g&g

We had such a great time! Plan: All Bikes All the Time went pretty well…we only got in the car a couple of times during the whole weekend!

Sunday night, we had a birthday party for my 2 little nephews. They’re so precious! We opened presents, and there was a completely insane cake shaped like Thomas the Tank Engine.

The next morning, we stopped for coffee and breakfast at a place on the pier near our hotel, then rode bikes out to Fort Frederica. It was sort of spooky walking around what used to be a big village but was now mostly ruins. There were informative plaques all over the place, which is how we learned about Samuel Perkins. I can’t find anything useful about him, but he was run out of town and I’d love to know why! The plaque about him just mentioned that folks wouldn’t let him tend his orchard and they shot his pigs. Why did all that happen to him?

Right up the block from our hotel was Southern Soul BBQ. They had Dale’s Pale Ale, Terrapin Rye PA and Sweetwater 420 on tap! We first popped by there on Monday night, and they were having an acoustic open mic. I will tell you a secret now: if I first walk in and hear Uncle John’s Band playing someplace, I will probably want to stick around and also visit that place again. We never did eat there, but we sure did stop in every evening for a drink.

Now we’re back, tan and being total bums around the house. Vacation! It was much, much needed.

Tomorrow, Dave and I are packing up the car with our bags and bikes and heading to St Simon’s Island to spend 4 days in the sun with his family! I was actually looking for a picture of the beach or something when I ran across this bike map of the island. We may not do that whole loop, but who knows? I knew St Simon’s was bikable, but this is really awesome! Have a great week!

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So, I’ll tell you guys my dirtiest secret: I’ve never made clothes before. The idea of making clothes freaked me out for some reason…I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. Whether I had a pattern in front of me or not, I felt totally lost at the idea of sewing darts or finishing sleeves. The closest I’d come to making clothes before this week was hemming the occasional pair of pants or doing little fixes to thifted skirts before embellishing them. So! That makes me extra super-duper proud of the smock I made on Tuesday!

It’s got 4 pockets in the front, which is awesome for work where I’m always putting things down and forgetting where they are. The fabric is a vintage sheet, and it closes at the back with 2 bright red vintage buttons. The back of it hangs free. On the dressform, it hangs a little differently. Since I have actual hips, it’s a little more open in the back when it’s on. I wore it yesterday and loved it, tho I think it needs a little work in the yoke region.

I definitely learned a lot this time around and have an idea for another top! A tank top!

There is a great post over a Treehugger about cars, bikes and infrastructure. Andrew makes the excellent point that the way our roads are built and our drivers and cyclists are educated is really just a recipe for frustration and accidents. With more and more folks riding bikes to avoid filling up their tanks, education is going to be more important than ever.

I made a little set of mustache stamps for me and the SuperCute! gals to use, and folks went batty for them! Since I got so many questions, I decided that next time I was making a stamp, I’d document and post a tutorial. Here it is! If you need to see any picture larger, just click on it to go to the bigger version on Flickr.

1. Gather the Goods - fabric scissors, paper scissors, a Sharpie, cardboard (I used an empty 6 pack), felt & glue.

2. Measure & Cut Your Cardboard

3. Measure & Cut Your Felt - You’ll want the felt cut to the same size as the cardboard to make certain your design won’t be too big to fit on there!

4. Draw Your Design - Use the Sharpie to draw the design on your felt. Keep in mind that you’re going to be gluing this Sharpie-side-down to the cardboard, so make sure to mirror anything that won’t work once you flip it, like letters or numbers.

5. Cut Out Your Design

6. Glue! - Put glue all over the back side of the felt (the side with the visible marker on it).

7. Voila! - Bask in the glory of your cute, new stamp! You definitely want to wait for the glue to dry entirely before you start stamping. To use the stamp, just apply paint to the felt with a paintbrush and gently press onto the surface you’re stamping!

Cody just linked me to the trailer for the new 90210!!!

Can I just say OMG??? Darcy from Degrassi TNG? And it looks like they’re going to stick with some of the same look, like the cheesy montages of Beverley Hills and whatnot? Also, now the word is that not only is Tori Spelling on it, but Shannon Doherty and Jennie Garth, too! Cannot. WAIT. It’s supposed to come out this Fall on the CW. I need to set my Tivo immediately!!!

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So remember how I won that Vintage Ephemera Pack from Clever Nettle a while back? Well it came!! Inside was a fantastical scarf, tons of old photographs and tickets, postcards that Anja designed herself and this amazing book of children’s poetry. Of course, I can’t resist pulling pages from old books and gluing them to things, so that’s what I did! It also gave me a chance to play with this gel medium that had been taunting me from the cabinet for a bit. This little owl collage is over in the shop along with a new Lunch Kit! Look out for more collages from this little book along with more Lunch Kits in the next couple of weeks! Hurrah! It feels so good to be making things again, you guys, I can’t even really describe it.

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OK, it was more like…going out to dinner and realizing we all wanted to get some things at the Kroger, but still. We went to RuSans for some cheap sushi, sake and tempura to gab and dish and be really girly and it was fantastical! Hanging out with Liz and Lori is so therapeutic. After dinner, we walked over to the Kroger and decided we needed to take some pictures. Due to various forces working against us, this is the only one that really came out. I sort of love it! Look at all those huge bags of dog food behind us. That’s art, my friends!

We also had a somewhere stalkery moment at the store, where Liz and Lori spotted Leah and Mark doing some latenight shopping. They only knew these folks through the internet, and there was a lot of debate about whether we should say hello to them after a bit too much sake. We decided not to, which I think was a good move. When Liz got home, she left a post over on their blog about seeing them! Maybe next time we go on a sushi trip, they can come with! If the blog is any indication, these folks are hilarious and also supernice.

Hey, also, I added a little Twitter doodad over there on the right. I think it shows just my latest Tweet, but you can scroll through them. How cute is that??