swaps! and, anyone interested in a swap?

i love swaps. can you tell? ;) i just shipped off my black-and-white petite inspiration matchboxes to my partners amy and stevie.

it is my first swap of this kind. i've been wanting to join in on a swap hosted by heather of speckled egg for a long time. they always look so fun! take a look on flickr to see what i mean.

there's something so satisfying about collecting a group of gorgeous supplies and things that all coordinate. i loved the black and white theme.

it was a challenge for me because i LOVE color so much. but this was calming. i forget how much an absence of color can be so inspiring too.

i also participated in a one-on-one swap with christina and boy was i in for a treat! :) it felt like my birthday!

i was so excited to receive such a nice, big envelope stuffed with goodies in my mailbox on friday. just what i needed to end a somewhat stressful week!

i found vintage paper, a vintage map, a leather-bound fabric sample book (i have never seen anything like it and i can't wait to use them in my quilting and journaling projects!!),

beautiful pink buttons, lace, scrapbooking goodies, metal bits and bobs, vintage office supplies (love!)...i could go on and on but i'll let the photos speak for themselves! :)

which brings me to a question: would anyone be interesting in doing a group swap? i've never hosted a swap before, but i thought it would be fun. i'm not sure of the theme. for some reason, i was thinking of rainbows (i know, it's fall! but i'm stuck on spring for some reason. or maybe it's just my love of all things colorful!) i'm not talkin' rainbows with pots of gold at the end (although that would be fun, too!) but more like, a swap where you collect items and group them by color and send them off to your swap partner. like, fill a sandwich-sized bag of wonderful goodies for each color of the rainbow. i'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. i will post an "official" swap announcement later in the week for the sign ups, so stay tuned! :)

1. Glossy Rainbow IV, 2. For A Rainy Day..., 3. Rainbow Fake, 4. Rainbow, 5. Rainbow Stars, 6. Rainbow Beads, 7. Colourful letters, 8. - paint! - , 9. Rainbow beads, 10. Mucho Color, 11. Glitter Glitter Glitter Glitter Glitter, 12. 100_2202.JPG, 13. Button size 15mm, 14. Rainbow matchboxes filling, 15. 26/365 (Explore~), 16. Alphabet Rainbow

maybe i'm stuck on rainbows because i'm wishing it were spring...cool weather, cloudy days, rain. we are supposedly in the fall season right now, but with 100 degree weather, it's hard to think about pumpkins and cool, smoky nights! we are boiling here, folks! :( hope you are enjoying cool, fall weather wherever you are. and if you're stuck in this early fall heatwave, i can sympathize with you!

hope you're having some creative, quite moments to yourself this week!

mail art and other lovlies

some lovely packages are going out in the mail tomorrow! one is going out all the way to england to sal, who won the giveaway. she is getting her very own custom made journal! here is a teeny sneak peek (but i don't want to give away the big surprise until after she's received it.)

the other package is going out to christina! we decided to do a vintage themed swap! fun!! she's in luck, because i just went to a great book sale down the street from my house and found all kinds of great, old books! ;)

i'm participating in another swap with speckled egg. this one is a black-and-white theme.

so i gathered all my lovely vintage and vintage-inspired black and white lovlies and got to sortin'. next comes decorating the boxes and then sending them off !

i love this box of old buttons. i found it at an estate sale a few months back. it's so pretty, just on it's own. i'll be including some of these in my partners' swap boxes for sure!

the weather is definitely cooling down but it's still nice enough for us to play outside.

sureya loves to stand on the front of her sister's scooter while maya pushes them both down the street. it's lovely to see them having so much fun together.

today was another lovely day. i decided to take little ms. squirly pants out on a walk to get some lunch before heading over to pick up her big sister from school.

oooh, and i even got some art journaling in, too! ;) i packed a little bag with the bare essentials (that was hard to pare it all down to just a few pens, tape and misc. vintage paper. this journal is made from a variety of my favorite paper bound in an old greeting card. the glassine envelope taped to the back page holds little labels and other journaling lovlies.

ms. sureya sat so nicely, eating her lunch while i journaled in between bites.

these are some random shots from the journal. i skip around a lot so the dates are always out of order, but that's ok by me.

i wish! i love this. i should get a poster-sized copy of this and hang it on my wall.

Etsy Treasury: All Souls Day

I LOVE curating treasuries on etsy. it's like window shopping and creating an inspiration board all-in-one. i typed in "soul" and found some interesting items. then narrowed it down with a black-white-and-orange theme. hope you enjoy some halloween inspired goodies! check it out by clicking HERE. happy fall!

ok, i'm ready for fall!

i'm usually the last one in flip flops and summer dresses, desperately clinging onto the last few drops of sweet summertime. but after seeing everyone around blogland getting ready for halloween, i am officially ready for fall to begin! :) i forget that my favorite holidays start just around the corner after i've splashed my last cannonball into the deep end of the pool. (actually, we didn't do much swimming this summer. it was one of the mildest summers i've ever experienced here in the past 10 years! brrr! and when i mean brr, it's the california gal in me, going, "it's 65 degrees out? turn up the heater! where's my fuzzy socks??)

peek-a-booo! halloween mini stitched journal/album available in the shop!

anyway, i've been a busy bee and i've added some more items to my shop. halloween-inspired mini journals. perfect for jotting down little notes or tucking in sweet photos of loved ones. i always sneak little goodies into the pockets and folds of every journal i make. kind of a fun little surprise. and a way to get a little creative jumpstart!

kitschy kid costume fun!

birds of the night sky. great old book page from an old children's book on birds

i've sent laurie her mini journal in the mail today, hurray! and i'm getting started on sally's custom made journal this week. sally was the big winner of the giveaway--winning her very own custom made journal. yay! i'll share a couple of behind-the-scenes photos of the work in progress. ;) and if anyone knows ejmom, please let her know i'm lookin' for her! (she won the collage pack! if i can't find her within a week, i'll have to re-draw the prize.) these three ladies are our winners from my 100th post giveaway. if you missed out, don't fret. i'll be having them frequently! we'll have another one coming up pretty soon to kick start the fall/halloween fun! stay tuned...

whooo doesn't love owls?

pages inside a stitched mini journal

would make a great back-to-school gift! ;)

more mini journal pages. i LOVE old paper!

pumpkin themed page! found in the halloween mini stitched notebooks

we are still enjoying mild summer/early fall weather here. which means we can still run around in flip flops and bare feet and eat popsicles for lunch if we feel like it. took the girls to the park today and they had a blast. sureya loves the slide! she loves climbing up in her little bare feet and sliding down on her back and then doing it all over again. she is my little daredevil. today, in fact, i walked out of the kitchen only to find her sitting ON TOP of the dining room table, shaking both the pepper and salt onto her feet. cute, but kind of terrifying too! she is a quick little one, i guess the baby gates are going back up! she only had a few seconds lead time on me, but that was enough time to get into trouble!

hope you are enjoying these last few days of summer before the smoky fall air and cool nights wrap around us like fog. i'm looking forward to it. finally. i'm not dragging my heels like i was in years past. maybe because i avoided michael's where they start putting up halloween stuff in july. i really don't like to be forced to do anything (who does?) and i really don't like to hurry through anything as precious as life and the everyday "little" things like the passing of seasons. after all, there will never be another day quite like today.

dirty face and feet: evidence of a great time had at her friend mo's 2nd birthday party!

giveaway winners!

thank you to all who entered! your comments were all so sweet and encouraging. it was so much fun to "meet" all of you and to visit your blogs and get to know a little more about each of you. i loved reading each and every comment.

to recap, everyone got an entry just for commenting and additional entries for blogging about the giveaway, following and/or voting for trace merritt elementary in the kohl's cares contest (4 entries maximum). i gave each entry a number. then i went to random.org and entered the numbers 1-68 into the number generator thingie and pressed enter three different times to get three winners. (the total number of entries is more than the total number of comments because some comments had more than one entry, i.e. "i'm following" and "i'm voting" in one comment, etc.) i decided to add an extra winner as a "thank you" for so many comments! ;)

so, without further ado, i present to you the winners of my 100th post giveaway! (drumroll...)

first place goes to Sal-Gal! she is the winner of the custom made journal!! yay! (you get to decide on the color scheme for the cover and the inside pages!)

Sal-Gal said...Hi, I saw a link on Bonnie's blog - so here I am! I am very impressed with your lovely journals, and would love to own one! I've never done anything like that myself as I'm quite new to making cards.I will make mention in my blog about you and of course I'd love to become a follower - what a lovely idea to get more followers too! lol my blog is: http://wwwsalgal53.blogspot.com/I will also vote for your school - so that's all three sorted!!
Sal xx9/02/2010 2:14 AM

second place goes to ejmom! she is the winner of the collage paper pack! :) (ejmom, please leave a comment and let me know your email address!)

ejmom said...Your journals are so beautiful!9/01/2010 2:33 PM

and third place goes to huntla1! she is the winner of a mini stitched journal! woo hoo! (huntla1, also please leave your email address in a comment so i can contact you!)

huntla1 said...I added you to my reader so I can follow your blog. 8/27/2010 5:45 PM

and as a thank you to everyone, i'd like to offer a special 20% discount to my blog readers for my etsy shop--good anytime! just mention the promo code in the comment section during checkout: BLOG20

i've added some mini stitched journals to the shop. the covers are made with enclosure cards from paper source. they have little pockets in the back cover that are perfect for stashing goodies for journaling (paper scraps, stickers, photos!) in fact, all my journals come with little goodies hidden in the pockets and flaps!

the insides are a mix of lovely vintage paper from my favorite sources (old atlases, yearbooks, ledgers, music sheets, children's books) and new paper (recycled cavalini & co calendars, scrapbook paper, catalog pages... YUM!

and happy labor day! i hope you are all enjoying a day off today. one last "vacation" before summer officially ends. sigh. but that just means that autumn is on it's way. i always forget how much i love the changing seasons. i'm always so stubborn when it comes to saying goodbye to summer. but i do love fall and halloween! i'll have another giveaway in october to celebrate my 3rd anniversary of blogging (or, blogiversary, as some say!) i'd also like to start organizing swaps and doing tutorials, etc. i'd love to know what else you'd like to see on the blog in the future? just leave your ideas in the comments! :) i'm always happy to hear your thoughts.