the peaceful peacock

Ya’ll should run on over to check out my Fea­tured Seller arti­cle for the Etsy team Gypsy Road.

There’s even a giveaway!

A set of four reusable gro­cery bags in vin­tage fabric…

and a pretty lit­tle felted mohair scarflette that didn’t make the cut for Christ­mas (it was itchy and I couldn’t solve the prob­lem in time to mail it off if you must know).

Guide­lines for entry are over at the Gypsy Road blog and the draw­ings will take place on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 23. Good luck!!

free stuff

I paused for a moment yes­ter­day and real­ized that I am in the mid­dle of not one, not two, not three, but FOUR, yes FOUR green hats.

I must be recov­er­ing from all of the pink from last month.

Well, with the excep­tion of the blue-green hat in the front there, all of these will be avail­able in The Shop here pretty quick. And by pretty quick I mean by Fri­day because my inter­view with Gypsy Road (the very best Etsy team in the world) will be pub­lished then and I should prob­a­bly have some­thing in my shop to pro­mote, eh?

As part of the Gypsy Road Fea­tured Seller spot (which you will find here) I have the option of giv­ing away some of my good­ies, so you all can look for­ward to the oppor­tu­nity to win a set of my gro­cery bags!

There will also be another lit­tle giftie but I’m not spilling what that is…you’ll just have to wait until Friday.

free stuff, givewaway, reusable grocery bags, wool hats

So the baby is teething, mama’s strained from the Four­teen Days of Mad­ness, the fuel pump in our car has decided that it’s had enough, and the neighbor’s cat just fig­ured out how to get into our house to visit with us.

Which is a pretty big con­cern because Kyle, our anti-social para­keet, just decided that it’s really fun to fly around the house to explore and bang into things.

All of this and not an ounce of choco­late in the entire house. Crap.

Kind of like that scene from ET, isn’t it? Try to ignore the freaky plas­tic bunny.

Need­less to say he is on lock­down until we do a lit­tle trim­ming of the flight feath­ers. We’ve been wait­ing for him to real­ize that birds around here don’t have to live behind locked doors, so it’s a very happy day to see him begin to accept his new envi­ron­ment. Finally. Like every­thing, time is the answer. And a bit of kind­heart­ed­ness and patience goes quite a ways of course. We almost ended up res­cu­ing a Macaw too but thank­fully there is some­one who is an even big­ger softie than the peo­ple who live in this house. Whew.

We have once again reaf­firmed our deci­sion hold out for an African Grey and the lit­tle guy will find us when the time is right.

Any­hoo, I have the tuto­r­ial ready for “How to Make a Sim­ple Apron from a Repur­posed Skirt” that will be posted bright and early tomor­row morning.

Learn how you too can resem­ble Madonna, circa 1983, in this lovely apron.

For now I have dosed the boy with some of this very orange, very berry fla­vored magic potion:

and I’m putting my Mate­r­ial Girl Apron on to make some of these lit­tle babies, which were obvi­ously cre­ated for days like this:

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Choco­late Crin­kle Cookies

1 cup cocoa (ok, I found some choco­late in the house)

1/2 cup saf­flower oil (I used butter)

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 cups flour

2 tsp bak­ing powder

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

Cream sugar and oil, mix in cocoa. Blend in eggs, one at a time. Add flour, bak­ing pow­der, vanilla, and salt. Chill dough for a cou­ple of hours. Spoon onto cookie sheet, press into disks, and sprin­kle with pow­dered sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for six min­utes, rotate pan and bake for an addi­tional 4 minutes.

(Watch the bak­ing time on these–we’re at high alti­tude and use a con­vec­tion oven.)

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Kind of like a brownie did it with a cookie. All I know is that if there is a heaven these are there in abundance.

Oh yeah, and I’ve decided to give away one of the baby car­ri­ers that is made dur­ing the Four­teen Days of Mad­ness. I’ll post some details later after I’ve had some cook­ies. And maybe a beer.

apron tutorial, cookie recipe, free stuff, parakeet, sewing tutorial