Category: Uncategorized

Today I got my first wholesale shipment of glitter from China! I wasn’t sure exactly what the colours would be like (the pics on AliExpress aren’t exactly… exact) so I was excited to see what I’d get. Most of the colours were the same/very similar to colours I already have: red, fuchsia, black, emerald green, sapphire blue, silver and white. I was out of stock of red and fuchsia so I’m happy about those, but I’m REALLY excited because there are also three new colours!

l-r: rose, chocolate and antique gold

Here are some comparisons of the new colours with the current ones (these are more accurate for colour than the pic above):

pinks

I really like this new pink, it’s nothing like any colour I’ve had before! It’s almost a salmon colour, but rose sounds prettier than salmon as far as naming glitter goes.
golds

The antique gold is paler and less brassy than my regular gold. tbh I should probably call the gold brass instead but OH WELL.
browns

At first I didn’t realize how different the chocolate was from the bronze but when I put them side by side you can see how much darker it is.

These new colours will be up in the shop in the next couple days, as well as the restock of red and fuchsia. And in the meantime to celebrate I’m offering 20% orders of $10 or more with the code AUTUMN20

First of all I wanted to say thank you to everyone who requested one of the mini posters! And also I’m sorry for not posting sooner, but I’ve been dealing with some SERIOUS DECISIONS that were stressing me out so much all I could do was mindlessly work on etsy orders (all weekend, which I don’t normally do), watch Friday Night Lights (I started on Saturday morning and I’m halfway through season three), and then recap Friday Night Lights for Taylor since he sleeps through a lot of my prime tv watching hours. ANYWAY. I’m going to email everyone but in case you are watching here are the winners:

top row, 5x7s: black & blue nebula on tan cardstock winner: Varia, white & pink roses on white cardstock winner: Aviva, brown gradient on tan cardstock winner: Stephanie, white & pink nebula on cream watercolour paper winner: Jas, white & pink roses on tan cardstock winner: Elina
bottom row, 4x6s: brown gradient on glossy photo paper winner: no one wanted this one haha, pink & pink roses on cream watercolour paper winner: Ash, white & pink nebula on tan cardstock winner: Marisa, black & pink nebula on glossy photo paper winner: Leslie, white & pink roses on cream watercolour paper winner: Anne, black & blue nebula on glossy photo paper winner: Pris

If you see your name here and you DIDN’T get an email let me know. Again, THANK YOU to everyone who played along, and if you didn’t win don’t forget you can download and print out whichever one(s) you want. Downloads can be found here.

And since no post would be complete without the requisite baby pictures…

First riot grrrl pigtails AND the first time wearing the jersey I bought in December 2011 ie before I was even pregnant. Also first time capturing her latest milestone:


Standing and (almost) walking! Like a little Rory Calhoun!

Every parent should read this (but especially parents of boys).

Regular building or SECRET ICE CAVE?

As the original commissioner of the very first “Feminist Killjoy” banner I owe a lot of my etsy’s success to Alithea. She’s doing her damnedest to start a new business and is asking for just a little help getting started.

Just discovered this creepy little shop & I love it!

What a very silly Gwen wore this week.

snakesnakesnakesnakesnakesnakesnakesnake

There are still a few mini number poster samples that haven’t yet been claimed here (for free!).

Remember to order your banners in the following colours while you still can!
• bronze (5 sheets left)
• lilac (4 sheets left)
• indigo (10 sheets left)
• mint (7.5 sheets left)
• cerulean (3.5 sheets left)
• lemon (3.5 sheets left)
• orange sherbet (6 sheets left)
• peacock (5 sheets left)
• turquoise (6.5 sheets left)
• lime (6.5 sheets left)

Gwen’s hair is getting really long. It’s starting to curl in the back and the front is always in her eyes. I’ve pinned it back with barrettes a couple times but today is the first time I’ve been able to get her to hold still long enough to put an elastic in!

Yesterday I went through her clothes and took out any nine-month sized items and summer stuff she’ll never wear again (HEARTBREAK). We actually really need to do some serious shopping for her- I’ve been buying a few pieces here and there but she’s pretty low on basics. The problem is I haven’t seen many things I’ve really LOVED, and this is weird but I don’t really like graphic tees for her? idk, I’m just not into them. It’s like when Sym was a baby and I wouldn’t dress her in navy blue.

Don’t forget to check out the sweet giveaway on my last post, some pieces haven’t yet been claimed.

I made this mini numbers poster for Gwen’s room a few weeks ago. I have it on a shelf with some pictures and toys (although I’m going to have to move all these things soon as she’s getting tall and grabby), but it would also be cute as part of a nursery gallery wall. It’s just a simple gradient in shades of brown printed on tan cardstock, but for variety I put together some new versions. I tried printing them out on a few different types of paper and got different results, as you can see below.

top row, 5x7s: black & blue nebula on tan cardstock, white & pink roses on white cardstock, brown gradient on tan cardstock, white & pink nebula on cream watercolour paper, white & pink roses on tan cardstock
bottom row, 4x6s: brown gradient on glossy photo paper, pink & pink roses on cream watercolour paper, white & pink nebula on tan cardstock, black & pink nebula on glossy photo paper, white & pink roses on cream watercolour paper, black & blue nebula on glossy photo paper

Download the mini posters here:
• brown gradient
• white & pink roses
• pink & pink roses
• white & pink nebula
• black & pink nebula
• black & blue nebula

These can be printed at 5×7 or 4×6. Please note that I fixed the pink & pink roses and both black nebulas (nebulae?) so they’ll no longer print with so much white at the top and bottom as seen in the 4×6 samples.

And now for the giveaway! I’m giving away all the samples I made, so if you can’t be bothered to print one out yourself simply leave a comment saying which you’d like and lbr, you’ll probably end up getting it.

*These posters are free for personal use ONLY! Please don’t use my design to make products to sell, that’s stealing & it’s rude as hell.

lol that title is really overdramatic but MAYBE NOT.

On Sunday night I found out the store where I’ve been getting most of the glitter sheets I use to make banners isn’t going to be carrying them anymore. Unless I can find a new supplier these colours will soon be out of stock FOREVER:
• bronze (7.5 5 sheets left)
• lilac (4.5 sheets left)
• indigo (10 sheets left)
• mint (7.5 sheets left)
• cerulean (3.5 sheets left)
• lemon (3.5 sheets left)
• orange sherbet (6 sheets left)
• peacock (5 sheets left)
• turquoise (6.5 sheets left)
… and also lime (7 sheets left), which is a secret colour I’ve just never bothered photographing until now, when it’s suuuuuuper useful. So like… PLACE YOUR ORDERS NOW.

I’m not really sure right now what the future of my etsy is going to be. I can still get some colours at Michael’s, and I actually placed a couple experimental orders on AliExpress (a 150 sheet experiment, oops, but first I looked on Alibaba and I’d have to buy a 40-foot shipping containers worth there so like… 150 sheets seems reasonable) just to see what the colours are like from the sellers in China (and I’ll know in only 22-41 days!), if they are more like the Michael’s colours (mostly metallics) or more like the dollar store colours (mostly iridescents). Even if that works out though, I’ll probably have to change the way my shop works. From what I’ve found so far I can only buy multicoloured -packs with 1 sheet each of 10 different colours so if I keep doing so many custom orders I’ll sell out of everything except for sapphire and emerald (I HAVE SO MUCH SAPPHIRE AND EMERALD WHY DOES NO ONE LIKE THESE COLOURS).

Hopefully it’ll all work out. I love running the shop, I love making custom banners for people and I love when people choose one of my creations. And I’m not gonna lie, I also love the extra income, which has been a phenomenal help during this past year of funemployment. So if it DOESN’T work out and I end up having to stop making banners I want to say THANK YOU to all my customers. I love you girls so much, you keep me young.

Friday… Drank wine with Jenn. Watched This Is The End. Poured wine on Taylor, idk why. Saturday… Went to the farmer’s market and got sandwiches, twisty bread and lemonade from Pig on the Street for the last time this year. They gave Taylor his favourite pig for keepsies and bought him a bunch of beer as a thank you for being such a great customer. Laid on the couch for the rest of the day recovering because I am too old to drink so much wine. Played Ascension against Taylor, Katrina and Scott. DESTROYED THEM ALL because I am the best at Ascension >:) Sunday… Went for brunch at The Main and did some window shopping (& a lil Christmas shopping) on Main Street. It was the first time we’d been pout there since I was three months pregnant! Checked out some fall foliage and ogled cute houses.

… and also some pics and random thoughts because I’m in a mood this week.

The world is full of spiders right now, it’s intense. My apartment is also full of spiders (CURSE YOU, BASEMENT LIVING).

This is a terrifying nightmare.

Love this shop!

I’m a chicken so I don’t like watching horror movies but I DO like reading about them so I’ve been enjoying Rhiannon’s 31 Horror Movies in 31 Days series.

My latest creation.

Some great, easy Halloween costume ideas from Radical Possibility.

What Gwen wore (last week and I thought the pictures weren’t good enough so I didn’t share them but then she didn’t wear any good outfits this week so here you go).

Classic cat move. Claire has been the biggest pest in the world recently. CONSTANTLY MEOWING. The other morning I was reading some blogs before Gwen woke up, the dogs were in their crate and no one else was home. I kept hearing this weird scratching noise coming from the kitchen and I was like “PERFECT. WE HAVE MICE.” but when I went to investigate I found Claire playing with one of Gwen’s stacking cups, batting it around the room with her silly paw. Even when they are cats they are still kittens, I guess.

New shoes for meeeee. I had some major hassles getting these. I originally ordered them from a local shoe store where they were on sale, but then I got an email saying “whoops they’re out of stock” and a refund to my Paypal. But by then I was obsessed and had to have them so I found a pair on ebay that ended up costing me way more. OH WELL. I’ve yet to actually wear them because a) it’s been raining and they are canvas, b) I’ve barely left the house all week, and c) I bought them in a size 10 because they aren’t made in a 9.5 and I’m worried they look like clown shoes. Why don’t more companies make shoes in a 9.5? It’s very frustrating. I JUST WANT TO PUT SHOES ON MY FEET, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK???

I was trying to explain Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey to Sym on our way to the store and when we got there I found this pomegranate that looks like Station’s excellently huge Martian butt. COINCIDENCE???

I pulled out this Apple IIc for Gwen to do her word processing on. She really enjoys mashing keyboards. I should find some power cables for it or something, that’d be great.

You can follow me on instagram here.

Earlier this week I was walking the dogs and ran into another pom owner in the park, who was talking to a guy I don’t know who had a large, rather fat dog. The owner of this dog told us that she had actually lost 25 lbs since January, and he attributed this to his receiving a new heart because now he can take her out for more exercise. He called it a win-win situation. I loved that; his dog gets out more often, and as a bonus he gets to be alive more.

Speaking of dogs, does anyone know the best way to make patches? Like for jackets? I had a cool idea for something last night and idk if it would be best to try and print them myself or learn how to silk screen or take up embroidery. I know you can print right onto fabric if your printer uses a certain type of ink, but how do I find out what kind of ink my printer uses? Ugh making stuff when you have no knowledge is hard.

this pic has nothing to do with this post but I don’t have any recent pics of Sym to illustrate it (nor would she want me to) so these silly idiots will have to do

The other day Sym came home from school in a bad mood. She’s been working on this big project and a huge chunk of it was due the next day. A huge chunk she hadn’t even started yet. When I asked her if she should have been working on this aspect of the project all along she was very “I don’t know, no one told me anything about it.” Such a typical tween.

That morning I’d picked up a package at the post office that just happened to contain an acrylic shelf designed to hold 96 bottles of nail polish (that is an amazon link but I got mine on ebay because I found a great deal on shipping to Canada, which that seller tragically no longer offers). I know I don’t post manicures much anymore but TRUST ME when I say I need this shelf. Since Gwen is now ultra mobile and I really am going to have to go back to work sooner or later I’ve been in super clean up mode. No more stacks of boxes! No more unbuilt Ikea pieces! No more homeless Pyrex being moved from surface to surface around the kitchen and dining room because there’s no space for it in the cupboard!

It’s actually been going great; I’ve gotten a lot of things sorted out and squared away BUT one thing that is NOT sorted out or squared away is the stackable storage drawers full of nail polish, which are currently piled at the end of the hallway. So I bought the shelf, and once I patch all the holes in the bathroom wall where a different shelf used to be (I moved that shelf into the laundry closet, I’m like totally shelf-obsessed haha see what I did there) I’ll put it up and then I can use the stackable drawers for storing craft supplies in my office,. It’s like the circle of life around here, with shelves and storage bins.

ANYWAY the day that Sym grumpy I’d just gotten the new shelf, and it was packaged in tons and tons of bubble wrap. And not regular bubble wrap; GIANT bubble wrap. When I was a kid and my mom had her porcelain doll business she had rolls of the stuff for shipping her dolls, and we were NEVER allowed to pop it. THE INJUSTICE. So as Sym complained to me about school I waved the bubble plastic at her. At first she was like “Even that can’t cheer me up!” but eventually she was more like “UGH FINE JUST GIMME THE BUBBLES.” I did, and she popped them, and I think it worked.

SPEAKING OF DOLLS, for some reason the other night I started thinking about these dolls my mom had when I was a kid (not porcelain ones she made, vinyl ones she’d bought) called Sasha Dolls. Man did I love those things. My sisters and I would have to ask to play with them and be really good or it was see ya, Sasha.

I did some reading up on them (which is what I do with every single thing that pops into my head, last week Taylor and I had an argument about whether or not we’d watched Star Wars recently and I was like IF WE HAVEN’T WATCHED IT RECENTLY THEN WHY DID I DO ALL THAT STAR WARS RESEARCH??? and it turns out that yes we had watched it) and I found this on the wikipedia page:
“Morganthaler created face sculpts for her dolls with subtle expressions to not dictate artificially exaggerated smiles, her concern that children surviving the horrors of WWII would not relate to dolls so happy in times of terror.”
WOW that really gives you a lot to think about. I do remember really liking their faces. They are like the doll version of Living With Chronic Bitchface. I would love to get some Sasha dolls (for… my kid? not at all for me) but unsurprisingly they are VERY EXPENSIVE these days.

Oh and Sym also got all the work done she needed to do for that project.

A little update on how we’re doing with giving Gwen solids…


She loves food. L O V E S it. She loves eating, and she loves cramming everything into her mouth. All of it. At once. We cut her food into little pieces and give her just one of two at a time, because otherwise she crams her cheeks like a hamster and ends up choke-barfing it all out.


I also make baby food for her. I recently read somewhere recently where someone said that making baby food is too much work and baby-led weaning is no extra work, other than the clean up, and like… cleaning up a baby and all the things they’ve thrown food on is a lot of work! And I have a bunch of dogs that will eat anything thrown on the floor. For me making baby food is nbd, like yesterday morning I peeled, cored and chopped two apples and then boiled them down with a little water until they turned into applesauce on their own. Seriously, I barely had to mash them. I guess if I was making quantities at once it’d be a bigger hassle, but I usually only make enough for two or three meals at a time.