Ok, not really. My poor sewing machine hasn’t been touched in weeks. In fact, I think I hear it weeping quietly in the craft room. I’ll admit I have been a bit obsessed with the house, we’ve been painting and cleaning out garages and working in the yard. In between everything that seems to need to be done in the last few weeks of school, there just hasn’t been any time for crafting. I have some fun crafts brewing for my Girl Scouts this week, so next week…definitely next week.

So what has been happening, you ask?

Well…we have a new roof on the two lower parts of the house. So hopefully – no more leaky roof. And the best part is – we get to take down the tiles in the living room and discover what lies beneath! (I know J. is cringing right now and bracing himself for coming home to a torn up living room. Don’t worry, babe…I’ll save that project for an upcoming weekend, so you can help!)

While the guys were working on the roof, Gracie disappeared. She was up in Ad’s room, came down with her little notebook and said, “Well, Mama – I was watching the roof guys and made 41 different observations.”

I need to get a copy of her observations because they are pretty awesome. My favorites were:

21. The roof guys leave their fire (torch) burning the whole time they are working.
22. They are weird. (Because they leave the fire burning)

Addie has been observing (every single day!) a little project of her own. Her garden. It is coming in nicely and we had our first blueberry harvest over the weekend.

Okay, so not enough to even put on our yogurt or Cheerios in the morning, but they were delicious! And we have some more coming along.

I need to do a photoshoot on the rest of Addie’s garden now that it is all coming in. Maybe tomorrow when we learn how to thin carrots. She is going to be crushed to know we have to pull some of them out. The carrots are her absolute favorite plants. Well, next to the catgrass she is growing for all the kitties in her life.

On another note, we are so excited to have Daddy home safe and sound from India. And of course he brought presents…

Oh, hey! I almost forgot…we did have some arts and crafts working it around here last week! One of Em’s pieces of artwork was chosen for the SGUSD art gallery downtown – again! They go through the school and take two pieces from each classroom and she was chosen for the second year in a row. Pretty cool and makes the art part of Mama’s heart smile. (This sweet face makes me smile, too.)

So if you made it this far – that will have to do for your crafty fix today. I promise better stuff next week!

Yes. It is again Tuesday. Yes…I have been painting and making bottlecaps and clipboards, but honestly haven’t taken one darn photo or even thought about blogging it. So until next week for CT, my friends…

I am however chaperoning 2nd graders at the La Brea Tarpits, finishing my final PTA newsletter of the year (Hallelujah!) and having deep discussions like this on the way home from ballet with the littles this afternoon.

Listening to the radio…

A: Mama? That doesn’t even make sense! The song goes…
“Everybody dies, but not everyone lives.”
I mean…they are the same things basically. You can’t die without being live.

Deep thoughts with Addie.

And the countdown til summer is on. 10 more school days….

Happy Birthday to you!

We wish you a happy day and all year through!

Love you,
J, C, E & A

…but very, very busy. No Crafty Tuesday goodies to show today. This little ol’ thing called a new house (well, new as in…”now it is our problem”) is taking up every single moment of our spare time.

Between the pesky things I have to do, like projects, logos and websites that people would like done (and I would like to get paid for) and just everyday life, it is hard to squeeze in everything on our ever-expanding “honey do” list.

And then J. has to go gallivanting off to India today, so my manpower is cut in half! While he is away Addie and I are finishing up some gardening things and I am painting the bedroom. Stay tuned for photos and stories of both of those! And since I know that J. is going to be missing his girls ever so much, there will probably be a lot of gratuitous photos of them this week, too. Bear with us.

I skipped out on you all last Crafty Tuesday, but it wasn’t because we didn’t have anything to show. Birdie Jamie and I have been very, very busy!

A few weeks ago we had a little craft boutique here and we ended up with a packed house! Besides the Two Birdies, we had another 8 or 9 vendors and a really good turnout, including a lot of the teachers from school and some of our city council members. It was a really fun night and everyone keeps asking when we are going to have our next boutique. We are thinking possibly doing it 4 times a year – each season or so.

We sold some of our bottlecap necklaces – the Cougar ones were a pretty big hit. Can you guess what our display for the necklaces and magnets used to be? Remember those metal TV trays your grandma used to have? Yeah – I found one at the flea market, we gave it a fresh coat of paint and then used our cool machine (aka Eva) and made a vinyl adhesive logo for it. We are currently scouting for other smaller metal trays that we can personalize and use for the bottlecap wardrobes.

We also sold some snackpacks. Little waterproof and reusable snack packs. I’m still searching for some less “girly” laminated fabric.

And Jamie played around with some boy tees, too.

Another hit at the Boutique that we didn’t even suspect would be a big seller were the personalized clipboards. What an incredible way to get rid of all of the scrapbook paper that has been collecting dust around here lately.

Since they were a big success we all made them for the Moms in our lives, too. I can show this one because I know that Nena got hers. I’m not so sure about Nana and  Meesh’s though.

And then we made  a couple for the teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week last Friday.

And of course, we sold a bunch of our pillowcase dresses at the boutique. And even more exciting…some of our dresses are in an honest to goodness store! If you pop into our friend Hallie’s shop, The Stylish Child, you’ll see some Two Birdies dresses.

And we also used Eva to design the girls’ outfits for the Variety Show. She (yes, Eva is a girl!) cuts fabric! And makes temporary tattoos! The girls were kickin’ it in their bling and tats!

So we have been busy, you see…it is just a toss up. Take time to photograph and blog or use the time to craft?? Hmmm…it doesn’t seem that hard of a choice. Back to crafting!

…that I have a thing to show for Crafty Tuesday today. My partner-in-craft-crime and I have found ourselves the owners of a new crafty toy and once we get it figured out there will be NO.END.TO.OUR.CRAFTINESS.

But in the meantime, the Two Birdies are trying desperately to get this school-wide ceramics project done in time for our school’s Silent Auction next month. I’ll snap a few photos today so you can see what I mean. It is a big project, people, I mean HUGE.

And on another note, I am in a quagmire of house-hunting stress with realtors and lovely mortgage fellows (really, they are quite lovely). It really isn’t much I can talk about right now. Just know that we are still here and hanging on. And I really, REALLY hope to finally have some time to, at the very least, dig out my sewing area so I can think about sewing something. Anything.

But as always, would love some crafty diversions to peruse while I’m trying to avoid doing everything else I need to do, so please leave us your creations.

Won’t you be our valentine?

Hope your day is filled with love.

I love how my partner in crime, Kimberly, always finds and captures the beauty in random around the house objects. When I thought of photographing something in black & white I immediately thought of dice. And…this was the ONLY die I could find in our house. So, we just went with it.

Check out more black & white over at

Hosted by Megan and Hip Momma

Today he is at the White House…

…and not this model one either. The REAL White House. The one in Washington D.C. – that one. I’m still not really clear on the mission and what he will be doing, but he is going to talk be a part of a committee to one of President Obama’s advisors. I told him to be on high alert for a President sighting. Seriously, how cool is that?

He certainly finds his way to some pretty cool adventures, doesn’t he?