Buddy and Tiny

My boys are obsessed with Dinosaur Train.  The show, the toys, the books, we even had to buy the little guy a duplicate of this so they would stop fighting over the one we have.  We ended up getting one from Target that is a special underwater version with their favorite shark (cretoxyrhina) character instead, and that caused more fighting initially because Babyman wanted "the blue one" instead of his "green one."

I figured what better for Halloween than for Babyman to dress as Buddy and Tiny to dress as Tiny, natch.  Small hitch:  I really don't want to pay $30 for each of their costumes... though I've done it before.  Sooooooooo I thought, well maybe I can make them.  Should be easy enough, right?  Nevemind the fact that my boys would never go for having these heavy-looking hoods on for any length of time.

So you can imagine how excited I was to find this!  My only concern is going to be translating the patterns to full size since I don't have a lot of experience with that kind of thing.  And the pattern is only for Buddy, not Tiny.  But I think it will be easy enough to translate the pattern to Tiny, changing the color and adding wings.  I have a bit more than a month to get it done, I think I can do it!

Confession

I have a confession to make:  I am obsessed with Twilight.  No, I'm not a 13 year old girl, and no, I'm not out buying everything with Edward's face all over it.  But I can't stop reading the books.  Especially Breaking Dawn.  I spend almost every night in Babyman's room reading while I wait for him to fall asleep, either a real book or one on my iPad.  And even if I have a new book that I'm reading, as soon as I'm done with it I go back to Twilight, again usually Breaking Dawn. 

I also have to watch the movies whenever they are on cable... as bad as they are.  Sick, isn't it?

I'd like to say that now that I've confessed I feel better, but nope.  Just as guilty as ever. 

A Case of the Mondays

Ugh, having one of those days around here... can't get moving this morning.  Oh, wait, it's the afternoon?  When did that happen?  Um, ok, yes, I see, about an hour and 38 minutes ago. 

Rainbow Happiness

photo from Babble.com

We've been loving rainbows around here lately, especially a little wooden xylophone the boys enjoy banging on.  So when I saw this article on Babble on Facebook this morning, I just had to share!  I'm loving the garden above, the painted stairs, the pie plate and especially the xylophone table!

Simplifying Simplify

I've been doing a lot of thinking these days... well, most days, really.  My mind is constantly racing.  But Hurricane Irene this weekend has put a lot in perspective.  We were very lucky, no flooding, no trees blown over, no damage whatsoever.  I spent quite a bit of time moving things in the basement, deciding what was important and what I didn't really mind if it got wet and ruined.  So then it leads me to think, why do I have things that I wouldn't care if they were ruined?  They're just taking up space, right?  I'm trying to get my mind to accept that there are things we (I) possess that really aren't that important, but I always fight giving them up.  So basically a lot of stuff is heading toward Goodwill in the very near future.

The other point of this is that I tend to spread out and in my attempt to simplify as much as I can.  I had multiple blogs for different topics.  I have since taken most of those blogs down and will start working on importing them into this blog so that everything is together. 

I'd like to get back to blogging regularly and I think my biggest reason for the lapse in my blogging was the separating topics.  It got to be too confusing, rather than making it easier like I thought it would.  So everything from venting about the boys (big and little) to baking adventures to job search to etsy shop updates will all be here.  It's going to take a bit to consolidate everything, so please be patient on that.  I promise, eventually there will be a LOT to read from the past few years.  And there will be even more in the future!

IF: Shadow

Another Illustration Friday post! This week is "shadow" and my immediate thought whenever I hear the word shadow is of my former shadow, Dragon. She's my tiny little black cat and she used to follow me wherever I went. Nowadays, she's much happier to wait until nighttime to be with me, when there are no little hands trying to grab her tail or little heads trying to use her as a pillow. Instead, she sleeps upstairs during the day, maybe appearing once or twice to eat or use the litter box.

So here's my little shadow, sleeping on the arm chair in our bedroom last night. This is my first attempt at sketching, scanning in the sketch, redrawing with illustrator and painting with photoshop. I kept it all very simple, but I really like the effect.

Logo and "Mascot" Characters

I'm working on a new logo and a couple of little characters for Striped Turtle Studio! It's a little slow-going since I don't get a lot of design time on the "good" computer these days. It's in the basement and since there are two little monsters running around the house most days who can't be contained down there, it's hard to get into the basement to do anything productive.

I did get some progress done this morning while Babyman was at school and Tinyman cooperated by playing somewhat quietly and non-destructively. Then he decided he wanted to sit in my lap at the computer and play on the keyboard, so that ended computer time fairly effectively.

So sorry, but I can't give any sneak peeks until the new designs are done. But I think they're going to be really cute - I'm loving them already!