I bought this froggy chair from a friend of mine a while back. It's actually hard to find chairs for kids that are in between high chairs and regular seats, well cheap ones at least. We've been getting by with dictionaries and just plain old kneeling, but often my daughters legs  fall asleep and then she'll lie on the ground flailing while we finished dinner. Not really pleasant for anyone. So the chair. I guess I didn't really mention that I was going to paint it, because everyone in my family was shocked and no one approved. For the few weeks it was at the table, it seems everyone fell in love with this god awful, garish froggy chair.  Well too bad. I just can't stand that 80's craft fair, dappled paint, googly eyed animal shit. And I love me some high gloss spray paint. Of course it's still called the froggy chair. And I need to find another because the kids fight over it at every meal. I guess I better go hit up some old school craft fairs.

Oh and for all of you who subscribe to my blog via email, I'm sorry about that huge email you got with all the past posts in it. We upgraded WordPress this weekend and I guess that was the side effect. It shouldn't happen again (and if it does, please tell me).

I am super excited about this little project: it's an embroidery sketch book! Now that it's springtime here in the midwest--and what a lovely spring it is, by the way--we are outside most of the day. Unfortunately, I don't know how to knit or crochet, so the only portable project I have as a sewer is seam ripping, which is less than pleasurable. After doing a little embroidery for a quilt square I was reminded how much I like to embroider. If I came up with a real project to embroider I wouldn't want to take it outside because it would inevitably get dropped in the sandbox or hosed down by the sprinkler, so I made a little book out of fabric and cardboard to take with me. I just cut out a piece of lightweight cardboard (from a cereal box) for the cover, making sure it was a little bigger then my smallest embroidery hoop when folded in half, so I could use the hoop for all the pages. Then I traced the cover onto some fabric (adding seam allowances), made a pocket to go across the whole thing, sewed up 3 sides, slipped the cardboard in, and sewed up the opening. Then I cut some gray and white linen for pages and sewed up the middle.  Done.  When I was thinking about making this sketch book, it was much more elaborate with lots of pockets and pin cushions (more like this) but in the end I wanted something I could make fast, use up, and then make again. Now we're off to the park.

For more photos look here, and here.

This is the project I was telling you about yesterday.  The blue one didn't turn out quite right obviously--you can't really see the bunny--but hell if I'm going to unpick the whole thing just to fix it. The others are fine anyway. I wanted to hand embroider all of them to make the bunny really stand out, but after doing one set of ears I ran out of patience and just did it on the machine. I was too nervous to go whole hog and put the feet dogs down and embroider it the real way, so I just did sort of fake machine embroidery and it turned out okay. I haven't told you what they are, but I'm sure all you smartypants out there can guess.

this is just to show off the amazing cake plate I got from a friend for christmas. It's a cup and a plate epoxied together, but it's so much more than the sum of it's parts. I've always wanted a fancy fancy cake plate.  Those are chocolate caramels on it, made for little christmas gifts. I made the gingerbread version too (which were surprisingly good) and they've all gone to our neighbors on this snowy, snowy day.

Here it is the 100th post.  It's a nice tradition in this crafty blog world to have some sort of contest or giveaway on occasions like these.  And even though I'm crap at responding to comments, they really do push me to do more and better things.  This sewing book is a great example . A year ago I would have thought up this idea, but probably never got around to making it, and then proceed to mope around because I never do the things I say I will.  No more!  And it's all because of you.  So the sewing book pictured above is yours (sans supplies) if you win.  Just leave a comment on this post--a joke, a recipe, a book recommendation, the name of your dog, whatever--and Monday I will pick a winner (by random).  If you've never left a comment before, go ahead and do so. Click on the comments and write your email in the space provided (no one can see it but me) and if you don't have a website just leave that space blank.   There are more pictures of the book on my flickr site if you'd like to see.  

Because I'm almost up to 1000 comments (it's at 984 right now) there will be a secret prize for the 1000th commenter! Good luck! And I'll see you on Monday.