made you a gift...

this year, for christmas, i decided to make a few special people in my life a homemade gift. it's just more personal when it is something that your own hands have made. i found some recipes for a bath soak, body scrub, and facial mask and thought these would be great for mamas and grandmas, and my hard-working sister. turns out they loved them, and even though christmas is over i thought i would share in case you need a gift idea for another special occasion for someone you know that needs to relax (or maybe for yourself!). these are great because it doesn't matter what time of year it is!

what i made:

lavender bath soak
3 C epsom salt
2 tbsp dried lavender flowers (i used the lavender from my garden and let it dry for a few days which you could do or i am sure you can buy some already dry)
20-30 drops vanilla essential oil (i bought mine from sprouts)
5-10 drops lavender essential oil

mix everything and shake shake shake

add a few spoonfuls to your bath and RELAX!


warm vanilla, brown sugar, and coconut oil body scrub
1 1/4 C organic brown sugar
6-8 tbsp organic unrefined coconut oil
15-20 drops vanilla essential oil

if coconut oil is solid warm just enough to melt. combine oil and sugar, eliminating any lumps. add vanilla drop by drop blending after each.

apply to pre-moistened skin, massaging in circular motions

miracle mask
2tbsp raw organic honey
2tsp cinnamon
2tsp nutmeg

mix to a thick paste

apply to face and let sit for 30 minutes. wash off with warm water, scrubbing softly using a circular motion for exfoliation.

i bought some mason jars and baskets from michaels and found some free printable labels here to write what each one was. i then tied some wool yarn around them with a tag in the back that had instructions on how to use them.

i also found some adorable free printable 'handmade' gift tags which you can get here! now i just need to make these babies for myself!

a (slightly) repurposed gift

it was my closest girl friend's birthday recently and for the past few months she has been constantly mentioning how much she wanted to get an old rotary phone for her girls to play with as a toy. so for one of her presents, i decided to set out and find one. fortunately for me, 7th ave is full of antique shops and not far away at all. so i did a little shopping and found this phone below:

 after doing a little cleaning and disinfecting, i googled how to remove the plastic finger-wheel so i could get rid of the random phone number and replace it with this super fun pinwheel fabric i had in my stash.

next, i thought to tie in the pinwheel on the finger-wheel, i would cover the cord in the fabric as well (there were a few slightly exposed wires and i didnt want the girls playing with those either). so i just sewed a 'tube,' turned it right-side out and fed the cord through it. to attach it to the phone, i used some tacky glue on both ends of the fabric.

and here's the finished product! (now i just need to make one for clémence)

a (mostly) handmade wedding present

a dear friend of ours is getting married tomorrow and we wanted to give him and his bride-to-be something meaningful and unique. and while i think registries serve a wonderfully practical purpose, sometimes it is fun to give something unexpected.

so i started with an embroidery hoop, some mustard fabric, and a few options of embroidery floss. i couldn't choose between brown and fuchsia so i decided to fuse them together using 3 strands of brown and 1 of fuchsia. they love the musician ray lamontagne so with some help, i figured out what their favorite song was and took a line from it to embroider. i posted a tutorial here about how to do this, only this time instead of using my own handwriting, i printed off a style that i liked and used it as a template. below is the result:

 being a girl who is all about themed gift situation, we bought them 2 LPs to go along with it. my darling husband remembered that the bride has her father's record player but the doesn't have many records so we felt like this was perfect.  (the song i used for the embroidery piece is from that top album 'trouble')

fabric flowers, kraft paper, and some twine to wrap them in--simple yet sweet. the flowers are in no way a genius idea of mine, but i have made them in the past...so if you're interested, here is how you make them:

start with some fabric and cut out a handful of 'petal' shapes in different sizes. its not really about perfection here and how many is entirely up to you and how big you would like them to be. also, cut out a more narrow piece (the one on the right).

then, take some tacky glue and apply it at the bottom of your narrow piece.

roll it up like so...

this is the center of your flower.

next, take a 'petal' and also apply glue at the bottom.

wrap the 'petal' around your center piece.

add the 'petals' one by one around the center overlapping them (i used smaller 'petals' inside and larger ones around the outside).

using some thread, tie a tight knot around the bottom.

wrap the gift, tie it with twine, and arrange the flowers to your liking. (to give them a little extra security, i glued them to the twine...i also propped them with something to allow them to dry in place)

missoni for target

my convictions about high-end fashion designers doing affordable limited edition lines for the general mass at places like target and h&m was totally put to the test yesterday...and i lost. or i should say that the excitement i had when my mom came over and brought a bag full of missoni in clémence's size totally contradicted where i said i stood on the subject.

right or wrong, i felt like designers who make lines for these stores, do it solely for a quick buck, and in my opinion, (in a non-literal sense) it sort of cheapens it. isn't the fact that these clothes are unattainable for most of us somehow part of the appeal? or when you do get crazy and invest in an amazing piece or find it somewhere (like last chance or even goodwill) there is an immense satisfaction that emerges. but even in a less superficial way, one of the most frustrating things about the idea is that most of the people getting to these stores at 3am to wait for the doors to open aren't doing it for the love of the designer or the art that they make in clothing, they are doing it to slap it back up on ebay to, again, make a quick buck.

that all being said, i couldn't help going against my own view on the subject and gladly accepted my mom's amazing gift for clémence. because after all, i have got to start her early right?!?

another birthday present.

an adorable platter i had been lusting over which was bought in secret from my family to match our dinnerware collection. they are all handmade by an artist out of san francisco named rae dunn. she makes beautiful things. i can't wait to use this!!

testing the waters.

speaking of my fab new camera that i'm super excited about here she is...
it has twice the amount of mega pix as the one i was previously using, an incredible zoom, smile and blink detection (which is perfect for the ever quick-moving babes) and a super user-friendly panoramic option (thanks darling!)...here are some random shots... those cheeks below are getting increasingly droopy.

she loves the camera.

1st timer

its jeremiah's first father's day. it's such a deserving holiday for him and honestly so special for me as well. you see i have a great father who i know loves me dearly and has worked incredibly hard to provide for our family our whole life (there are 5 of us kids so you can imagine its not an easy task to do), but our more emotional relationship is not the idyllic father-daughter one. there aren't many feelings shared openly that often. in fact saying 'i love you' was something that only really started to commonly occur in the past 7 or 8 years (but i must add i have never doubted it). we don't see eachother often because he is out of town a majority of the year and we don't talk much on the phone either. it has just always been like this. but still, i am grateful to have my dad because i know my situation could have been far worse. i tell you all of this, not so you can feel bad because i don't, but so you can understand my thankfulness for my husband. he is incredible in his new role. i love watching how delicate he is with her. how many kisses he gives her (i am totally crying while writing this right now). how when he gets home from work he wants to know every detail of her day. the way he looks at her. how he plays with her not caring how ridiculous and silly he is. how many times he tells her he loves her and how she'll never comprehend just how much that is. clémence, we are both truly blessed to have your daddy.

thinking of this upcoming day, clémence and i decided a homemade card was better than a store-bought one. we got some supplies and went to town. here's the result. it's nothing outrageously creative or inventive, but just more playful and special.

'okay, give daddy his card'

this was his father's day gift. an ode to his first daughter,his little rose. and the five leaves represent 5 incredible blessings that happened to us leading up to her birth. her name is written in his handwriting.

a gem.

my darling husband doesn't ask for much. a record or two here and there, a new pair of shoes when he has completely worn his out. i'm usually the frequent shopper (frequently more for Clémence as of late). so when he starts quietly checking craigslist and ebay for an amp, it's gotta be something he seriously wants and something i seriously want to give him. he has such an incredible heart. he once snuck behind my back and sold one of his guitars to take me to denver to see bjork and joanna newsom. you can say i've got a good man.


when i found out what he was looking at, we searched together and found one incredible piece of musical equipment: a vintage 69' fender deluxe reverb amp. the sound is beautiful. most of the bands around that time were playing some form of the fender reverb...think the beach boys and the beatles. its an amp that sort of transcends musical genres and can be played with blues, early rock & roll, country (the original hank williams kinda country not today's pop version), surf, rockabilly etc. pretty much everything we listen to.



when she arrived, he was one happy boy and spent the aftenoon in our basement getting to know her.

support local

last night we celebrated my sister-in-law's 25th birthday. combined with jeremiah's family, there are 11 of us total so we are celebrating a birthday almost every month. because of this, the past few years, we have just either asked what the birthday recipient wanted or just given them money (neither of which are bad things). but this year we felt like being slightly more creative because let's face it, while it's nice to get what you asked for, sometimes surprises are better. so here's what we came up with...





the pic below was close to being the final product, however as jeremiah was finishing it (with t-minus 45min til we left for dinner, he accidentally spilt his water all over the bottom and had to run to the store and re-draw the entire thing...

soooo here is the final product...first, to Smeeks Candy Boutique, to take some pictures in their photo booth. next, off to St. Francis for an amazing dinner. and finally, down to Jobot Coffee Shop for some coffee and crepes. sounds like a good date to me!

a birthday gift.

one afternoon jeremiah and i were watching tv when my mother-in-law, digging in her linen chest, found an old linen bag that our baba had sent to her son (my father-in-law) with some peppers from macedonia. the linen bag was all stained from the peppers and the addresses, written in babas handwriting, were mostly in macedonian. the first thing that came into my head is what an amazing shadow box this would make. well it just so happened that my father-in-law's birthday was in 2 weeks...how perfect this would be for that occasion. since he is a successful doctor and is fortunate enough to buy whatever he wants, this usually makes buying a gift fairly difficult each year. but it didn't always used to be that way.


you see he immigrated to america in 1973 with twenty dollars in his pocket and maybe enough english to introduce himself. but right away he got a job and enrolled in college. he mastered english in an incredibly small amount of time and with a night job working for ups, went on to become a doctor in chiropractic. he is a hard worker to say the least and by far the most generous man i have ever met.


so, jeremiah and i put our creative heads together to make something to honor his life and where he came from...here's the result...




the envelope that had his naturalization papers in it...

i was able to find twenty dollars worth of uncirculated quarters from 1973 and just hot-glued them in there...love me some ebay!
since his faith is the most important thing in his life we wanted to make sure something was in the box that represented that...we found one of his first bibles with this amazing chicken scratch on literally every page. we chose this particular page because he had highlighted a verse in the same blue as the blue in the address. the verse says, 'the lord will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, oh lord, endureth forever: forsake not the work of thine own hands.'