My Life Turned Upside Down

This Autumn Witch was illustrated by my fabulous husband and all rights go to him.

It's my favorite time of year (well besides Christmas- and I do love spring) :)

Anyway- I would have usually began designing and sewing costumes for Halloween June or July-ish. I would have been making Halloween paintings or some Halloween craft beginning in August because I would be just too excited and have the house decorated by the beginning of September. This year we have been living out of suitcases since May. My husband had a contract job at Blue Sky Studios in New York/Connecticut area animating on the movie "Rio" that comes out this next year and my girls and I joined him for a lot of it.

It was quite the experience seeing as how up to this point I had never been more east than Denver, CO. I didn't even know how to imagine so many trees. I absolutely loved it! We were crammed in a one bedroom apartment just outside of New York City in a sky-rise corporate temp housing. The girls and I spent quite a bit of time in upstate New York with family in Palmyra visiting many wonderful/historical/church sites. I took them to New York City many times on fun outings as well as Boston (several times), Concord, Salem, Sleepy Hollow (a couple of times), Niagara Falls, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Virginia while living on the east coast. We went to the beach every week as well. They got very use to car rides and traveling. We stopped at many wonderful places along the way out east and back again to the west hitting all the historical church sites we could possibly fit in. In all I have driven almost 11,000 miles in the last 6 months and most of that was all by myself with my girls with no dvd player, cd player, or game devices for the majority of that. We talked about life, my girls wrote stories, made up songs, and talked about beautiful trees and rock formations. For the first few trips I thought we'd all want to hang ourselves with how boring and hard it was to get use to driving, but by the end we absolutely loved our time in the car. We'd be settled somewhere for a week or two and then I'd say, "How about a road trip?" Within 30 minutes my girls would have packed their suitcases and be ready to bring it all out to the car. hahaha. We felt like little pioneer/vagabond/gypsies- free to go where the wind blew us.

Needless to say our stuff has been inaccessible and for the most part my life has been too crazy to do my normal Halloween celebratory traditions and activities. I wouldn't trade the last 6 months for anything though. My husband's next contract job is in Albuquerque, NM working on the movie "Green Lantern" which he started almost a month ago. A few days ago we joined him. What a beautiful drive through southern Utah. It was breathtaking. It was an 11 hour day in the car and even my almost 2 year old did fine. She began crying the last 20 minutes- thankfully we were close. Our pod was delivered a few days before I arrived and Seth (along with the help from many man from our church out here got all the boxes and furniture in the house and garage) I'm trying to unpack things as quickly as possible so we can get to some of our Halloween decorations. I didn't get to sew any costumes this year- almost unforgivable for my children. I had to buy them- gasp! :)haha We do have our little Halloween advent calendar out that I made last year and we started to sew some Halloween trick-or-treat bags in Palmyra at Grandma's house before we left. We will have to finish those up this week. I'll post pictures as soon as they are done in the next day or two. I keep receiving emails asking if I am selling those calendars again this year or a pattern. I'm afraid not- we'll see about next year though.

We loved our time living on bare minimum and having nothing but each other's nutty company- but it's nice to get settled into somewhere, have our internet up and running again (as of last night), have more space, be reunited with my art supplies, sleep on our own beds, and enjoy our possessions again. (My girls are so excited to have their toys back) :)

I thought I'd share this little note I made this morning to put on my new neighborhood doors in case any of you would like to use it. Our family goes to church on Sunday and tries to keep it as a day of rest. We don't go to parties or go shopping. We don't participate entertainment like going to movies/amusement parks, or exuberant outdoor activities like swimming etc. We try to really focus on the Savior and our family and have fun things we do together at home on Sundays or invite others to dinner. My girls are really bummed about Halloween being on Sunday this year so I've created these little notes that we are giving to our neighbors to let them know that we will be trick-or-treating a day early on Saturday. If they are home and have candy and would like visitors they will flip the note over to show the drawing of the monster and put it on their door to let us know we can come for a candy visit. As a side note my husband made the pumpkins and monster illustrations on the notes- I just grabbed them from the computer and created the notes in Photoshop. You are more than welcome to use them- just not for sell in anyway. If for some reason these don't work let me know at my email kiazi44(at)hotmail(dot)com and I will email you the pdf.

(Front View)

(Back View)

Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween!

A few more fairy shoes

After giving my mom her fairy shoe for Christmas she gave me a little bin of fabric, lace, trim, flowers, thread, ribbon, beads, and buttons from mostly the Victorian era, but some are older and some are from the 20's, 30's, and 40's. She is an antique doll collector and has an entire room dedicated to doll supplies. She hand sews and repairs many of their clothes to be authentic to that particulars doll time period. She has shelves and shelves and bins of wonderful, yummy supplies. Whenever I go home to visit I play in that room by sitting on the floor and open bin after bin looking at the wonderful pieces that she has admiring the handiwork of someone 100-200 years ago. She gave me some of her prize smaller pieces so that I could make her a collection of antique fairy shoes. I love using her stuff. It's like opening a treasure box each time I open it and reminds me of being home with her.

My mom's birthday was a few weeks ago and Seth's mom had her birthday a few weeks before that. I decided it was time to make some more fairy shoes for my two moms. :) To see the other shoes I made you can click here.

This is a blue lady's fairy shoe for my mom. Isn't that flower exquisite? This blue silk was the most wonderful fabric to work with. It came in the form of a HUGE ribbon. I like to paint a lot of my shoes with a gold, copper, or silver metallic paint on the inside to hide stitching and give it a more rich feel. You can see that slightly in the picture on the left. (just ignore the chipped off pink paint on my nails- it's time to play beauty salon with my girls and get another manicure) :)

The blue polka dot shoe is my mom's other shoe for her b-day and the gold and red shoe is Georgia's (Seth's mom). Georgia's shoe isn't made from all old materials, but has some old tatting and lace on it. My mom's polka dot shoe has such a wonderful old black button that seems very art deco to me. I remember when my mom gave me that button and I couldn't wait to see what shoe it would appear on that I would make. The black beads were stitched to some old netting and the tassels on the back of the shoe are from a Victorian fan.

Frabjous Day, Callooh, Callay

Our mighty Kendyl turned 7 last month and we had a Frabjous party in her honor. She was so proud of her daddy animating on Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland" that she wanted to have a Mad Hatter's Birthday Tea Party. I must say I was quite inspired by the theme I didn't know how to hold back. Everything I thought up I created. It was so fun. And while someone (a-hem Seth's mom :) ) called me obsessed I chose to think of myself as enthusiastic and inspired (like all great geniuses are- haha).

We started with a gathering of the guests and proceeded to drink some mysterious liquid which shrunk us so we could be led down the rabbit hole by the white rabbit (Seth's mom) until we found Absulum (my cute husband- Seth sitting under a tree "smoking" on a garden hand shovel). He gave us wonderful words of wisdom and showed us the Oraculum (a 9 foot scroll that he drew). The Oraculum was drawings of the events of the party. First was a drawing of Alice peering in the rabbit hole. Next was Absulum sitting on a mushroom. After that was a fun looking tea party and then croquet with the Red Queen and last of all was slaying the Jabberwocky.

(Sorry the picture of the Oraculum is not a good one- I need a better camera)

Since we had been down the rabbit hole and talked to Absulum we knew next we needed to go to the Tea Party. The girls had such a fun time talking silly and eating yummy treats. (It's hard to see because it's blurry but the bottle has a tag that says "drink me" and the strawberry's sign says "eat me".

These little snails are so cute and fun to make. You take tortilla and wrap up cream cheese and ham in it. Slice it and stick it to a pickle with a toothpick tail. Then toothpick green olive eyes on top. The kids loved them!

I love this sweet little butterfly tea set I found online. Each cup and saucer are a different color.

After consulting the Oraculum again we joined the Red Queen (me of course) for a fun game of croquet.

Next we proceeded to slay my poor Jabber-baby-wonkey. :) I forgot to attach he amazing wings on him for the picture and slaying (darn) this cool pinata.

After candy was spilt we celebrated by fudderwacking most vigorously and then watched the movie until parents arrived.

What a fun day. Later that night we had a topsy turvy cake. I have never made one before, nor have I tried using fondant, so I think it turned out pretty great considering. :)

yipee!

In my search for inspiration to create a most marvelous Mad Hatter's Tea Party (with much muchness) for my daughter's 7th birthday party I found this... for me...

....... um....YES PLEASE!

I can't think of a more marvelous thing to see everyday as I put on makeup than a popup book scene of one of my favorite stories. There's even a website to show how to do the makeup of the different characters from the movie using this box of shadows.

Okay so I didn't really buy it for me ($52), but if you'd like to here's a link. And in case you are wondering I wouldn't be offended in the least if you gave me one of these too. hahaha

Beauty and the Beast Jr.

Our Makenzie was in her school play this last month. We were so happy for her and proud of the wonderful job she did. We put a lot of work into the production as well. Seth and I spent quite a bit of time painting the set and I was a busy bee with sewing! Below are pictures of the play and our creations. :) Even though it was a weekend mostly about Makenzie, Kendyl found a way to get involved. She just jumped right in and grabbed a pile of play bills and stood by the wall and started passing them out. They were in a box by the door for people to grab on the way in, but Kendyl decided to be in charge of that. :) She loved it! What a sweetie pie.

The cast (above)

Makenzie with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Ron's family (below)

The Belle dress I was sewing. A big thank you to my friend Melissa who put the zipper in at the end. I'll sew them in if I must, but they tend to scare me to pieces. In this picture it was only part way through, but Makenzie wanted to try it on and pose in it. :) Cutie girl.

Here's the officially finished Belle dress on the official Belle. She's about 6 inches taller than Makenzie so that's why it was drowning her in the above picture. :)

Here's some of the other costumes I sewed or pulled out of our costume closet.

Cogsworth (I didn't make the clock- just the jacket. I threw in the complete costume picture so you could see how great it looked all together. The clock was made by the music teacher at the school and is make out of foam).

Makenzie's Sausage Curl Girl Costume (the apron was made by my terrific friend Melissa when I was in a pinch. I just added the ruffly trim around it) :) and this Villager Boy's vest is one that I made to go with Seth's pirate jacket years ago.

Monsieur Dark's costume was actually Seth's vampire costume a few Halloween's ago. I just altered it a little to fit this guy. Not too much though. He was a tall boy.

These other two costumes I had in my costume closet- neither of which I had sewn (actually the green one Seth's sister Holly sewed years ago). A lot of my fabric was made into many more costumes or made a part of the set through curtains, rugs etc. I probably donated about $1000 worth of fabric to the school. I have had it in bins and have needed to get rid of it for years. I thought I would use it all the time and I don't. We are moving soon so I figured this went to a really good cause and helped me clean out a little.

Here's the set pieces that Seth designed during one of the practices. He would have loved to have been able to spend more time and make them 3-dimensional and have the time to paint them himself, but he's a busy guy. A bunch of people painted them, but I thought it would be fun to show what he came up with.

It was such a great experience and I have to say I'm grateful it's over. It was very time consuming :) Such is the way of the theater though.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Fairy Shoes

Where in the sam hill have I been? :) To be honest, life has taken over. Seth was living in California for 3+ months this last fall-winter animating on Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" that was just released a few weeks ago. He was interviewed by Fox 13 and KSL channel 5. Here's a the link to the KSL interview. Look closely because when he's signing autographs at the premiere you can see me sitting next to him helping to roll up the posters with my new red hair color :)

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=9911331

I didn't want to write about being alone for few months here on my blog while he was gone in case anyone yucky reads this blog. It was hard being a single mom 24/7 and missing him and I had all I could handle to keep up. I don't know how some of you women do it, but I have a greater respect for you and want to bring you all dinner every night and babysit your kids so you can get a nap in and at least 6 hours of sleep a night. SERIOUSLY! Anyway, while he was gone I'm afraid my creative juices were zapped. I was however able to sit down and sew up some sweet little fairy shoes by hand. They were small enough and didn't require a lot of stuff so I could bring them along with me anywhere. I made them for family and a friend or two. I have plans to make many more because they are so fun, but am already onto my next project of course which I will show pictures of in a few days/weeks when it's finished :).

I gave the fairy shoes for Christmas, but didn't finish some of them in time for that. :( I was reading a lady's blog that invented them and I bought the pattern for them. You've got to see her blog here- she's amazing! She only sells the pattern for one type of her shoes. The ones on her site are so incredible and I'm trying to figure out how to alter the pattern to make others as amazing as she does. Wish she'd sell me all her patterns. :) I've had the best time playing with fabric, beads, lace, etc. They take a lot of work and many hours! They are so sweet only 3 inches long or so. Each one is a little work of art and a piece of magic. I like to combine them with a little painting when I give them away. Here's a few of them below. Check out all the tiny details and hand stitching and beading. I gave my mom the purpley pink ones with the hand tatted flower under the red flower. She was so excited she sent me home with a HUGE box of trims, lace, fabrics, beads, thread, feathers, silks, flowers, etc. all from the victorian era and earlier. I can't believe I've got all this fun stuff to play with now. She dresses old composition dolls and has an entire room of supplies. She has a small tree that I'm going to make enough fairy shoes for her to hang all over it. Can't wait! :)