Oh the Cuteness!

I was thinking about saving this tutorial for next Christmas, but I've seen a lot of people doing something special for Valentine's day this year called the "14 Days of Valentines". I'm guessing it's a play off of the 12 days of Christmas, and I thought this might be a fun way to participate. This year I wanted to make Johnny an advent calendar since we didn't get to spend as much time together as we would have liked (he lives a little ways away from me). I used my favorite little single truffle boxes, which you saw as place cards during  Thanksgiving  , as the containers for my little gifts. I drew all the numbers on them while they were flat with a green felt-tip marker. All the objects I collected or made were something from our relationship, either actually or symbolically. It was harder than I thought it would be to find 23 little items that would fit in the boxes, but it all came together so sweetly. Now, I say 23 items because an ...

I love doing custom orders. Brainstorming with customers, getting to make special items and go a little over the top compared to what I normally do... It feels great. On the " Hire Me " page I have a little blurb about custom orders, and recently I got a few for the Moustache Soaps I listed in the shop. My favorite one was six special soaps as favors for this little guy's birthday party: That's Ash, and his mummy told me he's obsessed with orange (the fruit as well as the color), and moustaches! The sweet invitations were done for her at Brown Paper Goods on etsy. With that as inspiration it was easy: I scented the soaps with tangerine and vanilla essential oils and packaged them in little kraft boxes with orange and white baker's twine: So yay! Another nice little item to add to my portfolio of custom work! If you'd like me to make something for you, send me an e-mail at ohthecuteness@hotmail.com!

I've been on some kind of mission lately... I suppose the main objective is to make my house as colorful and cozy as possible. I keep looking around and just wishing there was more visual interest. I think I'm most at home in a place that is riotous with color, and luckily Dennis is pretty obliging in the matter. The pillows and photo wall in the bedroom are just the start of a much larger plan. Recently I started working on the kitchen ; hanging more art that had been stashed under the sink before the housewarming party, preparing some garlands that I want to string about the ceiling (more on those later), and this: I picked this up for 12 bucks at MaiDo (a Japanese stationary store in San Francisco). It's a chalkboard wall decal, and it was actually just a big black square with the frame in the center but I decided to cut the border off. It's hung in the pass-through between the kitchen and living room. We've been wanting to hand something there, but were...