Crafters Needed for the Handcar Regatta!

I have been hard at work, helping to plan the first annual Great West End and Railroad Square Handcar Regatta and Exhibition of Mechanical and Artistic Wonders.  A new festival in Santa Rosa that will have kinetic sculpture races on the railroad tracks, music all day, art, costumes, fun, sideshows, food and all kind of things. 

There is also a craft show as part of it.  We have several amazing crafters signed up already, like honeylux, treatzone, atelier choklit, Sarah Dungan and many others.  We're also sponsored in part by Make and Craft magazines, which is very exciting.

We are still looking for participants.  The vendor fee is $65 and we can provide a white pop up canopy if you don't have one of your own.

You can get the necessary forms here.  And if you have questions you can email me.

And please spread the word on blogs or however to all of your crafty friends.

the garden in june

artichoke gone to flower

figs are coming in

santa rosa plums ripening

zucchini

mix of lettuces

We have been busy in the garden, there is lots of work to be done.

We lost a lot of plants in the heat wave, and due to my stingy ways with water.

Our main veggie patch is two strips that are 3 feet wide by about 20 feet long. This is the area where the previous owners of the house grew their veggies too. The soil is lovely, but the only thing is that it is a bit too shady for optimum veggie growth, due to the two plum trees and the fig tree.

We have planted

• 10 different kinds of heirloom tomato
• 12 pepper plants (that aren't doing too well)
• farmer's market blend of cut and come again lettuces
• 6 heads of romaine
• 6 heads of grand rapids lettuce
• zucchini
  
• pumpkin
• spaghetti squash
• butternut squash
• 2 kinds of cucumber
• bright lights chard
• 2 kinds of corn
• carrots
• 3 kinds of beets
• kentucky wonder pole beans
• dwarf italian bush beans
• dragon tongue beans

reworking my store

I'm working on a new version of my vintage store, Appleseed Vintage. I'm hoping that I will be able to make it look and function the way that I want it to. It will probably be a week or so before it's done, but it's been a long time coming.

I'm starting with freshening up the logo. And I'm switching it over to big cartel, because I don't really want to mess around with web design and a shopping cart and everything and big cartel has the clean and simple look that I am shooting for.

I have let the store languish unattended for far too long, and I have so much wonderful inventory to share.

peek!

Hi. I have been working busily on the house and garden, and mothering my kids and trying to come up with more steady streams of income, more befitting a homeowner with a million expensive projects. I got a part time job, working at Ray Modern, and I love it. Those Kartell ghost chairs are more comfortable than you would think.

We made it through winter with no illnesses more serious than the flu. Oh and my friend Heidi and I got a grant from the Arts District Downtown Santa Rosa for a fun public art project that we proposed.

In not so good news, I have completely lost access to my flickr account due to computer troubles. I can't for the life of me remember my yahoo ID and so I can't sign in. I tried the prompting help things but I must have used a made up birthday or something and I just can't remember. Sigh. So now I have to start all over again. I have been a member of flickr since the start. I'm very sad about losing all of my contacts and photos.

happy new year!

I hope that you all have the happiest of new years. I'm very eager to get started on 2008, just as soon as I get a full night of sleep and maybe a back massage.

It's been a busy and tiring month. We had two weeks of working on the house alongside Scott's folks, who worked like champs and really moved us along, and fed the whole crew each day to boot! Scott's Aunt and Uncle even drove 6 hours down to help us for a few days. It was really nice to get started on the house with family.

We primed and painted all of the bedrooms and the hallway. We pulled up the rust colored carpet and pads and found lovely wide plank oak floors underneath. We installed a tankless water heater to replace the existing one from 1971, and we updated some of the original electrical system of the house. And we put washer and dryer hook ups in the garage and installed a gas stove in the kitchen. Oh, and we demolished the wall between the kitchen and living room and removed the kitchen cabinet doors and shelves to get started on sanding, priming, and painting them. And then we started moving our things in.



We knew before hand that we have an overwhelming amount of posessions, but jeez louise, it is truly unbelievable. It took us a full two weeks, working every day, to move out of that house and clean it. We rented a truck two times. It was really disheartening to both of us, and now our pretty new house has a garage and carport piled high with boxes and furniture that won't fit in the house!

We had a big house full of things, a shed full of things, my studio with all of my paintings and art supplies and fabric stash and paper collection, and then my vintage store and ebay inventory, which is a lot bigger than I thought! ( I should have a sale!) And we had Scott's workshop full of tools and projects. I think we might literally have a million things!

We hope to get rid of 60% of what we have currently and really only keep things we need and truly love and respect.

But that's a job for 2008! We're ringing in the new year very quietly. I have a cold, and am curled up on the couch with tea and a blanket. We ordered pizza for dinner and we're going to play Mario Galaxy and maybe some bowling on the Wii. I'm hoping to be in bed before 10pm!

house painting

new house photos

Every time that we drag our realtor over to unlock our new house for us ...again, we get so excited that we forget to take photos. Scott said he thinks we have taken our worst house photos ever of the place.

But we finally got some pretty good ones. These are sort of reference photos for us as we think of the work ahead. As you will see in the photos, there is a lot of stuff left on the property. Lots of cans and jars of mysterious toxic fluids, lots of wood and tools and just junk. But we are fine with it. A few days of clean up, several trips to the dump. We expect we will find some really neat things too.

Here's a link to Scott's photos.