Happy Holidays!

Hope everyone has a great Christmas season, I'm off for a nice long break to spend some time with our families. I'll be back in mid-january, so Happy New Year! :D

I got Tagged, and finished the quilt!

Here are the pictures of the finished quilt for my Gramma. I had to pull back the kitchen table to find enough space to lay out the quilt bottom/batting/top to pin it all together to get it ready to quilt together. :D Almost done with all my Xmas projects- YAY!
Eva of Effunia tagged me the other day; (here's a photo of Buttercup the Eva-made mushroom)

meaning I have to divulge six random things about myself, so here goes:

1. I have a really big phobia of frogs- real frogs, not cartoon or plush ones. I think it stems from the time when I was in grade one. I was sitting in the school library pulling out nature books, and I happened to open one book at this full 2 page picture spread of the poisonous African Tree Frog- I remember it felt like it was going to leap off the page and poison me right then and there. It freaked me out so much that whenever I see frogs on the Discovery Channel, or in real life, I get that horrible shivery feeling in my stomach that almost makes me want to throw up. (This phobia was not helped by having to fish dead frogs out of our swimming pool in the summer, or that GIGANTIC toad sitting on the chest high rock wall I almost walked into on my vacation with friends in Bermuda. EWWWW!)

2. My favorite color is green. You'd never know it to look at my wardrobe- I'm not one of those people who wears their favorite color all the time, due to the fact that very few shades of green look good with my skin tone. Bummer!!

3. I LOVE winter!! Growing up in Canada among the snowy Rocky Mountains was awesome. I miss snow A LOT, especially at Christmas.

4. My favorite painters are Tom Thompson

and Hans Hoffman.

5. I grew up playing video games- to this day my family is still playing- we have Mario Kart tournaments every time we get together, and now we do Wii bowling/Guitar Hero and get everyone involved from ages 5 to 65. You're never too old for Mario. :D

6. I suck at math- HATED it from day one. Total brain block. A small part of the reason I am an artist are my feeble math skills. :D Man did I hate the math portion of the SAT! So glad that I rocked the English portion, otherwise I would never have made it into art school. It was also the death knell for my very early childhood dreams of being a doctor- I sucked at Chemistry too, although I was really good at Biology. Never even went near Physics, I knew that one was going to be a disaster for my GPA.

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So here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know that they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Now it's your turn:

Emily from Follow the White Rabbit
Daniel from Happycloud Thunderhead
Jill and Erin from Dolls for Friends
Anna from Burgerlog
Kitty from KiTtYPiNkStArS
Danamarie from greenstar studios

One of my (many! :D) Christmas Projects...

I took my first quilting class, and am working on finishing this up as a gift for my Gramma for Christmas. I haven't been a slacker lately, just too busy to post much. Lots of stuff happening, but it's all been un-postable. My Gramma doesn't do computers, so I figured I was safe to post a little something of her quilt. :D She loves red and white, and as Ben pointed out to me, they're the colors of the Canadian flag. I wonder if that is part of their appeal, I never thought of it that way. I'll have to ask her when I see her this Christmas.
I'm not cut out to be a full time quilter, much as I love looking at them- I can't seem to care about it enough to be as precise as you need to be- which you can tell from a few of my edges not lining up flush with each other. I'm in awe of all the beautiful quilt artists out there, after attempting my first quilt I have even more respect for their patience and skills. Plus, who knew there would be so much ironing involved? (NOT a big fan of all the ironing, let me just say.) :D
Have a great week everybody!

My week in Plush

All I can say about last week is WOO HOO! I'm riding a creative high off of all the fantastic plush that either came in the mail or I picked up at Plush You! SF. The day before Thanksgiving I got both Ravvi the monster (from Daniel of Happycloud Thunderhead) and Basil (from Jill and Erin of Dolls for Friends). Now THAT was a good day! On sunday I picked up my purchases from Plush You!- the Pixie "Yoyota" by Yuriko Sera and the cutest owl "Jasper" by Devout Dolls. I also got a fun "I'm a liver, not a fighter" T-shirt (SO GREAT!) from "I heart Guts" at Bizarre Bazaar on sunday, I had my second sale off my etsy shop, AND the Thanksgiving turkey I cooked turned out really well - so all in all it was a great week. How can this week possibly compare!?
If every week was like last week then it wouldn't be so special I guess. (Not that I wouldn't mind a few more weeks like that!!) Now that I'm totally inspired, I'm off to my sewing machine! Have a good week, everyone.