Craftyminx

What we wore in Austin

I'm usually really bad about over-packing for trips. I bring clothing for every possible occasion. However, I've been trying to get better about this and practiced just taking what I needed with minimal "what if" additions. We were only going to be there for two full days and the last day would be a long travel day so I needed something cute but comfy to ride around in the car all day.

I finally got to wear my favorite dress ever to Renegade on Saturday.

 
 
Dress: ASOS Curve
Tights: We Love Colors
Shoes: Dollhouse (from a pre-vacation Ross trip)
Swollen Ankles: c/o a fall during last year's Austin trip that has forever jacked up my ability to have cute ankles.

I was really nervous about wearing this dress. It's really short. Way shorter than I ever wear because of my hand-me-down thunder thighs. I have worn a thicker, darker, pair of leggings with it before and felt a little more comfortable, but these mint tights were cuter. I could never wear this in Oklahoma because of the wind and I may or may not have flashed a few passersby after taking this photo because of that very reason. haha!I felt great in this outfit and got about a million compliments on it at Renegade, which made me feel much more confident about it.

My nails that day were also pretty cute:

 
Blue and Orange to support the Thunder! I'm a big fan of blues and greens with Coral.

I wore a different dress on Sunday and didn't even think about taking a picture of it because it's a million years old. Still cute though. I just wasn't as excited about it I guess. :)

 I have a secret to tell you. I wore this next outfit EVERY evening while we were in Austin. After very hot and humid days in cute dresses, I didn't want to have anything to do with them in the evening when we went out. So I just kept putting this outfit on because it worked for me Friday night. 

 
Top: French Laundry... another pre-vaction Ross purchase.
Jeans: Lane Bryant
Shoes: Jeffrey Campell

And because I entitled this post "what we wore"...

 
I often take photos of Sheldon to get my camera settings right before he takes my picture. This one made me laugh because he looks like a catalog model so I had to share it. This is Sheldon's summer uniform, which is a lot like my uniform; Tee Fury Shirt (this one is the Bluth Family Crest), shorts, and chucks.

Oh, and this is what I wore on our drive home.

 
I'll have to do another post on it later with good photos because it's a really cute outfit.

The dress is a thrifted mumu with a crocheted neckline and peasant-type sleeves. I wear it with leggings because it's really thin and with a belt because it looks like a sack otherwise. This is my perfect traveling outfit. Stretchy pants so I can sit in any position comfortably and a flowy dress or top. I'm also partial to maxi dresses for traveling.

I realized yesterday that I didn't share our Renegade purchases so expect a post about that sometime this week. We're missing a couple of them so I'm going to have to do a house search before that happens. :)

What happened in Austin

We had such a wonderful time in Austin and I've been working on these photos all week. That's the part I hate the most after a big trip. Editing photos for myself and picking out ones to share. Sometimes, I just "forget" to take my camera so I don't have to worry about it and then I get mad for missing good photo opportunities. Anyway, here's some snapshots of our weekend...

The drive down to Austin was horrible! It rained the entire trip just like it did last year, and there were many times where we had to stop because we couldn't see out of the windshield. Our 6 hour drive turned in to an 8 hour drive and we were so exhausted after we arrived in Austin we didn't really want to do anything.

We stayed at the Austin Motel again in Room 260 (the Americana). I don't think we'll ever stay anywhere else when we go to Austin. We love the Austin Motel! It's in a great location (right in the middle of south congress) and the rooms are fun and clean and aren't expensive.

Our main reason for going to Austin was to go to the Renegade Craft Fair. We had a blast there last year and knew we had to go back this year. We had an even greater time there this year! I met Twinkie Chan and Erin from Sunshine and Carousels along with many other of my favorite crafters/bloggers.  We decided to rest a lot during this trip so we didn't do a lot of running around. But we went to a few of our faovorite Austin places: Toy Joy, The Continental Club, and Thrift Stores. We saw Junior Brown at the Continental Club and he was amazing! Neither of us had ever seen him live so it was a real treat.

We also went to plenty of awesome places to eat.

I didn't take photos of everything we ate but there was lots of imbibing in tasty beverages and food that was bad for us! We went to Gueros for Margaritas and tacos and the Texas Chili Parlor for beers and Nachos because we love Death Proof. Seriously, the Nachos at the Texas Chili Parlor are just as good as they look in the movie. We finished our tour of Man Vs. Food Austin by going to the Salt Lick since we didn't make it there last year. It is so worth the drive out there. The food was amazing!! 

We went to Frank for brunch on Sunday and had wonderful food and the best Bloody Mary ever! It has bacon in it. Enough said. We go there every time we're in Austin not only because we know the owner, but because the atmosphere is really great and the food is even better. 

Hey Cupcake was a block away from our hotel so we walked down and got 4 cupcakes our last day. Their cupcakes are really dense, moist and flavorful. Soo good!

On our way home we had to stop at Round Rock Donuts to get a few Texas sized donuts to bring back for friends. We ate on ours all week afterwards. They are great for days. :)

We love Austin!!

And we can't wait for next year!

So that about sums up our trip! I have an outfit post to share tomorrow -- What I wore in Austin -- you can see a little peek above. :)

Layouts and fabric banners used in the post are from Pugly Pixel.

 

A Granny A Day: Week 18

Each granny square image above will lead you to the individual post for more information

These 12" squares are kicking my butt. I love them because of all the details they have but they take a lot of time!! Thankfully the month is almost over and I can connect these in to baby blankets and get back to the blanket I started at the very beginning!

So I bought a really geeky web cam (mainly to be a doggy cam when we get a new dog) and thought it might be fun to occaisionally stream my nightly granny making.  Would any of you be interested in watching? I have to get a cord to get the sound to work, but we could maybe do an online chat/crochet along. There's probably a lot of logistics I'll have to work out, but I wanted to see if there was any interest first.

Also, I think I've finally got everything ready to video the sessions for crochet school!! Yeah, I knew you'd be excited :) More about that later this month though.

So what's going on this Memorial Day weekend? Sheldon has to work tomorrow so I'm going to use that time to finish stuff for two deadlines and finish our Austin blog posts (look for those over the weekend). Then we have movie watching, cook outs, cleaning, and yard work to keep us busy the rest of the time. I have a ton of purging to do at the house so I think I'll start some of that as well. It would be wonderful to have a garage that we can actually use. We're looking in to getting a new dog, or two so we really need some more space for furry friends.

I'm back!

Helloooo! I'm back from my vacation and feeling so much better!! I'm still busy of course, but my mindset is much more positive. I skipped doing a happiness is post this week because most of my pictures are from Austin and I have some blog posts to write for wrapping up our trip.

The trip was really great!! We got to do all of our favorite Austiny things and go to Renegade. I met a lot of people from the blog/crafty world that I've been wanting to meet in person and I even met a really sweet blog reader from Denver who came to talk to me (send me the picture you took of us if you read this!).

So what I'm saying is -- I had a great time and I have a ton of photos to edit and blog posts to write. So I'll see you all later!

Oklahoma City Zoo Trip

Last Sunday, Sheldon and I went to the zoo with our nieces and his sister. Our goal was to see the new baby elephant, Malee. Sadly we didn't make it there until around 3 and many of the animals were sleeping because it was so late in the day. The new elephant enclosure was amazing!! I can't wait until we get to go back later when it's nice outside. I told Sheldon we had to go back around 10am next time. 

Little Malee was sleeping in the shade between her mother and aunt (the dad lives in Tulsa) so she was hard to get photos of. You can kind of see her under the trunk of the elephant in the foreground.

The girls were soo over the zoo after we walked to see the elephants. We're going by ourselves next time! haha

They really enjoyed feeding the ducks and taking photos with the statues around the zoo. 

The highlight of my day was finding the peacock that roams freely around the park. He got really close to me which was exciting! I wanted him to spread his tail, but didn't want to piss him off so we just left him alone. I LOVE peacocks! They are just so beautiful.

The Lion water fountain has always been a favorite of mine at the zoo. They retire them and sell them occaisionally and I would love to get my hands on one some day. Weird dream to have, I know.  I have a soft spot in my heart for the rescued bald eagles. One was shot and another was hit by a semi so they can't fly, but they're still so regal looking. Since I was a little girl, I've always loved watching the prarie dogs. There were a lot of babies this time, so cute!

There were a lot of animals we didn't get to see. The girls got restless really fast and we had to leave before we went through the whole park.

If you haven't been to the Oklahoma City Zoo, I highly recommend it if you are visiting. It's really big and has great facilities. They update something every year and it's been really exciting to see it grow over the years. 

A Granny A Day: Week 17

Each granny square image above will lead you to the individual post for more information

Whoo wee another week of great patterns. I like it!

I know things have been really slow around here lately. I'm still working on those big projects and all of my creative energy has been there and with my granny squares. There's only so many hours in a day and unfortunately I spend 8 of those at my job every day so every other hour is spent creating and attempting to clean ( I like to pretend I do our dishes sometimes). 

And because of all that I'm taking a vacation! Well a mini vacation. We're going to Austin for Renegade again this year. yay! I think I actually know more people going this year so that's exciting. There are quite a few Okies setting up there this year, so I'm very excited that our crafty state is being represented so well :) If you're going, send me a tweet or something so we can meet up. 

I'm trying to schedule a post or two for while I'm away, but I'm "unplugging" as much as I can so I won't be responding to comments or anything until I get back on Wednesday.  I will be snapping Instagram photos while I'm away, because I'm totally addicted to that app. So follow me there if you like. In the app, my name is craftyminx and you can follow me on the web here.

What I'm trying to say really poorly is that I'm not going off the grid, but I'll be as far away from it as I can stand. It's hard to completely disconnect when you have a phone that does its best to keep you so connected. 

Happiness is...

 
1. Ginormous marshmallows!, 2. Tasty dinners at home, 3. Philly Cheese Steak Rolls,
4. pretty photos from ugly tree messes, 5. Olive flirting with our gnome, Chomsky ;), 6. Mother/Daughter manicures,
7. Dewey begging to sit in my lap, 8. Getting a good photo of myself., 9. Tiny Hearts on Natural Nails,
10. Getting to see the baby elephant at the zoo, 11. Taking the girls to the zoo., 12. fun, mis-matched bedding

Music:

I've been obsessed with this song/video/artist ALL WEEK after seeing it on the Sunshine and Carousels blog (Erin made the sweet treats for the video).

Have a Happy Tuesday :)

How to block your grannies

Just wanted to pop in and say hi and tell you all I posted a video last night on how I block my granny sqaures. It's my first video attempt, but you can see what goes on. It shows how I take a sad looking bunched up granny and make it square, flat and ready for its close up. :)

http://craftyminx.typepad.com/a_granny_a_day/2011/05/115365-more-vs-please.html

Have a look and I'll see you here soon. Maybe tonight with zoo pictures? If not, definitely tomorrow with a happiness is post. Happy Monday!