My favorite stress reliever (apart from sleep and a good movie) is going to antique stores. I love browsing old things and digging through junk and there’s something very relaxing about it. I love items that hold a memory like finding things that my grandmother used to have or something I had as a child. The above is a huge old suitcase I found a few months back for only $18 and inside was an old pin of pilot wings. I wonder were they were going when they got those wings and who exactly was F.C.T?

A leprechaun came to the house today and did some silly things! We found a note this morning:

taken with my iphone so it’s a little blurry

“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!
Can you find all 10 things changed by me?
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
-Mr. Leprechaun

P.S. Don’t forget to eat your Lucky Charms”

There were 10 things he changed in the the house so we ran around trying to find them all. Only one was the most obvious:

taken with my iphone so it’s a little blurry

Here is all the changed links in order of when they were found:
1. Shamrock drawn on chalkboard
2. Suitcase in bathtub
3. Lampshade upside down
4. Can of ravioli on the tv cabinet
5. Kit hanging upside down by her shoes on the window curtain
6. Flamica shoes on her huge baby doll
7. Her Liz Lomax cow parade bank upside down
8. Book in the bathroom upside down
9. Tennis shows on the freezer
10. Her picture turn upside down in a frame

Last Friday he came to the Woog’s school and did silly things in the classroom and when she got home, he had totally messed up her room AND “tinkled” (out chosen potty word) in all our toilets without flushing. They all had green tinkle in them!

Silly leprechaun!

The Woog had her first Daddy/Daughter Banquet tonight and it was a 50′s theme. We treated her to a professional “up-do” and manicure. She was beyond excited when they left.

I’ll be changing over my blog to WordPress in the next few weeks since Blogger is no longer supporting FTP uploads. I’ve been testing getting everything moved over without hiccups, but they might just happen when I move it all over so if the site’s offline any, you’ll know what’s happening.

As I said yesterday, here is a detailed look at the Valentine’s placemats avaiable through Oopsy Daisy. I love how they turned out – a combination of found objects and lettering – my two favorite things!

These designs are available to license as a whole or each “section” as individual pieces – wouldn’t they make a cute pack of Valentines?

I signed up to organize a Miss Spider tea party for the Woog’s class Friday. We’ll have Miss Spider there to read her book, plus games & yummy tea party/spider themed food. I’ve hit about every store I know to find spider things in the Halloween sections and it’s been a challenge to find things with “just” spiders

If you’re not familiar with the Miss Spider character, she is from The Miss Spider/Sunny Patch books by author/illustrator David Kirk. His work is fantastic and he also has some cute outdoor things at target during the summer and then cute cups and plates.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find much of a portfolio online for him but did find this site. He works in oils and I love his color palette. And a cute tidbit, to go along with his nature themed work, all 3 of his daughter’s are named after flowers.

His books have also been turned into a TV series which is very popular at our house. You can see it on Noggin:

Bear with me, but this is worth a read. My mom emailed this to me today and I kind of got all choked up!

The Price of Children:

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140.00 for a middle income family. Talk about price shock! That doesn’t even touch college tuition.

But $160,140.00 isn’t so bad if you break it down. It translates into:
- $8,896.66 a year
- $741.38 a month
- $171.08 a week
- A mere $24.24 a day!
- Just over a dollar an hour.

What do you get for your $160,140.00?
- Naming rights. First, middle, and last!
- Glimpses of God every day.
- Giggles under the covers every night.
- More love than your heart can hold.
- Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
- Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
- A hand to hold usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
- A partner for blowing bubbles and flying kites.
- Someone to laugh yourself silly with

You get to:
- finger-paint
- carve pumpkins,
- play hide-and-see
- catch lightning bugs
- never stop believing in Santa Claus.

Have an excuse to:
- keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh,
- watch Saturday morning cartoons,
- go to Disney movies
- wish on stars.

You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother’s Day, and cards with backward letters for Father’s Day.

For a mere $24.24 a day, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for:
- retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof
- taking the training wheels off a bike
- removing a splinter
- filling a wading pool
- coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and
- coaching a baseball team that never wins, but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.

You get a front row seat in history to witness the:
- First step
- First word
- First bra,
- First date
- First time behind the wheel

You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you’re lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match. In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. That is quite a deal for the price!!!!!!!

Love & enjoy your children & grandchildren & great-grandchildren… It’s the best investment you’ll ever make!

I’ve had an iPhone for the last couple of years and this summer upgraded to the 3GS. Yes it is quicker and you can do more with it and these are reasons I why I think every illustrator/designer needs an iPhone:

Email: The number one reason I got it and the feature I use most. Since I want to keep my flexible career, being reachable is key.

PDFs: This was the reason I switch from using a palm phone to and iPhone. iPhones can read PDF files and since a lot of my jobs specs come in as PDFs I really needed this feature. When I had my Palm phone, I would have to wait until I got back in the studio to respond to an email about a job, or while on vacation, I would have to call someone to log into my webmail and tell me what the PDF said. When you work in children’s publishing, deadlines are tight so people usually want a answer that day.

Social Media: I stay connected through twitter and facebook through my phone while I’m out of the studio.

Mobile Portfolio: I have a collection of work pieces within my “photos” area that can be easily scrolled though if I need to show someone my work.

Apps: There is seriously a app for anything. The app store is chocked full of great apps and many of them are free.

The only downside I’ve found is that they are not able to view websites in flash, but I can live without that.

And personal reasons you should have an iPhone – especially if you have kids:

Video & Audio: You can record on the fly and have a record of cute voices forever:

Movies: It also comes in handy for watching movies during those long restaurant & doctor waits (I currently have Nemo, Cinderella, Dora, and various tv shows on it for just those occasions)!

Freshly picked bright and early this morning. I think tomatoes are the only things that’s really going to grow well for us this year. We’ll do more expeiments next year.

p.s. i’ve always wanted to do one of those little vegetable faced pictures. Check out Geninne’s radishes.

Personalized Father’s Day gifts from the Woog: Etched “frosty” mugs. She wrote their names and I copied them onto the glass with etching cream.