A Busy Week

Hello!

(Warning: Picture loaded, long story post!)

I hope that everyone is keeping somewhat cool during this crazy, 112 degree heat wave that we've been having!  I'm sorry for the week off, but let me show you what we were up to...

Yes, my little guy started Preschool.  It was a morning with a little bit of tears.... not from Adam though!

Grammy took him "School Shopping" the week before and he picked out this shirt for his first day.

And this backpack.  It's only as big as him, but he did have it full... of his stuffed animals!

A little pep talk from Daddy while we're walking up to the school.

A name tag!  Yay!

Good Morning, Teacher!

Along with starting preschool, we got our lost pet back!  Let me fill you all in.  A few weeks ago my BIL's fiance gave us a tortoise her family had found in the street.  We were estatic!  I had a tortoise growing up, and with my allergies, well, any animal without fur, hair or feathers are our only options... so, let me introduce you to the Jessup families first pet, Rango!

We were so excited that Alan and Adam starting fixing his enclosure immediately!  They took out an Oleander tree, tons of bushes, rocks, and built him a wooden "safe" home.  We also took Rango to the local reptile store to find out what kinda of tortoise he was and we have ourselves an African Spur Thigh!  He doesn't hibernate, he's under a year old, he'll grow to be around 100-150 lbs!  By the time he's 10 years old, he'll be full sized and by full sized, I mean huge!  Like, throw a saddle on him and ride him to town, HUGE!

We let him out of his enclosure every day to play with us, graze in the yard and we normally let him go for a little dip...

You can see it in his eyes, he really enjoys this.

Well, the Saturday before Preschool, Rango escaped!  We still don't understand how, but he "ran away".  We were able to follow his poop trail to the drive way next door, but then our trail went cold.  We made a "Lost Tortoise" sign, talked to our neighbors, put a trail of lettuce leading  back to our house and hung our heads.  We were seriously upset.  I was honestly surprised at how upset Adam was, I wasn't sure that a 3.5 year old would understand, but he did.

Well, on Monday after dropping off Adam at school and getting breakfast, running a few errands we came home to make a lunch for Adam and get his emergency kit ready to take back to school and pick him up.  A knock sounded on our door and Alan answered it.  There was our neighbor, with a large bucket and Rango inside!  I guess the gardeners found him in the rose bushes.  Silly Rango.

We were all so happy, we had a pool party after Preschool.

I'll be better about posts this week, I have a few projects to share and I've been working every preschool morning on more!

Here's to hoping your Monday brings your a nice surprise!
Andrea

I'm "Sew Funky"

I'm not talking about my body odor... although it is hot today...

I'm not talking about the way I dress - I think I'm a little more boring than funky but I admire funky!

I'm talking about the Sew Funky Market Blog!  If you're interested in learning a little about the business side of Kutz, Paper, Scissors, then please check out the blog - I'm the vendor that's sharing today!

I know that I teased you a little yesterday with a picture... did anyone guess what it is?  Okay, so I'm sure everyone guessed that it was a banner, but did you guess what it said?  HAPPY!  And I felt that was totally appropriate for the way I was feeling yesterday after seeing my cards in CARDS magazine!  So, here's a few more pictures of the banner - I'm offering it as a class at Page's From the Heart (626.358.5334) so call and sign up if you're interested!

I hope you're feeling happy this Monday!  And please check out the Sew Funky Market blog - there's a ton of cool vendors to take a look at!

Andrea

I'm a BIG Girl Now!!!

I'm not going to lie, I'm super excited.  Like, pee my pants just a little bit excited!

My friend, Debbie, from Collective Journey's called to let me know that she saw 2 of my cards in the September Issue of CARDS!  I grabbed my computer and looked up my online editions and... sure enough... on pages 74 & 75 I saw 1 of cards - in a two-page spread!  And on page 83 was another one of my cards!

So EXCITED!

I kinda feel like flash dancing!

And why is it that my cards look better when they photograph them?  Even I'm impressed by my cards when I look at them in their magazine! 

And since a picture-less post is no fun, here's a little sneak peak at what I'll be sharing later this week!

Thanks for sharing in my "happy" dance!

Have a great day!!
Andrea

A real "hoot"

Do you remember me mentioning a project I'd been working on for my Sis-in-laws birthday?  Well, I finished it last week and gave it to her on Saturday... and I LOVE it!  I'm going to make a larger version for myself... I'm thinking bookbag/diaper bag size...

It's a little owl purse/bag!  I love it! I made 2 of this style, gave one to my SIL and put the other one in my shop.  I'm hoping to fly over to the fabric store and grab some fabric to make a few other ones!

The flap that covers the drawstring is his face.

His feathers are quilted and double sided.  The majority of him is made from upholstery fabric so he's super sturdy!  And he's fully lined, which I'd only even done one other time and found it a little easier this time.  I did use my seam ripper a lot tho...

Check out my Etsy shop to see his twin...

See you later, alligator!
Andrea

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Happy Friday! 

This week has flown by... I cannot believe that it's Friday and that in a little over a week my sweet little boy will be starting preschool.  I'm so excited and scared and nervous and excited... I have a lot of plans for the 3 hours he'll be in school, I'll share more about those later.

And now for my first contest winner!  I only had one entry, but hey, 1 is better than none!  And the winner is:

NAOMI!!!!! (I thought I had your email but I was wrong)

email me at ayokleyjessup@gmail.com and tell me which prize is your 1st choice, 2nd choice and 3rd choice!  And, if you're looking for the pennant punch, I know how you can get your hands on it- so email me as soon as you can and start weekend off as a winner!  Yay! 

And here's some samples that I made for Collective Journey's die cutting club using Lifestyle Craft's Tropical Splash release. 

I had this wooden birdhouse laying around that I'd picked up from Target's $1 bin - and then I was looking at the charm leaves and saw a thatched roof in my head...

I took tan paper and glued it to the roof and then cut strips into it so that it'd look like grass, then I die cut a bunch of the charm leaves in solids and patterned paper and glued them down.

I added the cookie cutter flowers from the vine around the entrance to the bird house.  I'm sure it'd be nice to come home to giant flowers every day!  I added rhinestones and dew drops just because I like shiny things, tied some tulle around the base and there you go!  A sweet, simple project!

I also made a wreath using the Tropical Splash release.  I had an old grapevine wreath and was hanging out and so I decided to spray paint him a pretty, soft blue color to make a more vintage, beachy project.

I tore strips of muslin and sprayed them with Glimmer Mist in Creme de Chocolat, then wrapped them around the wreath.  I was going for a weathered, beachy feel.

I then made a large yo-yo and put the die cut shells and flowers and the sand castle on it.  I embellished it with dew drops, which reminded me of bubbles.  The flowers are from the lie, the seashells are a 4x4 die, along with the sand castle.

I used more seashells and flowers and grouped them together on the wreath in 2 other areas.  I used hot glue for this project because I wanted to make sure that everything would stay on and I wanted a quick glue.  I love this wreath, it feels so beachy and pretty to me!  Imagine if you sprayed the clusters of shells and flowers with a GlimmerMist in Marshmallow - so pretty!

I also made a card using the drink umbrella, which I LOVE!

The card is super simple, I used the Simple Stories "100 Days of Summer" line, which had the perfect feel for this release!

I cut out an opening so that my umbrella would stay open when the card was standing up.  I used a toothpick as my umbrella stand.

Here's the open side view, see how cute it is that you can see the open umbrella?  I think this project was my favorite, but the line was so fun to use, it's a hard choice!

I hope that you have a great weekend!  See you next week!
Andrea

Redo! A great quote and a TON more!

Okay, so Project Runway was a little better last week.  I enjoy the unconventional challenges, I'm always amazed at what you can sew! 

Joshua had my favorite quotes of the episode:

"A garment out of dog food bags... if that's out of the box, then put me back in!"

and

"I don't want to be the dog on the catwalk."

There were so many great opportunities for great puns on this challenge.  He really took advantage of that.  Here's his outfit.

His top's design was made with aquarium rocks.  It was very 80's for me, but it had a nice shape and movement.  My other favorite part was when Heidi ragged on one of the contestant about using pee pads for his skirt, it was something along the lines of dogs walking up and peeing on the skirt while the person was walking down the street.  It was a good moment.

And now, onto Shop Hopping and The Queen Bee Market!

Saturday my Mom and I headed down to San Diego to hop around the stores down there and to attend the Queen Bee Market.  We had a great day, the Queen Bee Market was great, the booths were chalk full of fun, hand crafted goodness.  I got to see The Pleated Poppy, Allora Handmade, Little Wellies and so much more!  These ladies are all amazingly talented and I've been following their blogs since I realized what a blog was!  Here's some pictures from the Market.

Ugghhhh - don't you just love that scooter bag?  I wanted it soo bad, didn't grab it and have regretted it for the past 3 days.  I hate that!  I seldom have buyers remorse, but I often have walk-away remorse!

I love the pillows too, I've been wanting to make pillows for some time now, even had a similar one to the log cabin type in my head.

I almost got my Sister-in-law an Allora Handmade necklace, but had already started on her present (you'll see it later this week) so I passed on it, but I can guarantee that someone I know will get one for Christmas!

I think my favorite item at the Market was the super cute, super fun, children's shirts from "Oh, Fiddlesticks".  She had the onsies with a vintage picture of a cow + boy for cowboy, or a lime + light for limelight.  The vintage pictures plus the cute clues... awesome and so creative and different!

We sandwiched the QBM between shop hopping, we hit up 9 stores total that day and my favorite was Paper Tales.  I loved the shop, it's in Point Loma and I enjoyed the friendly staff, the samples and the shabby chic, beach cottage feel.  Take a look at some samples that I found in the store that have definitely inspired me!

After we visited Paper Tales, we went for lunch.  Yum.  There's a restaurant/walk up counter that we've been going to forever - as a child I remember coming home from San D with smoked fish, 3-4 different fancy cheeses, crackers and fruit, eating with my parents and feeling so grown up.  We visited Point Loma Seafood's for delicious, fresh Halibut fish and chips.  So good.  And I still feel like a grown up eating smoked fish and fancy cheeses!

Okay!  Phew!  This was a long post!  I'm sure you can understand why this one was put on hold while Adam and I fought off our summer colds!

I'll be back tomorrow with some Lifestyle Crafts samples!
Andrea

Not the game plan...

Today's post was supposed to be different, with a funny little quote to start your week off right and a recap of my Shop Hopping and Queen Bee Market experience... but I have a sick little boy (and I'm feeling a little under the weather), so I'm going to cheat a little!

Today is my turn to share my DT project over at the Page's Blog - so please check it out!

I used Distress Crackle Paint in Picket Fences, Tattered Angels Glitter paint , a ton of fun paper from Authentique and a lot of sweet buttons, ribbon and twine!  Here's a few more pics, but you'll have to visit the Page's blog to see a lot more!

See you tomorrow!  Hope the start to your week is great!
Andrea

200 Posts, My First Contest and a Simple Little Something...

Today is my 200th post. 

What?  I know!  The last 100 have flown by!  I think I've had this blog for 3 years now and it took me 2 years to do the first 100...

So, to celebrate my 200 post's, I'm having a contest!  My first contest.  I'm a big blogger now. 

Are you totally like me and skimming ahead to see what you'll get if you participate? 

One winner will receive a $25 gift card to the  Kutz, Paper, Scissors shop.  You can grab a cute child's body bib or a fun Subway Art like this one here...

Another winner will get a fun assortment of Lifestyle Craft's Sweet Simplicity dies...

And the last winner will get a "splashy" assortment of Lifestyle Crafts Tropical Splash dies...

Are you ready for the catch?  All you have to do is leave me a comment letting me know which post(s) was your favorite(s) and which prize you'd prefer.  The contest closes Sunday, August 7th at midnight.  Please remember to leave your email so that I can contact to let you know that you're a winner!  

And, finally... here's my Simple little something!

A mini-album made from manila envelopes and Simple Stories "100 Day's of Summer" paper.  I LOVE this paper!  It was so easy to use, it had great 4"x6" paper journaling doo-hickies, fun strips, the paper is just plain fun-tastic!

Here's a close-up of the cover.

The banner is punched from Stamp'in Up's new exclusive pennant punch.  I love it, it has 2 pennants, 1 scalloped and the other plain.

Here's some pics of the inside pages.

I used tags, coin envelopes and the 6"x9" Manila envelopes along with 1" binder rings.  Love this album.  Love the paper.  Love the subjects - Adam and Aidan!

Have a great end to the week!
Andrea