A whirlwind of a weekend: a friends & family event on Saturday to christen the new shop. It was a big thrill to throw the doors open and welcome my first visitors after fiddling around on my own until the wee hours for so many weeks. I'm delighted that my stroller-friendly assertion passed the test. And doubly happy that the kid-friendly claim also seemed to hold: the play kitchen and stack of poofs were popular with the under six crowd. And I'll get to do it all again in four days with the grand opening on Saturday.

On that note, I've decided keeping up two blogs is a bit much right now and I'm going to take a break here. With so much of my time and energy going into the shop I'm a one note Nelly these days and I just don't have that much else to talk about. I'll be posting over at the shop blog here and hope to return to this comfortable place once things settle down.

I'll be back!

Nicole

whooo

That's me blowing the dust off the blog. Oh I've been around and thinking bloggy things but lately my eyes spring open at odd hours of the night with thoughts that sound like
ordercroissantsandwhatcolourflowersandbuymoregreenpaint
andineedshoppingbagsandcashregisterollsandiditurnonthealarma
ndwhatifmovetheblanketstothebackandishouldmailtheinvitationsandremembertocallelsa

racing through my head and, being unsure that I could piece together a paragraph, I opted for silence this week. But things are looking up, after a productive day spent in the excellent company of my dear sister-in-law, who always come through in a pinch, even though she is jet-lagged. And now that the back wall is merchandised, I can sleep tonight without thoughts of unpacked boxes invading my slumber. Two weeks 'til opening day.

Happy weekend folks.

sundaying

Fiddling with the aperture settings on the new camera this morning. And sewing button eyes on a felt bird, but that is another story. It's crazy cold and some kind of windy here, in other words the perfect sort of day to stay inside and make things. Which is exactly what I'm doing over at the shop this afternoon. Making displays. Unmaking displays. Remaking displays. Trying to get it right. At the peak of my exasperation, caused by endless configurations of a bucket, a vase, a tub of Bum Bum Balm, the iPod coughed up The Storm by Tanya Donelly and this lyric that felt perfectly apropos as some brave passersby peered in my window:

I'm not finished yet, I'm under construction
You can peek behind the curtain if you want
You watch, don't stop
My reputation's shot
I just wanted to get it right


Well maybe not the reputation part, but the rest feels spot on.

me Vs. your friendly neighbourhood spiderman

Tomboys are cool. I have no issue with that. It's the aesthetic that gets me. And what does SpiderMan - or the Transformers for that matter - know about Valentine's Day anyhow? It may be controlling. It may even be wrong. But I won't buy a box of SpiderMan valentines. I just won't. I know it is only a question of when I will be too girlish for Stella and instead of lavishing attention on our crafty projects she will merely humour me. Happily, I have managed to thwart Spidey and the evil forces of commercialism - this time - with a little bit of old fashioned cut and paste.



A big box of old school Valentines, the kind you have to cut out - no perforations here - glue together the little envelopes (they never stay closed anyhow) and seal with a sticker. She can't wait to get her hands on them. The other cards were made with snips of baker's twine, white glue and embroidery floss along the border.