First, I would like to thank O'Reilly Media and the nice person that works in this company that offered them to me (to me and my readers). Guess what? These books can be yours for free! How cool is that? I will be doing giveaways in the following weeks, so stay tuned. If you would like to learn about Digital Photography reading a great book, it's your chance. I will choose some for me, I did not have time to sit and review all the books, but hopefully this weekend I'll be doing that.
Come back Saturday, November 1st to see the first giveaway post and to enter the contest. At this time I will request some sort of home work from you, it won't be just drop a message and run to participate, because I care about those people that are real visitors to this blog, those that visit often. I will be drawing names every week during November.
In the meantime I am back in my little craft room for some sewing and other creations for the shop before November starts.
This jelly roll was smiling to me on the shelf of a local fabric shop another day. It's Charisma by Chez Moi for Moda. The colors are stunning and so are the patterns! Not sure what I will do with it, but probably covers for the bed side tables and covers for lamp shades. I saw a lamp shade at Anthropologie that have inspired me, but I don't see it anymore on the website.
I would like to make some nice posts with great stuff I find online...handmade and vintage things. Only things I really like. From catalogs, stuff from mags., a nice way to share my tastes on oh well, material things...I will start clipping magazines and send all I don't want to a recycle bin. I just don't have space for so much mags. I love them, because they inspire me a lot, but this year I cut half of them from my list. The list were endless. From Domino to Martha. From Romantic Homes to Country Living. I will choose just a couple that I really like and I will renew subscriptions of these only and all the others will be my company while drinking some coffe at the book store. The one I like the most is Marie Claire Idees. I know, it's french. I don't understand much (although I had french classes when I was in school), but the ideas and photos on it are just gorgeous and truly inspiring. To be honest this year I did not see much great stuff on mags at all.( speacially on crafts, kinda repetitive) I think bloggers out thereare doingthe bestjob ever with great articles and lovely finds. One of the greatest things about them? Don't cost a penny! Ha!
These dutch shoes I found in an antique shop in town. There is only one place I like to go, because all the others the owners look at me like I am going to sneak something into my purse. And if you are leaving their shops without buying anything they don't even say a "have a good day or whatsoever". They just pretend they are not looking, turning their faces the other way when you say buy. Horrible. Plus, they over price everything. This shop I like in particular is on Route 66. The people there is always nice and like to talk, no stress. Sometimes I stop by and I bring something home. I've purchased lots of things for my home there. The dresser for little one's room, the vintage style table and chairs to the kitchen and other small things.
The pinapple doily is a vintage find too. It's going to adorn a cushion...
These branches are for bird swings. My husband was trimming some lower branches of aspens trees beside the house and I asked him to save a few for me. I made a bird swing another day and here is how it looks...
And this was the image that have inspired me, from Marie Claire Idees...
I am thinking about some for the winter season...but how come? I am totally into spring!
And this vintage cloth with a pretty embroidery is also turning into a cushion...it will be in my shop for a short time.
And October has been warm and nice. I hope it will be like that on Friday for Halloween trick- or- treating. Last year was too cold and we could not stand very long outside. We all got costumes. I can't believe my husband is going to dress up at this time!! I chose to be Wednesday Addams (in Brazil she is called Vandinha). I will just wear a black skirt and a black sweater, black and white striped tights and a wig. Simple and fast. Do you doubt that I am going out like that? Haha, it will be dark anyway!
Can warm days like these get extended? Please, we just love it!
Here are 4 more photos digitally manipulated. I am so in love with them all! I enjoy every single minute spent playing on Photoshop. Gotta make some more!
She has asked if I have a particular tutorial for them. Well, all I can say is that I play a lot with layers, filters, hues, saturation and levels till I get the desired mood. I also have my textures. I will give you a list of places where you can find tutorials and great advice from others. I use Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac and lots of patience.
You can also photograph a very distressed wall, maybe you can find an old building around your town where you will get great textures and use it on your photos. Maybe you can spill some coffe on paper and shoot it. You will be playing with layers adding the texture under the image you want to use and set the opacity of that image (like 50%, 60% it depends a lot, you must try several options sometimes), so this way the images will be blended. Set free your imagination!
Every morning I look at my e-mails very quick with my cup of coffe waiting for the kids to finish their breakfast and get ready for school. This morning I had a super cool surprise! Holly blogged about my work! For the first seconds I did not really understand, I was so sleepy. What? Really? Wow!!
Thanks so much Holly (Decor 8) for this opportunity to be on your blog, to have my sites shown to your readers. When we know that people like what we do, it's really rewarding.
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I spent almost the whole day running around going doctors, for me and kids, going groceries, looking for activities for the kids...and I still got one hour to start and finish something that I was crazy to make a long time. I wanted to take some wip photos, but the light was terrible and I had to rush to pick up my son at school. I will try to get the photos tomorrow. I have a light issue in this home during the fall/winter. It can get really dark. It's been so windy outside that is almost impossible to set up a photo shoot.
I will be finishing up things till the end of november for my shop and after that I think I will take a break of making pretties for sale. I will be on Modish Marketplace as well and I will have some home decor items like mobiles, picture frame, storage box and hopefully nice cushions. I might keep my Etsy shop up with photographs, but I am not sure about this yet. Last winter was terrible, I had my child very sick of asthma and too much snow that made me crazy! Besides I really want to start making some decor for my home. My bed needs a skirt, My son room needs curtains, I would like to revamp the dining room, etc... .
I really liked Big Cartel. It's nice to be able to customize our shops the way we like, to have traffic stats and create as much pages as we wish. All wee need is a bit of html/css knowledge and we can get help from the nice people at the forum. Calculating what I have spent with Etsy in the past, listings, relistings + fees, it's almost the same amount of money investment. The only problem with Big Cartel is that if you don't work to get views (if you don't market yourself), you won't have much views at all. I wish I could keep my Big Cartel shop, but if I don't sell enough to pay the monthly bill, things get expensive. Hopefully Spring will bring good things, great changes! Who knows what I will be doing!!
I have googled it and I did not find the answer. What is Mushaboom? Funny word, but I like this song a lot and this video...I wish I could fly, just like her!
My son says: " Cooool, how did she do that?" Hehe, great to be a kid!
My Goodness, it's been 8 days since my last post! Sorry for having sporadic posts. Yes, I do say sorry because I consider all the nice people that have been following this blog since I started it but you will understand that my days are filled with so many activites and responsabilities that I just can't sit here and blog every day. Maybe if I go to bed later, but I find important to fall asleep at the same time my kids do or I will be totally irritated next day. Well, once in a while is fine, but not often. My nights are sacred and if I can't fall asleep right away, I put a dvd to watch and that will help a lot! The computer makes me jittery at night, it's just like caffeine. Does it happen to you too?
We had a well spent weekend. Our hands have worked hard to get the finest results. He did a table. His first homemade table. I made a pie. A grape pie. Martha thought me. My first pie, belive or not. Thanks Martha, your recipe is great, but I think the jam needs less sugar. Next time, IF I make that again, because I stood in that kitchen for about 5 hours, I will put less sugar in the jam. I don't really like lots of sugar. Baking is rare in this home. I have lost 22 lbs and I am not turning into a baker...for good. Awww, those two sticks of butter and one cup of sugar. Sins!
Well, I have kids and they love to see me baking sweet stuff. I would like to try other recipes, but won't do it all the time. This blog won't turn into a food blog, I promise. My oldest son has been pestering me to prepare a pie since 2 weeks ago when Martha's magazine came home. Those gorgeous photos of pies made my kid to salivate and beg for it. I said "ok, I will make it." I thought he would forget about it. Nope, he is persistent. I have written here before that I don't really like the kitchen anymore like in the beggining of my married life. I cook because I have to or we will starve to death. Sometimes, when I am inspired I cook decently and people here like it.
The process...he also helped for a little bit!
So, yes I wanted to make him happy and for my children I take the challenge and bravely will cook when requests are made. Talking like this seems that cooking is a sacrifice. Not really, I just don't enjoy it as much as sewing, do you know what I mean? When I was a child and I enjoyed to watch my mom and my grandma cooking...I loved the delicious smell coming from the kitchen and knowing that my mom was making something just because I asked her to make it made me feel loved and very happy. Unfortunately my mom wasn't healthy for very long and all the good times were before my 9 years old. After that I think I became a not so happy girl and I used to pray for her to get back on the tracks but it never happened (not during childhood). Now I am a mom, I am here and healthy for my own children and I want to offer great time for them because one day they will have remembrances of their childhoods and hopefully they will have good ones. Life is short. Time goes too fast and let's make it as great as we can. We can't live pessimistically the entire time. There are ups and downs, it's true for all of us. All I want is to savor these nice moments with them as much as I can.
The Table. If you are looking to purchase those cutting tables sold at Joann's, forget about it. The one I've got fell apart in less than one year. It happened to mine. If you have one and it holds still, you are lucky! Sooo, I've been searching for a decent cutting table all over town and online. I loved this one by Pottery Barn but I did not feel like paying one thousand bucks for a craft table and the space I have is very limited. I started to talk to my husband about it and he offered to watch the kids for me and I could drive to Tempe and shop in piece for a table at Ikea. I also thought about buying a regular dining table and use bricks underneath the legs to make it higher but it would not look very good (aesthetically)...and with kids in the house you need stable and solid stuff. After several days of thinking, the crap table I had was half way down and pulling my hair off I called hubby to help me out with the stuff that was going to crash on the ground that second! Just in time we got the stuff up and he offered to make a cutting table for me. Hu? Me doing a table myself? Yeah, right. I do believe that all women can do whatever they wish if they want to , but if someone offers, I accept it with mucho gusto, thank you very much! We headed to Home Depot to get the material. He took the measurements and at the store you can get anything cut to fit. Awesome. He spent as much time as I spent making the pie. So ladies, don't think too much, get hubby to work!!
Yay, I've got a homemade table that is totally stable, solid and made with love by hubby! His first table. Haha! I just loved it! It's perfect. Now we are thinking about desks for the kids...maybe! Pine legs and great quality oak plywood top. Cost? Less than 160 bucks. And he also offered to paint it just like he did with little one's dresser...remember that post? See July 2008 archives...
And after all the work we ended at NAU to watch Caji and Salome show...we did not stay very long because the kids were just crazy to go back home and eat the pie that was left on the stove top to cool down.
No leftovers. My friend Claudia came to visit (first friend in town - yay! Progress!!) and we had a nice Monday afternoon eating the remains of the pie and chatting a bunch!
The dishwasher is broken. Wow! Good thing about it is that while washing dishes by hand, I think about life, I think about my childhood, speacially at that time when my mom fell very ill and I had to do the house cleaning. I started at young age, 9 - 10 years old. I was never spoiled. After school I had not only the homework to do, but house duties. Sometimes my dad could pay a lady to help, but sometimes not. They often used to steal things from our kitchen. My mom had a beautiful porcelain tea set and other nice things (wedding gifts) that have disappeared! We did not have a dishwasher and we never complained about it. Many families in Brazil have no idea what a dishwasher is. They usually have maids when they can afford one and a lot of people can, as they don't pay very much...we still have slavery in Brazil. Sad. It's a vicious cicle. My dad did not have a great salary either.
Some people have dishwashers, I guess middle class and up. Popular appliances in Brazil differ a bit from the ones in The US, from quality to design. Usually when you buy a house in Brazil, you must have your own kitchen appliances. Ikea?? Nope! There is a big store called Tok&Stock that I think gets closer to Ikea, but comparing their prices, converting the money and blab blab...Ikea is still cheaper.
Husband will fix the machine that washes the dishes. Hehe! Pronto! I do admire his abilities of fixing almost anything around the house...very talented, I must say! He does a nice job plus save us some money. He wants to end my burden soon. I felt good about that, very generous of him to get home and look for the problem right away. Bad things about standing by the sink? Our kitchen has no windows. The next time we move, hopefully we will stay here for long time, I promise to look for details like that. I would like a window by the sink, to look outside and see the birds! I need to remember to get rubber gloves next time in the grocerie store too. My hands are itchy.
Now, let me bitch and moan a bit more and I promise to end the story nicely. How about junk mail? The piles of papers growing big on kitchen's counter? Can these companies stop being so persistent? Do they really believe that we read all those papers? I don't need new insurance of all kinds. I don't need a new car. I don't need more credit cards. That's it. Do you know what? I will use your papers for a good cause. I will open each of your envelopes and I will open all the letters and offerings you will send it to me and guess? They are not going to be read and they ar not going to the trash bin right away anymore. I will give them to my kids to doodle on it, because paper is expensive and these are the days we all must save. Save is the word.
I have dropped the dishes and invited my family to go out. Yes, I left the dishes for later. To be honest the sink is still full. Ha ha, no guilty at all! But at least we had good time yesterday. We drove to Sedona. Walked in the woods along the creek to see the beautiful nature, Fall colors, little creatures and remains of summer...
And here are some photos...
I put a dozen of these pretties in my pocket and when I came home they were not there anymore... it's like a mother nature fairy took it from me and put back where they belong...
I've been playing with Photoshop before going to bed. I like these vintage inspired photos. It's like in our dreams...when they are good, sweet, bright and soft. They bring us some nostalgia, the desire to revive the past somehow. I am diving into these photos, doing something new with good old files, adding more light, textures, softness and preserving colors. Something that I have not tried with so much enthusiasm before...
Oh, someone have asked if I own a super camera. Nope, I don't. I have an old Canon EOS Rebel digital 6 mp purchased in 2003. It's a good camera and suits my needs. I would like to have a newer one but there are other things that I would like to have before a new camera. Besides, I am not a professional and I don't have plans to work as one. I also have 4 Canon lenses. The ones I like the most is the 60mm macro and a 18-55mm zoom lens. The 60mm is really cool, but I need a tripod to shoot with it most of the time. In the future I would love to own another macro lens.
I am not the best person to teach photography. I've learned a lot of things in school when I was 18 years old and I've forgotten many things...speacially lab stuff. If you can and if you have the time and like photography, take classes or get a nice book. You will also find lots of great tips over the web. I've learned Photoshop digging up around the Internet. I can make my layouts for web and edit photos, but there are a lot of things I don't know. In this case, the curiosity did not kill the cat! The more you read, the more you dig, the more you will learn!
Hi, my name is Zee.I am a mom of 2 little boys, wife, crafter and picture taker. I am originally from
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil. I live in
Arizona since
2002.
Pixie Blossoms is a place to show and tell about things I make, photos I take, blabbings and wisperings.
If you like what you see, get a cup of tea and enjoy!
Thanks for all the comments. I appreciate your visit. If you have specific questions I will do my best to answer in the comment box of each post.
:: Visit My
Shop ♥
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