Can't Catch Me...

I have a very sad story to share... Akemi was very excited to decorate her gingerbread man at school this year. She brought it home and decided not to eat it right away (big mistake)! Instead, she kept it in the bag and showed it to everyone. It was a pretty big gingerbread man I must say. I'm sad I didn't take a photo of him before he disappeared. DH came to see me the next day and asked if Akemi asked about her gingerbread man. I said she didn't and then he told me the bad news. Our very naughty other daughter (Kiki) ate it!!!! We didn't tell Akemi right away but we knew we'd have to break the news to her soon. We were hoping she would think the gingerbread man ran away like in the nursery rhyme. Sooooo, the following day, Akemi and I came home from shopping after work and the entire dining room area was covered in trash!!! Apparently Kiki got into the stinky trash that was left in the dining room and it was a mess! While trying to clean it up, Akemi saw the empty bag where her gingerbread man used to be and figured out that it was gone. I told her the truth and she started bawling! She was so sad because all she got to eat was one raisin. So now I feel bad and ended up promising her we'd make cookies this weekend. I know this won't replace that special cookie she made in school, but I'm hoping this will help a little. I guess it helped a lot, cause check out these pictures! DH actually helped us bake this year! He was a natural at rolling out the dough so she could cut out her gingerbread men (well, I guess they were more like butter cookie men). See the cookie cutter? Flour and sprinkles EVERYWHERE!!!!! Here's Akemi tasting the cookies. She was really good at that- it even says that on her apron! At the end Akemi told me she was sooooo tired and that cookie baking was a lot of work! I think this is the first year she actually helped me that much... usually she just does one try and is pretty much done, so this year she stuck with it for all the butter cookies and dug out when it was time to make the chocolate chip. I'm glad she had fun. I think she kind of forgot about the gingerbread man for now.

Thanks So Much!

We had the Hero Arts Preview Party for the new 2011 Catalog at Island Scrapbooking on Saturday and I did a free make 'n take for those that stopped by that day. Since we had some leftover supplies, decided to make another card using more of the new stamps. The leaf stamp is from the set called "Delicate Leaf Clusters". I just stamped it twice on the left side of the card and added some red crystals to resemble berries. Wanted to give it an xmas feel so it could be used as a thank you card for after xmas. The Thanks So Much sentiment came from a new set called "Made With Love". All of their new sentiment sets are really nice this year and I want to get all of them! It was really nice making some simple cards and taking a break from all that calendar making! Nothing like spending an afternoon with friends and crafting! Just the therapy I needed after a rough week at work.

Gyotaku Prints

OK- for those of you that have been following my blog, you may remember that I promised to show you what my brother was sending me (from the mainland) to sell at my craft fair... Well, the package only arrived yesterday, so it didn't make it in time for the fair. Anyway, a bunch of you had inquired what he was sending me, so I thought I'd post it anyway. He took a class earlier this year on how to do Gyotaku (I think it means fish printing). I remember going to summer fun and making fish prints, but we used really junk paint and it never really looked like the fish. I was quite impressed to see that my brother's prints came out so nice... though I really shouldn't have been that surprised, since he's pretty much a perfectionist. Yes, he's the painter in the family. My sister draws, I craft and he paints. So here's the prints he sent... they are all on 8x10 rice paper. If you are interested, email me. Otherwise, I may try to sell them at a craft fair here in Hilo in the near future. If you are interested in a larger sized print, you can email me and I can put you in touch with him directly since I don't know what he has in the larger sizes. OK here goes... this first two are of minnows... Here's a baby octopus he found one day at the fish market. Score!! It think this is my favorite of the bunch. Here's the Ebi (Shrimp)... One shrimp.... Two shrimps... See his Chop??? He made that himself too!!! He actually carved it because he couldn't find one with our name on it in that larger size.

Easter Seals Gingerbread House

This past Sunday was the annual Gingerbread House Decorating Event for Easter Seals at Sanga Hall. Ever since Akemi was a toddler, we took her to decorate a gingerbread house. It was so much fun, I even bought this lazy susan to make it easier to decorate (I'm crazy I know)... Akemi is finally old enough to decorate the house herself, so all I did this year was put the icing on it for her to add her candies. Grandma Kat is our construction crew, so she helped us to put the house together. Its so much fun to get together to do this project. Akemi wanted to make one half of the roof in M&M's and the other half in snow caps (yum!). We put a heart over the door to show our love! When Akemi asked for lollipops this year, I didn't know how she was going to put them up. Daddy figured out that if you stick the stick end into the gumdrops, it makes a good "pot" for them. She said the lollipops were her plants/trees. I think she's been playing too much plants vs. zombies! About 1/2 way through, someone came by and offered us extra gingerbread pieces, which we could not resist... Daddy made Kiki a dog house outside (yeah right, like she'd ever sleep outside!), and you can't really see from this blurry photo, but Grandma Kat made a little Kiki doggie out of mini marshmallows. I think Akemi ate more than what went on the house! Our neighbor sat on our table and was nice enough to take our photo with our gingerbread house. We had a blast this year making our house and watching what everyone else came up with. The commercial side was even more impressive- too bad I forgot to take photos of those too! The bestest thing about this event (other than decorating the house) is we don't have to clean up!!!!

Class Goodies

Christmas Break has arrived! Well, not really for me, but for my family, so I've been busy (in between my calendar making) finishing up making xmas goodies for Akemi's class. We went more practical this year and bought some xmas themed pencils from Walmart. It was about a dozen in a pack (3 designs) for $1! Can't beat that price, so I picked up several packs so that I could give each child one of each pencil. Packaging pencils has always been an issue for me- its long, skinny, and never seems to fit nicely in a bag. Luckily, I remembered Jean's post on Dandelion Designs Blog which would work for my pencils. Jean has really neat ideas, so if you haven't visited her blog yet, you'll want to check it out for great templates and ideas for her cute stamps! Thanks Jean! Anyway, all I did was measure the size of the pencils to come up with my custom packaging. I don't have a crimper for the ends, so I just sealed it using my double stick tape. Punched two holes on the top and tied it with some curling ribbon and added my tag. Here's all 25 that I made (xtras for her friends not in her class)... Used my new PTI stamp set called Tiny Treats Christmas since they fit nicely onto the heart tag I wanted to use. Since the images are small, I colored them up in no time and taped them to the scallop heart. The set comes with 18 designs but I only used my favorite 5 stamps. I picked these because I thought the kids would like them more than the other designs... Can't forget the teacher right?? Every year I make a calendar for my daughter's teacher in a school theme. Sorry- didn't take a photo of it before I wrapped it. I did remember to take a picture of the tag though... used the bear from LOTV holding a star. It was a nice break to be able to make something other than a calendar! Well... back to work!

Lemonade Anyone?

Akemi asked me once if she could have a lemonade stand. I just pictured her sitting on our corner with her lemonade and no customers. It would just break my heart if no one came and bought anything from her... so I decided to bring in the customers by doing a craft fair. Of course the craft fair took up a lot of time, but in the back of my mind, I knew I had to make that lemonade!!! We lucked out and scored some free lemons from some of our friends and neighbors. Then I spent most of the night before squeezing lemons, making the simple syrup, and mixing them all together. We even bought a dispenser to make it easier for her to serve. Daddy built her an actual stand shown here... she made the sign and we decorated the sides with some old silk flower vines we found. Oh yah... also made some other goodies to see at her stand. Here's Akemi serving her first lemonade! Do you see her assistant Daba helping her?? A couple of weeks before the fair, Akemi told me that it was her "dream" to have a lemonade stand. I'm glad I could help make her dream come true! I just have to make one last comment... when we said we were gonna charge $1 per cup, everyone thought that was sooo expensive. I guess cause they assumed we were using those small juice cups or the ones you use for brushing your teeth. DH actually picked up larger cups than I wanted, but it worked out in the end. She ended up selling out! And for the record, she did much better than we thought! She used only about 35 cups, but made much more than that. We think its cause everyone was giving her good tips!

Recpie Books

Just thought I'd share a great gift idea with you. I printed up some recipe cards from my computer with a template I made, but you can use ready made recipe cards too. To make life easier on myself, I printed them on pre-cut 4x6 index cards, so I wouldn't have to cut them all too. I think there's about 25 cards in each book. Then I just used my Zutter to bind it all together into a recipe book. Too bad I didn't take photos of the cards themselves cause they matched the covers. Anyway, you get the drift.

Another Bunny Calendar

We had a great time over the weekend! Had so much fun talking story with everyone and seeing what my crafty friends created. It was a lot of work but well worth it! Here's another bunny calendar for Year of the Rabbit. Decided to go with more traditional asian colors this time and used my trusty red, gold and black. My sister's designs were pretty popular, which made me really happy! :)

Out Of My Comfort Zone

For all of you out there who can sympathize with the difficulty of making masculine cards, think of what a hard time I had making a whole calendar based on sports???? My friend special ordered this calendar and I really should have said I can't do it. I found paper, so I agreed to it, but it was not that easy let me tell ya! Luckily Michele let me borrow and old cuttlebug set of dies that cut out the ball then embosses it to look like a basketball, baseball, volleyball or soccer ball. They had one more that was for a football. If I didn't have these, I don't know how I would've done it. I'm thinking this is a one time only calendar for me!