Holiday Shopping Madness!

Trust me, I'm not one for skipping over Thanksgiving.  It's one of my absolute favorite holidays of the year (probably because I like to eat so much), but with the month of November comes shopping season and emmy-ray has lots of shows lining up, so I thought it prudent to share a few:

This one's coming up on Thursday, and it's my first time participating.  However the ARTichokes crew is such a great bunch, I think it'll be lots of fun.

The second holiday Ric Rac Roundup is coming!  Last year was super successful, and I got some fun new holiday decorations for my table display.  

The Honeypot Shop is a group I'm involved with via the Wedding Hive.  It's become a separate off shoot and will focus on supporting local Kansas City artists, designers, and indie businesses.  I'm really excited about this project and show, we have an awesome bunch of vendors.

So if you're a local gal, I hope to see you at maybe one of these events.  Come out, show your support, shop local, shop hand made!

xo, em

Audrey Kawasaki: Tangled

Hello lovelies.  It's Monday once again.  Sometimes it's hard to get to work, and get inspired at the beginning of the week, so today I wanted to share with you some of the beautiful work from one of my favorite artists, Audrey Kawasaki.  I found Audrey's work many years ago in college via Juxtapoze Magazine.  I was immediately drawn to her work.  She draws and paints on wood panels, allowing the warmth and grain of the pieces to enhance the work.  Each painting is intricately detailed, and I love her color palette.  Here are some of my favorite pieces from her solo show "Tangled" in Melbourne, Australia:

Hope you've found Audrey's work as inspiring as I always do.  Follow her art blog, and keep up with her newest work and shows.

A Keychain Give-away

Hello Freckled Nest Readers!  

I'd like to extend a big welcome to all my new visitors.  I've been working hard to fill my store up with new holiday treats, and I hope you all enjoy visiting my blog, and reading about my hand made adventures.  If you're also a handmaker of things or have a cool blog please feel free to leave it in your comment, I love checking out what all the other creative peeps in the blog-o-sphere are up to.  

And of course to all my loyal blog readers, if you'd like to enter this give-away pop on over to Freckled Nest and find out all the details.  You can win lots of other cool prizes, other than my keychain.

love, em

Holiday Event: Ladies Night Out at ARTichokes

The holidays are coming up so quickly, and I've got a few events up my sleeve this year.  The first is the ARTichokes Ladies Night Out.  It's coming up next week, so I wanted to make sure and broadcast the info to all my lovely readers.  I hope you can join me and many other talented KC vendors, and if not, stay tuned for posts about my other holiday events.

love, em

New Online Store!

Hello lovelies, and happy Monday (or as happy as the Monday after Halloween can be).  I'm happy today to let everyone know that I launched a new online store last week.  I'm always open to trying new online venues, so please check it out: http://emmyray.storenvy.com.  I have lots of brand new goodies just for you, and don't forget about Christmas.  Why not take the Handmade Pledge this year and buy cool stuff for your loved ones while supporting indie businesses?  Everybody wins!  

p.s. Hey, wanna know a secret?  Blog readers can shop the store this holiday season, (November-December) and receive a discount.  Just enter the code "handmaker" at check-out and receive 10% off.  Yesssss!

love, em

The Money Pit: Water is not a Homeowner's Best Friend

A few months ago we started smelling a musty aroma coming from the fireplace area.  Thinking it was just the old chimney that needed a good scrubbing of course we ignored it.  One day I went to clean off the mantle and noticed that one of my Hammerpress prints had some waves in it, you know the kind that paper gets when it gets wet and dries.  I went to pull the print down from the mantle and a 6 inch long piece of paint from the wall came along with it.  Much to our dismay there was water coming in from somewhere, the source of which we still haven't exactly uncovered.  So my lovely mantle that I worked so hard on went from looking like this...

to this...

I had tried to decide to repaint the 6 inch rip, as we were having a lot of friends over last weekend for a party.  However instead I ended up ripping a gigantic portion of peeling paint off.  Don't ask me what happened, I think I blacked out.  So what to do?  I came up with a temporary solution..

I stapled up some vintage fabric.  This way until we discover where the damage is coming from we can hide the peeling paint, and also the fabric is washable and of course easily removable.  Wah lah!

love, em

My First Apple Pie

A few weeks ago Matt's aunt called us up and said that they had a surplus of apples from the tree in their backyard.  They were organic, and sweet, so what better to do with them than make an apple pie?  It was my  very first attempt, and although I'm not a lover of any desserts in the "baked fruit" category, it tasted delicious and the crust was just the right amount of flakey and golden brown.

Apron on, ready to go...

Organic apples, almost too lovely to use...

pie crust rolled out and decorated...

Finished product (and no it's not burned, I just got a little patchy with the cinnamon).

What's your favorite autumn dessert?

love, em