Etsy makes it Easy

I've been doing a lot of searching the web for fabrics lately to find the perfect prints for the baby bedding. There are so many fabric sites to look through but the absolute BEST place to search for fabrics is ETSY.com. Etsy is an online marketplace that supports all things handmade and vintage. There are numerous ways to search for what you are looking for and just browse the thousands of unique listings. Be warned though, it is very easy to get sucked in!

The Baby Cage

I picked up the crib on Saturday morning up in Carlsbad. It is everything I hoped it would be. Margarita and her 4 year old daughter Selena were super nice and helped me to load it into the back of my car. It barely fit! The thing is freakin HUGE! It came with all the parts in perfect condition and includes crib, mattress, toddler rail, and base boards for the full bed conversion. All in all it would be around $1000+ if we purchased it brand new. I came home and set it up myself in under an hour. Pretty easy to assemble and it looks great in the corner of our bedroom until he is a little older and we'll move him into the other bedroom.

Now I am working on finding some really cool fabrics to make the bedding for it. I want it to coordinate with the colors on my bedspread which is orange and white. As with everything I'm purchasing for him I don't want it to be to kiddy or cartoonish, ie Winnie the Pooh. I like the idea of using a color theme of turquoise, lime green, white, orange, and brown. Kind of a tropical feel. Here are some fabrics I like.

Baby Crib Bargain

Sorry I haven't had a post in awhile, it's been pretty busy around here the last week or so. Some exciting news though...I'm going to pick up my crib tomorrow! I have been obsessively checking craigslist postings for white convertible cribs with a tall backboard for the past month or so. To make it even trickier I wanted it to include a nice mattress and be in practically new condition, all for an unbelievable price. Oddly enough my patience paid off. Here is the post:

BABY CRIB SPECIAL PRICE 2DAY ONLY!!!! - $150 (La Costa, Carlsbad)

BEAUTIFUL, WHITE Sorelle "Maxine" crib for sale. SPECIAL OFFER!!!!! MUST SELL BEFORE WEEKEND!!!! Includes brand NEW Mattress, Toddler rail, and Conversion kit. This BEAUTIFUL crib Converts to a FULL size bed. First 150.00 takes it!!!! IN PERFECT CONDITION!!! MUST SEE!!! Sacrifice at 150.00 Paid $800 NEW!! Please Call 000-000-000 I WILL DELIVER!!!!!!

First I did my research and looked up the brand online here, and sure enough it was everything I wanted. I called, thinking it would be snapped up already, but talked with a really nice and super talkative single mom. I got the cribs back story from beginning to current day as well as her relationship status and her plans for the weekend! WHOA TMI :) I pick it up tomorrow morning in Carlsbad, a little bit of a drive, but whatever it's a terrific deal. Can't wait to start posting pics and searching for the perfect bedding!

Time to give my jeans a break

Man, I am really feeling the effects of the extra weight I'm lugging around. You wouldn't think an extra 15lbs would make much of a difference but jeez! So of course I made the BIGGEST mistake you could possibly make when pregnant, I measured myself! Weight is one thing, of course I expected to put on the pounds, but for some reason actually seeing the numbers on the measuring tape made my eyes pop out of my head! So word to the wise, NEVER MEASURE YOURSELF WHEN PREGNANT! So in order to set
things right I am planning on purchasing a pair of lululemon yoga pants. All my friends swear by them and they are supposed to make your butt look amazing, I'm sold.

(Unrelated picture...Super cute alligator puppet and monkey I picked up at a garage sale for $2!)

Derby Day Onsie

Another cute little gown to add to my collection. I had heard at a baby shower that these were great to have on hand because you don't have to fumble with buttons or pants and they are easy on/off.

It's Obvious

I'm officially "obvious", at least I've passed THIS stage. You know the one when a woman looks a little heavy in the middle but people are afraid to say anything because she could or couldn't be expecting. So at least once a day now people are starting to ask when I'm due.

May Gray go away

May Gray has descended upon coastal cities in California, boo. If you've never visited during that time, your not missing out. My Dad actually says that the coldest he's ever been in June was the week he visited us one year. May Gray/June Gloom is a marine layer that covers the entire coast for a few months in Spring and makes the whole day colder. It's really not that bad until your BBQ/beach day/other outside event, is brought down by all the fog. Sometimes it breaks during midday for a few hours but mostly its just gloomy. This is a picture of Torrey Pines during June Gloom. Bummer.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it.

"June Gloom (also May Gray) is a California term for a weather pattern that results in overcast skies with mild temperatures during the late spring and early summer. The condition is prevalent in many parts of the world where marine stratus or stratocumulus clouds are common, particularly off the western coasts of continents—especially off Peru, Namibia, Western Australia, and California. Such cloud systems are persistent year-round off the coast, yet in certain seasons they blow ashore and create the gloomy "May Gray" effect on land. The June Gloom phenomenon has also been known to occur during the early fall in California.

Early mornings during this period are typically foggy, with an occasional drizzle. The fog turns to low clouds by late morning and early afternoon. Finally, by late afternoon, solar heating is sufficient to evaporate the clouds. Often the overcast will be evaporated ("burned off") quickly inland, but will linger along the immediate coast.

In California, the number of days from May to June that are gloomy vary from year to year. Cooler ocean temperatures, associated with La Niña, usually foretell a more gray period.

June Gloom has been reported by some Californians to bring on symptoms consistent with seasonal affective disorder. It is often cited as a time of depression."

Spoiled Rotten

Our dog spoiled, no way! THIS is what he does all day when we aren't home.

Mental Roller Coaster Ride

The past couple of days I've felt kinda blah. A little mental and a little physical. I think it's just my crazy pregnancy hormones playing tricks on me but I felt a little off. Not wanting to get out of bed, being lethargic all day, headaches, and being overly sensitive to little things that normally wouldn't effect me. Fortunately, I have an understanding husband and great friends to make me feel better (and feed me awesome food) when I need it most! Thanks Guys!

This is a little bitty pair of Chuck Taylors I picked up at a garage sale for like a dollar, they make me smile every time I see them. So naturally they have been sitting on our kitchen table for the past week!

Lil Vampire

Ha Ha, how funny are these pacifiers!!!
Check out there other silly selections at Billy Bob Pacifiers.

Where I've Worked

Yesterday I was browsing through some old photos and came across some shots we took of our old stores in Dallas, TX. Over the past 9 years we have opened 4 of our own stores and helped numerous others start theirs. Here are a couple of pics of the stores past...

This is a picture from the back of our first store in Deep Ellum looking towards the entrance. The Deep Ellum Store was open from for October 2000-January 2007. It is also where Ricky and I met and started "dating". It was our most profitable store and also the coolest in my opionion. We had to close down because the neighborhood went into a decline and people were afraid to come to the area. When we first opened we would be open until 1:00+ on Friday and Saturday nights and were pumping with business nonstop. Over the years the media got ahold of some unfortunate circumstances and less and less people visited the neighborhood. Business closed down left and right and we were one of the very last retail spots to oporate. LOTS and LOTS of awesome memories, Ricky even had an apartment behind the store for the first couple of years.



After noticing the decline in the Deep Ellum neighborhood we decided to open a second location at a new shopping center called Mockingbird Station about 3 miles away. Here we did the entire finish out to the spot which was a MAJOR undertaking. Installing a window front, bathrooms, AC unit, pretty much everything as it was a blank box to begin with. This location was open for about 3 years and we sold it when we decided to move back to San Diego in 2007.







Factory Vintage was our warehouse/store located next door to the Deep Ellum location. For the first year we just used the space to ship and pack orders and oporated our Particle Reconstruction line. But after we closed the doors to the Deep Ellum Store next door, we expanded and let people shop the warehouse and extremly low "bulk" prices. This was by far a biggest location at 10,000+ sq feet. It had an room for a few offices, a large particle workroom, a darkroom, screenprinting room, skateboarding half-pipe ramp, and tons and tons of racks and bins. There were even a few classic cars on display throughout the warehouse, a Jag and a Mercedes. We were oporating three locations at once in Dallas at one point and had a payroll fluxuating at about 20+people and interns.






These days we are running one location in Bay Park that houses Dust Factory Wholesale, Factory Vintage Retail, and Particle Reconstruction Clothing. It makes it much easier on us to have it all in one place. Check us out if you are ever in the area.

Pickles & Ice Cream

So far I have felt like this food craving thing that pregnant women were supposed to get was nonsense. I've had a few cravings: chocolate cake, smores, Hodad's veggie burger, but nothing that I couldn't just forget about till later. But today I craved coconut! I was thinking about it all day, at church, cleaning up around the house, on my walk, etc... I just could not get coconut out of my head. The weird thing is I never eat coconut. I went online to allrecipes.com to see if anything looked great, but I don't really feel like making a big amount of food. I went to People's Co-op to see if they had coconut pudding or something...NOPE! I finally ventured down to the new DIY frozen yogurt place they opened on Newport. You can choose from 16 flavors of frozen yogurt and pile it high with as many toppings as you please. I choose a squirt of peppermint, coffee, and vanilla yogurt with fresh mango, rasberry, 1 oreo, and TONS of coconut shavings on top! Perfection, craving averted, for now.

So Many Projects, So little Time!

Growing up I was surrounded by arts & crafts. My mother and grandmother were both very crafty, hands on, project type ladies... So it's only natural I follow in their footsteps. My grandma (my mom's mom) only lived a block away so I would walk to her house almost every day growing up to go paint ceramics. She had the whole setup, tons of paints and brushes, and even a kiln to fire the finished pieces in. It was so fun and year after year we would paint different little decorations for all the holidays. She was SUPER into holidays, but more on that in another post ;)

My mom was always into sewing projects. She too made everything under the sun holiday related. Stuffed life sized skeletons, reindeer wall hangings, and quilts for every season decorated our house year round. It was always cool to see what she would come up with next, and still is. So now that I have a "reason" to finally jump on the crafting bandwagon I can't stop it! I am in the middle of at least three projects excluding all the orders I fulfill at work.

The first project is a baby quilt I'm making out of blue, green, black, brown, and white patterned materials. It is my first quilt and I think it is coming along quite nicely. So far I have it all sewn together and have the sides evened up, I just need to buy some backing material and sew on a border and stitch it all together. I thought it up after not loving anything on the market as far as baby bedding goes, so I thought I'd do it myself.

Another cool project I'm working on is to embroider some blank baby onsies. I've hand embellished stuff before but never with any fancy stitches so I've been doing some research. I came across this cool site called Sublime Stitching and they have tons of patterns and designs you can order off there site. But being the I-want-it-right-now and I-don't-want-to-pay kind of person I decided to make my own patterns. After much thought on what would look cute on my little boy I've decided on doing an alphabet design across the front with a different color for each letter. First I hand drew the alphabet and then I scanned it in and traced it in Illustrator. Now I have to figure out how to reverse it and iron it onto the onsie to get a guide for my stitches. I'll post more pictures as the project nears completion.