Happy Birthday, Agent N64

Meet Agent N64.

And his sidekick, Agent Root Beer.

My little boy just turned 8. Sigh! So big. We had a secret secret agent celebration. Fun and easy on the budget. When the boys came, they all got mustaches, hats & sunglasses (found on the cheap at an online party warehouse store) and were photographed for their top secret spy passports.


Then we went on a REALLY LONG spy treasure hunt around the neighborhood (I love treasure hunts). I coded the clues so it took them awhile to crack the messages at each of the stops.


Look, they are nervous that they'll be caught.


And then time for this crazy concoction. Can I even tell you how many cans (that's right, ladies, cans) of frosting I had to use to get this baby to stick together? It wasn't looking so good so I had to send my husband out for some last minute dry ice. I am a great believer that dry ice on/around a birthday cake can redeem even the most sorry creation.

But the best part of the whole thing was making the invitations. We'd typed up a secret memo with all the information except my son's name, & a note explaining that in order to find out the identity of the birthday boy you'd need to hold the document under a heat source (with a parent, of course. We don't want any invitations on fire.) E. signed them all in lemon juice, which works like invisible ink. I wish I'd saved one...

fabric conundrum

I bought this dress eight years ago in France. It's probably 60 years old and made of the nicest woven cotton fabric. Though it's probably been washed hundreds of times, the weave remains even and without any balls or piling. Is it me or have you all noticed a general decline in fabric quality over the past few years? I generally won't buy fabric from many of the big fabric retailers as the quality is really lacking. Once washed an item immediately develops a landscape of unsightly tiny balls of pile. I've noticed this with ready-made clothing too. Cotton broadcloth from Purl and Reprodepot still retains a certain quality, but when seeking any other type of fabric, things get tricky. I've found a few nice little shops in Manhattan. Although even the garment district is shrinking as companies move all garment production to China. Where do you all find nice quality fabric?

pippi

This is our family's favorite book, ever (so far). Isn't it so fun as a parent to introduce your kids to your old book friends? (and Lauren Child's illustrations in this version are just so, so, so, so perfect)

"The day had been filled with pleasant activities. She woke up early and served Mr. Nilsson [her pet monkey] juice and rolls in bed. He looked so sweet as he sat there in his light blue nightshirt, holding the glass with both hands. Then she fed and groomed her horse, telling him a long story about her travels at sea. After that she went into the living room and painted a big picture on the wallpaper. The painting showed a fat woman in a red dress and black hat. In one hand she was holding a yellow flower and in the other a dead mouse. Pippi thought it was a very beautiful painting."

Home Sweet Home Tour: Jackie

I'm so excited for today's Home Sweet Home tour. Welcome to the lovely world of Jackie from Berkeley, CA, whose home is an incredible blend of found vintage and newer, fantastically chosen pieces (some built by her husband). Jackie's a California girl who grew up in LA, and went to school at UC Berkeley. She worked in the arts for 10 years as a grantwriter, then got married, had a kid (the very cute Graham) and then another (the also very cute baby Simon). After some time in New York her family is back in Berkeley, where she runs a consulting business that does fundraising & marketing for non-profit organizations ranging from the arts, to social services, to education.

Jackie's entry - loving that chair

(lamp from West Elm; table found on street, wooden shoes from flea market)

Her charming kitchen...

Master bedroom - I really like Jackie's art. She's collected great pieces from flea markets, etsy, and talented artist friends...

This is her son's room. Her husband made the bed (um, how amazing is that?), and the bird decals are from elly nelly's etsy shop.

(these prints are by Ashley Goldberg)

Jackie's home has a room with map wallpaper that's been there since 1964...

(here's the sweetest picture in the world of her son)

And her basement craft room. (As one of the millions of non-basement California homeowners I am quite jealous of this)

Below - Jackie says the men in her home do all the cooking.

lovely flaws

The beauty of the homemade to me is that it is not perfect: the stitches might not always be roboticly stitched, the buttons, not completely evenly spaced, the buttonholes, perhaps a bit skiwampus. But it is stitched with love and those stitches tell a story. Time and thought and effort make the homemade important to us. The more time, thought and effort put into a project, the more we value it. The more story it tells to us. The less likely we are to easily discard the item. In the case of this shirt, I sewed it during the Christmas break. I made it up as I went along, completely pattern-free and unscripted. After sewing the first sleeves, I realized they were too short. So I added a band of dotted fabric then another band of red. And voila the perfect length. Somehow the time I spent thinking about this shirt and stitching it together endeared me to it. It's not likely to end up in the Salvation Army pile, and if a button falls off, it will definitely get sewn back on, not thrown out for lack of time. I think the more we sacrifice for something or someone, the more we love them. Enjoy all the lovely flaws of those dear to you...

looking for green

Sunday afternoon I dug around in my mother-in-law's treasured collection of patterns from the 70's and found this one, McCall's 5109. Quick to sew, so we had time to go look for green poking up in unexpected spots.

more tablecloth dresses!

Remember this curious girl? She was perhaps a bit too meddlesome--though to our advantage,--for as she sat at the small wooden table in the three bears cottage, eating the bear's breakfast potage, she stared transfixed at the beautiful woven linen tablecloth.

And voila the result of her inspiration: a little linen dress with alluring blue stripes. Made of nubby oatmealy european 100% linen. Bound with 100% cotton of the finest men's shirting material. All handmade in our little cottage industry in the USA. Each dress took three hours to make! All hems and bindings were sewn by hand with the greatest attention to detail. My seamstress has made a few more to offer for sale in our shop right here. (Plus free domestic shipping on this item to help assuage your recession angst.)

Hopefully you'll be able to get one for your girl. We think this dress will make her look beautiful. And maybe even help her to eat her oatmeal!

Wolfie says: "click here to order, before it's too late!"

Month of Love

Inspired by this, this, and this, we devised the 5 year old's valentines. She has a big kindergarten class so we have to start early! I xeroxed one of her pictures (thank heavens not the cannibalistic pirates, or an excerpt from her Bum-Bum book (a story for another day)) and exacto-ed out the dresses to see the pretty paper beneath. We'll glue on a lollipop and call it good.

Any great idea for Valentines for second grade boys, anyone?

Order your Wanderings Coat pattern just in time for Valentines, (on sale for only $10!) starting this Friday through Monday. If you're a slow, contemplative (or maybe procrastinating) sort of sewer, you can have all spring and summer to sew your girl's coat for the fall. Or if you're a speedster seamstress, you can have it ready for use for the end of winter and beginning of spring. Here is a link with some tips for sewing the coat with fur along the hood. My girl has worn her coat all winter long, and prefers it even above the pink and silver sparkly (and super ugly) ski coat her dad bought her last winter! What girl wouldn't want a wanderings landscape inside her coat? And a hood with soft buttery rabbit fur?