A few new screen printed totes of mine are available for sale at Shanalogic.  First up is my mama and baby cuddling polar bears design on a bright turquoise lightweight cotton tote.

Next up is a return of my hamster design, but this time on a much larger and more heavy duty cotton canvas tote.  This design is available in teal and orange.

Last, but not least, is a large shopping tote... 18" wide.  It is made of 15 oz cotton canvas and has my deer design printed on it in white.  These are available in keey green or chocolate brown.

This year, I decided that I was going to act like major reatil store and rush my Christmas items into my etsy shop as soon as Halloween ended.  Of course, at this point most retail stores have had Christmas things in their stores for at least a couple of weeks already.  So, as ridiculous as it feels, I am already behind.

I am bringing my stuffed screenprinted reindeer ornament back from last year.  I make them with my Gocco printed using red fabric ink on natural cotton canvas.  New this year will be a set of Santa Chihuahua buttons and a pack of Santa Hamster note cards.  All of these items are currently available in my etsy shop.

Ok.  So, I am the first to admit that the last two months have not been the best in the blogging department.  I have no good excuses, I can only promise to be better in the future :)

Here are three things from the last month that could have been great blog posts:

1.  My new Toyota Yaris is not so new anymore after I crashed into a deer about a month ago.  The car is all fixed now, but the bad taste of the event is still in my mouth.  I don't know if it is just the small size of my car, but the deer flew across the rode, got up, shook off, and then ran into the woods.  That made me feel a little better about the whole ordeal...  I like to think that the deer is living a healthy life and spreading the word to her friends about how to stay away from the roads.

1-a.  The day before I hit the deer, I locked my keys in my car at work... with the lights on and engine running.  Ummm.. HELLO?!?  I felt so stupid.  Even more stupid, a coworker agreed to drive me 30 mintues to my house to get my spare keys - of course, I didn't realize that my house keys were in my locked car....

2.  I turned 35 about a week ago.  Having just recently adapted from being in my "twenties" to my "early-thirties," I am finding it shocking how quickly it became my "mid-to-late thirties." 

2-a.  I got a Wii FIT for my birthday.  Mid-to-late thirties and all, I'm loving my Wii. The Fit game with its balance board can be a lot of fun.  I don't know how much of a work out provides, but it is fun to see virtual me go running with my virtual friends and family!

3.  The weather forecast for Tuesday 10/28 was rain with 50 mph winds.  Well, that turned into snow that accumulated close to 1 foot where I work.  I haven't been to work since Tuesday... the power still isn't on out there.  Trees were down all over and people have been without power for a couple of days.  I have never seen anything like that in Ocotber before.  Here's a pic of the snow on my windshield about halfway through the storm.

I decided it was finally time to take a picture of some of my Mr.Men and Little Miss collectibles today.  I'm starting with my favorites, the little pvc figures that were given out at Arby's restaurants in 1981.  There are 18 figures total and I am still missing two: Mr Strong and Mr Nosey.  I try to keep my eyes open on ebay, but I haven't had any luck recently.  If anyone ever sees one (or has one for sale), please let me know!  I hope you like the pic... I got a little crazy with photoshop.

After a couple of busy weeks, I finally got back in the crafting mode yesterday and decided to print some notecards with a mama and baby bear design that I have been working on.  

Typically, I am fairly neat person and can usually keep my crafting mess to a minimum, but not yesterday.  Somehow while mixing the ink, I got some aqua ink on the bottom of my shoes and then proceeded to walk through three rooms and a hallway without realizing that I was leaving a bright blue trail in my wake.  Of course, when I discovered the spots, I kicked my shoes off and frantically began cleaning the ink off of the wood floors.  The crazy part is that while in my cleaning frenzy I didn't realize that I stepped in a spot with my socks and as I cleaned up spots in front of me, I was remaking them behind me.  Ugh!  Somehow there was purple and aqua ink everywhere in my crafting area by the time these cards were done... my fingers looked like I had frostbite.

All the drama aside, I am pretty happy with how the images came out.  I am going to be listing these cards in sets of three in my etsy shop and I hope you think they were worth all the mess!

I've neglected my blog the last week or so, but I have just been too busy to get around to it... though I know that is no excuse.  Work has been keeping me going at a steady clip and I have fallen behind in a lot of my leisure activities.  So, in a nutshell, here are some quick updates:

crafts: I have finally restocked all of my items at Shanalogic.com - it has taken a while, but it is the first time in a while that they have every item I make for them in stock.  Go me!

collectibles: I have found myself on a Mr. Men & Little Miss kick lately.  I have been buying up little pvc figurines of all the different characters whenever I can find them... blog post with pics to come soon!

leisure: I have finally found a Nintendo Wii.  I know I am about the last person on the planet to get one, but I am still thrilled about it.  Now, I just wish I had more time to play around with it because it is AWESOME!

Actually, my brother and sister-in-law came over on Friday night for a little Wii action.   Prior to our play, my brother took some pics of my dogs.  I still have to sort through all of the images because I want to get some printed, but here's a low res preview.  There wasn't a whole lot of light, so there were lots and lots of dog-treat bribes to keep the movement to a minimum - notice how attentive each dog is: