Nothing Says Happy Birthday!

She Sits in Darkness
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Like cold, rain, wind and being sick to top it all off.

It's my 30th birthday today and outside is depressing on a day when I really need it to not be.

Seriously, February is not a good month to have a kid in most areas of the United States. It is hard caring for a newborn in this weather with bundling them up and illness and all that fun stuff new parents just love.

And it isn't fun for them when they are older. This is the second time in a row that I have been sick and isolated on my birthday. I dragged myself out to a little birthday dinner on Saturday night, but due to weather and traveling for the long weekend only three people came. When you have something planned in February you need to anticipate people dropping out or it getting canceled last minute because of a storm.

If we ever choose to have another child I plan on trying to avoid months November through March as due dates. Early September was a great time to have a baby. And Boston summers are a lot milder than Chicago summers so it wasn't all that bad being huge during the summer. And it certainly wasn't as dangerous as being huge in icy conditions!

While I firmly anticipate that I am on the right track in my life finally and that my thirties will be better than my twenties today is still such a bummer. I got my hopes up thinking that my dad would send me something this year. He told me that he would send me a little something along with some of my sister's old baby clothes but predictably that never happened. And you know what, it hurts.

And I miss my mother today. A lot. I picked up a book for blee yesterday and thought about how if she were around then blee would always have plenty of books from grandma. Thankfully she raised me well and I know what to get. It was an exchange and I had a very limited selection to choose from so I got Harold and the Purple Crayon. It is a little to old for her, but it never hurts to start the collection. There is a Leo Lionni (Fish is Fish and Frederick) box set that I want badly.

I was supposed to go to a babywearing group in Cambridge today as the meeting this time is actually a lot more accessible than normally. But with this weather I am not so sure anymore.

At least I am not puking on my birthday like last year! And I have a lot that I am truly and deeply grateful for this year. It would just be nice, yanno, to not be hacking up strange things on my birthday for a change. *edit* thinking about my symptoms and the fact that my father in law had pneumonia I am starting to suspect that I have a case of walking pneumonia. Freakin hell! And the doctor won't even be open for me to make an appointment! Double doh!

Stamps!

More carved blocks
Originally uploaded by pinkbathtub

Thanks to everybody that wished me well yesterday. I had a much better night sleeping last night and feel much better this morning as a result. It is a amazing how much more rested one can end up feeling when you don't wake up to puke in the middle of the night!

Anyhow, I am inspired by this gorgeous set of stamps by pinkbathtub and the stamp making photopool on Etsy. Stamping is so similar to what I do yet so different.

The cheap Speedball stamp material I picked up at Michaels sucked just like I feared it would. I made a decent "thank you stamp" but it isn't very crisp and it really does feel like it is about to fall apart if I don't treat it very gently. A corner (that is not part of the design thankfully) already broke off. I knew the pink stuff is better but they didn't have any plus it is so much more expensive I thought I would give this stuff a go. Plus these inspiring and well carved stamps are not pink so maybe it isn't so bad. Found out they are not carved in the white (actually off white) Speedball material but a totally different brand. A brand that Dick Blick has so I picked up one small block of the pink stuff and one small block of this stuff so I can compare.

My replacement gocco supplies came in the mail yesterday so I can get back to experimenting with that. But of course my studio is too much of a mess right now for goccoing. But I will clean it and get back to messing with it because I would like to see it work! If I do ever get it to work I have this thought of combining gocco printing with stamping. I think it could be cool.

Jon is working from home today and is going to come with me to my appointment with the mid-wife. Just a standard visit. He'll get to hear the heartbeat again and that will be cool. It always is.

Yesterday I decided to raise the price of the piece I blogged about. I've never sold a piece that size for more than $15, but I have grown to love it so much that I just won't part with it for less than $20. I was rather nervous about it when I first made it, about the colors that is why I started with such a small piece. But being a bit daring with color paid off and I ended up with some really strong pieces and that is one of them. One thing I am loving about that ginkgo block is how it works so well for so many different sizes of paper. Anything up to 9"x12".

I hope everybody has a lovely weekend. I'm probably not going to post again until tomorrow. I have a lot to do and have been quite tired lately.

Impulse Purchase!

Stickers on purple lace
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Happy 4th of July to all my American readers! Not that I am feeling all that patriotic myself, especially lately. And fireworks lost most of their appeal years ago. It certainly isn't worth braving crowds of people in Boston just too see them, especially with how my hips have been feeling. The thought of going out to the Charles to watch the display makes me shudder. Maybe we will have burgers or something tonight but sadly no beer for me.

Thanks to one of the many bloggers I read on a daily basis I ended up getting a cute little machine to make my own stickers last night. First I made some promo type stickers using printed out images of shrunk down art and when those turned out so nice I turned my attention to my real love. Making originals! And here is the first set I came up with. I don't have a ton of prints to work from so I don't think I will have many of these for awhile. Until then I will make what I can and probably do more for promo than for sale. The computer printed out ones are a nice little something to stick on packages. I'm always looking for different things to do with my art.

I also picked up some tools to try stamping again. I tried it around Christmas last year with not the best results using my woodcarving tools. From what I have learned the cheap Speedball tools with the thin blades are actually better for carving stamp material than my fancy wood tools. The blades on my woodcarving tools are just too thick. Getting used to the feel of the very different material will take a bit of time. I am used to wood not rubber. It might be interesting to make cards that are a mixture of gocco and stamping.

Jon is going to see the new Transformers movie today and I don't think I will be going. It really doesn't sound like my kind of a movie. Even though I had a couple of the transformers toys growing up I wouldn't say that I was all that into the series. I rarely watched the cartoon and I didn't see the original cartoon until Jon made me watch it a few years ago. It is terrible. But he is a boy from the 80's and he and his other boy from the 80's friends are all pumped to go see it no matter what the reviews say. Suddenly his standards are totally thrown out the window. It's cute. But I will be lonely while he is at the movie.