Violaceous

In which I pretend to post about the 4th of July but am really posting about my new camera.

Did you have a nice Independence Day? I hope so! Lucy's finally at that age where she's starting to get excited about holidays, which is really fun! I got a new camera over the weekend and have been trying to get the hang of it. It's a Canon Powershot SD1100 IS. I'm completely amazed at the difference. I knew my old camera was bad, but I don't think I knew quite how out of date it was.

Look how nicely this seed pod came out in macro! I'm impressed.
 
And these:

I'm still trying to figure out a few things, and I need to figure out how to resize pictures because they're coming out huge.

Lucy's Independence Day outfit:

I made her 3 of those little pillowcase dresses last weekend and I just love how they came out!

My two sweeties, at the parade yesterday.

I am so happy with how quickly my new camera can get photos of Lucy when she's in motion! We were having a little photo shoot of her in her dress and I accidentally got a shot of her in mid fall, when her stool tipped over! It wasn't blurry at all. Hopefully I'll be able to post better pictures now.

Unrelated - I have to show off Lucy's vintage stool, it's so cute!

Peaceful

Being peaceful...I'm working on it. I just love the color of those eggs, don't you? We have a local lady that delivers fresh eggs from her chickens every other week.

Home Sweet Home

I spent almost all day painting yesterday and love how it's brightened up our home! On the weekends when I'm at home with Lucy, I love watching decorating shows. I got all inspired yesterday after watching one and decided to paint one of our big walls on a whim! It had never been painted and was a harsh white with lots of nail holes and dirt - blech. That wall has been bugging me for a while now.
Tada!

It's a really nice sand color ( It's Valspar "spun sugar" from the Martha Stewart line). I love how it brightens everything up but is still a neutral and goes with everything. The color variation at the bottom isn't the paint, I'm better than that! :) Our house has weird lighting.

This is a better example of the color, I think. It took 2 coats.
This is the other side of the room:

I'm so happy with the way the house is turning out! We painted these walls a couple of months ago.

The green is Valspar by Martha Stewart, "tapenade" and the dark brown is "horseshoe".
I also wanted to show off my new cutie pie wreath!

It's a little gnome in his s'mores garden! How creative is that!? I got it from KnockKnocking on Etsy, of which I am a huge fan. I want all of her wreaths!

Summer Goodness

Just a couple of things from today.

I was able to pull my short hair into a ponytail for the first time in 2 years!! Yay! You will, however, notice all the bobby pins and hairs that have escaped. Still! I'm happy.

Also, I made this yummy ice cream pie!

It's called a Lemonade Stand Pie, yum! It took all of about 10 minutes, which is my kind of pie. Here's the recipe. I'm still waiting for it to freeze but the filling I sampled was delicious! Sweet and just a little tangy.

Candy Colors and Glitter

I've been down in the dumps lately - I don't think it's any one thing, just a bunch of things all stuck together. I've had a hard time pulling myself out of it. Today I was able to spend a good 4-5 hours in my craft room just messing around (thanks to my wonderful husband who kept Lucy occupied because he knew I needed time to myself) and it was so therapeutic! I didn't make any masterpieces, I just surrounded myself with candy colors and glitter and had fun.

Lucy has been so into dressing up lately that I thought it would be fun to make her a dress up corner. Yesterday we hung some hooks and a floor length mirror after I rearranged her room, and today I painted a "Lucy's Boutique" sign! I love how it turned out, and Lucy has been playing in there a lot.

Lucy's dress up corner
Sorry for the blurriness, I really need a new camera! It's just one of those things that has to wait for the time being.

Here's a close up of the sign:

It has a cute vintage paper doll dress!
I made her this one too:


If I keep on going this way, she's going to own every type of store there is!

I just discovered Diamond Dust! I'm probably one of the last people to find out about it, but I love it! It's crushed glass glitter that looks just like sugar. I've been using it on everything lately, and it's pretty inexpensive! I think I found an excuse to use it on everything I made today. I've also been playing with Paper Clay a lot too, I'm just getting the hang of it!

I feel a little better after my time in my craft room and Lucy's room looks cuter too.

Oh dang.

Someone got into the markers today at nursery school!

And it's not washing off.

Yes, it's even under her shirt, and on her eyelids. And toenails.

I think she had help.

Costumes

Lucy is at that age where she just loves to dress up. She'll be in her room quietly for a while and come out in the craziest outfits! I so love this phase.

From this morning - She calls those wings her "bees" and when she's wearing them she goes around saying "bzzz, bzzz".

From about an hour ago. Her shoes are on the wrong feet and she's wearing about 3 skirts! Also, her beret is on backwards.

Little beauty

Note chocolate covered face from eating fresh chocolate chip cookies after her nap!

I found one of the best things ever at the thrift store today!! Other shoppers were actually laughing at me for buying it. I don't blame them, but I bought it anyways! It seriously filled up my entire cart with ruffled fabric.

It's a vintage bright red square dancing petticoat! I can't even tell you how yards of fabric are in this thing. It is so full of ruffles!

I think it's gorgeous! I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. Hang it up? Cut it up? I don't know! I am not going to wear it.

Lucy will though!

And yet another one.

I absolutely love working on both of my Etsy shops, but decided I needed another, smaller one! I've been making things over and over so much that I haven't had a lot of time to make one of a kind pieces. I really wanted a little corner of my own that I could put my weird little altered art pieces in. They are, admittedly, weird and kitschy, but I love making them so much!
My new Etsy shop is Violet Plays, just for whatever comes out of my imagination but doesn't exactly fit in with a children's shop or a vintage shop. That's exactly what I'm doing - playing! I really needed to get back to being creative and I hope this gives me more of an excuse to do so. I hope you like my new creations, but if you don't that's okay too! I wanted this shop to be more of a place to put my little art pieces in. I hate calling myself an artist - blech. It sounds so pretentious. Especially when I'm using glitter and vintage dolls and things. It seems like the word "artist" should be reserved for painters that actually sell what they paint in gallerys, you know?

Let me know what you think!

Skipping Rocks

Yesterday Dustin and I had the day off together, so we pulled Lucy out of her nursery school for the day and went up to the lake! I can't even tell you how rare it is that all 3 of us are free on the same day. That sounds funny, Lucy being 2, but she goes to nursery school in the mornings Monday through Friday. And Dustin and I are just so dang busy all of the time! We had so much fun! My only goal for the day was to bring Lucy home dirty, tired, and sticky from ice cream (we went to Dairy Queen afterwards). Just the way it should be for kids once in a while in the summer. Accomplished!

Quite the popular activity of the day was throwing rocks into the lake! Luce has quite the throwing arm, as you can see!

Lucy's Daddy tried to teach her how to skip rocks. He's pretty good!

Good skipping rocks.

Lucy needed one!

Rock skipping ripples

And I just have to show off this picture that Dustin took! I so love that girl.
Sometimes you just have to take the day off and skip rocks, y'know? I see lots more rock skipping in our future.

From the other night

Lucy was having me draw for her on the etch a sketch and I guess she liked this one too much to erase! I found it like this a couple days later.

Don't the 3 of us look cute?