Princess Time!

Erm, so I understand that many of you may not care, but every disney movie in the past ten years has made me shake my fist and say "Where are the princesses? Where!" I mean, I loved Lilo and Stitch, but Brother Bear? Home on the Range? What up with that? Then there were nooo hand drawn movies which was even sadder. But at last there is a new princess movie and I've been hearing the buzz for a couple years...and the trailer is out!

Go watch it!

It's here: Teaser Trailer

Or, I mean, don't. You can play it cool.

*Runs off squealing like a five year old*

Design| Stitchin' Time

So my aunt is opening a fabric and yarn store next week and I've been doing her design work. Here's the sign and her business cards. Website will be up when her store opens and I've done some other bits and pieces. She likes the design and so do I!

My Backyard | Fry Creek Canyon

So we were camping this weekend with Regan and Larry, friends of ours from Lethbridge days. We had a bit of an adventure the first night as the campgrounds were all full and we ended up pitching our tents at a lookout/picnic area around midnight. Renegade camping! We were up the north end of Kootenay Lake, just past Kaslo. It's beautiful up there.


On Sunday we woke up, packed up our illegal campsite and hiked Fry Creek Canyon. Gorgeous hike. I highly recommend it. It's fairly easy and well worth it. We only did the first 2.6 Km of the hike which brings you to the creekside campsite.


The first half is through the forest. There's some cool huge boulders.



Then there's a side trail to a bridge. Take the side trail! The bridge is very close and it's an amazing view. This is no little creek and the canyon is very deep at this point.



The trail was originally made by minors and parts of the mountain have been carved out to make the path.



The trail follows the creek all the way to the campsite where we stopped for lunch. It was nice just hanging out on the rocks and soaking our feet. I of course collected some little rocks to bring home and add to my ever growing pile.




So that was Sunday! You can view a couple more photos here: Facebook Album. I'll post the trail we did yesterday for you tomorrow, got to sort the photos still. It was so good to get out camping, have any of you had good camping trips this summer?

Final Stitches

I just got back from a couple days of camping, good fun which I will share with you later once I get my pictures sorted. In the meantime here's a website I designed the graphics for and Karl coded. Final Stitches is a long arm quilting service, so if you have the urge to make a nice big quilt, do up the top and they can quilt it for you!

Puppy Love

I wanted to show you my parent's new puppy Brody...but he was just too busy to have his picture taken...

Busy burrowing,


Busy pouncing,


Busy attempting to lick the camera...


And about 100 takes later, here he is! He's a six week old lab/collie/mutt. And very sweet when not attempting to eat me.

Search Engines

I like to read my search engine hits in Google Analytics. Some of them make sense:
Hanna Sandvig
Hanna's Life is Cool
Hanna art
etc.

Some of them I can see where they came from:
Hedgehog pincushion
Ocean Necklace
Brick Quilt Pattern
Organic Gardening

Good good, but can someone explain these? Here's my top ten strange google hits:
10)"happy hanna" cartoon
9) cool eek ....who searches for this? why?
8)pictures of headache have I drawn a picture of a headache? Hmmm?
7)sepia lepus what?
6)you and coold
5) "gudrun lilja gunnlaugsdottir" explain this to me!
4)"life is cool" "shoes" okay I can understand this one, still funny that someone searched this way though
3)hacking cough 5 year old I posted once about having a hacking cough....ooops twice now! and I get lots of hits about it. Tragic as I can't help the hacking ones at all.
2)incompitence...ahahaha!
1)Finally I also get about 10 hits a month regarding the Gazoo, a petting zoo in Three Hills that I don't even remember writing about. It's good times though, you should go.

Okay those weren't really in any order.

What about you guys? Did you find me while looking for a picture of a headache? What's your strangest google hit?

Birds birds birds and a quilt

Seems like a lot of bird projects lately, but honestly when you are married to a birder it all just seems to make sense.

Anyway, here are my adooorable bird toys:







I drew them up on the computer, printed them onto cotton and presto! I kind of love them a lot. But I'm willing to part with a few, you can buy them on my Etsy Shop as well as my magnetic paper dolls and some prints. More prints to come!

Also, check out this beautiful quilt that is being given away at Old Red Barn Co.! Secretly I hope you all hate it because that will up my chances of winning! However, I must tell you about it to gain some points.

A bird in the hand is worth four in a bonsai tree.

Can you tell I need an iron? This was done for the art event I was at yesterday...read about it here.

Today I mailed off some prints and attempted to learn about the Canadian Postal System. I costs more for me to send a package to next door than to Florida. Please explain this to me.

Also I attacked my basil patch and made three batches of pesto. I blanched the leaves as I heard it would help retain the colour and the pesto is so pretty and green. I froze it flat and thin in three ziplocks with instructions on them (please add 1/2 cup pasta water and 1/2 cup parm) so that makes three suppers this winter that I don't have to think about! I plan to keep pestoing every week until I can pesto no more.

I really love basil.

yo

Greetings and good day to you all. Here is a recap of my days since last we spoke (wrote? read?).

- Thursday. Thursday I spent most of the day designing my bird plushies. They are, by the way, fantastic. I printed off enough fabric to make 4 owls and 4 bluebirds. Good times. Pretty much...that was what I did all day. Then I stared at the ceiling decided the best way to sew them when I should have been sleeping. Also I agonized over whether to go to Cranbrook or not as I no longer had a ride. Decided not to.

- Friday. Woke up. Drove to Cranbrook. The mind, it changes. I bought photo paper, magnet paper, window cling paper, ink, a magnetic white board, blue ribbon, orange ribbon, brown ribbon, and Love is a Many Trousered Thing by Louise Rennison. As it is now out on paper back. Then I drove to Barb's house. Only I got lost and it took me about half an hour to find it again. Embarrassing. Barb wasn't home so I pretended I lived there and ran my birds through the wash while I read blogs on her computer and ate her Golden Grahams. Mmmmmm. Then she came how and we wandered about downtown and played with the baaaby. Thanks for the Starbucks Barb! Then I drove home, picked up Craig and sewed half my birds (the bluebirds). I also printed Mirtika's prints (pssst, Mirtika...you need to email me your address still).

- Saturday. Sewed birds and printed prints all day long. And I mean all day. Until 11:30 PM. Well the birds didn't take that long. Suggestion to all: don't buy Staples brand photo paper, it is crap. Their magnet paper however is better than Avery's by a long shot. Barb came by, abandoned her baby and went strawberry picking with her friends. Then we all went for ice cream at my aunt's new ice cream place. Very yummy.

- Today. Woke up and found that I had made my first Etsy sale. Hurray! I wasn't even trying yet. As you might have noticed by my not mentioning my shop. Spent all day at an Art thing out at a local organic farm/greenhouse. I will write about it properly with photos on my other blog tomorrow but the gist is that I sold two birds, two magnetic paper dolls and a print. Also I got a sweeeeet sunburn. Very sexy. Then we went up the lake with my parents for a swim. Felt great on my burn. I honestly could have stayed in longer, goosebumps and all. And now I have collapsed at home. Phew.

- Coming soon. Still need to get two more doll designs and hopefully two more birds done before I put together my application to get into the Nelson Artisan Winter Carnival Fair Thingy. Also I have to have a floor plan of my booth. Yikes. I also have been working a lot on self promotion and really...my portfolio is about ready so I need to do some e-mail mass promoting soon for my illustration work. I have four webpages still on the go and need to make price tags for Aunt Kathy still. Also...I have some art that wants drawing. So no napping yet!

By for now! XOXO

Garden Update!

I am a busy bee over here. Working on a couple webpages, doing some art and then I decided to participate in an local art event...on Sunday. So I'm getting prints ready to sell and I've come up with some hopefully adorable bird plushies (printed off the computer) that are all hung up and drying right now. Then tomorrow I'm off to Cranbrook to visit Barb and buy more ink and more magnetic paper...and maybe more photo paper.

In the meanwhile, here's how my garden grows, there's kinda lot of photos, so click through if you want to see it all:





Basil (had my first batch of pesto this week....mmmmm):


Purple Basil (a big hit with slugs!):


Tomatoes! (I have eaten 3 so far):


Tiny baby green pepper:


Salad Mix (have been eating for a while now):


Carrots:


Swiss Chard & Potatoes:


Corn:


Peter Pan Squash:


Zucchini:


Pumpkin:


Raspberries:


Dill:


Oregano (only a small portion :P):

huzzah!

New layout! I like this one better than the last one. So it should last at least a couple months.

Also we just watched Hero and it made me cry. Again. Speaking of which, you should all go see Kung Fu Panda. Very amusing, and really beautiful backgrounds. Worth buying the DVD in our books.

huzzah!

New layout! I like this one better than the last one. So it should last at least a couple months.

Also we just watched Hero and it made me cry. Again. Speaking of which, you should all go see Kung Fu Panda. Very amusing, and really beautiful backgrounds. Worth buying the DVD in our books.

Juliet Turnaround

For my portfolio:

Friday Five

On the downside I have a cold...but on the plus side it is currently only 26 degrees...which is pretty close to perfect.

1)Yuki by Wunderkind. I am totally stalking this shop now. I want one of these ribbon spools. Okay I want three.





2)Beautiful mushroom cards by Wiley Valentine(via design sponge)



3) Fantastic pottery by Aida Dirse. (via Oh Joy)



4)Send a smile with this little octopus by Isabell's Umbrella.



5)This is Doug, he's Nicole Brinkham's latest pillow monster.

Glad to be in BC...

...and not still in Lethbridge today. Hope all you Lethbridge readers still have basements!



In other news I have been running 6 days a week for almost a month. And have gained two pounds. Go me! Time to look at the diet I guess.

Also we have gone through over 20 lbs of organic strawberries in the past week. I have strawberry jam, strawberry rhubarb jam, frozen strawberries and have made strawberry rhubarb banana milkshake popsicles. We have also just eaten a lot of them. 10 more lbs coming today. Yum. Watch my other blog for my jam making adventures later this week.

Going to see Kung Fu Panda tonight, very exciting.

Working on a new character and style, meet Juliet! More to come from her soon.

Balancing Rock Trail

Went for a hike yesterday morning. I have 21 new mosquito bites to call my own. Pretty pretty though!