Dealing cards the Arabella way

Arabella Story - All's well that ends well

             I don't have any extra available focus/concentration 

             to write a decent blog post myself, but I can retype this  

             lovely story Arabella created in preschool today 

              (her preschool in Roseville, CA by the way - just throwing that out there since this is a Roseville mom blog and I'm trying to organically get Google to 

              pick up on that fact):

Once upon a time there was a princess named Cinderella and a princess named Snow White, and a princess named Bambi. 

And dragons were flying and going "pht, pht, pht." 

And then princesses went into a castle. 

And then they saw something big, dark and scary. 

And it was just their pet cat. 

The end. 

The author on her porch - possibly contemplating future creative literary endeavors.

Valentine's Day kid's picks for Etsy

And now for something completely different from my last post. 

It's a shameless attempt to get the peeps on my most popular Pinterest board (Arabella's Dream Wardrobe) to come check out my blog.

I've made 2 collages of my most favorite Valentine's Day kids clothes and accessories available on Etsy - here's the first one (mostly modern less-traditional colors).

1. Itzi and Bitzi 2. Sparkkids Clothes 3. mfandj 4. TheAfricanLlama 5. SweetandSilly3 6. kakabaka 7. Itzi and Bitzi 8. TheStripedSwallow 9. Giddy Up and Grow 10. 3lp Couture

And the second one (mostly traditional less modern):

1. Sunflower Seed Stitch 2. Giddy Up and Grow 3. pdstudiosstore 4. The Modish Life 5. ArtsyCraftsy 6. shopantsypants 7. Birdy Boots

I used PicMonkey's collage feature which was painless and intuitive to use. Almost immediately after I made these, I saw this tutorial from A Creative Cookie showing how to use Photoshop to make the item collages with a white background like all the cool blogger kids do - next time. 

In case you're wondering, I won't be ordering a Valentine's outfit for Arabella this year due to our budget, and also I'm hoping to get her to wear the cute pink dress that I couldn't get her to wear on Christmas.

This one:

If you know me In Real Life, this dress is a 4t - so please call dibs in the comments if you want this hand-me-down when Arabella outgrows it.

Shocking News!

Don't you love sensationalized titles that force you to click to satisfy your curiosity and then disappoint with something mundane? Yeah, me too.



Anyway, I was at least slightly shocked to find that when I googled "grilled cheese trampoline" there are 12 pages of results before this blog comes up. Which sucks considering that I made the quote on the front page 

"Arabella says "If we were little people, we will jump on grilled cheese sandwiches like they were trampolines" 

our official blog description (since I couldn't figure out then how else to make the quote show up on Blogger, although now I know there's a widget for that. so maybe it's good we aren't boxing ourselves in as the grilled cheese trampoline people, as we are so much more than that, and I'm going to rotate the grilled cheese thing with a few more catchphrases as Arabella creates them)  But at least I learned something and that is: 

There are a LOT of people that eat grilled cheese before/after jumping on trampolines, and then they go and write about it on the internet.



Another shocker: I saw this article on Problogger.net entitled 15 Bloggers to watch in 2013, and I'm not on the list. Apparently having a erratic posting schedule, haphazard formatting, and a narrow topic of interest does NOT put you in front of the Problogger editors (probably also not a plus to start sentences with "Which sucks because...", especially when you know it's wrong but are too lazy to write otherwise). Who knew?  But I still recommend reading the article although I was overlooked as there are some blogs on there I never heard of before, but look really interesting. 

Three that really stood out to me that I'll be following:

1. http://hairromance.com - a step-by-step  hairstyle blog 

2. http://yesandyes.org - A super fun blog about lots of random stuff. Plus, blogger Sarah Von Bargen is 33 years old like me so she's automatically got supercool cred with me.

3. http://www.alexbeadonphotography.com/blog/ - a photographer's blog with gorgeous photos and Photoshop tutorials that even I can understand. 

I asked Arabella for something "shocking" she knows to round out this post. Her's her contribution:

"Marching is so hard that you even fall down when you skate, and then you march, march, march on the ground. Twiggy told me that." 

So enough with the sensationalism already; I need to leave this where it's at now, as the bed I'm sitting on just became Arabella's Chinese restaurant and I need to pick "dinner, food or dinner."

Help me choose - design choice for Arabella's room!

1.

2.

3.

4.

 

5.

6.

Sorry for taking the pics at an angle - I used Arabella's bed for the flat space. Any opinions/advice would be mucho appreciated. Thank you!

Arabella's video review of Suessical!

Here's Arabella's take on the performance:

So, the verdict is in - Arabella liked it. And so did her parents! We'll definitely be going again. Here's a link to another grownup's take on it with a much more comprehensive review:

http://www.greatlocalshows.blogspot.com/2012/08/seussical.html


I agree with everything said in the review link above, plus want to mention mom's pick for standout performance was Carli Meyer as Gertrude McFuzz, the bird with a little tail and a big crush on Horton the Elephant; Keith's standout pick is Randle Rankin as Horton.  Those are just highlights - the whole cast from little toddler through adult is entertaining and engaging throughout.

If you wonder why I am promoting this so heavily, it's because:
1. I love having great live local entertainment in Central Roseville
2. I want this group to be around when Arabella is old enough to perform in a few years (if she so chooses)
3. The talent pool in this town is AMAZING










All the details for performance times and location are here at 

http://www.perfcal.com/orgs/StandOutTalent.htm

Jennifer and Jason Bortz run Stand Out Talent at the Tower Theater and are doing an amazing job - 
Go see Suessical, and tell them Arabella sent you!

Did you see Suessical? Please leave us a comment and tell us what you thought. If you haven't seen it and don't plan to see it, then please comment below about why you want to be a Grinch (who was also in this show but we weren't able to find for a photo after).  

Butterflies

Butterflies by arabellajane on Polyvore

Arabella has been on a little story strike lately, but I asked reminded her the other day that she used to tell me stories that I could put on "us blog" to share with her adoring public, and asked her if she would tell me another one. I played it cool when she agreed out of the blue and set to transcribing - this story is short but super sweet.

Arabella's Butterfly Fancy Nancy Story

Butterfly come in the store and come in the house two threes and flutters!! And butterfly flutters by and Fancy Nancy comes and pets her butterfly and comes in the tree and Fancy Nancy climbs and her mother said "What's that big tree?"  Nancy says "It big tree you climb with" said Fancy Nancy. Butterfly flutters in the clouds and butterfly flaps his wings up to the sky! Us go on roof (the butterfly & Fancy Nancy and her mom). They took the ladder - no they flew in pike position and roll up there [visualize a fancy Olympics dive but in reverse going up from the ground to the roof is the way I understood it from Arabella's description]

The sad illustration above is one of my first attempts at Polyvore. I actually like it fairly well except for the huge white background, but   I have to get back to real paying appraisal work instead of playing with that anymore. Do you use Polyvore? If so, you can follow me under name arabellajane and I'd love to know what name you Polyvore under so I can follow you too. It's a lot of fun, and fairly simple once you get the hang of it if you use the premade templates. It's kind of like Pinterest collaging.   If you don't use it, have you heard of Polyvore? If you go to Polyvore.com, you can get started super easily. No, Polyvore is not paying me to write this and mobilize all 20ish of my readers to use Polyvore - although they should the way I am talking them up. OK, back to real work, Happy Tuesday everybody! But seriously, leave us a comment (about anything (besides spam of course)) - it makes our day bright and shiny!