Art on the Farm 2008

We checked out Art on the Farm tonight....oh my. how gorgeous it was.
www.artonthefarmlancaster.com/
it's open 12-8 today and tomorrow too....Here I am with My Aunt Debbie, and here's some beautiful art, including that of Will and Maggie Mowery. Just beautiful, this event will become one of my favorites to visit every year from here on out.

Rachel's...

So here's the pic of my art in the window of the creperie.
what is funny to note is that the mosaic leaning against the easel is by Carrie Green, my old friend, and someone put our two pieces together.
Carrie and I worked together at RMS for several years. She was the admin my team, and when she changed roles, I asked to be the team admin, and so I moved to her desk etc.
so here we are now in the window tonight of Rachel's.

Rachel's Cafe and Creperie...tonite!

Check out a piece of my art and many others tonite at this cool show in downtown Lancaster. Enjoy some company while eating a delicious crepe!

and if you are in Ithaca NY...:-) check out my "Our Lady"at the 5 Women on the Border show- opened last night.

Amy...thanks for your advice the last couple days.

Strawberry...your desserts look insane. Wish I could have been at the opening this evening, I hope it was rockin.

xo everyone.

what a day...

Mariana, my Romanian au pair left today for Sweden- after two years in Lancaster. She left me her very cool black sweater coat that I will wear proudly all over downtown:-)
and change and excitement is in the air today.
we cast our votes this evening. So proudly.
This is an eloquent man I voted for. The first president I would ever be in awe to meet, one I could listen to for the next four years, and someone I respect.

...later....HE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What a wonderful thing for the nation and the world.

Chairs in the car

Tonight Max was playing with his dollhouse (one of those big light wood modern numbers) and he started talking to the little people and then he put them in the big car. (the dollhouse came with a garage and a car).
And then...he took the kitchen chairs out of the house, and loaded them into the car, and the people were chatting and driving along with chairs all stuffed around them.
it was so funny to me. I don't know how many times he has driven with a chair next to him in the back seat, or one in the passenger seat!
My Dad often finds them for me by the side of the road, or at house sales, and we'll drive home from their house with one. and then we'll pack one into the car and deliver it to a show or an event or something.

Check it out!

Thank you to Strawberry Curls, for putting one of my Our Lady's in this show! If you are in the area check out all this fantastic artwork.
How refreshing it would be to see bright beautiful artwork on a chilly November night!

Our Lady

This is a Mary I made earlier last week, getting ready for St. Anne's- I had to make a special trip to Restore to find a door that would fit this panel. I think this door works really well, I hope I find some more.
A woman asked me about my art while I was holding the fabric up to the door.
She said, "people go for that?"
it was funny.

Pen Cups

(Halloween week and I'm thinking Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!)

These are my cool new pen cups made from:

tin cans
a gray coat
a red sweater
a white polar fleece pullover
and new trimmings

I am bugging everyone for tin cans, and rummaging through recycling bins on my street, it's rough but look how cute they are!!!!

They will be at the St. Anne's show and at
City Arts Market.

"Be proud of your composter!"

Earlier in the month, my mom and I took a free community class on composting, and with the free class you got a free Earth Machine!

Today Max and I installed it in the backyard, close to the house for easy access. He thought it was a fort and I turned around and he was inside it!

So far, I composted a tiny gourd!:-)

I like it. I like things that make you feel self-sufficient.

(the manual said that beginning composters often put the composter too far from the house, but they recommend being "proud of your composter" and putting it nearby for frequent deposits from your kitchen:-))

Cute card

I ordered these from TayloredArts on Etsy. They remind me of my black chairs, and my love of red and Christmas...:-) I am going to make a Christmas chair and this will be the tag. xo

KnittyDirtyGirl teaches my nannies knitting!

A very special thank you to Rachel-Marie, www.knittydirtygirl.etsy.com for coming to my house for my October au pair meeting and teaching all my girls to knit!!! yeah!

She was super great, and very very nice to all the girls, even though they went crazy and ransacked her bag of yarn balls!

I feel like this has been such a busy week. I've been working on little crafty projects for the upcoming shows, and had to really work hard to clean the house up for this meeting. So much is going on!

I'm learning that the fall/winter is the busiest time for shows-
I need some soup and I need to go to bed! it's almost 2am!!!!

A Secret Photo for Someone....

Hi my friend, and you know who you are:-) Isn't this just a crazy coincidental photo? And I knew who they were! even weirder!!! Your grilled cheese is waiting for you. It's all buttery and cheesy and stuff. This pic is a sign from above! Come by anytime...
I am always your friend:-) xo

My first class!

With the girl scouts! what a delight they were! and I felt like I came full circle, as a former art loving kid, and a big time Girl Scout myself:-) we painted drawer fronts from ReStore, using salvaged house paints and craft paint. They loved my buttons! This photo is so similar to my Girl Scout "unit" camp photos...it's uncanny. The cool difference is that I'm like the counselor now!
xo

Happy Birthday Occy....

Here's a doll I made for Octavian out of one of my old handbags (the brown micro suede part), his 1st birthday is tomorrow- the party was today. Rachel-Marie's sweet son.

I love FreeCycle

I think I started using FreeCycle in May? I love it!
it's crazy how much stuff we have that we don't really want, and how people in the Lancaster County Freecycle group are so giving.
It has been not only fantastic for cleaning out my house, but I've gotten some things that I would never have expected. Like a large tin barn star which are popular here- I hung it on the side of my garage. Yesterday...the Hunter baseball ceiling fan for Max's room, and over the summer Max had more shorts from Freecycle than I could fit in his dresser.
Whereas before, I would have bagged things up and dropped them at Goodwill, now I give them to real people directly! and no one pays anything for anything. how great is that!

The price of making your house unique

I need a new bathroom vanity and sink but the ones I've found near me, are made from particleboard. I can't use particle board cabinet doors in my art, so no way am I using them in my bathroom!
So, I'm redoing the existing vanity, replacing the doors with beadboard ones, and replacing the sink and faucet with a set I found on the side of the road. Amazingly, it fits my vanity, and has cottage-ey "hot/cold" faucet knobs. However, the cost to install this top and put new pipes in under the sink (they are old and noisy)...$239!
The parts I found retail for $300, so it's worth it. And what a story...the plumber says, "so you find your plumbing supplies by the side of the road?"

Last night at Goodwill I found a pair of milk glass bedside lamps. A PAIR! I am infatuated with the lamp in the little girls room in the new Charlotte's Web movie. The decorating from that time was all about texture. I love it. The pair I found was rubberbanded together with that scary Goodwill appliance price tag "Sold AS IS"...for $3.99.

It felt daring to take this old lamps home, all dirty, but they are SO cool! and isn't that what all the cool homes in magazines have? really funky cool old lamps?

So I cleaned them in the sink with a brush (the dirt was all in the grooves), they gleamed. Then today my husband bought two rewiring kits for $30. Ugh. Then we went out tonight for shades, and I ended up with pleated ones, that might be all wrong, I don't know, but the white of them works (I'm really working towards all CLEAR colors in my house, no beige). The shades were $14 for the pair.

Today, when my husband took the lamps apart, I had to repaint the brass "look" bits. Brasso didn't work, so I don't think they were brass:-)

When I was at the dept store, a woman next to me in Lamps was buying a set of wrought iron ones for $30 flat. When I got home tonight, unsure of the shades I bought, I almost threw in the towel. But then I thought that in two years the dept ones will look boring, and I'll still have my ones that are at least 50 years old. That are so hard to find. That are as old as the house, and are unique like me.

And of course, down the road, when the house is in Cottage Living :-), they'll be a little notation about my lamps. "Found at a Goodwill for $3.99, Maggie's husband fitted the lamps with new wiring, and Maggie added the ball fringe to the shades."

You can't write stuff like that boring new lamps!

Etsy chair

my Etsy chair with beautiful hand spun yarns from knittydirtygirl.etsy.com!
it turned out so bohemian, and you gotta love that:-)
Add your own Etsy pins and things to it!
available soon,
on... you guessed it!

my new Grocery!

oh my....heaven....!
Stauffers of Kissel Hill's new Rohrerstown store- opening day today (the biggest SKH is the county)...it's right down the road, and looks like a really big version of Whole Foods (which for some reason hasn't come to Lancaster yet).
the produce aisles and aisles and aisles are so tidy .... the prepared foods are gorgeous, it's just great.
I am partial to SKH because when we moved to Lititz when I was 17, from a tiny town in Massachusetts, the SKH was so close to us and we thought it was fantastic. We went there nearly every day and came home with tasty things constantly. We took our guests there...it was kind of a joke, but they loved it and would go back the next day too.
now I have my own store and it's better than that one. there is something about having a really really really nice food store near your home. It makes you just feel good. I think it's because it's one of those places that you go to all the time, so the nicer it is, the nicer your life is.

1000 Handmade Greetings....

is coming out a month earlier than expected!!! Hooray! Look for two of my cards in it!

ISBN: 9781592534739
January 2009

$25.00
$27.50 Canadian
£14.99

Flexi-binding
1000 photos/illustrations
320 Pages
Size (in): 9 x 9

1,000 Handmade Greetings

Creative Cards and Clever Correspondence

Laura McFadden, with Deborah Baskin

Even in this current day and age, where we are all senders and receivers of voluminous emails, handmade greeting cards, stationery, and invitations never lose their charm or fail to touch the heart. This book is a delightful showcase of 1,000 exciting and contemporary hand-designed greeting cards, with examples that feature a wide array of paper craft techniques, including: paper cutting, paper stencils, stamping, punching, stitchery, monoprints, screenprints, paper piecing, and more.

Laura McFadden runs her own graphic design studio, Laura McFadden Design, Inc., and has contributed to various craft books and magazines. She is co-author with April Paffrath of The Artful Bride: Wedding Invitations and The Artful Bride: Wedding Favors & Decorations. Her most recent book is 100 Ideas for Stationery, Cards, and Invitations.

Press today....

Claudia, aka reporter called me last night for info on au pairs and technology while they're working....it's fun to be quoted in the paper:-)

Fun night with the au pairs....

I met the au pairs from Reading and Lancaster tonight at Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant. It was really fun. People (ie. the waiter) find them all very entertaining...7 young people from all over the world. the place is a little bizarre but you remember going there, that's for sure:-)
Really really excellent service I might add and the salad was spicy! (but really good)

And YES! those are two boy au pairs!!!! Moritz and Tobi!

Yesterday I painted the kids table at Eastern Market with the kids...it is BEAUTIFUL! I can't believe I didn't have my camera. At one time there were about 10 kids painting it at once.

Very very hot here...I was enjoying our early fall!

I crack myself up late at night:-)

The edge of the seat has Lancaster street names around it!

Check it out....I'll have some art here....

Whales and stuff!

I had a dream of three whales!
Here is what they say that means:
'dreaming of a whale reflects a sense of calmness and spirituality within you"

The three of them looked like this Orca! It was startling because in the dream I was standing on the beach on a rainy day by myself and they appeared right at the shoreline.

I have had many revelations lately that are very positive to think of. My house is really coming together, I love being a local artist and spending time with a wonderful circle of artist friends, and I've realized since my son turned 3 last month, that I did a great job these last three years!!!! He helped make me who I am now...and helped define me. All the decisions I made for him or related to him or our family were hard at the time, but now things are fantastic and I am so proud of myself! It is hard to quit your job, but it was worth it...like a million dollars worth it! and I think now that pursuing my dream of being an artist has been so rewarding to me.
Whenever I had thought about "winning the lottery" (during my twenties as I sat in my cubicle as an admin) I would say, "I would be an artist." and the people around me would say, "you like art?" and it would floor me that they didn't even sense that about me!!!

I had a meeting with Lancaster Indie Arts on Wed...and what a wonderful thing it is to talk about art on a Wed morning at 11am and not weird office crap and politics! I feel like I'm in heaven. Like I did when I was at summer camp as a kid and we would be walking down a path to the Art Cabin for Art class.

It really really pays you back in a zillion different ways to just follow your heart, because when you do...things in your life will just move along..."swimmingly!" :-)

Saturday

Saturday Mary and my first Day of the Dead piece.
both are on Etsy now.
www.maggiefrenchfolkart.etsy.com

Little guys on my chair!

At artist Maggie C. Mowery's house:
...her new silkscreened stuffed critters!!!....www.happysilence.etsy.com.
A great artist and friend:-)!

Thursday...Friday....

A Week of Mary:

Monday Mary, Tuesday Mary, Wednesday Mary....

I could sit here all day....

An Inspiring End to Summer 2008

We just got back from a long weekend, at my husbands families summer place...my son is playing there and having the time of his life, and it is so neat to think that he's the 5th generation of his family that has summered here- over a period of 99 years!!!! This is Anne's cottage- a woman that really fascinates me...so much so that I've knocked on her door twice, not knowing her, and have been invited in both times- and she just talks with me like she knows me.
This weekend I asked if I could photograph her place- I got some great shots that I will use for a special show Lancaster Indie Arts is putting together. a "Home" themed show benefiting Habitat for Humanity, my favorite cause these last couple of years.
Anne's home represents a dream summer home to me. And if you think the outside looks cool, the inside gets even better. She really inspired me this time. I love the clear colors of everything in her house. She is so cool, I can't stop thinking about the whole thing...She's sitting inside wearing a red sweater, eating her dinner, surrounded by the artiest stuff, and next to her are her books, and her flatscreen. A woman after my own heart!
We are really lucky to have a wonderful place like this cottage community to take my son to in the summer. With towering trees and little paths and fantastic porches...no traffic...it is a perfect place to spend summers in childhood.

What I'm into at the Moment:

cottages. cape cod houses. sweeping my whole first floor of hardwood floors, with a broom, autumn, Lowes, beadboard paneling, rainy days, Rice Krispies, English muffins, Green Mountain Hazelnut coffee, reading, www.sesamestreet.org videos, new white socks, white dishes.

www.maggiefrenchfolkart.etsy.com
$150

I'm old, and I like it!

Here's a pic of me and DH last Saturday at my friends gorgeous wedding at the York Country Club!

I've been super busy this week- with German au pair Lena here- but I managed to finish my Night Night Sleep Tight Don't Let the Bed bugs bite end table.

available on etsy very soon!!!!

Today I went to IKEA after dropping off Lena (who is flying to Orange County, Cali!!!!)
Oh I love IKEA! So clean. So modern. But people should pair their stuff with homemade things. This week is art art art...nesting nesting nesting...maybe a little Vacation and lots of time to think about me as an older mom...I want to look comfortable and arty all the time (for those of you in the world that think I'm annoying and insane for wanting to look "arty" go fly a kite!)
My idea of arty is a gorgeous gray sweater and old dark wash jeans, Dansko shoes, and cool glasses. Iwould love to have crazy curly red hair though...but the heavens above gave that to Erica:-)

Paint a Chair with me (and a German au pair!) this Saturday

Saturday, August 16

First annual Eastern Market Tomato Festival from 9 - 2!
Salsa Contest (you be the judge!), Salsa Dancing, Tomato Golf, Tomato Toss, Taste testings and more! Live music by the Main Street Mystics. Tomato-themed chair painting with Maggie French.

I am busy getting this chair ready, and getting Lena's room ready (the German au pair that will stay with me this week) also, my son's 3rd birthday is Sunday!!!!...big party with lots of food, and some decorations from Etsy:-) (cupcake toppers from rockabyeretro.etsy.com.

Arrival of the Big Desk

I am now, officially, the proud owner of the biggest desk in the world. It wasn't really my goal to have such a huge desk...but I wanted a space for my fax machine, and I wanted it to have shelf space on the top of it.
The three boxes it came in, filled up my dining room and kitchen. It took me over an hour to bag up all the styro foam and fold the boxes that would have fit several kindergardeners in each!
Sitting here now at it...I feel like I'm at ski lodge or something in Colorado.
It's very nice, is real wood! (what a concept! :-) )and subsequently, it smells good!

Note regarding photo: Item appears WAY bigger when you get it home!

Hi Grandma....

This has never happened to before, and I rather enjoyed it. For two days, in different areas of my house, I could smell my Grandma's perfume, her hallway, her upstairs, her house, her closets...every time I turned a corner in my own home.
I know it was her, because this hasn't happened before. And it continued and continued. I might as well have been back in her house. Hi Grandma!

I have been busy busy busy cleaning the house this weekend, and fixing up my guest room (a mess since DH decided to install insulation last winter in our crawl spaces, and used the guest room as project central.) In one week, Lena, my German au pair - for - a - week! will be here...transitioning to LA. So Max will have a friend, and I'll have someone to talk to. She reminds me of myself when I was a nanny. Max runs up to the guest room now and chatters, "Me in Ena room, yes, sleep here..."

Sonic

This is one of many crazy and fun things about my au pair job...
I can do things like...randomly take a girl from Switzerland who has only been in America for two weeks, to Sonic at 9pm for an ice cream blast. Her first time experiencing 1950's style car window restuarant service. Too bad the waitress wasn't wearing roller skates:-)
She laughed so hard when I pressed the button to order, and then said, "OH ONLY IN AMERICA!!!!"
It is so fun to experience things through my au pairs eyes. Americans in general don't get to hang out with people from a variety of other countries. Me on the other hand....I get to do this kind of stuff anytime...and just for the record, it's really cute when they accidently start talking to me in their native language. My au pair said, "I'm going to open my own drive-in, in Switzerland!!!" all smiles of course:-)

Back to painting furniture....

I have finally gotten a nice amount of work done on my "Night Night Sleep Tight Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite" bedside table. it's really cool. Pics are coming soon.
I want to finish it in the next couple days and then...get this...start painting an Etsy chair.
And yes...it will be Etsy ORANGE!

Max's Room

i think it's finished...I want to add a few of the
vehicles applique things to the road and hills-
I've been thinking this week, "boy, I really have to do some art, I'm slacking!" and then I remember that THIS is what I did this week :-) I think it's a special thing that I did for Max, and that feels good. He walks in his room and says , "Ta Da!"
it even looks cool from the hall! He doesn't know he's getting a train table for his birthday, it's replacing the little IKEA table.