No photos of the tags on yet – I have to wait for them to dry. I put a couple layers of varnish on the back side where my colored pencil is (I colored them backwards).

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Shrinky Dink Dog Tags

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On Sunday, I finally made a trip to the fabric store to get what I needed to make some summer clothes. I wanted to make a simple summer dress (no pattern needed for that) and some skirts. It took a while to find just the right pattern for the skirt. I didn’t want anything with a bulky waist (no elastic or draw strings.) I went with a pattern by Burda in their “Young Fashion” collection (view B here). Though doing a faced yoke (the waistband part of the skirt) with a hidden zipper is harder than elastic, it will lay smooth under a shirt.

I bought two types of fabric with matching zippers for skirts to start with. Last night I made the first one… And, I love it! I used A Fuji Afternoon Umbrellas for the fabric. I had to give myself a quick refresher course on hidden zippers, but I didn’t have to seam rip once. That’s good for me!

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Burda 8176 Skirt

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My next skirt is going to be a grey one (I don’t see that fabric online.) I want to get it done, and possibly the dress, before we go on vacation. I could seriously live in skirts and dresses all summer if I was able to. Skirts don’t work out well at the doggy daycare, though.

As usual, I am redoing my braids for the trip. But, this time, I am 1.5 months later in doing so and the itch is driving me nuts! I didn’t want to redo them in March only to have to re-redo them in April, so I’ve suffered through the wait. Also, I’ve kept my hair strawberry blond with a bit of red mixed in since autumn, so I am switching back to my natural blond. I have 29/106 done so far and want to get to at least 70/106 by the end of the weekend.

Tonight we are heading to the mall (fun, fun) in hopes of finding me a sweater for the trip. All I want is a long-sleeve, button-down, brown (and maybe black) cardigan sweater for chilly nights on the beach. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is, because everything I find is either not brown (brown matches most of my clothes, black would match the rest), not long-sleeved (why bother? sweaters are supposed to warm you!) or they are zip-up hoodies (too casual – I need something that can be dressed up too). Hopefully I’ll find something before we leave for California, but I’m not holding my breath that I’ll find something tonight. If you have any suggestions as to wear I should look, leave a comment or send me a twitter tweet thingie to @punquin.

Speaking of cardigans, I decided to do an upcycle/remake project. I took an old K-mart crew neck sweater from my donation pile and refashioned it into a cardigan. I think I will move the button slightly, but I’m too lazy to do it right now. I wore it yesterday, and it turned out really cute. The sweater had been way too short on me (like 7″ above my belly button!) and the neckline unflattering. Now it is really fun to wear.

It’s going to be really hot this weekend – around 90° F on Sunday. I don’t mind warm/hot weather, but our heater/air conditioner wasn’t working and I was worried about the dogs. Luckily it turned out to just be a power switch that was shorting out. The price they charged to replace it was kinda rediculous, but at least we are ready for the heat wave.

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Cherry Blossom Piggy Bank

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Piggy Bank, originally uploaded by punquin.

We are painting ceramic piggy banks as our main craft project at our party next week. I am usually too busy hostessing to do a major craft project, so I do mine in advance.

I guess I had spring on the brain, because I really wanted to do mine in cherry blossoms. I didn’t look up what they really look like, so this is my mind’s version. I also wanted something non-cutesy that matches our decor.

I’ll take some real photos tomorrow in the light!

I finished decorating the photo booth for our money-theme party. Click the photo to go to flickr for more interior shots.

The weekend went fast! Saturday dan had a hair cut appointment at 10. I tagged along then we went to Home Depot to get 16 bags of mulch on sale. Dan spent the day working on our biggest planter bed out back, while i cleaned inside. Laura came over that night and we got some dinner (mm, bean tacos!). We did some work on our party decorations and played some Rock Band 2.

On Sunday, I went with Laura to a brunch/jewelry sale party thrown by a coworker in Arlington. I am on a budget and was not allowed to order anything. Laura was awesome and ordered me some pretty silver earrings with a $10 gift card she won. After that, we drove around trying to find gold wrapping paper to decorate the party photo booth with (check!) and stopped for burgers (make mine a veggie) and fries. Back at home, we worked on more party decorations, and I got the photobooth covered in the gold paper while Laura figured out some work scheduling stuff. When she figured out that she wouldn’t be working on her birthday, I gave her the little gift I had made her (see below). Danny had gone to a Caps game with our friend/neighbor Dan, and they came home so we could all play Rock Band 2 together for a bit.

Yesterday was uneventful – a work from home day. We had our tax appointment in the evening. Glad that is over with! Today I was back in my office. My day was unproductive because of computer issues. I use a hand-me-down computer there (as all my desktops have been) and it has strange partitions/hds. OS X is on a 17 gig drive, another 17 gig drive is split in 2 equal parts, and a 40 gig was split unevenly. It was all very strange and with ever OS upgrade the main hd filled up more and more. Now I get “startup disk is full” errors every time I use big programs like Photoshop. It was making work impossible today. So I emptied the 40 gig drive’s partitions and repartitioned them to be 1 again. Then I used a utility to make an exact copy of my OS hd to it. It took a long time, and I was unable to work during it because my startup disk kept getting full still. I was scheduled to help up front in the doggy daycare 5 – 7 pm anyway. It was all done the copying when I got back to my desk. I rebooted to my new startup disk and quickly tested Mail before heading home. It seems like everythign is working perfectly.

Okay, this has gotten long! Big shout-out to the birthday girl, Laura! Look out for a post soon about all the fun decorations we’ve been working on for her party on the 18th. I’ll leave you with some pictures of the present I made for Laura and the practice piece I made for myself.

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Stephanie's Bag

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My finished bag!

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Beginning of Maggie

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I have lots of shading laid down to go under her creamy white fur. The fur will be built up in many steps.

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I had a lot of leftover fleece from sewing valentine hearts, so I figured out how to make braided doggy tug toys. It is super easy – no sewing involved. You basically just cut and braid. Here is a quick how-to. There are more photos from in between the step in my Flickr feed.

You’ll need some fleece. You can use up to 3 colors for each tug toy. Mine was leftover from another project.

Fold the fleece in half, selvage to selvage so you are cutting strips along the direction the fabric stretches (the selvage will be on the end of your strips, not on the length).

Cut a strip 3″ – 4″ wide. I went with 3.5″.

Repeat until you have three strips total.

Lay the strips lengthwise side-by-side. Fold them in to loose tubes at the middle so that the rough edges aren’t as noticeable when you start to braid.

Braid the middle 10″ or so of the strips. When you fold this in half, it will become the loop handle.

Fold the strips in half and line up the matching colors. If you are using all one color, just split the strips from each side into 3 groups of 2.

Start braiding tightly till the end. You can make it look neater by wrapping the pairs of strips around each other into a tube so you don’t see as many rough edges.

Tie the whole tug toy in a knot above the loose ends. I like to make the knot loosely but starting fairly high, then pull it down towards the end until it is nice and tight.

Trim the ends to make them even, and you are done!

Dawn & Tony’s Nursery, originally uploaded by punquin.

We spent our day with the beautiful Dawn, helping her paint a Dr. Seuss mural in her nursery-to-be. It came out super cute!

She picked a great design. Danny helped pick the colors – he suggested the green letters (they match the green trim in the room, and the walls are a greenish-white). I taped up a ton of newsprint paper and sketched it all out before we went to the art store for paints and graphite paper. Once it was transferred, Dawn and I painted it all in, and I did the outline work.

When we were all finished, we went out for dinner in Old Town Alexandria at Austin Grill. We got ice cream cones for dessert (sorbet for me) and wandered a bit. We had to get home though… The puppies had been home alone too long and had to pee!