A little bit of a preview. . .

It's been crazy busy in the land of Lemon Cadet. Baby Lemon has been hard at work developing her modeling skills, Mr. Huskystar has been stitching up a tsunami of new goods, and Mr. Lemon fixed the tent.

I've been working on some yeti plush that I'm really excited about. I usually embroider the faces after I have a base established. It's a little more to grab onto that way. But this new fur is a beast! It was shedding like a Skunk Ape in Spring so I had to hand sew the faces before I attached them to the fur. Then I had this amazing bald yeti.

The second photo is a sneak peak at what the finished guy will look like. The new fur is longer and very silky. I actually finished all of these but the photos are still on the camera.

Special Delivery

So elves are our favorite. Then beans. Then monkeys. You would think that we like monkeys the best since we have so many of them but no. It's the elf. It's just really hard to find a good elf.

Zadie demanded this elf and I liked how it looked in its shipping box like a pauper's coffin.

Panties.

This week Lemon Cadet is getting a whole new line of panties. Just like with the beans, I'll be listing them whenever the beast is sleeping or with Daddy. We've been experiencing some napping issues so this is the best we can do.

We have some new designs and some old designs in new fabrics. But the best part is that we were able to get some nice quality blank panties in fabulous colors so instead of a hodge podge of various styles and sizes, we now have some consistency.

Please let me know if there is a specific design or style you'd like and we can talk custom.

The beans are ready to eat

After simmering in my studio for quite some time, the beans are soft enough to head out into the world via Etsy. I had a few in the shop before and they sold so I made a bunch more.

I would have had them up sooner but it really takes a certain kind of day for perfect lighting. It needs to be very bright but overcast. Even then, my camera still sometimes does a hack job with a couple of the brighter colors. I'll be getting a new camera soon but until then, I gotta work with what I got.

Since Baby Lemon is first priority, I won't ever have a big enough chunk of time to put these all up at once so look for these throughout the week. I've got one of the Joel Dewberry fabric that was featured in the onesie in Parents Magazine. It has a bright yellow dotted swiss back. I have a few of this gorgeous red satin brocade Asian print fabric with teal backs. There are striped beans and corduroy number print beans and kitty alphabet beans one last green woodgrain bean from that amazing Alexander Henry fabric that I love so much.

Trofast as changing table

When I was buying the furniture for Zadie's nursery, I couldn't let myself buy a regular changing table. It was hard to find anything attractive for less than $100. A lot of the brands weren't even made of real wood. Also, once your kid is potty trained, you have this odd piece of "wood" with no other use.

So when I saw the Trofast system at Ikea, I did some measuring and came up with this idea. We bought the stair-step piece and the single unit. Mr. Lemon cut a piece of plywood 1" larger than the changing table pad. I had some teal fleece in a bin so I cut it to size, wrapped it around the plywood and stapled it to the plywood like I was stretching a canvas. So the staples wouldn't scratch the Trofast pieces, I used double-sided tape to put a layer of felt on top of the staples. Mr. Lemon was concerned about safety so he somehow attached the two Trofast pieces together (leaving enough distance between them so that the plywood would fit nicely).

This has been working great for us. The Trofast system is the same size as a standard changing table and doesn't kill Mr. Lemon's back like the pack n play does. The best part about this is that when the baby's no longer in diapers, we'll have a great storage system for all her stuff. If we're lucky, she won't crack her head too many times while she's climbing all over it.

I have more pictures of this system and the nursery over on my flickr.

Love love love

So my preempted rant post is doing some good! My friend Amanda (that's her dog Bleu up there in a photo of hers that I stole from her flickr) was in a pissy mood, read my blog and got all inspired to write her own post about why she loves her life.

Imagine how much happier everyone would be if we just took a couple of minutes out of the day to think about the things we love!

If you decide to write your own post about loving life, please let me know. Some days I don't feel very effective (or is it affective?).

Rant week: discontinued

I never rant on this blog. I like ranting but I really don't ever get around to it. However, something really got me going the other day and I decided to do an entire week of ranting right here.

Then as I was looking through one of my favorite blogs, [i] love life, for a specific post, I decided to cut rant week short. I guess I preempted rant week since I hadn't even gotten started. I'm usually a pretty positive person anyway.

K. Barteski, author of [i] love life, is an artist and a mother with an adorable baby just a few months older than Zadie. Her blog is a mix of talking about her art and her life. She seems incredibly happy, is an amazing artist, and is constantly positive.

I realized that since I, too, am in love with my life, I really shouldn't bother with venting. What good is it to dwell on the negative things? Not much at all.

But just in case you were wondering, here are the topics of the recently forgotten rant week (there were actually only 3):
1. People who ask you questions about your process and never thank you when you give away your secrets.
2. People who think it's okay to touch your baby. Hello? Germs? Strangers? I don't even let mom hold the baby before she's washed her hands, why would I want some kid in the Kmart touching the baby.
3. The parking situation on my street.

That picture up there is from the alphabet wall I put together for Zadie's nursery. I spent a lot of time on it and I think it turned out great. The hedgehog in the middle is one of the free pieces I got from the aforementioned blog. I'll write a post about the nursery later.

But since I made a list of idle rants, I think I should share why I love my life since I have a lot more reasons than I had rants to begin with:
1. I have an amazing husband.
2. I have an adorable baby who smiles almost all the time now and everytime she does I can feel it through my entire body.
3. I live within walking distance of a small farmer's market. We go there every weekend (although we have yet to walk it with baby in tow. The Babyhawk can get hot and it's super humid here too. Soon.).
4. At that market Firefly Farms sells delicious goat cheese. It has less fat than my old standy, colbyjack and is made locally.
5. This list can go on forever so I'll stop.