:: new stuff ::

six new designs listed in the shop today.



more coming in the next few days.



i also finally listed the already-assembled make your own good mood cards, as requested by one or two people on the blog here. instead of a little box for the deck, the cards are contained on a metal ring. it's pretty cool if i do say so myself.

:: contractually moving ::

{ by film in the fridge }

{ by Beaty Family Fun }

well, we're in contract on a new (to us) house. i'm excited and optimistic but still totally cautious and not really believing it. after the disaster back in february/march/april with two real estate deals materializing and then collapsing before our eyes, i just can't help but be tentative.

this time around, though, ought to be completely different. instead of selling the condo we're renting it out. we should have a signed lease by the weekend. because of that, we were able to make a non-contingent offer on the house here. so now all that really stands in our way is the inspection (thursday morning) and any subsequent negotiations, plus the mortgage (already pre-approved). but still. i just can't bring myself to even post a picture for you because i'm not ready to believe it until we get much closer to closing.

i will, however, post pictures of two of the quilts i'm considering making for our maybe living room. (it's all maybe for now. it's the maybe house. we may be moving. etc. etc.) the room has hardwood floors and brown walls, and all of our furniture is brown, so i'm thinking we need a shock of color and a healthy dose of white.

:: catching up ::

for what feels like the first time in awhile, i haven't written because too many good things have been piling themselves up like so many football players on a fumbled ball. that and the enormity of the stuff going on (evan turned two this week, people!) has left me a bit speechless.

how do i even reflect on two? how do i put it into words?

sure, two brings with it floor tantrums (although i've pulled evan back from the edge of a few by making him laugh... i tell him he looks like a fish flopping on the floor and then i call him "flipper flopper" and he laughs and gets up and we walk calmly away from the train set at barnes & noble or whatever) and lovely phrases like, "MINE!" and "nope" and "no way, jose" (thanks, gramps, for that last one).

but two also brings with it so much good. like tonight before bed evan, unprompted, kissed my belly and said night night to the baby. earlier in the week he force fed me strawberries because he wanted to share them with the baby.

he's also talking up a storm. this week we looked at a few more houses (we made an offer on one this morning -- more on that to develop, i hope) and when i sat down with him at lunch one day to ask him what he thought of them he had two questions for me:

1. guy there? (he wanted to know if the realtor would always have to be there to let us in -- when i said no, mommy would be able to open the house if we bought it he said, "mommy key? mommy key open house?" and then also double checked that daddy would have a key)
2. doggy there? (he wanted to know if that rabid-sounding dog in the cage in the basement would be staying (he hoped it would not be) and once i told him that the dog would go away if we bought it he seemed totally on board with the house)

two sits and plays alone. two arranges his toys. two sings songs (in the grocery store, loudly: "i workin on railrow" and "rub ducky you're wa won"). two asks me to take him to the woods so that we can hunt for owls (even though he knows they sleep in the daytime, he still stands in the woods and does owl calls and then leans forward and shouts, "hey owls!"). two has favorites. two pretends (at the playground steering wheel he drives to get us ice cream -- a kid after my own heart!).

and oh! two negotiates! i'll tell him it's time for breakfast, he'll ask if he can watch nemo first, i'll say he can watch it while i make breakfast, he'll ask if he can watch it until nemo touches the boat. i always say yes. he knows i will.

i spent all last week telling everyone that evan was practicing being terrible in preparation for his second birthday (and oh, he was), but this week he was so good. i have to admit, i love two so far.

:: Wanna Know Something Good? ::

do ya?

i'm feeling pretty great these last couple of weeks. i'm feeling pretty much like myself. evan's twoness is trying at times, of course, and i can't stop thinking about houses, but i'm handling it a-ok. i'm so glad about that.

all of this was confirmed for me yesterday when i met with my new therapist. she's a social worker i'm going to meet with once a month or so as needed until the baby comes. we're working on a prevention plan.

anyway, it was our first meeting and as we talked about my life a year ago when i was in crisis and my life now, i just realized how different things are. with my life. with me. with my ability to cope. with my inner turmoil. i told her about leaving my ph.d. program. i told her about moving home. i told her about house hunting. i told her about the second baby. i told her about joining the mommy group. and i felt so powerful. i felt so empowered is maybe the better way to say it. i felt like yeah, sure, stressors will always be stressors. yeah, sure, there'll be bad days. yeah, sure, having a two year old and being pregnant with another is both exhausting and sometimes scary. but i'm ahead of it. i have learned to sit out here in front of it and assess it. watch it. stay on top of it. keep it from getting too big or too scary or too hard to talk about. i have learned that putting off decisions i know i'm going to make anyway only makes me more miserable.

i did tell her about my new-found over-attention to my moods and reactions, and she said it's probably not such a bad thing but that maybe i should try to keep the obsessive self-reflection to once a week. one day when i take a few minutes to review the week and think about how it went. and i'm okay with trying that.

as for the prevention plan, she also recommended carving out more time for me-just-me. i admitted that i spend all my supposed me-time now doing work for the shop, and she challenged me to try to find some time each day when i can do something that's not mothering and not wife-ing and decidedly not working.

we'll see how that goes. i know something'll have to give somewhere to make this happen. wish it could be eating oreos that i could give up, but oreos and pregnancy are just two things that go together in this body of mine. i actually dreamt about them during my nap yesterday.

sigh. oreos.

:: In The Works ::

new designs coming down the pipeline... debuting as soon as i get get 'em all photographed, described, and listed.

we're talking holiday cards, personalized stationery for kids and adults, recipe cards, greeting cards, and a few printables, and there are more than this, even! stay tuned!

:: Super Simple Drawstring Bags ::

it's not that i forgot to post pictures of these finished little beauties. it's that i wanted to post them with a little semi-tutorial on how i altered the original tutorial here and doing that would require making another one, and even though i finished all three of these in just over an hour total, i just haven't had the time.



anyway here's what i did: i used french seams on the inside of the bag and, with the exception of the first one i made (the butterflies), i skipped the gusset on the bottom. i just like these bags better as nice flat bags.



i did the french seams (see quick note at end) because i wanted to keep the insides of the bags all nice, but it did cause a small problem when it came to making the drawstring channel. if i make these again i will probably just serge the inside seams to keep 'em neat and avoid the channel problem.

i've been using them to carry around snacks (chocolate-dipped granola bars and a tub of cherries on thursday night for house hunting), shoes (for a canal walk that actually got canceled anyway), sewing stuff (for craft night with my new mommy group). they're essentially all-purpose, and since i made three sizes they really are all purpose.

***

(quickly, french seams work like this:

1. sew your fabric together with WRONG SIDES together. trim seam allowance to 1/8 inch or as close as you can get without cutting the seam.
2. press seam to ONE SIDE (don't press open)
3. turn so WRONG SIDES ARE TOGETHER like you usually sew and sew a new seam, this one at about 1/2 inches.

what happens here is that your other seam gets sewn INTO this seam so when you turn your final project right sides out, you'll have these funny little enclosed seams inside. no raw edges.
i'm sure there are tutorials out there. i'll save my time for dreaming up what i'm going to do with this month's word.play theme (which is sugar).)

:: weekends ::

except that it doesn't include my family or my computer, this here pic pretty much sums up my weekend existence: orders get shipped, cookies get eaten and nectarines devoured, books get read right before bed as my eyes dry up and start to ache, and errands get run. it's actually not such a bad life if you think about it.

(a note about the book: right now i'm reading better off, by eric brende, and i feel a bit like i've been sucker punched, but in a good way. i thought it would be interesting, but instead i'm finding it downright inspiring and amazing. it's not that i want to "go amish" and ditch this life as i know it, but i am just fascinated by some of brende's ideas about technology and his insights about social life and work. love love love.)

:: :: everything's coming up roses :: ::

i need both: more sleep and more hours to work. i have no idea what's going to give, but i better figure it out soon!

in the meantime, i shouldn't be getting excited but i just am: we have someone interested in renting our condo in ohio. oh my god that would be so awesome. we told my mom this past weekend that we'll be out of her house by august 15th, rain or shine, and renting that condo would make that an awful lot easier on us. we went to look at houses last night and kept having to tell the showing realtors, "well, we're still working on selling or renting our place in ohio, but we'll be in touch as soon as possible."

i've got "everything's coming up roses" stuck in my head even though, come on, this could totally lead nowhere. and since there's that and the fact that i don't have roses right now, i thought i'd share some pics of my mom's gorgeous hydrangeas, just beginning to unfurl from their little green brain stage into their gorgeous floral explosion stage. i took these earlier this week while evan raked the yard with his little bitty rake.

(re: the picture... taken by me, edited in photoshop (purposefully desaturated even if it does sort of take away from the beautiful colors in the original shot) and polaroided using picnik. please keep your hands to yourself (i.e. don't copy my picture) without prior permission. thanks, yo.)

:: :: things i know and don't know :: ::

from camil tulcan's photostream, and available in the EPP creative commons group

what i resent most about the postpartum depression, the zoloft, coming off the zoloft, is that i have lost my sense of normal. not society-normal but me-normal. i have lost my inner compass. furthermore, i have developed an attendant need to second-guess every single emotion that flits through my poor, confused, hormonal brain.

i resent that i can't really tell how i'm doing right now. i'm moody, which i usually am not, but i'm also pregnant, which i also am usually not. so am i okay? am i not okay? and am i supposed to always feel okay? because i'm positive i didn't always feel okay before; i'm positive i often felt sad or confused or indignant. i'm positive i used to feel a frequent sense of, what? twenty-something angst?

i'm also positive that i was starting to outgrow that.

something inside me is saying, "hey, lady, you might not be doing so great right now" but then something inside me is also saying, "but hey! wait! who said you'd always be doing great?"

i do know that i'm not doing as well as i was a few months ago, but i also know that my life has changed a lot in the interim. is it fair to expect that i would still be feeling the same?

i thought i would know right away if i needed to go back on the zoloft or if i needed to talk to brian so that he could tell me to go back on the zoloft. i thought i'd know if i was feeling good or bad. but instead i'm feeling everything. i'm good and bad. i'm confused and scared and resentful. sometimes. and i'm stressed out. sometimes. we have two months until we're leaving my mom's house and we still haven't sold the condo in ohio. i know it's normal to be stressed out, but is my reaction to the stress normal? me-normal? am i coping okay? i don't freaking know.

i thought i would know.

:: :: stressful dreams :: ::

this illustration, called "hopes and dream," is by ashleyg. it doesn't capture the stress but it certainly captures the oddness of my dream. it's far lovelier, though.

i woke up this morning in the middle of a very stressful dream:

it was evan's first day of "kindergarten" (in quotation marks because he was actually the same age he is now, almost two, but in the dream it was called kindergarten) and so i wanted to go with him to that but i also had two homework assignments due (one for my 8th grade math teacher who wanted me to write a thesis-driven paper about some rom-com about parenting that i had forgotten to watch, and i was to compare it a book i was supposed to have read) and i also had to share cars with my dad.

and there was something about parking on a hill or something? i don't quite remember that part.

it was awful. not quite nightmare but no fun either. but the upside was that it made me awfully glad that i'm not in school anymore.

:: :: word.play one :: ::

the word for this first round of word.play is SUGAR. interpret it however you'd like.

RECAP ON THE RULES:

there are no rules. just create something inspired by the word "sugar" and have it done by july 14th. it can be anything. then share it in the word.play flickr group (yet to be set up, but once it is i will post it here) or send it to me to share anonymously.

the hope is that we'll be inspired by our own attempts as well as by everyone else's finished products. i myself am super psyched about this.

BLOGGING WORD.PLAY:

yes, please, go ahead and blog about your project. there's no reason to keep it all hush hush and secret until the end of the first round unless you want to for some reason.

if you blog about it, drop me an email or comment and i'll link to your post.

NOW GO. BE INSPIRED. CREATE.

and since the word is sugar, think sweet thoughts.

(p.s. you can grab the word.play button from my left column and put it on your website if you want to help spread the word. just right click or do whatever you do on macs, then save it and upload it to your site with a link to this post (or this one). 'kay? once the flickr group is up you can have it link to the group if you want.)

:: :: on fairness and lemonade :: ::

you know sometimes i get downright indignant that i work so hard and yet make so little money. here my family is struggling to sell our condo and knowing it’s time to move out of my mom’s house and faced with a strong financial suck if we can’t make something happen SOON. (and p.s. can we please talk about the fact that even if i wanted to go to work to help contribute to the family funds daycare is prohibitively expensive, especially with number two on the way? is that wrong or what?)

i spent all day yesterday looking over our finances and running scenario after scenario. i mean, some way or another we're going to make it work, because we have to, but in the end i just kept thinking how unfair it is that i make so little and that i have so little control over when i will be able to make more.

i’m out there. i’m getting my work seen. i’m doing whatever marketing and networking i can.

and i’m making sales. lots of sales, even. but with overhead and fees and all, the $10 or so i can manage to make in a day soon turns into a profit of so much less.

i feel like shouting “it’s not fa-ir!” in my loudest and whiniest voice so that all the world can hear and cringe at my cry.

but i also feel like running through the streets shouting, “hey! watch out world! one day i’m going to be featured in real simple and you’re all going to be sending me your money in fistfuls. and then i will be able to buy a house. and then maybe life still won’t be fair but iI’ll be able to invite you over for lemonade and some good old fashioned bitching about fairness.”

what would you think if you saw a person running through the streets shouting that? would you think i was crazy? or would you join in? what would you shout if you were into shouting and that kind of thing?

{image from the each penny pretty creative commons group. go on over there and check out all the amazing photography available for many uses.}

:: :: just one :: ::

well, the news of the day is that i'm definitely only carrying one baby. yesterday we had an ultrasound (not the ultrasound - still no idea if i am having a boy or a girl) and within about one second of her putting the goop on my belly and then pressing the wand somewhat uncomfortably into my abdomen i saw it: just one baby.

i've got boy-girl twins on both sides of my family -- my mom's siblings and my dad's aunt and uncle and maybe others. and the first time around i never even had the inclination that i might be having twins, but this time i was getting the vibe.

don't get me wrong, i'm relieved that i'm only having one because oh my god we would need two new cars and some serious babysitting help with twins but there was a definite twinge of disappointment in there, too, which shocked the hell out of me.

but today i'm back to just feeling relieved. one baby. just one. yay for one.

:: :: input please :: ::

i spent six years in a ph.d. program in english, and right before i left (this is a coincidence, i assure you), i had one of the program directors send an email asking for imput. with an m. and i almost died. but now i am always a tiny bit nervous about asking for input because that m is just stuck in my brain forever. in fact now the n looks wrong to me.

anyway, i think there was a post somewhere in here. a request for feedback.

ah yes, here it is. yesterday i put up a little splash page at upupcreative.com. i'm not totally convinced that i like it, although once that big speech bubble is gone i'll like it better, i'm sure. whaddaya think? should it have images of items in my shop instead of the illustration? i mean, this is just the initial entry page, so i wanted to keep it simple...

but now i'm just rambling. lemme know what you think.

:: :: word play begins :: ::

okay. here's the deal with word.play.

over the next week i'll be collecting suggestions for words. leave them in the comments on this post. then on june 15th i'll choose a word (out of a bag? out of my mind? we'll see.) and i'll announce it here. then you've got a month to come up with a project inspired by the word.

your project can be anything. it can be a sewing project or an illustration or a poem. it just needs to be something that gets the creative juices flowing. something that gets you working just a little bit outside your comfort zone, maybe. something you can share with others to help spread the inspiration.

'cause oh yeah. i'm going to set up a flickr group so we can all share our work.

i'm super excited about this.

(p.s. you can grab ths button here and put it on your website if you want to help spread the word. just right click or do whatever you do on macs, then save it and upload it to your site with a link to this post. 'kay? once the flickr group is up you can have it link to the group if you want.)

:: :: blueberries and fabric :: ::

tonight i have a headache and my printer arrived today but isn't set up (it weighs 70 pounds! i can't lift it! my husband has night court!) and i've gotten a lot of work done lately and so i decided to take a break.

blueberries and all this gorgeous fabric. i'm making a few drawstring bags, just because i want to. they're for me. for something. maybe for nothing. i think one's for my knitting. who cares; they're gonna be pretty.

:: :: yay! :: ::

{from torinodave72's Flickr photostream}

so is it controversial because you think i should have gotten off it the moment i found out i was pregnant, or because you think i should have gotten off before we even started trying to have a kid? or is it controversial because you think i should have stayed on?

whichever reason it may be controversial, i am off my zoloft. today was my first day without it, although i've been stepping down gradually and have been doing just fine. i have moments of anxiety or dread, but i know what they are now and i see them coming from so far away. i am learning to manage them. i am learning to name them so that they can disappear.

i was on the drugs for eleven months to the day, which is a total coincidence. it was longer than i initially expected, but for me it was the exact right amount of time. and to anyone out there in the middle of a complete breakdown like i was eleven months ago, let me reassure you: i'm glad i went on the drugs even though at the time i was both terrified of them and convinced that i didn't need to be medicated.

if i need them again i won't wait as long before i talk to my docs. i hope to stay off for the rest of my pregnancy, but as my OB advised, anxiety and depression have shown to have strong effects on the fetus, risks which may outweigh the possible risks of being on zoloft while pregnant. so we'll see. i just want to stay healthy. i just want to feel like myself.

right now i'm hopeful that i'll accomplish that without the zoloft.

yippee!

:: :: discount & gift :: ::

one week only, 15% off plus a free gift with any purchase. get the details here.

:: :: making good decisions :: ::

if you've been following me on twitter you know that my printer up and died on me this week. my freaking printer. it's like my paint.

and of course it died in the middle of processing an order. i had january through november of a calendar printed, but no december. which meant i had to decide quickly on a new one. talk about pressure. there are thousands of printers out there. inkjets, lasers, large format, all-in-ones. but the real struggle for me wasn't about the options. it was about my future. the future of my business.

in the end i decided to go all in. i want this business to grow. i want it to succeed. i enjoy what i'm going and i enjoy the success i'm having and even though it took all of my remaining profits from 2009, i went for the printer i thought could best help up up creative expand.

and then today i got all these envelopes in the mail and i wanted to eat them up i love them so much and i cleared out space in my sock drawer because they don't fit with my other envelopes. and that's how i knew i made the right decision on the printer.

:: :: make your own mailer :: ::

have a gift you need to send but no mailer? here's what i did...

1. take some plain brown wrapping paper, leave it super wide and wrap it around your gift a few times (i wrapped mine so that it had at least two layers all the way around).

2. go over to your sewing machine and sew one end shut. i left about an inch between the gift and where i sewed. i recommend using cotton thread and a slightly long stitch length (i set mine to 5mm) otherwise you run the risk of simply perforating your paper.



3. repeat on other side, again leaving a bit of room between the gift and your stitch line.

4. cut the excess paper off about half an inch from the sewn seams. i used pinking shears to add a little something special. (i also used different colored thread for the bobbin thread back in step two, again just for a little interest.)

5. address and then send. wait for the happy call from your recipient.

** NOTE: i do think that if you needed something sturdier, you could definitely line your brown wrapping paper with a section from your newspaper, but i'm thinking you might need to use a denim needle or something. anyone have thoughts on that?

:: :: my signature :: ::

i am trying to work on some new designs and products for when i take my upupcreative.com shop live, but i've been struggling a bit. i just have too many ideas coursing through my creative veins. and too many influences. i've been spending an awful lot of time perusing other stationery shops to see what i like (for the design of the shop itself and then of course i can't help but fall in love with just about every stationery line) and it's got my brain completely overwhelmed.

all of this is a lead-in to this:

i downloaded good to know issue #2 yesterday from amy at pikaland ($7 for the printed version, $2.50 for a pdf download). this issue's topic is personal style, as in how does an artist know when he or she has developed a personal style.

i was heartened to see that so many great artists said that they're honestly not sure what constitutes their own personal style and that they didn't know they had developed one until people would tell them, "i saw your work the other day and i knew it was yours before i saw your name."

as i read through the zine and as i worked on some of my own designs last night, i decided that i know something's my own personal style when i make it just for myself. when i make a card that i would send and that i love. i also decided that i need to sit on new designs for a few weeks before i really know if i love them, because sometimes just the joy of creating them makes me love them for awhile, y'know?

how do YOU know when something's got your signature on it?

:: :: welcome, june :: ::

i'm not sure why but i have great hopes for june. i just woke up today feeling like it's going to be a good month for me. which is funny because last night i was feeling all nervous about it being almost june. june was my month of gut-wrenching anxiety last year. the month that led to me breaking down in the kitchen on july 7th crying into brian's shoulder, "i want my mommy" and then her driving out that day to take care of the sobbing, wrecked heap that was me.

but i woke up filled with hope. hope for feeling better (the first trimester is waning and i am beginning to feel normal again). hope for my creative process (i have been feeling sort of stuck lately, but because i have too many ideas). hope for some nice time with my family. hope for some actual summer weather. hope for making new friends.

what do you hope will come your way this june?