Sometimes we do stuff

Today is rather cold and dreary, but yesterday was, according to Sage, "The best Saturday ever."

We got all spiffied up and drove down through Hollywood. . .

(our favorite bowling alley Lucky Strike)

(Sage's favorite landmark - the Ripley's dinosaur eating the clock)

(tourist hotspot - Hollywood and Highland)

(The big giant iPod sign you can see from Runyon Canyon)

. . . and ended up here:

The LACMA. We had to kill a little time until 5:00 when the prices dropped, so we went here:

The Craft and Folk Art museum where we saw two ceramic exhibits (no photgraphy allowed). I was allowed to take a picture of the gift shop though

and I bought Sage a Kalimba from Africa and McKenna (I call her my little Bunny Roo) a bunny finger puppet handknit in Peru.

After that, we strolled through the La Brea tar pits.

Seriously, they're kinda gross. But there are dinosaur bones in there!


Those elephants are not real.

Sage enjoyed rolling down the hillside:

and McKenna enjoyed being cute:

Unfortunately, this is all I can show you of the Dali exhibit (no photography allowed):

but it was a really great show. Even better, McKenna was quiet and content the whole time and Sage didn't destroy any priceless works of art, in fact, he was really interested in all the "weird stuff" and never once complained of being bored. We got to see Dali's paintings up close, which is really the only way you can appreciate the details. Sage enjoyed finding the all hidden symbols - keys, ants, grasshoppers, "bendy clocks," etc. We also watched a few of Dali's short films - collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney, and Andy Warhol. The 20's 30's and 40s must have been an exciting time to be an artist. Nowadays everyone's a weirdo and it's harder to be so scandalous.

After the show we were starving and found this cool Indian restaurant on Melrose

where we had the best dinner ever

in a cozy little secluded booth that Sage deemed "fancy" and where McKenna and I could nurse incognito and she could sleep in peace atop my purse.

Here ends the VanHorn family outing.

I'm no graphic designer

But! I did put together a couple things in Photoshop recently.

I made this flyer for Craftmas Bizarre 3 organizer Stacy McQueen (a.ka. the Craft Whore), and all the other vendors to distribute about town. I'm psyched to be a part of such a cool event. There will be music and short films and comedy and drinks! If you live in the area and want to attend, simply print out that flyer, write "kokoleo" on the back, and you can get in for free (or don't, and pay $1 at the door.) Come! It'll be fun!

Also, more Photoshoppery:

My first ad! You can see it on the indiesave.com blog run by Danielle Green (who also heads a cool shop called Collective Elements). Indiesave features lots of coupons, deals, sales and offers from independent designers all over the web. Sweet! I normally don't advertise because A. I can't afford it and B. for now, I'm kinda comfortable with the clientelle I already have, especially as far as personalized stuff goes. However, Danielle was offering a sweet deal (free!) for a limited time so I jumped on it and put together an ad this morning.

I have a newfound respect for graphic designers. It's not as easy as it looks. There are all these fonts to fool with and pixels to tackle and glitches to overcome. I'd much rather rip seams and make my things on the sewing machine.

Thrift Thursday - The Motherload

Owls + Mug = Love

More dishy delightfulness:

Pretty things for me to wear:


a nice barrette, and this:

a vintage windup watch necklace. I've always wanted one of these. I'm considering it an early birthday present to myself.

For my friends and kokoleo customers, these:

Wacky vintage stationary. Hey mom, recognize that cat? We had towels with that cat on them when I was a kid.

And finally, Sage's find:

A ceramic baby dinosaur planter. It came in the original box with a packet of grass seeds. Will grass seeds from 1993 still grow? We'll see.

Grand total: $20.75

Monster Adventures

Back in September I blogged about how The Children's Museum of Virginia purchased six of my monsters to use in their educational program about germs. Last week I received this in the mail.


They're starring in their own coloring book! I'm so proud of them! Here they were before:


And here are a few pages from the coloring book:




Yay! But also, ewwww! Now go wash your hands.

Made by Monday - Fun with Mod Podge

I hadn't done a collage in while, so this week I got out my Mod Podge, pried the stuck cap off, and made this with a bunch of fabric scraps. I resisted the urge to stick a dinosaur in there. Then I made this:
A sewing box. I still need to do something with the inside. I have a few more in the works. I never know how they'll end up when I start them. Actually, I don't even know what I'm going to do with them all when they're done. At least they'll be more interesting looking than plain wooden boxes (which I scored at an HGTV garage sale last spring).

I also finished up a few personalized commissions.



For that last one I actually cut into my vintage embroidered linens. My customer wanted soft dainty colors and I looked through my fabric and realized that most of what I have is BRIGHT and obnoxious. So I opened up my suitcase-o-stitched-linens and started cutting. I can't just save these things forever. I have to use them. And now that I made those first cuts I have to use the rest of them.

I'm sorry ladies-who-labored-over-these-for-hours-many-years-ago, but some of them were stained in places and I just cut out the good parts. Besides, your heirs didn't want them - they sold them to me for way too cheap at your estate sale. It's either this, or have them stuck in some box in an attic somewhere. Or worse - thrown out with the trash. I don't mean to disrespect your handiwork by cutting it up. I want it to live on! I hereby give future generations permission to cut up my stuff too if it means kokoleo will live on after I'm gone.

#1

Ahhhh! I missed a day! My streak is over! I have failed as a blogger.

So now maybe I'll just write what I want to write when I want to write it. I may keep going with some of the themed-days that I set up for myself, but I'm definitely going to get rid of a couple. Who knows, I might just even post

#2

twice in one day. Wow! That's just to keep my readers (all three of you) on your toes.

So, another weekend came and went. I would have blogged all about it but really, do you want to see pictures of our trip to Home Depot? Plus, my camera is dying. I don't know how much longer it has for this world. The little automatic lens cap thingie keeps getting stuck and you have to pry it open with your fingers which inevitably touch the lens and make for smeary pictures. Poor McKenna. There will be no record of her infancy. Poor kokoleo. What good is an online business if you have no pictures of your product? You never realize how much you rely on something until it stops working for you.

My sewing machines are next. They're all in need of a tune-up. Trouble is, I can't afford to be without them for a couple weeks. I keep putting it off and putting it off but then I worry that I might be killing them in the meantime. I killed a few in college by sewing things like cardboard, vinyl, painted canvas, and denim all together. Every sewing machine repair person I've ever seen has asked something to the effect of, "What have you been doing to this thing?" because their innards (the machine's, not the repair person's) are often encrusted with fake fur, lint, broken needles, loose screws, etc.

The washing machine wants to join in on the breakdown fun too. It makes a loud chugga-chugga sound and shakes the whole house. Let's see, what else? The handle falls off the stove sometimes and then the door gets stuck in the locked position. The refrigerator freezes anything in the vegetable drawer. The vacuum cleaner's cord is all chewed up and covered in electrical tape. My computer screen (an ancient gigantic thing from the early 90s) randomly goes blue on me sometimes.

I'm not complaining though. I keep telling myself to be thankful that at least I have these things. Some people don't. Or some people did but they lost everything to a flood or fire. Noisy laundry and frozen celery isn't all that bad in comparison.

I did it!

I did what I challenged myself to do. During the month of October I wrote a blog post every day. That's more blog posts than I wrote in the preceding 4 months combined. It was fun! But now I'm done.

No, not done blogging. Heck, I may even keep writing every day. But if I miss a day, so be it. No pressure. Stop pressuring me! Oh wait, I was doing it to myself.

So why did I do it? One reason was to bring a little life to my poor four-posts-a-month blog. Another reason was to give our family and friends back east a chance to see pictures of our life out west. Probably the most important reason though was to exercise my brain by forcing it to write something every day. I have to put that English degree to use! Not that I think I was writing little masterpieces or anything. It was more the practice, or the process of writing that I needed. Being out of the workaday world and having needy young ones as my only audience is hard. Kokoleo and a patchwork world are what keep me from losing my mind.

What did our foremothers do? They had no blogs to read, no Flickr pictures to peruse, no online shops to set up, not to mention all the other modern conveniences we enjoy. We have it easy, really. Though at times those things can be a distraction.

(insert inner dialogue)

I need to update my website more often so I don't start losing traffic. . . I need new marketable products. . . I need to make something to show everyone on Monday. . . All these other blogs make me feel inadequate. . . My house is too messy to photograph. . . It's hard to type and nurse a baby at the same time. . . Please just leave mama alone for one minute so I can blog about how cute you are. . . Is anyone even reading this?

Sometimes I have to tell myself - Stop. Step away from the computer. Go outside. Don't even take your camera. Just be.

and blog about it later.

Thrift Thursday

Remember how last week I said I wouldn't spend a dime for the next few weeks? Well, I lied. I found this needlepoint piece at a yard sale in Toluca Lake and I had to get it. Just looking at it conjures up feelings of all things fall. It might take a while for me to build up the nerve to cut it from it's board and turn it into something else. For now I just like looking at and running my fingers over those orange things (pumpkins? leaves?).

Also, at the same yard sale, I got a few yards of burgundy naugahyde - enough to cover the dining room chairs (finally!):

The chairs now match the curtains perfectly and are easily wipe-offable, which is good when you have a messy little monster of an eater in the house. Erik asked, "Aren't our butts going to stick to that material?" and I had to remind him that we usually always wear clothes when we eat at the dining room table, so I don't think it'll be a problem.

Total cost: $6.

Happy Halloween!

More to come, but for now -- Boo!


McKenna was a pumpkin (again).

I had to do it to continue the tradition. Here's Sage 5 years ago:


In 2003 we had a Henson Family Halloween:

I was Janice, Erik was Floyd Pepper and Sage was Oscar the Grouch.

In 2004 Sage was corn:

I asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween and he said "corn" but I think he was just asking for dinner.

In 2005 He wanted to be a skeleton. I went the lame route and just let him wear this glow-in-the-dark sweat suit and a mask.

I made up for it the next year though and made him this robot costume:

But this year we went the storebought route again and he was a pirate. I told him to do something piratey for this picture so he said,

"Arrrrr, I'm gonna steal this pumpkin."

Happy Halloween!

To Do Tuesday's are stupid

This will be the last one.

Made by Monday - Fun with Pumpkins

Did you know that when you post a blog entry the timestamp is from when you started writing, not when you post it? Lucky for me, because I have one minute until it's Tuesday.

No sewing project pics because my studio is all in disarray (what's new?) . Instead, here's some VanHorn family fun with pumpkins:

Squishy pumpkin guts.

He's soaking in it.

Here's my pumpkin with gourds for eyes and a warty gourdy Gonzo nose and a flashing skull inside. Here it is again with Erik and Sage's pumkin, a dragon (from a template Sage found).

And this is what I made with the leftovers:

Yes, I, KB VanHorn, baked a pie. A ginger, clove, and cinnamon pumpkin pie. Mmmmm.