Little Orange Monster

Here are some shots of the first of the little monsters I've started sewing. He is made out of the same wool sweater as the hat I made a few posts ago (I love that color orange). He is now living with Sebastien's sister's very cute son, outside Seattle. They live in the country, so hopefully he won't create much trouble.

He is naughty, though. Really naughty. Look at the havoc he created around my office!


(As I showed him around, l.o.m. hid in the plant on my co-worker's desk.)


(He answered my phone for a bit, but I found out later he was rude to a client....)

(Then I lost him for a bit, and when I found him again, he was having a little "office fun.")



(These photos are edited - there are MANY I couldn't show here.)



(When he found out we were in the Olympic host city, l.o.m. just HAD to get his picture taken with the mascots.)


My other three sweet nephews will get the next little monsters. They are all totally different, and totally fun to make. Why don't I have more time to sew and do projects, again? Maybe I should ask l.o.m. to come back and help me do paperwork, so I can have more time at home!

Where'd the Jam Go?

My mom gave us this classic red and white checkered tablecloth for Christmas. Sebastien adores it. Thanks, mom!

Hilarious Website: young me now me

This had me completely in fits at my office. I think I even snorted once. It is that good. Enjoy! (And if you take some of your own photos like this, I want to see them!)

Leave me a comment to let me know which ones are your favorites! I can go back and snort again!

The Beginnings of Some Fun Sewing Projects

Over Christmas, I got really motivated. Remember that?! Remember (umm, say two posts ago) when I said that I was going to be more on top of writing? Well, I haven't been very good at writing posts, but I have been doing lots and lots of fun stuff. --And writing on my blog hasn't been one of them.

January was a very full month, and so far, February is trying to outdo it! I am loving it though! I just want more time to do all the things I have in my head!


January was full of productive weekends, sewing fun projects and making our own (gulp) sausages!

While we were in Eugene over Christmas, I went shopping with MH and V (Sebastien's mother and sister) to get some cashmere sweaters to felt at Value Village. They are such good shoppers, and I definitely walked away with more sweaters than I anticipated buying, but I couldn't figure out any to put back on the rack!
The colors (or patterns) I bought were: autumny orange, hottt pink, raven black, peppermint candy (pink and white stripes with a green collar and cuffs), sunbleached sunflowers (cream with beige flowers), and my favorite - a rich creamy grass. I am so excited about all of them.


SO, my first project was to figure out how to make hats and mittens for the cold weather we were having. It was fun to figure out the patterns!

I (HEART) Graphic Design

I have been doing a fun design project lately for a friend of mine. She makes jewelry in her spare time and sells it on Etsy. She would like to get a little more serious about making and selling it, so she asked me to make business cards for her. I am so delighted she asked me, because it was so fun and such an honor that she thought of me! I am quite happy with how they turned out. Here is the finished product:



This was one of many iterations that we discussed. Here are some of the others. I definitely had my favorites, although Sandra and I had a very similar vision of what the end-result could be.




I basically figured out what she wanted in terms of colors and basic design elements and we went from there.



If you check out her Etsy page, you will see the banner I designed for her too! It is so much fun!

Which is your favorite card design?

Little Henry

Hi all, I know some of you have asked about my nephew, Henry, and how he is doing. Thank you for all your kind wishes. It has been really difficult to be so far away from them since all this excitement started. It was pretty tense for a while there, but things are looking up. I thought it might be better to link you up with my brother and sister-in-law's blog, to get a first-hand perspective on how things are going for them.

I am so excited to have a sweet new nephew! It will be great to finally meet him (hopefully in the next few months?)!

New and Improving

I haven't kept up my personal blog at all for almost exactly a year. Sebastien and I were so busy with our wedding, and then I was preoccupied studying with my LEED exam (and then many other excuses!) that I totally let it go.

I was, however, blogging about our wedding planning process in much of the interim. I have been thinking it would be good to get started on blogging again, without neglecting this whole last year. I found out that you can export blogs from one account into another, so you may notice there is a lot of newly added stuff on my blog, regarding the build-up to our wedding. If you want to see our wedding blog in its original context (different fonts and backgrounds, etc.), you can find it here: www.telfordrake.blogspot.com.

We are (almost) finished with our wedding Thank You cards, and we have both really gotten a great start on 2010, in terms of personal goals! I hope I can share those with you all a little better, through my new and improved blog! Please comment on anything you find interesting - I love to hear from you!

Finally Photos for Mr. & Mrs. Telford-Rake!

I am SO excited!

I only say "finally" because I have been so anxious to see the photos from our wedding. It is just over a month since we got married (four days over a month, in fact), and I have barely seen any pictures.

The photographers' set is ready and online! You can find them here. The password is " hopesebas .

I cannot tell you how happy we were with our photographers. They were thoughtful and kind, knowledgeable, and they are really wonderful artists, to boot! If you are looking for a great photographer in Portland, I would definitely recommend Drew and Jai, of His and Her Photography.

I hope I get to work with them again!

I apologize about the quality of pictures on this post. We do not have any high-resolution images yet, so these are the large thumbnails, from the site. They look great at this size, but check out the site for some nice lush photos!

Crane Chandelier Project, take 2

We had SUCH an amazing time with everyone last week!! What a wedding.... It was so great to have so many people we love there with us!

We just returned today from our honeymoon (it was a wonderful week), and there are so many things I would like to write about.

For now though (I am a TIRED girl), I just wanted to send a link to the Wedding Co.'s blog - we were featured, with pictures and everything! How flattering! And how excited we are to be able to donate many of our 1001 paper cranes from the wedding to a great cause. The Wedding Co. is sponsoring the Crane Chandelier Project, and donating $0.50 for every crane received. This money will go to cancer research. Please check out their website at www.theweddingco.com. We are going to ship our paper creations off as soon as we are able!

Sarah Chapin took this lovely photo of the cranes at our wedding. I hope she doesn't mind I used this photo! There are others that show more action, but this one is nice of just cranes. I am not sure if you can tell from this photo just how many 1001 turned out to be!! These strings were LONG!!

Crane Chandelier Project

What is the MOST exciting thing about this is that we made these cranes for ourselves, but they are going to be charitably re-purposed after our wedding. We got an email from a good friend (who is coincidentally getting married two days after we do). She knew that we were in the midst of crane-making, and stumbled upon a blog that mentioned the "Crane Chandelier Project," which is the work of a Toronto artist. The project is to collect 10,000 total cranes, from brides and grooms. The bride and groom sign the crane with their names and the date they are getting (or did get) married. For every crane that is given for the project, 50¢ is going to be donated toward cancer research. Sebastien wrote to the organization hosting the event (The Wedding Co.), and said, "Hey - I know that you are trying to get cranes, and that you usually get them one at a time - would you be willing to still donate 50¢ per crane, if we donate 800 of them?" (or some thing like that).
They said YES!, and so we are psyched! That is $400 (at least!) that we will be able to donate. I am so happy we can do this.

That's a Lot of Birds!!

I told you a couple of weeks ago that we had finished with our cranes. Last Wednesday (Canada Day), we had off from work, and we mainly stayed around the house getting things done. We wanted to begin to string the cranes, for decoration, and needed to make some sense of them, so I decided to dump all the colored cranes on our flat file, in the middle of the living room (most of them are there still....) Keep in mind that the flat file is approximately 3'x5' large.
Anyway, I emptied the multi-colored cranes from a box onto the table, and was in awe that they only make up a third of the number of paper cranes we made (it was interesting that without any planning, we had roughly equal numbers of multi-colored, large silver, and small silver cranes). I decided to pull the red ones aside, to use with some of the silver that we want to string. When I did that I thought, "I wonder how many orange cranes we have?," and so on with green and light blue, etc....

Soon enough, the table was covered in little piles of color, and it didn't take any time at all to give them a ROYGBIV-type organization. Once we said "How cool!" enough times, I realized that the center of the table was a perfect place for all the silver cranes as well (the top picture is only half of the silver ones!). You can see the results. We were pretty excited that the pictures turned out so well too.

Wonderful Party - and Great Inspiration!

I have been following this blog a bit lately - A Cup of Jo. The blogger also writes columns for MarieClaire and the New York Magazine and Glamour (to name a few), but I really like her personal site a lot. She has lot of good ideas about things to make and do, and she has a really good eye for design. There are two parties I found on her blog, and one separate entry (I think they are old posts) that I thought could be helpful if you are wondering what the Jazz Age style was like, and how it could be carried out.

These should give you an idea:

1930's (new) Depression Party

Great Gadsby Goodbye Party

and lastly (scroll down for this - these dresses are worth it), 1930's Europe

One Month and Counting!

We are quickly approaching July!! Our to-do list is getting longer and longer, even as we cross more and more things off.
Sebastien and I have been busy the last few nights, learning how to make neckties. We are sewing his silk tie, as wall at the one for his Best Man. They are looking good so far! This photo shows our living room, in the midst of project-time, and my "sewing table" (a.k.a. a plywood board balanced on a sawhorse). As you can imagine, our 760sf apartment gets pretty full, fairly quickly. You can see one of the silk ties on the table (we haven't started the other one yet), as well as our practice tie, made of cheap muslin. This photo is me, with the practice tie that we made this past week. It turned out surprisingly well, so I am excited to see how nice the silk looks!!

We've Finished....

Making cranes! We re-counted them tonight, and we have one thousand and one (1001) paper cranes!



2/3 of them are silver, and the rest are colored or patterned. They are all unique. I am excited that we finished with so much time to spare! Now all we have to do is sew them all together! We'll see how that goes....

Rooms at Edgefield

I just wanted to let everyone know that we are almost reaching the end of our "blocked rooms" date! On June 23rd I believe (please don't quote me) we will no longer have a hold on these rooms. If you haven't booked, please do soon. We really want to see you there, and if you stay on premises, you don't have to go home after the party! --And everyone likes that!

Some more Illustrations!

I thought you all might find some of these interesting too…. I just love the illustrations. Anyway…. That is all, until I find more!!

More Fun Patterns!

What You'll Get in the Mail

We are very excited this week. We got so many things done over this past weekend, and we are headed to Portland to tie up a few loose ends that need tying. Things are really coming together! It is so much fun (and so much work!) to plan such a big party for so many people! I am so excited to see everyone, and really happy that so many people are headed out to share such a special time with us!

When we get back, we are start our invitations. We ordered a stamp from a rubber-stamp producer, and I really like the effect of it. We are designing all the stationary to be really simple and clean. We also wanted the stamps to have a bit of the Jazz Age in them, so hopefully the fonts and the motifs pull it all together! So far so good!

I'll take some pictures of the assembly line, when it happens, and you can see all of us hard at work!

Wowza

How lavish are these designs?! I love them!

Some Jazzy Ideas

I think I am going to post some of the great Jazz Age stuff I am finding to my blog, because I love it so much! I hope these can give you some good ideas!
The clothes were so sophisticated and simple, and the ladies looked so elegant, so self-assured.

I love the hats and the dresses....

I love that everyone looked as though they were going places!