knew that those little suckers were baby lady bugs. Huh! I'm still shocked and feel the urge to contact every kindergarten teacher on the planet and beg them to teach the little ones about their favorite little beetles.

Lady Bug Larvae (or as we like to say baby lady bug)

OK, so on to some seriously fun business! It's my one year blogversary! And I want to say how much I appreciate every single one of you who leave comments or just stop by to read, or ask about my bags. And thank you so much for your patience in my shop opening.

So to show my appreciation I am giving away a $50 $75 gift certificate from one of my favorite on-line fabric stores Over The Rainbow. I have been ordering fabric there for the last few years. You must sign up for her newsletter. It's like a blog post. She links to all the fabric lines as they come in her store. She does lots of pre-orders so if there is a line that you know you want just pre-order from her and then forget about it. When it comes in she'll charge your card and send it to you. You also get lots of fun updates about her farm life and family. I think (correct me if I'm wrong Laura) she used to be a fashion designer and now runs her fabric store from her beautiful farm. Oh and...her prices are always the lowest per yard!

Edit: Ok, I just checked my email and Laura the owner of Over the Rainbow emailed me to say that she has kicked in an extra $25.00. How awesome is that?? That's why this is one of my very fave shops. Thanks Laura!! So now one of you lucky ducks will win a $75.00 gift cert

Ok, so here is what you have to do to enter:

Just leave a comment telling me what you would like to see more of on this site. Or ask me anything you want to know. Do you want to see more bags and sewing stuff, craft projects, recipes (ok they will be Tara's recipes because I get them all from her...but they are good... really good) Do you want to see more photography or know more about photography equipment (I get asked often about that). Do you wanna know how I met Big Daddy? Anything, there are no wrong requests. Feel free to ask goofy stuff, I'm all about goofy.

Let's spread this awesome give-away around (thanks again Laura, I can't stop thanking her, that was just such a random act of coolness to kick in $25!!!). If you mention this giveaway on your blog with a link to me blog (email me to let me know you have done so or mention it in your comment) and I will enter your name in the drawing twice!

The drawing will end at 8 p.m. pacific time this Thursday July 3rd. I will randomly pick a winner and announce the winner on Friday.

Only one entry per person please.

Oh and the cool thing is that Laura has already given me the code. So all I have to do is email the winner and you are ready to shop baby! You know its a good thing I discovered the whole blog thing a year ago...because before I was the only one I knew that got so excited about fabric, I started to think I was like those weird hoarder people only instead of odd junk it was pretty piles of neatly folded fabric that I collected. Now thanks to blog land I know I'm not alone. You're all crazy just like me. Thanks Man!

Dena out....
sorry, I just can't stop with the bad Ryan Seacreast impersonations lately

I know, I know what your thinking...she needs help! ... Please don't remove me from your blogroll, please.

Edit: TIME'S UP!!! Wow this has been so amazingly fun!! Thank you everyone for the wonderful comments and suggestions and requests. The winner will be announced tomorrow! Woohoo.

Man Up your Blog! Thunderhill Raceway

Those were the exact words of my husband... "baby, I think you need to man up your blog a little with some track pictures". It's true my little blog is pretty girly. I don't think I have any male readers... or Do I? Well if I do this post is for you... and if there are please man, leave a comment. I really should know after all if I should Man Up the blog once in a while.

See that up there? That's my husband looking like some dark super hero. He would totally hate me saying that, FYI. Can I just tell you that watching him go up to 160 miles per hour was super sexy and super freaky at the same time. Especially after shooting this guy doing this...

He was fine by the way. He got up and walked away. Crazy!

This here is our friend Dave. You may remember Dave and Michelle from The Photo Shoot
Dave is the tattoo leg guy and his wife is Michelle (the one with her arms in the air). We went with Dave and Michelle and their kids up to Willows, Ca to Thunderhill Raceway so that the boys could play on the track.

That's Big Daddy on the right with the Seahawks Sweatshirt.

This here is D & M's boy riding one of the bikes they leave lying around for people to just use at the track. Cool, huh?

We were cracking up, at the end of the day when the track was closed...without saying anything all of sudden we see cool kid here, riding the track on the bike. Hil-ar-ious!! This track is huge and everyone was cheering him on.

Jumpy kid here. He got a new Razor Scooter and it was the best 39 bucks we ever spent. It was his first one and he rode it ALL day. He worked on it a lot too. Very serious business and a bit annoying when your mom keeps calling your name so she can take a picture.

Scooter mechanics take some serious concentration.

This beauty is D & M's girly. This bridge goes over the race track. I went up there to get a good view of the track and couldn't resist this shot of her.

Should I officially change this to a photography site? lol. A new bag has been made. I'll show that soon, maybe next! Stop lurking and leave me a note to say hi! I promise to stop over and see you too! Plus 156 blogs on my bloglines is just not enough, I need some new sites and my favorite way to find new ones is through comments from my super cool readers here on this crazy little blog.

xo
Dena

Senior Portraits

Funny, I never intended this site to be about photography, but since it's my busy season and I have had no time for sewing lately, it's all I have to show you. But the sewing and new bag designs and shop opening are coming I promise you.

This is my neighbor. His mom asked if I would do his senior portraits and of course I said sure. We headed out to the ranch to get the shots. I was kinda surprised when the shirt came off. I have never shot shirtless senior portraits before but hey, his mom was there and he wants to model I think so I had fun with it.

Thanks for hang'in with me while I seem to post about everything other than sewing or bags!

I'd like to set up some polls on here for people to vote on. Does anyone know how to do that? I know there has got to be a widget out there somewhere but I can't seem to find one. I'd appreciate any help, you guys are the best!

Oh and this week I'll be getting to all my emails!! Sorry if it's been a while and I haven't gotten back to you, I will get to each and everyone I promise. Every single request or question means soooo much to me.

Well, I'm off to enjoy Mothers Day! My boys are out cleaning the pool, getting it ready. This week is supposed to get to 98 degrees here in the bay (Northern California). So we'll be needing it.
Happy Mothers Day to all of you!

Prom Season

Do you see that beautiful strawberry-blonde on the right? That's my niece. I have 3 nephews and her...so I get to say she's my favorite niece. Somehow I can't help but think that even if I had more than one she would still be my favorite. Her name is Andrea but we call her Andy which has also evoled to Andy-Pandy or Pandy-Pie or just Pandy. Anyway it was her Junior Prom last week and I ran over to my sisters house take a few pix before the kids were whisked away in Limos.

I feel like every time I post I'm apologizing for not posting sooner or not opening my shop. So here is my last sorry, you see this is also Prom Season for me at work. We have several contracts with High schools in the bay area and it's prom and little league season for us which means I work ALOT more than normal. So I am pushing the store opening to the beginning of summer. I need the breathing room to do it right. I have so many designs I want to make and just no time at the moment. So, If you have been waiting on a bag from me I want to thank you for being so patient and hopefully you'll still want me when I'm ready!

I can't believe she's seventeen. I was just nineteen when she was born, and I loved her instantly. In a family full of dark haired Irish she's like a bright star with her beautiful strawberry hair.

And the dress! Prom has come a long way from the late eighties when every dress I had was some shade of
metallic Lame (pronounced La May all though lame totally fits)

I had the prom night from hell once. It wasn't my prom but my friend really wanted to go to the prom with a Junior (we were sophomores) and I agreed to go with her guys friend but I made it VERY clear that this was a very platonic friends only kinda date. I knew him from school and although he was very tall and geeky, what little I knew he seemed nice enough and as long as he understood, there would be no hand holding or kissing or anything remotely close we would be fine. So off I went with my friends to pick out dresses. I loved my dress. It was all white satin, strapless and the skirt had a layer of shimmer tulle over the top. It was actually my least "eighties" dress to look back on.

The night started of badly when I was picked up in my dates (Tommy) parents carpeted van which stunk like cigarettes. There were four couples riding in the van to our dinner destination of Beni Hana's, the Japanese restaurant were you sit around the grill and the chef chops and tosses food in the air. We parked at the restaurant I sat in my seat waiting for Tommy to come around and open my door. Instead I watched as he just stood in front of the van lighting a cigarette while all the other guys helped their dates out of the van. Ewww, he smokes?... I got out on my own and we walked through the parking lot.I had to keep telling him not to walk so close to me because the way he kept swing his cigarette I was going to be set on fire. I was starting to realize my fate, this was going to be a long night. Tommy was not the sweet shy geek that I thought. Just because he didn't say much at school apparently doesn't mean he wasn't a jerk.

See all these cuties above. They had fun on their prom night.

So... just before we reached the door to the restaurant I smelled something funny. OMG! Tommy had hit my dress with his cigarette. Have you seen what happens when flame meets tulle? It melts and spreads like wild fire. I had a hole with a black ring in the top layer of my dress. Thank god this wasn't my prom and I prayed the night would get better.

We sat down for dinner enjoying the banging of spatulas and flipping of food until a miscalculated flip sent a greasy shrimp flying in the air only to land on my lap. Have you seen what happens when a buttery shrimp meets tulle? A greasy shrimp print which by the way perfectly accented the cigarette burn just nicely thank you very much.

We made it through dinner and got to the high school parking lot. We all wanted to get inside but Tommy pulled from the back of the van the beer he had stashed. Now I won't pretend I didn't drink in high school because, well, that would be silly. But...my dad was not yet retired and was always the photographer at my school dances so I couldn't drink until after the dance and I had no desire to drink with Tommy. As we started to walk to the gym in began to rain. I'm not kidding, pouring. Not that I had to worry about my dress at this point and actually it was a bit safer since Tommy had lit another cigarette in the parking lot. Just as we were about to round the corner to enter the gym Tommy literally yanks my arm to spin me around and plants a big sloppy smelly drunk-ass kiss on me. Did I mention he had a mullet and acne?

Well after an hour of being inside the dance and realizing all my attemps to avoid and ignore Tommy were failing miserably I made my way to where the pictures were being taken and told my dad I was going to go call a friend to come pick me up and take me home.

I made my way to the front of the school to use the pay phone to call my friend Scott. Scott came and picked me up in his VW bug with stinger pipes that were so loud you could here him coming 2 minutes before he arrived. Thank god I was about to be home. We were going along in the pouring rain when suddenly the VW went quiet...and we were coasting...and we were Out Of Gas.So I sat on the side of the road in a VW Bug, in the rain for about an hour while Scott walked to get and bring back some gas.

Finally I reached home. Scott dropped me off and I just couldn't wait to take of my soaked, burned and greased dress when I stood there at the door realizing I didn't have my key. I was locked out at 11pm at night in the rain in my prom dress. So I headed into the backyard praying that there was just one window open that I could get through. Now even though we had lived in this house my entire seventeen years the side yard was yet un-lanscaped. Just dirt, actually mud. But there was a window open and I crawled through catching the big hole in my tulle on the lock of the window tearing it to shreds as I fell in the house. And I sat there on the floor beneath the window with half my skirt still stuck to the window and laughed my ass off.

The End.

Hey do you have a good prom story? Tell me, I must know. Make me feel better. Either tell it here or leave a comment with a link to your site telling your story. C'mon it's Prom Season!

Sock Monkey

I have occasionally seen it posted about ones email being lost and while I have total faith in those writing about this tragic event I sometimes wonder if this is a "the dog ate my paper" situation. In other words a lame excuse for dumping ones In Box. Guess what happens to jackasses that think like that. They trash their In Box and have to plead with anyone that was kind enough to send me a lovely email to please send me another email if you haven't heard from me. So sorry but being a jackass is sadly sometimes just who I am. I will spare you the details about how it happened. Let me just say if you are new to Entourage (apples version of Outlook, a client email program) BE CAREFUL with the "send and receive" button. Let's leave it at that and move on. Shew!

By the way I love to get emails from you, they really make my day. Even if you just want to know where I got something, I'll help if I can. In fact I get obsessed if I don't know the answer. I had an email requesting the 411 on where I purchased the Mary Jane's I am wearing in my banner and when they were no longer carried in the store I originally purchased them from I spent a good 25 minutes searching the web for the exact pair so I could give her an answer.

ummm...
I just realized I probably should never post after I just drank a
VentiCoffeeFrappucinoLiteWithAnExtraShotBlended...
Sorry this is likely to be wordy...
is wordy a word?
What was I talking about?
Oh yah, Sock Monkey's

Me, Steve and Jumpy kid watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and in it there is a seen where a crabby accountant is standing with his back to a bunch of shelves filled with stuffed animals and a sock monkey reaches out to grab his arm but he doesn't notice. With the saddest of faces the sock monkey slumps back in place. Jumpy kid is BROKEN HEARTED... to the point of silent tears rolling down his face. He said that the sock monkey needed him to love it and make it feel better. If you look real fast there is a bit of this scene where he is trying to grab the accountants arm.

Anyway what does any crafty mom do in this situation, especially one who loves vintage toys...which is most of you reading this, I know. Well if you're me, you immediately geek-out on the internet until you find out where to get The Original Sock Monkey Sox so you can make your jumpy kid a sock monkey to love. Luckily for us the local surplus store carried them and at 10 am the next morning the three of us went to the surplus store. Steve's heart was total mush over seeing his son so emotional. These two are not normally so sappy. They are loud and they are all boy running in the house and making fart noises and talking about dirtbikes...yes I'm talking about my son and my husband.

Seeing this guy turn to mush over our sons melted heart makes me seriously weak.

then because I made "Lucky" the sock monkey in just a couple of hours I went and pulled out this book
that I ordered a long time ago but never made anything from.

From this book "Petey" the dog was born. Jumpy kid sleeps with both of them every night.

Coming up next post (which I promise won't be so long): an update on my shop opening.

Now I'm going to go sew before this serious caffeine buzz wears off and I crash!

Little Jeans

Little Jeans.....

Little Shoes...

Little Itch!

I did not forget the give-away...who me? Noooooope. Didn't forget. Ok yes, yes I did. But I had Jumpy kid pick a comment from the basket that I had printed and put them in and he picked out Monica!!!

Then when I went to Monica's site to shoot her an email I saw that she awarded me this...

Sa-weet!

A little Romance and a Giveaway...

Since today is a day about romantic gestures and heartfelt treats for our sweeties, I thought I would share a photo of one of my favorite romantic things my husband has ever done. Remember when I mentioned The back pack trip
that the guys went on? Steve had walked off from camp and had seen all these flowers. He spelled my name in them and then took this picture. He got crap from the guys for days after of course, but he didn't care, he can take it. All in the name of love. Good lord I love this guy.

When we first were living together he made me one of my most cherished gifts. I wish I had taken a picture to show you, maybe I'll take one later. He carved a heart out of sandstone (picture rolling dough into a snake and then bending in to a heart). Then he carved the reverse into a big chunk of the stone so the heart fits like a puzzle piece. That gift is one of the most meaningful I have ever received. It took him a long time and the thought of him spending time creating something for me out of love, there is no piece of jewelry, no expensive gadget that could possibly come close. This started a homemade heart theme. One year while camping he had found a rock that was naturally heart shaped, tucked it away, carved our initials in the bottom and gave that to me for valentines day.

This morning I woke up and he jumped out of bed and came back with a heart made out of amber with these beautiful teal flecks in it that he had purchased from a gallery.

What is your favorite valentine moment? Let's share, whether it was your husband or kids or neighbor, dog, boss, just plain funny?, whatever.. let's hear it.

For those of you, my sweet blog buddies, that are wondering when the H-E Double L I am going to open my shop, I'm sorry it's taken so long. Just when I get on a roll, life happens. We all came down with the terrible flu, first the little guy, then me, then Steve. Ugh that was weeks of noth'en getting done. Then the little guys birthday, which means planning the big family party, treats for Kindergarten class, then we just started baseball which is all new to us. So no sew'en go'en on! But I promise an announcement before actually opening. I will do a post with a date of when I will be opening. I will be doing mostly Nanny bags, because I have been using mine and it's super functional and I get lots of "where did you get your bag" so let me know what you think about that too. Also, I'm a bit behind on emails ,so if you haven't heard from me, you will, I'll be catching up with you!

Oooh, how about a giveaway? Since you all have been so amazing and supportive of me, I can't even begin to tell you how inspiring your sweet comments and emails have been or how thankful I am for all of you.

Leave a comment about your favorite Valentine moment and I will pick one of you to receive a half yard of my Most Covented Fabric. It's an out of print, impossible to get your hands on. Michael Millers Blossom Bells. Isn't it sweet?

Planning to be unplanned....it takes a lot of work.

I hope everyone is enjoying Christmas. I didn't plan on taking a blog break but this time of year gets pretty crazy with so much going on. This year I have decided to take the season easy. I have decided that it's ok to decline invitations and not get over planned. It's ok to not make every thing I wanted to make. And it's been great. We've had lots of family movies by the fire, unplanned visits with friends and there is always the December birthdays in my family. ( I think there should be some kind of rule about sex in March. Lol. too many December babies) and there has been plenty of making stuff which I'll eventually post about.

With that being said there is one annual event that is a must! Mine and Tara's annual shopping day.

Here are the rules:
1. Neither of us are allowed to make any other plans for the entire day or night.
2. We are gone day and night ..breakfast,shopping, coffee,shopping, Lunch,shopping, a drink,shopping, Dinner,shopping, Drinks, dessert.
3. The husbands are to take care of the kids and not call us unless it's an emergency Lol.
4. No dieting allowed.

We seem to run into some confusion from family and friends each year. They just don't get it. It usually goes something like this: One of us is invited to do something or other that night, we decline..sorry we have plans.Oh what are you doing? It's Dena and Tara's shopping day. Oh your just shopping...well can't you just.....Nope it's our shopping day. Well,what time will you be done?....Sorry don't know....Since you're just out shopping can't you.....Nope. Not gonna do it. Good lord it's all we can do not to have our day derailed. When the day finally arrives and we are in the car securely on our way to breakfast I feel like we have pulled off a secret government mission just to carve out one full day of unplanned time.

9 am - Railroad Cafe for breakfast
10 am - Panama Bay for Coffee and Making our lists and plotting our route
11 am - Toys R Us the first stop, you can see the car is empty. We always put baskets to keep our stuff seperate...I forgot to take a picture at the end of the day when the car is full.
11:30 - the mall

12:00 Godiva tuffles....oh my lord. Tara literally grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the store and said we are getting a treat. That's what our day is about after all. Now, I'm not a big chocolate person or I should say I wasn't a big choc person but Godiva truffles are some serious stuff.

Above is Tara pointing out to me all the different little balls of crack...I mean chocolate. We got gingerbread truffles and eggnog truffles and espresso truffles.....

hmmmm which one is this. Tara how come every time you took my pic I was eating or drinking. Lol.

Speaking of crack...as we were leaving the mall through Macy's we encountered more crack. Warning don't look if you're eating. Is it wrong that we actually turned around and Tara pretended to be holding something interesting while I snapped a photograph so we could document our exposure to crack?

who knows what happened in our wake. As soon as the camera fired we turned and practically ran laughing all the way...ho ho ho. I never claimed to be totally mature did I?

After the mall we headed to Cost Plus Imports for stocking stuffers then to the Barnes and Noble shopping center where we had appetizers and a beer with lime and made our round to the shops there. Then to the craft store for art supply gifts and then to Target and then we called Simply Fondue to make dinner reservations. They could only get us in at 9:30 pm which was perfect because it was 8 pm and we still had to go to Walmart.

This is my face when I saw our dessert.

If you have a Simply Fondue near you...at the very least go there for dessert. Do you see this??? More crack I tell ya. This was a Kahlua Heath Bar Chocolate fondue and do you see this plate of treats for dipping? There were bits of rice krispy treats, marshmallows, bananas, strawberries, fudge and an entire slice of cheesecake.

Try to plan one of these days next year, seriously, it's productive (we get 90% of our shopping done) and it's a day to treat our selves. So call a best girlfriend or your mom or sister and tell them you need to start a new tradition! Merry Christmas!

Sweet Dreams...

We are back from Disney World and had a great time. Seriously the best time of year to visit Mickey! There were several characters we tried to get the little guy to take pictures with but he had no desire. He was very clear... he only wanted his picture taken with Mickey, oh and princesses were OK too. We gathered around to watch Captain Jack Sparrow ask for help to give a hilariously funny sword fighting demo to our surprise the little guy raised his hand! And Captain Jack pointed at him and said "you, the Jumpy Fellow".

He was then given a scroll that pronounced him a pirate intern under the tutelage of Captain Jack Sparrow. Very cool!

When this Alice in wonderland float came by in the parade I remembered a piece of vintage Alice in wonderland fabric I had purchased (for a pretty penny i must admit) a couple of years ago. I decided I would use it for my next bag. I finished yesterday. I instantly thought that some Chocolate Lollipop fabrics would go nicely! That will be my next post!

Isn't this painting adorable? It was in a gallery in downtown disney for $750... not that cute. :) I thought it could be painted easily.

Worn out! How cute are the embroidered pillows that were on our bed. I think I need to try that!

On the way home we sat in the front of the plane and the captain sent the flight attendant to ask if the little guy wanted to sit in the captains chair. He was ecstatic!

Since I will be thanking my family and friends in person today I'd like to use this little space to say how thankful I am to my blog friends! When I started this blog I had no idea how fun it would be. I especially want to thank the first three chicks that put me on their blog rolls Hope from Going Sew Crazy , Lisa from Pink Lemonade Boutique , and Monica from Home is Where Your Heart Is
You chickas rock. Thank you for making me feel welcome. And Miss Jennifer from Sis Boom for becoming such a sweet friend. You make me want to put up a big banner for all to buy your amazing fabs because you are aamazing! And thank you to all of you who leave me such sweet and funny comments and emails. I truly appreciate all of you. Hope everyone enjoys their day today!

We have a date with Goofy!

We're off to Disney world for a week. I can't believe It's 9:30 pm and I am completely packed (for all three of us) and the house is clean and I'm going to bed. We are leaving at 5am ugh! Usually I'm still running around crazy trying to get the last minute stuff together and the house ends up a disaster. Not this time. I'm feeling quite organized (highly unusual for me). Uh-oh..this may mean I am totally forgetting something. Great, not so sure if the being "ready" thing is working for me. lol. I'll be back with lots of picks. Oh, I'm taking the "Governess bag" with me as a carry on so I'll review it when I get back. See you soon!