Featured Etsy Seller--Little Sassy

I know y'all are saying, Oh, well, she's your sis, but yunno what? She's darn good! So let me introduce Daisy of LittleSassy and LittleSassyMini. 

She and her husband recently took his daughter to see the King Tut exhibit to celebrate Erica's birthday.

This is the gift Daisy made for Erica. (She has another for sale in her shop.) Isn't it cool? And so appropriate. The museum shopkeeper must have swooned on sight! 

And look at the detail. Daisy's work is exquisite. 

Her tissue covers are fantabulous! She made one like this for our baby sister who, as I've mentioned before, is wonderfully musical. 

Gotta love the frogs! 

She also does dollhouse rugs. Aren't these exquisite? Makes you want to have a mini room setting. (She's thinking about doing miniature room shadow boxes. She'd do excellent at it, in my opinion.)

Makes you wanta visit these little rooms, huh? 

And lastly, this is the gift she gave me while we were in Eureka Springs. Yeah, those are my book covers on front. Cool, huh?

Look at the workmanship on the inside. That's a neat little snap flap.

And the handles--yunno, I think I'll copy that method on my next handbag!

Now, I'm off to the movies. Today I'm going all by my lonesome--by preference, y'all--to see Star Trek. Okay, maybe it's not all by preference. Except for my sis Billie and maybe my brother Joe, no one else in the family likes sci-fi, especially not my sis Ginger or my SIL Sunny, both of whom live close enough to go. Anyway, I like going to the movies alone. I'll carry a big handbag into which I'll sneak in a bottle of water and a granola bar--that'll be lunch since the movie starts at 11:40a. I know it's not nice to take your own stuff to the movies, but sheesh their prices!

So, see y'all later. Ta.

She's ba-ack!

Eureka Springs was a dream! It took us, I dunno, about eight hours or so to get there and of course we spent the whole time laughing. I can't even remember now at what, there were so many things over the weekend to laugh about. The cottage was great; we could be as loud as we wanted without worrying about being thrown out. 

It was drizzling that first morning, ergo the umbrellas on the front porch. Billie and I had just returned from our first walk when I took this picture. I loved walking in ES,  and I found I had much more stamina than I feared I would. My sisters were tireless! Ginger, the sis just younger than me, and Billie, the next youngest, and Alice, the baby, climbed a 10-story observation tower. Daisy and I, the smart ones in the family, decided not this time. Maybe next--because there absolutely has to be a next. As I said, the trip was magical.

This was a street musician who was so waifish--she looked as if she needed a good meal and a good bath, not necessarily in that order--that I had to give her a little money. I couldn't not. Daisy felt it too; she sat on the bench behind her a while and harmonized with her. (Did I say Alice and Daisy and Billie have tremendous voices? Ginger and I--not so much--we're not bad; we're just not in their class.)

Here too, while the rest of us were shopping, Billie was climbing. If you look past the grassy fronds, you'll see her head. 

Speaking of shopping, I took these pictures in the store the rest of us were visiting while Billie climbed. This is just the whimsical style I love! The store was filled with artist's products; I could have spent all day there.

This is the only shot I got of downtown ES. Not as pretty as the one I showed before I left. This is the lower part of town, near the trolley station.

And now, now that I've given the gifts, here are pics of the memory bags I made for my sisters. This first one's Alice's.

And Daisy's.
And Billie's.
And Ginger's.
I meant to show the pillow I made Daisy; I was so certain I'd taken a picture before I put it in the pillowcase wrapping, but I can't find a single one! Oh, well.

As much as I love my sisters and Eureka Springs, it's good to be home.

Ta, y'all.

Just a few...

Little notes before I head out on our trip. My sister Ginger and I leave from the hill country on Thursday the fourteenth and won't return until Tuesday the nineteenth. Eureka Springs, here we come!

Last time, I posted a pic of downtown ES, but here's the cottage where we'll stay. Rosewood Cottage, 'tis, and the lady I talked with is exceptionally friendly.

Isn't the cottage terrific? The bus stops in front too, but we're only about ten blocks from downtown. Of course, if I walked there, I'd probably need a nap before I could do anything!

I've been busy making token gifts for my sisters and though I can't show them here, I can show the packaging. First, though, an explanation. Last month, I posted about an Etsy seller, BellaVioletta here. Nice lady that she is, Kim sent me a thank you gift. (I intended to post a thank you back then but never got around to doing so. Forgive me, Kim!) I was as impressed with her packaging as with her gift--well, almost. But look at it. Pretty terrifical, isn't it?

I didn't take pictures of the DoeDoe birds and stars she sent, though you'll see some in the pictures that follow. But I liked the packaging so much, I decided to use the idea for my sisters. I needed something bigger than the book page Kim used so I started with plain brown paper, which looked quite oridinary. So...what else? I spiffed 'em up! 

Ginger, my next youngest sister, has a green thumb. She credits me with starting her in gardening, but I think she's much better at it. (She might be a bit more timid when it comes to pruning. I think she empathizes with the plant on every cut she makes while I barrel-ass in and cut off anything that gets in my way!)  So I went for the plant theme for her. 

This was the first package I made and I have to admit I took more time with it, cutting images from an old issue of BH&G.

Notice the little stars from Bella Violetta on the tie? I love 'em!

Billie is a talented writer who was quite successful back in the day (and could be again if she'd apply pants seat to desk chair). So I used actual pages from a novel. (I know, that's blasphemy for a writer, but while reading it, I decided it was nothing I'd recommend or pass on so I might as well use it for altered art.)  (Also tied with a DoeDoe bird from Kim.)

Daisy's a gourmet cook. (While the rest of us know our way around the kitchen, she truly excels.) So I used cutouts from a Cook's Catalog. (See how useful Kim's gift was? And I still have more, which I'm thinking of ways to use. Wasn't she generous?)

And lastly--though by no means leastly--Alice, the baby girl. She's a talented singer and musician. (I could have also included scholar as she's working on her Master's right now, but I decided to focus on the music.) I used copied pages of my SIL's keyboard music book for this. (This was my last one, and I'll admit I was running out of steam.)

One more gift package to show, and I'll be done. Daisy will be celebrating a big zero birthday this month so I wanted to take something special for her. Can't show the gift, but here's how I packaged it. (If you can tell what the gift is, don't hint at it to Daisy. Maybe she won't see this page before we leave. Ya think?)

Okay, you're right, the wrapping's nothing but a vintage pillow slip tied with a ribbon. Still it'll pack easy and protects the gift, and she can use the pillow slip--isn't it pretty?

So that's all, y'all. I'll check in when we return. Maybe I'll even have time to visit my fave blogs then. I'm sure there'll be lots to catch up on.

Ta.

Just a fly-by

I know I've been pretty quiet lately, but I have excuses...uh, reasons. In little more than a week, my sisters and I go for our pretty-much-yearly getaway, and I've been working my buns off getting ready. This year will be the second time we visit Eureka Springs in the Arkansas Ozarks. Below is a pic of downtown, such a pretty place!

I've also been working in the yard. Most times, though, my eyes are bigger'n my stamina. I'm beginning to think it'll take me all summer to do spring's chores. We have so many potted plants that need dividing--I'm not even gonna mention the African irises I have in the front beds that are screaming for some room. 

Only problem with them is that I don't function well in the cold and by the time it's warm enough for me to be working outside, they're blooming. Maybe in the fall....

In the meantime, I have a snake plant that is humongous.  (Not this one; this one looks manageable.)

And a hoya (aka wax plant) that has outgrown itself. At least with the hoya, I know someone I can give some to--they seem to survive both winter and deer around here. But the snake plant--I mean, this thing is older'n dirt and I s'pose I could just put it in a bigger pot, but yunno eventually you can't buy pots that big. That's like my ponytail palm--it needs repotting and I can't find anything around here larger than the 24" pot it's already in.

So, that's what I've been doing: not spending much time online, not adding things to my shops, not reading my fave blogs, and not keeping up. I didn't even post when I was put in another treasury, though I did manage to save the picture. 

Sometimes life gets too busy! says she who doesn't even hold down a job or clean her own house.