Though I am not Irish, my husband is of that heritage (one of only a few American born folks in his family) and since I grew up just outside of NYC I’ve attended my fair share of St. Patrick’s Day parades, bar crawls and parties. It’s a big deal where I’m from and although Seattle doesn’t embrace it quite as enthusiatically, if you fall in with the right group of people, you can definitely find some sort of celebrating.

We had our annual St. Pat’s party this past weekend and it was a good time, slightly more low key than previous years but still loads of fun. So I already had my full dose of Guinness and corned beef but if you haven’t already had yours, drink up and eat up! Don’t even think about not wearing green today.

Here’s a black and tan (harp and guinness) for the road:

black and tan

for free!!

Get it here.

Of course I’m not really a milliner (though I’d love to learn the craft!). My hats are just crude  knit or home sewn things for my son and other little ones that I know. But I liked the word so there it is.

I have always wanted an Amelia Earhart style aviator cap.

I know I’m not the only little girl that was enamored with her. I remember reading about her in grade school and fantasizing I was the lone aviatrix crossing the Atlantic in my very own propeller plane.

Well obviously I’m not an aviatrix but I still obsess about the cap that she wore. It’s not terribly practical from a casual wear perspective but it was my inspiration when I fashioned this one for Fenix:

As you can see this not a true aviator cap. The front of the cap doesn’t come down over the forehead in the traditional fashion (remember what I said about being practical). My version isn’t as close fitted nor  is it made from leather – though I have been thinking about making one from an old leather skirt that I have hanging around. Anyway I think you can clearly see the inspiration here and it looks pretty cute – which is all that really matters in the end, right?

Here’s another one that I made for my niece Sienna:

I have several more in the cue for the other kids in my life.  What projects are you working on these days?

here’s the video that J was talking about

greetings!

dang it’s been a long time since I blogged. Reese mentioned that the holidays kicked our tails and yes, yes they did. perhaps I’ll write about it someday. I made sure to spend a few minutes at least capturing the outline of a future story about thanksgiving ’08 through mid-january ’09 and it took five or six pages (handwritten) to cover the highlights. i know writers say the most daunting thing is a blank page or whatever, but if you’ve got an outline then at least you’ve got a roadmap, you know?

anyway, I wanted to make a blog post to help myself get back in the groove. oh, and also, reese and I each have decent little cameras* that are small enough to carry around with us and we’ve been taking pictures and videos quite a bit recently… and I wanted to share a recent super cute video of mister fenix.

as you may know we’ve been teaching fee some sign language. it’s pretty cool. his brain can comprehend way more than he can communicate right now, but at least with some basic sign language he can communicate something.

with signing there’s the sign that we use as adults that are teaching fee, and there’s his response, which isn’t an exact replica in most instances simply because he doesn’t have the dexterity in his fingers to replicate what we’re doing.

case in point, everybody knows the “i love you” sign, right? fingers and thumb extended except middle and ring which are tucked in… well, fenix understands what “i love you” means and responds to the sign with his attempt, but sometimes he gets frustrated at his lack of ability to make his fingers do whatever he wants them to.

anyway, we were hanging out in the kitchen the other night and fenix is there pointing at the light (he loves lights) and it was just the cutest thing. i grabbed my camera to take a quick video and we captured some cute babbling, discussions of the light and whatnot, and then said “I love you” to Fenix with sign and enjoyed his response immensely. so this is the point where i would have posted the video but reese said she was doing it so i’ll let her handle that.

anyway, that’s it for me for now. just trying to get back into the groove. hope all is well with y’all. be good and whatnot.

* as a photographer i get asked all the time ” hey, what kind of camera do you have?” and honestly, it doesn’t matter. ok, it matters, but barely. to use a car analogy, you don’t need a lexus to drive to safeway, a honda will get you there just fine. maybe you don’t want to be driving an ’81 escort, but you don’t need an ’09 lexus.

so before you ask, here’s what type of cameras we have:

mine is manufactured by a camera manufacturer (for example: canon, pentax, minolta, etc), NOT an electronics manufacturer (for example sony, phillips, etc).  that’s the camera that i walk around with.

the camera that reese walks around with is manufactured by a camera manufacturer (for example: canon, pentax, minolta, etc), NOT an electronics manufacturer (for example sony, phillips, etc).

image taken at burien art space

so I moved the blog over to wordpress from blogger a week or two ago.  i like the wordpress interface better but i am none too excited about tweaking the css to make this thing look the way i want it to. for now i’ll be using this theme out of the box. hopefully when i get a little more time i can jazz things up to make it look a little fresher.

so i’m back to posting again after a bit of a hiatus. the holidays sort of kicked my butt and then there is the matter concerning my job which has been insanely busy.

anyway i hope your new year has been great so far!

Truth be told, I lack the fundage to delve into fashion to the degree that I’d like but I do love to shop and definitely have a look that is my own. You know you have a look when friends and family are always pointing out things and saying “that’s totally a shirt/skirt/dress”. When that article of clothing is something that you like too, it’s pretty flattering to hear.

So I’ve been experimenting with Polyvore. Head on over if you want to know more about it. The very fashionable author of (Into) the Fray has been posting about it for a little while and she is definitely exemplary in her style. I hope I look half as cute in my clothes as she does in hers.

Anyway I made my first set and I think it really is representative of the sort of things that I’d wear on any given day. Not very exciting but definitely an accurate reflection of me (if you know me). I’m going to experiment more – it’s fun and I can put together things that I’d wear in my fantasy world where I’d never be judged for taking risks with my style.

Here’s the set if you are too lazy to click thru:

thoughtful work wear by reesemcg

I whipped up some Christmas stockings last weekend in an effort to try and make it look festive in our house. We don’t have a tree because I’m paranoid about Fenix trying to climb it and potentially pulling it down on himself — not worth the anxiety!

So we hung garland over the the doorway, wreaths on our front door and in another spot inside, and the stockings are hanging above the mantle.

The stockings were really easy to make. I bought a yard of blue and gray felt and a quarter of burgundy felt along with a spool of burgundy satin ribbon. I drew the pattern freehand on a big sheet of paper and then used my Olfa rotary cutter with a scalloped blade to cut out the pieces of fabric.

I cut the letters freehand and then stitched those onto the blue front panel first. Then I stitched the front and back panels together with a regular old top stitch – sandwiching a strip of ribbon folded in half between the two to make a little loop for hanging.

I finished it off by making a pompom from some variegated scrap yarn that happened to match perfectly!

Here they are, waiting to be filled:

One of our favorite blogs, Apartment Therapy’s Ohdeedoh, posted a birthday shout out for Fenix today.

Check it out here!

I gave J one of his bday gifts a little early (his actual bday is 12/15). we had decided to hijack the tail end of Fenix’s party to celebrate J’s birthday as well. Our friends were giving him gifts so I decided to give him his big gift (a Wii). I guess he got caught up in all of the gift giving so he gave me one of my Christmas gifts early.

These wooden hoops from Leviticus Jewelry:

I love them! They feel so light on your ears – I kept touching my earlobes all through the next day to be sure that they hadn’t fallen out.

Now that I have these it’s kinda piqued my interest in other wooden jewelry items. Check out some of these:

from etsy seller carpedraco

from etsy seller ZsBcreations

from etsy seller effiehandmade