Happy Zombie

To all my awesome friends who come to my blog, tweet me on twitter, pin with me on Pinterest, photo with me on Flickr - my heartfelt and warm mushy holiday greeting and wishes for a joyous holiday season to you. Thank you for your kindness and laughs, good cheer and lovin’s - thank you for being a part of my life.

May you be surrounded and squeezed with hugs by the ones you love, with family and friends, goodness and kindness.  If your family is far away (like mine are) - may you feel their love from the much too many miles between you.  Knock, knock, Santa… jet packs, please.

May your holiday be filled with the childlike joy and good friends who foster it.

May your New Year be filled with kept resolutions and achievable goals.  Mine is to stop gosling’ing. I promise.

xxoo,
Monica

(Big thanks to QuiltDad for sending me the Zombie Zack!!)

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Hey girl - you can never be too rich, or too thin, or have enough access to Photoshop or have too much Ryan Gosling in your life. So I’m jumping on Ryan on the Hey Girl Train.

(I feel bad for not giving a photo credit to the original photos of Ryan that I swiped used to make my “hey girl” memes from, but the original Ryan Gosling shots are all over the internet and I have no idea who the photographers are. So what I’m trying to say is, is that if I’m arrested for defacing someone’s photos - please send me a cake with a knife in it Ryan pics to decorate my cell with.)

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I love Sew,Mama,Sew’s Giveaway Day! LOVE it. I love giving a giveaway goodie and I love going to all the giveaways. In the years past, I’ve met and made some really good friends through SMSGD.  Not to mention discovering a bunch of great new blogs.  Sometimes the best gifts are hiding behind other gifts (it’s how I discovered my friend Krista) - so be sure and go back to all the sites you fell in love with that you discovered through Sew, Mama, Sew’s Giveaway Day!

I’m giving away a 3″ jelly roll of my Happy Mochi Yum Yum fabric (29 fabrics in all). Leave a comment - maybe you’d like to comment on what your favorite sweet treat is at the moment or what you’re craving?  I’m CRAVING my late Omi’s tapioca pudding - and eating it with her in her kitchen in Germany.  Right before dinner.  She was that cool - dessert before dinner! 

Drawing for the HMYY jelly roll is open to domestic and international commenters, and ends on Dec 16th at 5pm-ish PST. I’ll use Random.org to draw a lucky comment number.

December 17, 2011 Edited in:
Giveaway Day has ended and we have a winner, winner, Happy Mochi Yum Yum jelly roll dinner (aaaand, exhale)!  Thank you all for joining in on the giveaway.  The comments were so fun, and came  from such amazing and wonderful people.  Everyone’s comments were so kind, interesting, YUMMY, touching and poignant (and some cracked my ess up!).   I would LOVE to go all Oprah and say, “e v e r y o n e - l o o k - u n d e r - y o u r - s e a t…” and I’d have a prezzy for everyone.  But I’m only me, with crazy fantasies… so I thought I’d add an extra winner and draw two numbers.  Using random.org for comments 1-972, the winners are #24 Cindy and #810 Jo… please look under your seats!

Sewing machine & gear: naked

Large blue cooler: Trader Joe’s in Portland.

Helper:  comes with slobber

Helper:  seeking approval

Bam: $6.99 sewing machine travel bag

The goods + fold up hand truck: Bam, insta-butler

Me: felling pretty dang happy over my $6.99 mobile sewing-2-go travel bag!  Thank you, Trader Joe’s!

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I love the holidays. LOVE them. I LOVE the hustle and bustle, the merriment and merrymaking, the making and the sewing, the gifting and the prezzies, the ornaments and decorations. Most of all I love my family and friends that go with all the holiday goodness.

I also love stopping to smell the eye candy. Rest. Resting. Respite.
Refueling my tank.

Fueling some more - tank is just about full.

The cutest Christmas tree ornament ever!  I got this gem from Magpie Ethel at her booth at the Laurelhurst Winter Bazaar yesterday.  It’s on it’s way to a new home, so I may have to hunt Magpie Ethel down at Crafty Wonderland next Sunday for some more sparkle crack! Once you go sparkle…

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Where Women Create + 12 Days + 48 artists + Holiday magic + prizes galore = A W E S O M E N E S S!  I’m so freaking thrilled to be included again in the WWC Twelve Days of Fabulous Holiday Giveaways. Today is DAY 2 - my day… and I’m a little speck of bell pepper on a pretty amazing pizza!  Holy schmokes - you should see who I’m sharing the day with and the rest of the line up!

My give-away is a Fat Eighth bundlette of all 29 pieces in my Happy Mochi Yum Yum collection. Go there now and leave a comment to enter (and for all the other prezzies too).  Go.  Now!

Welcome to my day of Sarah Fielke’s Quilting From Little Things blog tour!  I’m so honored and excited to be included in this tour, especially since I had the privilege of making a quilt from the book long before it’s even available.  AND because I love Sarah so dang much.  Somewhere between my mailbox and the publisher’s shipping department awaits my copy of Quilting From Little Things… waiting to cradled in my arms, to be loved and to be devoured (knock, knock, delivery organization).  Like everyone else, I’ll be visiting all the blogs on the tour (list below) to peek inside Sarah’s delicious new book!

What I love so much about From Little Things is that you make little things!  Great to try new things + learn new things + instant gratification.   Sarah has a great gab about her new book with Pat Sloan on American Patchwork & Quilting Radio show.  It’s a great listen!

Since my book is still in transit and I have no book photos to post, I decided to do my own photo-shoot with the little quilt I made from the Diamond Chips pattern - and enlist the help of my Blythe doll, Melvita. She did fine… fine until I had her do some The Walking Quilted shots. She didn’t get how I didn’t want her face in the shot, and she was not happy.

Not happy at all. In fact, Melvita broke down into a tantrum. I’m pretty sure she even gave me the finger.

Turns out Melvita just can’t handle her gin & tonics.

But that’s ok, Melvita - be that way…

… because I have Photoshop.

Check out the past, be current and check out what Lissa is sayin’ today, and then step in to the future and enjoy the entire book tour!
28 Nov: Fat Quarterly
28 Nov: Amy Ellis
29 Nov: Thomas Knauer
30 Nov: Camp Follower Bags
30 Nov: Ryan Walsh
01 Dec: Happy Zombie
01 Dec: Moda Lissa
02 Dec: Mrs Schmenkman Quilts
02 Dec: True Up
03 Dec: Pink Chalk Fabrics
03 Dec: Pam Kitty Morning
04 Dec: Sew,Mama,Sew!
04 Dec: Pat Sloan

Sarah’s publisher has set up a deal for the Quilting from Little Things blog tour readers to get a discount of $5 off at MarthaPullen.com. Use promo code QUILTLITTLE to get your savings before the blog tour promotion expires (7/31/12).

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It’s like someone crawled into my head - and designed a product just for me!   I must have been sending signals out to the universe - and Panasonic must have had their aluminum foil hats on. Or it was Santa… and he came early (and misplaced his alleged Naughty List).

This is not an infomercial - this is a review and big fat thank you to Panasonic for making the Panasonic 360° Freestyle Iron Happy Zombie Cordless Dream Iron!

How could I not love the shiny and slick sole-plate with generous steam holes and crazy shape that reminds me of Stewie Griffin’s head.  The Panasonic 360° Freestyle Stewie 360° feels awesome in my hand and has such a sweet glide in all directions.  The 10 minute auto shut-off is perfect for me, too, because color me neglectful.

The gravy on top of this iron’s boat of gravy is it’s carrying case.  I love it SO MUCH I want to hug it (full disclosure… I kinda hugged it a little).  Snap off.  Snap on.  Bam.  Easy as pie.   I’m an on-the-go sewer and am always lugging my sewing gear to friends houses, Sweet Hot Yam sewing circles, retreats and Portland Modern Quilt Guild sewing days. My thorn has always been packing my pesky iron, especially at go-home time.  Not any more!  And I love that in limited sewing spaces - I have a spot to put my iron that’s not on my mini travel ironing board.  Cue choir.

I’m so in love with this iron, that I asked some super amazing awesome people if they’d be interested in providing one of these baby’s for a give-away on my blog.  And they said yes!  Iron name change request to The Happy Zombie Cordless Dream Stewie 360°… not so much. Leave a comment and I’ll draw a name from Random.org for a winner on Thursday, Dec 1st at noon-ish (PST), and Panasonic will send the winner the iron.  If you like - share who your favorite cartoon was from childhood. Mine was Scooby Doo (and still is).  Though I do love me some Family Guy!

December 1, 2011 Edited in:
Winner, winner! The Panasonic 360° Freestyle Iron give-away has now ended. Thank you all for joining in on the give-away! Using random.org for comments 1-805, the winner of the “Happy Zombie Cordless Dream Stewie 360°” is: #36 - Mary Anne!

I made a feast for dinner last night - 22 lb. turkey, stuffing, cranny cran crans, mashed potatoes, gravy and yams.
Just the three of us.
No greens.
No veggies.
No pies.
Pretty much just the meat n potatoes (and the yams just for me).

And then it dawned on me… I basically made a huge cache of sandwich fixin’s for the week. Gawd I love being a grown-up.

Turkey pattern by my friend Vanessa and can be found here.

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Shortly before I started “crafty blogging” (my blog has a past), one of the blogs that inspired me to make the switch was WhipUp.Net. WhipUp was one of the handful of sparks that made me want to taste the crafting rainbow from my own blog. Fast-forward to 5+ years later, and my rock-star idol and inspire-er Kathreen of WhipUp.Net asks ME if I want to take part in HER Kids’ Crafternoon Felting book. Not only was I incredibly flattered and honored, but I also had a holy crap moment!   And that moment is still lingering.

So here it is, Kids’ Crafternoon Felting, published by Hardie Grant. The last of the four Kids’ Crafternoon series. WHAT an amazing book filled with great projects for kids. Great kids stuff that adults will like too. Dang cute stuff. Fun stuff for kids to make, fun stuff for adults to make for kids.  Don’t let the title fool you - it’s for all ages.  Just freaking cute projects, like the Zombie Critter Charms by Lisa Tilse:

Dachshund Moneybox by Timothy Haugen:

Who Loves Ewe by Cate Holst:

Cute’n Cup Cozy by me!

One style for sweet tastes…

… one style for savory tastes.

There’s so much more to see and read about Kids’ Crafternoon Felting, so be sure to stop by the other AMAZING blogs on the blog party tour.

14 Nov:  Lisa Tilse from The Red Thread
15 Nov:  Suzie Fry from soozs
16 Nov:  Larissa Holland from mmmcrafts
17 Nov:  Pascale Mestdagh from Between the Lines
18 Nov:  Christine Chitnis from Christine Chitnis
19 Nov:  Holly Keller from Chez Beeper Bebe
20 Nov:  Monica Solorio-Snow from Happy Zombie
21 Nov:  Cate Holst from Go Make Me
22 Nov:  Shannon Cook from Luvinthemommyhood
23 Nov:  Jennifer Casa from JCHandmade
24 Nov:  Kate from Picklebums
25 Nov:  Steph Morgan from Modern Parents Messy Kids
26 Nov:  Kara Fleck from Simple Kids
27 Nov:  Maddie from Li’l Magoolie
28 Nov:  Jackie Boucher from Oh Dee Doh
29 Nov:  Bianca from Sadie and Lance
30 Nov:  Tricia Hogbin from Little Eco Footprints
01 Dec:  Lisa Siebert guest posting at Poppytalk

Hardie Grant has kindly given me a copy of Kids’ Crafternoon Felting to give away to one lucky winner.  Leave a comment and I’ll use random.org to pick a winner on this coming Thursday noon-ish, PST.  If you have a memorable craft project you made as a kid - share it in your comment if you like.  To start things rolling, my most memorable craft is the butt fugly felt gingerbread man I made in Brownies (in the 3rd grade, I think).  My mom scoffed at me for calling him ugly, and said that one day I would love him like she did.  Today I think he (Mr. B. Fugly) is beautiful and he hangs on my design wall and I smile at him every day.  And Mr. Fugly smiles back.

November 25, 2011 Edited in:
Winner, winner! The Kids’ Crafternoon Blog Party book give-away has now ended. Thank you all for joining in on the give-away! Using random.org for comments 1-90, the winner of the Kids’ Crafternoon Felting book is smack dab in the middle (shout out to Jan Brady!): Comment #45 - Kim!