Front Page Tresuries!

Yay! I was featured on the front page of Etsy 3 times this month! You can see if your shop was featured to by checking out this website *craft cult*, it will even show you archived treasuries that you were featured in...pretty nifty. It's funny that I've never been on the front page before and then 3 times in one month...not complaining though.

the toothless wonder!!

My little Gavin just lost 2 teeth this week. On Monday I took the boys for a 2 mile bike ride and Gavin's bike handle hit him in the mouth and loosened up his already loose front teeth. An hour later while eating an ice cream Gavin pulled out his tooth, two days later Mommy pulled out the second tooth that was just dangling.

So here is my question...after these teeth were lost my little Gavin's behaviour has improved so much, he has been so helpful, kind, agreeable and quite the little peacemaker. Is there a correlation?? Should I knock out the rest of his teeth?? Just joking!

Canada Day and 4th of July!

In our family we celebrate both, the only problem is that they are only a couple days apart and since we live in the USA we don't want to appear un-patriotic (is that a word?) by celebrating Canada Day just before Independence Day and since most Americans don't even know when Canada Day is it can appear a little insensitive on our part.
Nevertheless, we went to the park in our Canada t-shirts and had pizza with Canadian Bacon on it (roll your eyes if you will) and pineapple (which is essentially Hawaiian pizza and we are also Hawaiian so it works in the multicultural mix!). We had ice cream, played tag and usually sing "Oh Canada!" (which is NOT to the tune of "Oh Christmas tree" in case you were wondering!)
After that my husband and I reflected on how lucky we were to have all our children intact as my sister's pet polar bear recently devoured one of her children...good thing she's got 8 more (gotta do something to keep you warm in those looooong Canadian winters). Just after we write out a check to support the "Igloos for Humanity fund", then we write members of parliament to encourage them to allow the Internet to Canada cause I really miss my siblings and would like to keep in touch with them. (By the way if you believe the last paragraph please keep in mind that Canada is responsible for the inventions of the blackberry, basketball, the zipper and insulin, nor have I ever seen a polar bear except in the Los Angeles zoo!)

July 4th was lots of fun we started with a parade and then headed to my Aunt's gorgeous house for a BBQ and slip and slide and driveway of fireworks.

We are so lucky to live and have lived in countries that provide us with the freedoms that we enjoy and cherish. Happy Canada Day and 4th of July!

New shop addition and treasury!

Recently I was asked to do a custom order of a drum set, which is harder that one would think... here's what I came up with!



Also I was featured in a treasury recently by Beneath the Rowan tree, Clover and Violet, and Ciuccio some fun treasuries thanks for including me:

***away for a while***

I've been missing in action for a while and have been delinquent in blog postings. I am in Canada for a while, helping out with my mother as she is in her final stages fighting her battle with terminal cancer. Here is a link to updates of my mom and how she is doing. She is a trooper, what an amazing women. I will do a proper blog post once life gets back to some semblance of normalicy.

Godzilla and the Handmade experiment

I was featured on the Handmade Experiment today with some other amazingly cute children's items. An honor to be included among such talented designers. Also check out my new addition to my shop!...Godzilla, who would have thought he would be so popular?

My Latest Eco Addictions.....

I love love love this Eco Friendly Laundry Detergent, honestly I can't say enough amazing things about this product. It works sooo well, smells amazing (70+ scents to choose from, I chose sweetpea cause that's my nickname!) and has a myriad of uses.
It works for energy efficient washers as well as my old faithful one and takes less than half the amount of regular detergent and saves me so much money. Also these detergents are made with all natural ingredients, phosphate-free, non-toxic, PLANET FRIENDLY and gray water safe. You can buy them from Ashley a WAHM like myself, she has a great business called Crunchy Clean. Check her out. Here are some other uses that this amazing invention has, seriously can you tell I'm in love? It's made my life so much easier.

USE IT AS A SCRUB
You can actually use it by itself as a comet type scrub OR you can add some dish detergent to it to make a paste like soft scrub that works fantastic for shower floors! I use it to clean my toilets too in lieu of comet or other harsh chemical cleaners.

ALL PURPOSE CLEANER
2 Tablespoons in a bucket with 1/4 cup of vinegar makes a GREAT multipurpose cleaner! I clean our ceramic tile floors, the counters, and the kitchen sink with it!

SCRUBBY CLEANER
a few Tablespoons mixed with dish soap makes a wonderful scrubby cleaner - it needs to be a gritty consistency, and you can wash your tubs and sinks safely without bleach or other unsafe cleaners! :)

STAIN PRETREATER
Make a pretreater - mix with water and let it sit on stains! OR, mix hot water with a tablespoon or two and let your stains clothes sit for a few hours or overnight!

DEODORIZER
You can also sprinkle a little in your diaper pail to deodorize.

Also I'm in love with Spa Therapy's facial products, I have the patchouli mint soap, aloe skin toner, vegan deodorant stick (love this!), and the papaya and tea tree scrub (amazing!). These too shops are definite treasures that I've come across on Etsy, feel free to support these amazing women and their handmade products.

Fuzzy Prickly Pear!

Check out this pincushion that I ordered from South Africa. Isn't it so cute? And it works so well, for those of you who don't use pin cushions that often you wouldn't know that there are certain elements that make up a good pin cushion so become informed before you balk at me :) One of the perks of purchasing this pin cushion is that when it arrived it had so many cool stamps from Africa on it and my kids went crazy for them. This is where I got it on Etsy! Support Handmade cause it's unique and just plain cool.

It kind of reminds me of Heather Bailey's Fresh Picked pincushion, which is also so stinking cute!:

Digging for treasure!

here are a few of the recent treasuries I've been featured in. Special thanks to scrapnscribe, inocha, thepaperkingdom, kbshimmer, cloverandviolet and sewnsunday for including me in their collections.

Easter Ties!

At the end of the Easter treasure hunt we had at out house were drawing books and...(drum roll please!) Easter ties!! I made these from some of my favorite Amy Butler fabric....I'm such a sucker for polka dots....love to squeeze them in wherever I can.

Oh Sweet Sadie!

come and see me at the Oh Sweet Sadie boutique in Daybreak, Utah April 24th-25th!



you can find a map on their blog

Hope to see you there!

sorry I've been so MIA!

I have been so swamped lately and unfortunately my blog postings have been going by the wayside! I have been working on orders for 3 boutiques, one in Alaska, one in Colorado and one in Virginia. Anyway I've been chained to my sewing machine! Here are some photos of the work in progress with 3 seperate lines for each shop.

I'm treasured!

Here are three new treasuries that I was fortunate to be included in...

Mind your peas and carrots!

New for spring a diaper cover combo pack perfect for a baby shower gift or for that avid swimming baby or that special cloth diapered baby in your life.

I must admit, I'm in love with the peas....it could be that my term of endearment (from dear hubby) is "sweetpea". For a while my boys thought my name was Sweetpea Mommy Aina.

Trip to Cali!

I'm way overdo for a post of a personal nature. Happily swamped with work though... A couple weeks ago we went to California with the boys to visit some family and stayed with Stephen's brother and his family. Stephen has two brothers that live there and between the three brothers' families we have a total of 12 grandchildren under the age of 8! It pretty crazy but surprisingly enough they all get along really well and it really didn't seem like there were 12 of them, most of the time anyway~



We were also able to go check out the Amgen Tour of California bike race and Lance Armstrong was in it and my sister in law Tricia who is a whiz with a camera got a great picture of him, which is hard to do when they are riding so fast...we were pretty excited. He is the one with his head turned talking to the other rider.

We have been fortunate to have our children in "batches"...not planned that way but it has turned out to be such a big blessing for the kids to have playmates on their levels. We have the 8 year old group, the 5 year old group, the 3 year old group and the 1 year old group and a couple of baby boys at the end. It's a lively bunch but so much fun.

give away today!

check me out on this blog this week if you want to win one of my aprons or diaper covers or a meridian of other things that she's giving away!

Good Things Utah!

On Wednesday March 9th my products with be featured on Good Things Utah on channel 4 (ABC) at 10 am. Emily from giveawaytoday.blogspot.com is being interviewed and she is featuring my little shop on Good Things Utah on Wednesday and on her blog on friday 3/11. She is giving away an apron and a diaper cover both on the tv show for the studio audience and on her blog for general give away...so be sure to enter. She also has lots of other things she's giving away this week such as:

A designer handbag from Bags that Fit

Four all-day adult ski passes for next season to Brighton Ski Resort

A night’s stay at Anniversary Inn in Salt Lake City

Two All-day Family Fun passes to Boondocks

Four Disney on Ice tickets in Salt Lake City

A date night package to Trafalga Fun Center

A scrapbook retreat package OR 5 CDs from Digital Scrapbook Memories

A Photography sitting and package worth over $300 from Photo by Emilie.

KSL interview!

OK, so last Thursday Amanda Butterfield (KSL channel 5) called me and said that she really wanted to come over and get a quick interview on my reaction to the CPSIA testing stay for the next year. I was very hesitant, there I was still in my pyjamas trying to get my 5 year old out the door for kindergarten, making the boys lunch and packaging up 15 orders...planning on hopping into the shower once the baby was down for a nap...you know usual "Mom" stuff. Amanda persisted "please, we'll be really quick, I just really need a statement from you regarding this, I promise we'll be quick".
When she arrived she said "your home isn't messy I don't know what you were worried about". I told her I wasn't worried about my home as much as the orders, my pyjamas and such and she wanted to put me on TV, never mind that she showed up on my doorstep 20 minutes after calling. I was freaking out. But a quick face wash, some fresh makeup and quick change of clothes and a earlier than usual nap for the baby and 15 minutes of Nintendo for my preschooler and Voila!...a interview for KSL!...with sweat dripping down my brow!

Happy Presidents Day!

This is amazing! I found this cupcake mosaic a la presidents day theme from cakewrecks.blogspot.com ~ Zilly Rosen and her team put together this mosaic with 5,900 cupcakes...(can you imagine baking that many cupcakes, let alone frosting them and assembling them, gotta love your work that's all I can say!)
It was assembled at the Smithsonian in DC on 2/13

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday!