When You Can't Go To Paris, Bring Paris to You! Happy Bastille Day!

One of my closest friends celebrates her 29th birthday today. Its also Bastille Day in France. I'm not totally sure if this coincidence is what began my girlfriend's obsession with EVERYTHING Parisian, but it would certainly make sense!

For her 30th birthday we are all trying to go to Paris to celebrate - however that's a whole year away. This year I couldn't even make it up to Long Beach for her birthday (the joys of working weekends!) so I sent Paris to her with this super cute cut out set from La Petite Peach!

It was a big hit! The postcard is from Birchbox, just in case you think it is super cute too!

Etsy Treasury! Put a Bird On It San Diego...

... I'm having way too much fun putting together treasurys on Etsy. After watching Portlandia last night I really felt the need to do a "Put a bird on it" themed treasury.

To make it a bit more challenging on myself I decided to feature items only if they had birds or feathers AND if the artists/crafters were part of the Etsy Artisans of San Diego County Team (@EASDCTeam) of San Diego Etsians. It was really fun as I wound up going through most of the shops in our team and poking around.

Want to scoot around the treasury? Check it out here: In San Diego, We Put Birds on Things.

Mad Tea Party - My First Etsy Treasury

I've been wanting to do this for a while - but I finally put together my first Treasury List on Etsy. I'm excited to do more of them, as its really just an excuse to scoot around Etsy and look at a lot of really crafty and talented folks' stuff.

Want to browse these talented Etsians' shops? Go to the Treasury.

Happy 2011!

Adios 2010, and a happy 2011 to you all!!!!!!!!!

We celebrated the clock turning over last night in style. Well, sort of.

Taylore hosted a "Casual Fancy Dress New Year's Party" at her loft in downtown Long Beach. Not sure what a Casual Fancy Dress Party is? I'll let Taylore explain:

"Another year has passed. A year of engagements, house purchases, promotions, small business startings, weddings, and all around awesomeness. Let’s celebrate the closing of 2010 by continuing the argument “what the hell do we call this decade, the teens?” and drinking excessive amounts of champagne. So join me at my house to count down to 2011 in Casual Fancy Dress style. What does that mean? Well it means dress casually, but wear one item of fancy dress. Whether you’re wearing flip flops and a top hat, a t-shirt with a monocle, or stiletto heels with jean cut off shorts you are a causal fancy dresser my friend."

Excessive amounts of champagne were indeed had, and there was a lot of loud singing, and at one point 3 of attempting to copy the "choreography" of Jason Derulo's performance on the Dick Clark/Ryan Seacrest countdown. There was also a lot of making fun of aforementioned countdown show - I mean, NKOTB and Ke$ha on the same stage together - Really?!?!

At any rate. The real reason for posting this is to show off my newest attempt at crafty-ness. My item of fancy dress was a black blusher veil with peacock feathers. This is the first time I've made a veil, and the first time I've worked with tulle - but after my success a couple of weeks ago with a feather head band, I was confident in my abilities.

Peacock Feather Side

Leaf Side

All I have to say is that this was surprisingly difficult, and not a one person job. My friend Susan gave me some tips (after all she and our friend Tasja made the most beautiful bird cage veil for Susan's wedding), and my friend Nicole helped me cut, fit, and glue the veil to the headband. A bit of black fabric, adhesive fabric stiffener, a ton of hot glue, 10 translucent craft leaves, 6 peacock tail feathers, and two buttons later I was in business. 

We Fish Ewe a Mare Egrets Moose ...

Hello all and happy holidays to you! Its been ages since I've done anything on this blog, for starters because I had yet to finish blogging from Taylore's and my trip, and then because life got a bit insane.

So here I am - doing a quick holiday photo post. Its been a bit rainy and stormy here in San Diego, in case you haven't heard, so we've been keeping a low profile - but there have been Christmas Cookie Exchanges, Christmas tree trimming (x2), Christmas light viewing, and Christmas present crafting...


First there has been a stressful Christmas Crafting process. I think my roommates may have finally decided I'm crazy. My standby gift is this homemade cocoa mix - but sometimes I like to mix it up - this year I tried four different gift ideas, but inevitably came back to the one I know and love. This year I added these two adorable gift tags that I drew in Illustrator & had printed at Moo (hand written holiday sentiments and directions on the back of the tags).

Crafty Cocoa Christmas Presents!

As I mentioned before, there has been some live (read dead) Christmas tree action in both the Hare & Mohawk houses. With the craziness that has been driving the last month and a half my Mom and I both insisted on real, smell-tastic, and fully decorated Christmas trees this year. My budget was a little bit smaller then my parents tho...

Family Christmas Tree

Family Christmas Tree

Clay Nativity Scene at the 'rents'

My new/first tree topper!

Mohawk House Tree

There has also been some celebrating and way too much eating (especially of cookies)...

Jenelle with some of the cookies
from our cookie exchange...

Holiday party at Chris' in Redondo

Chris modeling his ugly old lady
Christmas sweater

Its not Christmas in our group of friends without some Christmas light viewing. Monday we braved a break in the storm and walked Jingle Bell Hill in El Cajon (a new one for most of us).

Happy holidays to you all! Keep checking back in, and sometime soon I'll finish posting the rest of the blog entries from our trip!