Pumpkin & Caterpillar

Pumpkin & Caterpillar, originally uploaded by BeckyKay Designs.

It's getting chilly here in Kansas. The expected low for tonight is 25 degrees. I adore fall, but it's super-hard to get out of my warm toasty bed in the mornings when it's this cold.

All our pumpkins are happily waiting on the porch for our pumpkin carving party on Thursday evening. Just gotta get the house cleaned for our guests!

I got to do a little needle felting last night after Lil' Kay went to bed. I'm working on some Christmas ornaments. I really hope they turn out well!

Lil' Kay found this little caterpillar in the yard about a week ago. After the photo shoot, he let him go in the grass. Poor caterpillar! I'm pretty sure he nearly had a heart attack from all the attention.

Lil' Kay Quote of the Day

"Girls are my favorite humans."

New Stuff at SheMadeIt!

Well, the craft show this weekend, was not everything we had hoped it would be. The weather was beautiful, there were quality booths and lots of people, but not enough buyers! We made enough to pay for our booth fee, but not a whole lot more than that. Although, Mom did get an order for two more crocheted monkeys.

The good news is that since we didn't sell out, I've got tons of new stuff to add to our She Made It! Etsy shop. I highly recommend you check it out, as I will be adding more and more over the next several days.

Jessica uses some of our scraps to make the prettiest little baby or doll blankets you've ever seen. She does the piecing by machine, then hand ties them and sends them to our lovely quilter Grandma Reva for binding by hand. I also have about three crib quilts ready for listing, too, with frogs, cowboys and vintage-look fabrics!!

This summer, Jessica came up with two adorable designs for tooth fairy pillows which I absolutely adore! One is a tough looking tooth with his own set of fangs. The other is a pretty little tooth with wings that actually flap! Both designs feature a little pocket to hold a tooth and the tooth fairy's payment.

A tooth fairy pillow is an absolute must if you have a kid in the tooth-losing age range. I'm told it is much easier to remove and replace a tooth when it has its own special pillow than it is to wrestle it out from under a child's pillow without waking them. The tooth fairy and I are good friends.

As you know, I made over 50 crayon caddies for our craft shows this fall. I sold a lot of them, but there are still a number left. I've started listing them in the shop. Many of them are suitable for little boys, because as the mom of a boy, I know how hard it can be to find cute handmade gifts for boys. Crayon caddies make great stocking stuffers and small gifts for birthday parties. I have also found that my son is more likely to put his crayons away in a caddy than back in the box. (Results may vary depending on the child.)

We've still got lots more to add, including some bundles of flannel burp cloths that our sister-in-law Heidi makes. Flannel burp cloths are fabulous! They actually get softer the more you wash them!

So, be sure to check out She Made It! It's been bare in there for a while, but it's filling up with all kinds of great kids and baby gifts!

Fine Arts & Crafts Festival

So, tomorrow is our second craft show of the season. I am completely unstressed and, most likely, unprepared. Well, not really. I just haven't done much work for it, so I feel like I should be unprepared. In fact, I had enough stock left over from the last show that I haven't felt it was necessary to do any sewing for this one. Also, all the displays are at my sister's house, so she's in charge of hauling everything over here tomorrow morning. We'll just go in, set up and throw our stuff on the tables and racks. Easy peasy.

Tonight, I need to replace a few price labels, wash the table cloths and just make sure that we have everything we need. Completely low-stress. Kind of nice, huh?

Birthday Money

As you know, my birthday was last Friday. My mom didn't know what to give me, so she went with cash. Totally awesome, although I did have a hard time deciding what I wanted to buy with my birthday money. Spending it all on Etsy seemed like a no-brainer though! Here's what I ended up with! An adorable giraffe pincushion from Sugarelf (how can you not like a shop with a name like that?); a very sweet Clever Kitty t-shirt from Cathy's Sweet Shop (I've wanted one of these forever!); and a fun little thought bubble barrette from Mel Bell.
Now, I just have to sit back and wait for my treasures to arrive! It'll be like having my birthday all over again!!

We had a great time on our overnight trip to Guthrie, Oklahoma. It really is a very fun town with lots of good restaurants (did you know you can fry green beans?) and tons of antique shops. We came home with some pretty great stuff. I need to take pictures so I can share it with you all!

And the winner is....

So, my birthday weekend is drawing to a close. (I don't believe in this one day birthday stuff. Why not stretch it out for two or three days?) As promised, I'm giving away the cute Villette bag in my previous post.

The winner is Tango K! Be sure to check out the Tango K blog for some beautiful and unique jewerly creations!

If you didn't win, but you're still dying to have a Villette bag of your own, be sure to stop by the Villette Bag section of my shop!

Giveaway!!

In honor of my (32nd) birthday on Friday, I'm hosting a little blog giveaway! One of my precious readers is going to receive this sweet little Villette Bag for their very own. I love the vintage shabby chic feel of this particular print. It reminds me of a block I might find in one of my grandma's handmade quilts.

Here's what you have to do: Leave me a post about your most favorite birthday ever. Be sure to include some way for me to contact you if you should win. Mr. Kay is taking me on a romantic getaway this weekend, so I'll draw the name of a lucky winner on Sunday.

I don't do these giveaways very often, so be sure to sign up!

I'll give you TROUBLE!!

Over my lunch hour, I stopped off at the store to pick up a couple things. I wondered by the toy section and had a thought! Lil' Kay is constantly bugging us to play games with him, but quite honestly, I find CandyLand and Chutes & Ladders a bit boring! In fact, mind-numbingly boring. I was suddenly reminded of one of my favorite games as a kid, and it still sounded like fun! Trouble! We used to play it with my grandma and grandpa when we visited their house. Does anyone not like to play Trouble?

I brought it home, and when Lil' Kay saw it, he couldn't wait to play! We even managed to talk Mr. Kay into playing with us. A nice little time of family fun at the kitchen table!

Mr. Kay is a ruthless Trouble player. Most of his plays were directed at me. Don't worry, I definitely fought back. In fact, we spent so much time trying to beat each other, that Lil' Kay snuck up and won the game! Okay, so maybe we went a little easy on him because he's five.

This is such a nice, simple compact game. You don't have to worry about losing the die, because it's trapped inside that snazzy bubble! I have to wonder why more games didn't utilize the pop-o-matic bubble? And, let's face it, popping a die is way more fun than rolling it or spinning one of those silly spinner things! That's right. The pop-o-matic bubble is the most underused piece of technology I can think of.

Needlefelting Attempt #2

Needlefelted Shark , originally uploaded by BeckyKay Designs.

I'm pretty proud of this one, since I did it all on my own without a kit and without instructions. I did use a couple of Lil' Kay's toy sharks as reference, but that's it!

Now, here's the crazy part. Last Monday, I made my wee little bunny. Lil' Kay was totally fascinated, so I gave him a bit of wool to play with. A day or so later, his right eye gets all puffy and red, and he develops a bit of a rash on his body. Friday, I keep him home from school and we make a visit to the doctor. The doctor says it is some kind of allergic reaction. We cannot figure out what it is from! We haven't changed soap or detergent or anything, and he hasn't eaten anything unusual.

Friday night, I pull out my brand new order of wool from The Felted Ewe in preparation for making the shark. I comment on the quantity of wool I received, and Mr. Kay says, "That's wool?"

I say, "Yeah."

He says, "Ummmm....I'm allergic to wool."

And then it dawns on us. Wool. Itchiness. Allergic reaction. Yep. Lil' Kay is allergic to my new hobby. Doesn't that just figure?

Sick Day!

The other day on Etsy, I stumbled across a thread announcing the 2nd Annual Pumpkin Junkin' Contest. After reading about it, I thought it sounded like something fun that Lil' Kay and I could do together. Well, this morning, Lil' Kay woke up with an extremely swollen right eye and a rash on multiple parts of his body. (I'll save the details for later, because that's a funny story, too.) Anyway, I decided to keep him home from school and take him to the doctor.

After the doctor's appointment, we had to run to the store to pick up his prescription. While we were there, we came up with a plan and gathered supplies for our pumpkin.

At first, Lil' Kay wanted to make the pumpkin into a microraptor. Now, most people may not know what a microraptor is, but basically, it's a feathered dinosaur creature...thing. We put a couple bags of feathers in the cart, and the whole time I'm wondering how the heck we're going to pull this thing off. Fortunately, at the last moment he changed his mind and decided on a T Rex. Before he could unchange his mind, we put the feathers back and bought some green spray paint.

After lunch, we started on the project. We cut the snout, arms, feet and tail out of white posterboard and pinned them to the pumpkin with straight pins. I was totally impressed with Lil' Kay's grasp of placement and dinosaur anatomy. I was going to put the tail at the base of the pumpkin, but he pointed out that it should go up higher, as T Rexes did not drag their tails. He also insisted that the eyes should actually go on the snout and not on the pumpkin like I wanted.

Once the pieces were in place, we went out to the yard and spray painted the entire thing green. Let me tell you, it takes a lot of spraying to cover up an orange pumpkin. Many, many coats.

When the paint was dry, we brought our creature back in the house and added the giant wiggly eyes (is there anything more fun than wiggly eyes?), teeth and tongue. I must say, I'm pretty giddy about the way it turned out. He looks cute and silly and dinosaur-like! Mr. Kay pointed out that it looks like he's about to tell a joke, "Wait! Guys! Tell me if you've heard this one!"

Reunion Time!

This past weekend was my 10 year class reunion at Hesston College. Hesston is a small two year Christian college in Kansas not far from where I live. I spent three semesters there and loved it! I'm thinking that if Lil' Kay decides he wants to go to Hesston in a few years, I'm good with that. Especially since it's only about 30 minutes from our house!

Some of my most favorite people were convinced to drive and fly in for the event, and I'm so glad they did! It was awesome to walk around campus and reminisce about the things we did and the people we knew.

My friend Alysha drove up from Oklahoma City. She's one of those friends that no matter how long it's been since we've seen each other, we pick up right where we left off. I remember the first time I met her was in chapel. She came and sat down next to me, the shy off-campus student. She is smart and funny and has a boisterous laugh/cackle. She was responsible for driving all the way to Kansas City to pick up our friend Matt from the airport on Friday night, and then deliver him to me on Saturday morning.

Matt actually flew in from Vancouver, Canada for the reunion. It took some very serious convincing and perhaps a guilt trip or two to get him here, but he sort of admitted that I was right. Well, he said I wasn't wrong. We hadn't seen each other in five years, so I was really looking forward to meeting him. Matt is partially responsible for helping me recover from a bad break up my first semester at college. Thanks to him and several other friends, I decided to become an on-campus student for my second semester at Hesston. Basically, we met through a play we did that first semester. My life has not been the same since. He is absolutely hilarious and smart and talented and an amazing person to have conversations with.

Then there is Grant. Honestly, I didn't really believe that he was going to show up for the reunion until I saw him walking across the campus. He and I agree on very little, except the fact that we like each other. Grant truly is one of the smartest, most charismatic people I know. I

can only pray (a lot) that he will use his powers

for good and not evil.

So, we wondered around campus for a lot of the weekend. We visited the old buildings where we used to spend time, ate in the cafeteria (totally surreal) and looked at what has changed since we were there. We scoured the bookstore, and I got to show Lil' Kay some of my old alma mater. He thought it was great!

And, now, they've been gone since Sunday and I kind of miss them.