Thrifting Buddy Needed!

I am on the hunt for a formal dress for John’s OCS formal! I would like something unique, and not crazy expensive. So I’m thinking of finding something used, and maybe altering it? Or maybe not if it’s awesome to begin with.

So I did some research and found these places to look:

Thrift Stores

• Salvation Army – opens @ 9:00
  535 East Ridge Road & 745 West Avenue
• Goodwill – opens @ 10am
  376 Jefferson Road & 1518 West Ridge Road & 451 South Clinton Avenue
• Thrifty Shopper – opens @ 9:00
  400 Jefferson Rd
• Volunteers of America – opens @ 9:00
  214 Lake Ave. & 89 Canal St.
• Second Season Clothing (Even though they advertise on PXY, blech!) – opens @ 10:00
  1555 Mt. Hope Ave – haha I found you online not through radio suckas

Estate Sales

• 321 Cedar Place in East Rochester 10am
• 1226 Stafford Cresent in Webster 9am to 3pm
• 12 Foxtail Lane in North Chili 10am-5pm
• 80 Sandbury Drive in Pittsford 8am-2pm
• 2981 Mt. Read Blvd. in Rochester 9am-5pm – numbers given out at 8am (!)

So… anyone want to go with me??  If you do, leave me a comment and I’ll email you tomorrow.

Things I would like to accomplish

I don’t have any recent pictures that could be related to this topic, so scattered throughout this entry will be cute pictures of my second cousin, who had her first communion last Sunday. I hope you don’t mind.

My friends have all been whisking me away during my nights so I don’t get lonely. I have plans to go to the Lilac Festival tonight, and on Saturday, Leah and I are garage sale-ing and going to a comedy club. Then, I will be attending a “Swine Flu themed” party, hilariously entitled “Hamdemic 2009: Aporkalypse Now!” So, a busy couple of days. Tonight, whenever I get home, I want to try cleaning a little bit. If no other room, then at least the kitchen. I haven’t done dishes in a loooong time. And laundry. It will be sad washing John’s clothes, knowing he won’t be wearing them for years…

But, back to the subject at hand. I plan on watching a lot less TV now that John is gone (although my TiVo Season Pass Manager begs to differ…) and have big plans on crafting, thrifting, and other things that I don’t normally do. I have budgeted myself $50 a month, starting in June, that I must spend either on the house, or myself.

I would like to make…

• Plush dolls. I can only make really simple ones, and would love to be able to master some more 3 dimensional types.
• Crochet flowers. Really, I would love to be able to crochet anything. I just can’t make sense out of the instructions I have.
• A custom wordpress layout for a blog hosted over at colleeniscreative.com. Again, I cannot make heads or tails out of directions I’ve read. Because it’s an ugly mess, it is currently not linked from anywhere.
• Those wooden doll houses I blogged about a while ago. But I’ll have to wait until my dad comes up so he can cut the wood for me. I didn’t get a chance to draw out what I wanted before John left.
• Some small, simple paintings. It’s been a while since I lifted a brush to something other than a wall.
• The second curtain for the study. This would be the same second curtain that I never made for the living room in the townhouse…
• I WANT TO MAKE A GARDEN. Not a single spring flower grew outside of my house this Spring! Summer will not repeat this.

Things I would like to buy…

• Cute table cloths for my kitchen and dining room tables (maybe I’ll make these…)
• Two corner hutches/cabinets for the corners in my dining room
• Nice prints for my studio. I already have a bunch picked out on etsy.
• Curtains for the bedroom. Right now I have unfinished yardage that is pinned together at the top to keep it from falling down… not acceptable.
• Prints of all my wedding photos! Well, maybe not ALL of them, but I finally used my Bed Bath & Beyond gift card to buy a photo collage frame, so now I need to pick out photos that I want and get them printed!
• THIS
• and THIS couch OMG I want it so badly. BOUGHT!
• And this, but I can’t justify the cost let alone the cost + shipping

Dollhouses!

I woke up from a nightmare last night and couldn’t get back to sleep, so my mind started to wander.  I received the latest issue of Stuffed Magazine (thanks mom!) earlier that day and was excited about all the cool plush, but sad over still having a broken sewing machine.  Some of the dolls that intrigued me the most in the magazine were the ones that people had painted onto.

I have been wanting to get back into painting, as I used to really like it in college.  But alas, no sewing machine. And I had enough hand sewing with my Birds of Change.  So now what?  Then, my little dollhouse popped into my head.

I bought this dollhouse, with the little people, and everything in it for $3 at a garage sale when my mom was up last year. The woman who was holding the sale said that she brought it over from Germany, and I knew I had to take it home. The little people didn’t have arms, but some string and a few knots fixed that right up.

I started thinking of all the things I would do to the dollhouses I’d buy. I picked out paint colors and roof styles, and wondered if scrapbook paper would make good wall paper. (I think it would.) Today, I started looking online for little dollhouse kits. But the only ones I could find were these super fancy, expensive ones. I just wanted a simple little house like the one I had. Why can’t I find that? I don’t want to paint the one I have; I want a different one!

Does anyone know of any places I should look? I even thought about cutting out the pieces myself, but I am really afraid of power tools, so I don’t think that would work so well. *sigh*

Silly Panda as a business.

It’s going to happen. Moving towards that goal, I made business cards.

What do you think?  Is it weird that I kept the contact info strictly digital?  I figured since I designed them I could have different versions; one for Twitter people, this one, one with traditional info, etc.

Colleen is Creative (dot com)

Hey guys.

Sorry I missed the update yesterday, but I don’t feel guilty about it. Why not you ask? Because my time was put to good use.

I ate lunch at my desk working on it, and even worked on it when I got home. On what, you ask? (What’s with the 20 questions, huh?) Answer: ON MY WEBSITE!

www.colleeniscreative.com

I have been wanting to have some webspace outside of this blog for a long time now, and I finally got around to finishing that resolution and getting it done! Now I have something to send to people if I see a freelance project I’d like to work on, etc. So exciting!

And for you webmasters out there, I would like to share the wonder that is Sprout. It is a fantastic widget creator, and while I wish they had an option to make a video gallery, you can include videos, so I was able to create something of a video gallery.

So that’s what I spent my weekend up until about 15 min ago on. Eventually I’ll be moving my blog over to there too. I’ll let you know when I do so you can change your bookmarks/links.

Bye!

PS: I’m pretty sure I checked it all, but let me know if you find any bugs. Thanks!

Road trip!

Maybe it’s the snow, maybe it’s the fact that I’m going CRAZY being stuck in an office all day again… but I’m already thinking of spring. Specifically, a road trip in the spring, when things aren’t so icy and it’s safe to drive again.

I don’t actually know if we can afford it, but if we can, we’d (John and I) would like to drive to ALASKA! Stopping in MA to visit a college friend, and then making it over to the west coast to meet a couple online friends. Assuming they’ll have me, of course.

I also have another version that skips MA and instead takes us to VA to visit a childhood friend who is currently in the Navy. Two things could affect that version though: if my friend is out of the country & if John feels weird meeting him. They’ve never met. I’m sure they’d get along, but… I guess I could see how that might be odd for them.

Heh, I now have real motivation to get my shop up & open for business. FUNDAGE FOR THIS TRIP!

Where should we stop in the midwest? Suggestions, people! Please!

PS: Today, John and I have been officially together for 8 years!  Crazy, right?!

Chair Reupholstering

I forgot that my mom reads my blog, and let it slip that I was recovering the chair. Whoops! I meant to keep the whole thing under wraps until it was done and then send her a package marked “Do not open until I am on the phone” with all the before/after photos.  So I could hear her “OMG What did you do?!”  But since I killed all that, here are the fabrics I’m considering:

The fabric in the background is the one I think I’m going to go with. Its kind of a microfiber-like material, and it’s really soft. Plus it comes kinda quilted, which is nice.  I need to figure out how to make fabric buttons, and I’ll be set!

The one with the “diamonds” on it was a second choice.  I like it, but I think the “fuzz” might rub off it eventually.  I don’t want reupholster this again if I don’t have to.

The top fabric is what I was thinking for an accent pillow.   I made a few t-shirt pillows years ago, but I never liked them, and never used them, so why not cover them?

PS: John hates all of the fabrics.  He thinks they’re hideous.  Ah well.  I bet he wants me to cover it in black fabric.  Hello cat hair catcher!

I hearby Swear that I was not paid to post this. (Although I wish I was)

I got a Pier 1 catalog in the mail the other day and oh man was it FULL of amazing stuff! Now, I don’t normally buy a lot at Pier 1 because it’s crazy expensive, but if I had a ton of money lying around, these are some of the things I would buy.

I might buy that little flower though anyway, since it’s just 4 bucks. And I Love Love Love the desk. My mom is going to buy me the shelves I posted the other day (thanks mom!) but if she wasn’t, that desk is what I would put against the wall I plan on hanging the shelves on. Actually, I wanted the shelves in part to recreate the look of this desk! Now I just have to find a table to put under them…

The bed would have to go into a guest room though. John and my dad worked too hard on making our current bed for it to just be replaced!

PS: Today has been the most viewed day my blog has had! The last one of these was my Christmas Photo Dump! Hi new viewers!