Spring? Winter? & Saturday in town..

Spring is coming! Is what I thought when I saw these buds on the Magnolia bush in our backyard.. Well, apparently I was wrong as can be, since less than a week later, this is what I see late one evening...

Our house with snow? M.u.s.t. capture on photo to show the kids...

It was an excellent opportunity for me to test out my camera's every function! :)

Figure this photo is cool:

I know the snow looks like rain but it was coming down fast enough where the shutter speed & the poor light didn't want to cooperate with each outher enough to actually capture flakes.

The snow didn't last long at all. By the next morning, it was all gone & rain had taken over, of course. Good thing I got pictures.

Last Saturday the kids were excellent & let us sleep in. Their habits have been late the last few weeks, so they were catching up on the Zs too, I guess. Anyway, when we finally got up I had to go to every room & open the blinds. (I HAVE to do this immediately first thing when I get up. I do not understand how people can live without daylight)

As I opened the blinds in the bonus room, I see huge black smoke - and actually flames - from as few blocks away!! YAAAYYY!! The school burning!! No, I'm not some radical secret pyromaniac. The old school down the street was burned down by the fire department, and I had read about this in the paper but of course forgot what day it was scheduled to happen.

We rushed to get everyone dressed, packed three youngest in the wonderful stroller, then walked down to see the school burn. The main building had already burnt down for the most part, but we still got some excitement.



We saw one building burn & fall apart. Thankfully, the smoke wasn't our direction, but we could feel the heat way back where we were standing.

The kids loved it. I had told them all about this when I read about it in the paper, so they knew it wasn't scary or dangerous.

Then the whole family walked down to Main street, and we had coffee & super good ham & cheese croissants at Battle Grounds - a coffee house:

(img source:http://hasson.com/communities/community/battleground)

When we left from there, it had started raining pretty bad. Thankfully, I had the huge rain cover in the stroller basket, so the kids stayed all dry the whole way home.
Then when we came home we deep cleaned the whole house.

And then our good friends invited us for supper & we stayed there all evening.

= perfect Saturday spent with the family I love the most!!

Top ten at Spoonflower!

http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/928483

I got in the top ten! Talking Spoonflower again.. The contest theme was "Cityscapes", and the entries were fantastic. This theme was of course right up my alley - featuring lots of houses! I love architecture (that's what i went to college for, for you who don't know me so well), and I love designs with houses.
I had the hardest time deciding what city to feature in my design, but knew I HAD to enter with something.. I debated Portland, Vancouver, Minneapolis and even any well-known big city. In the end, I decided I love Stockholm the best. Its "Old Town" would work for great designs, with awesome colors. The design started out as sketches..

The sketches were scanned, straightened a bit, imported to Inkscape & traced to become vector paths. In Inkscape, there is a "Trace bitmap" command that I use for almost every design. Unless I start designing in the program itself. When you trace a bitmap, you generate a vector path from your drawings. This makes the design endlessly easier to change -  in size, color, detail etc. I love this in Inkscape.

After adding some color in Inkscape (used the "fill" command for this one. Wanted it simple), making a good repeat, and exporting it to a good file format, I uploaded it to Spoonflower. This is the end result of my design - how it shows in SF!

I am pumped so many of you voted for my design, delighted to get in the top ten, happy to see the colors printed awesome, and relieved all the work wasn't for nothing! (I started this design 3 hours before the deadline last Tuesday! Talk about stress work..)

The Old Town in Stockholm is seriously worth visiting - for all you deprived fellows who have yet to experience this cozy cobblestoned area of Sweden's capital. I lived close to Stockholm for a few years of my life, and my favorite thing would be to go there (by commuter train, of course. Never needed a license there!), visit a nice coffee place to get my latte & bagel, then head over to the book store to buy a few post cards & nice pens. Then I'd walk along the cobblestone streets to the waterfront, sit down & enjoy my lunch & write cards to friends. I LOVED this city. I walked so many miles around the town. If it wasn't just to shop or for personal enjoyment, it would be to guide American friends around town. They would always wonder how there could be 5 (or was it even 6?) H&Ms within a mile of each other. And they would wonder why people didn't ever say "sorry" or "excuse me". And why do Swedes do anything they can to avoid eye contact?
Haha... the memories..

This post went from Spoonflower to houses to design process to Swedish customs! I have the gift of gab...

Here is the awesome scene that inspired my design.
(Image from http://www.mota.ru/en/wallpapers/view/id/15589)

This week's contest (voting starting today) is themed "Outdated Technology". I have an entry with old payphones (http://www.spoonflower.com/designs/940774).

Click here to go to Spoonflower's contest page.

GOOD LUCK everyone who enters the awesome Spoonflower contests!!

Sewing room! Yay!!

I finally got my sewing room set up!

I share my wealth space with my baby - her crib is in a corner but it didn't fit the picture..

All random furniture we had lying around...

I love this space! There you see my awesome new sewing machine & serger - all ready to go!

In the closet I put a huge tall metal wire shelf from Target to store books & fabric & what nots.. Packed in there with luggage etc too - so I kept the door shut for a nice picture.

CREATE!! SEW!! This room is calling to me but I haven't had much time in it yet. Soooooon...

Then another fun new thing.

I got another collection sampler from Spoonflower. Always love

getting their envelopes - filled with my designs PRINTED on actual fabric!!

I love how the colors are turning out great on all new designs now. I use Spoonflowers color chart a lot, but maybe I'm getting more used to what colors work in Inkscape. This sampler had some designs from the collection I posted about last, some random older contest entries, and some designs I wanted proofed so I could put them for sale.

Boy fabric with colors. Love how they turned out.

My kids said NOPE to all the girly ones, but this one above with the turquoise background & the kites was everyone's favorite.

Personally, I like this pile of swatches too. The colors are yummy and I must be drawn to simple florals lately. Check out more at http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/mrshervi

Life is busy & fun almost always, isn't it?

Especially if you have intresting four-year olds....



Spoonflower contest

Spoonflower's contest this week is "Coordinates" - and it's quite the contest! Not one but FOUR designs per every entry, and what entries! Check out the contest designs and vote here at Spoonflower's blog.

I worked and reworked my designs so many times but still feel like I wasn't sure at all with the end result. Here is my entry:

Romantic Coordinates by Mrs Hervi

(Click HERE to get to the actual design on my Spoonflower site)

Besides doing this design, I've been busy taking of house & kids. Weird how that goes - some days or weeks, I can get so many side projects done. Sewing, crafts with kids, ebaying, designing etc. Other days I scramble trying to stay on top of just laundry or keeping the kitchen floor walkable.

Today seems like a day where I have to work fast to even drink my coffee before it gets cold.

How's your day coming along??

Winner announced!

The giveaway generated quite a few comments on here - how fun! I used a site called random.org to get a "random number generator" to pick a winner. Took me a while to decide how to do it - since Blogger said there was 50 comments, but it counted the deleted ones and that messed it up. In the end, I only counted the actual posts, omitting the last one since it was not from a US resident.. (sorry, Sofia!)

Here is the result:

#41 is Bloggy Mama from "Making over me"  who said...

"Wow! As a sewing novice, any 'One Yard Wonder' project sounds like something I could attempt! I would LOVE to win this book!
hldressel (at) gmail (dot) com"

Congrats, Bloggy Mama! I will send you an email to get your address for Storey Publishing to send you this fun book!!



2012 is here!! HAPPY NEW YEAR to all dear Blog followers!!

Me & kids made some holiday crafts for the neighbors for New Year.

Supplies: Cardboard, tissue paper, tape, string, CANDY...

 Make rolls out of cardboard (or use empty toilet paper rolls). Fill with candy. Layer 4 pieces of tissue paper. Fold long edges, cut into strips like photos show. Place roll on tissue & roll it up. Tie string on sides to finish.

The original ones like these would make a loud BANG when you pulled them apart. Ours weren't quite so sophisticated. Just loaded with candy - which really is just as exciting!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, neighbors!!

Super excited to give their "smallkarameller" (swedish has to do here since I don't know the English word for these) to the neighbors!

Then I finally finally set up my craft room!! (Pics to come)

I had a lovely evening using the sewing machine & serger, and I am already very impressed with them! Will have to do reviews on the machines soon.

My first project with new serger:

 Raglan shirt for 4-yo. It's longer in the back. She usually wears tunics or dresses with her pants so this shirt might move along to etsy store. I love the fabrics though. Stretch knits = love.

And somebody loves to pose.

Have a grand day, and Congrats again to Bloggy Mama for winning the book!!

Yay for blogs and such.