Frecklewonder

pictures from a holiday week

still loving my shakit iphone app, as you can see.

miss kitty turns 91

a couple weekends ago, our next door neighbor, kitty, turned the big 9-1. ninety-one, folks! so to celebrate, a few neighbors got together for some chocolate cake + coffee, and of course, lots of good chatter from the lady miss kitty. imagine the stories!

 

she absolutely adores mister henry. she calls him her little boyfriend. she'll say, in her finest sophisticated southern accent, "where's mah little boy-freyund!!!". henry is such a good little fella, sometimes he'll go over to her house and spend a little time with her at the kitchen table. of course you know she stuffs him full of cookies and snacks, but what else would you expect.

 

miss kitty was an ER nurse back in her day and she's got all sorts of stories that she likes to share, particularly the gruesome ones. she seems to get a big kick out of telling those and the reactions they get.

nowadays, it's just her and her son, tommy, who's in his mid 50s with down syndrome. i think that probably has a lot to do with the fact that she really hasn't slowed down too much. in a way, she just can't. they don't have any family left- and haven't for many years. but the two of them still manage to get along pretty great. she's a real firecracker, with a huge heart- i think it would take a lot to get her down.

even a few minutes with the wiggle worm didn't tire her out.

 

if i make it to 91, i hope to be as happy and full of life as miss kitty is.

a few more

from our last days of summer...

okay. fall, we're ready for you. i think.

good to the last drop

we've just returned from a week at the beach. it was our last little hurrah with summer, and it was just perfect. the beach, the sea birds, the sunsets, the weather, the food- oh lord, the food. but most of all, it was the company. the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves- and it was a treat to see. i have so many memories of being on the beach as a kid, and it was fun to sort of revisit those memories through my kiddos. henry is a total fish and miss dot- she could spend hours in the sand picking up shells and digging with her mini shovel.

i would love to say that i'm easing my way back into the swing of things, but darn it if as soon as we returned, things got crazy-busy. more on that later, taters.

anyhow, sorry for the radio silence- i've been gathering and preparing for the next collection, which isn't officially named yet, but is feeling very fall-ish.

hope you are all doing great. i promise to be back shortly with some sneak peeks from the new collection. i just need that sun to shine just a little bit so i can snap a few pretty pictures.

xo

whoopsie

i didn't mean for things to get so quiet around here, i promise! i've just been hard at work packaging orders and haven't had much time to write! today i am processing all international orders, so if you are one of those folks, keep a lookout for an email from me with your shipping information. everyone else who is in the states should have already gotten (or will get today) your shipping notification with delivery confirmation number. most packages are already out the door and on their way to you. thanks again so much, everyone!

i would love, love to get some pictures of you guys- so if you aren't feeling too shy, please snap a pic of yourself (or your house, your kiddo, etc) in your new frecklewonder goodie, and maybe i can start up a new blog category of freckle folks sharing their goods! whaddya say? pretty please??? i would love to see you.

things are about to get quiet again around here for the next week, we are expecting some special guests to arrive late sunday night and they will be here for a week. we'll be busy entertaining and taking day trips, but i promise some pics on the flip side.

other than that, i have been busy enjoying these final couple weeks of summer with my favorite little people. henry and i picked up some school supplies the other day, which sort of threw us both a bit. it's too soon!

 

 

 

hope the day is treating you well. xo

around the house

 

it's been a busy week here! lots of running around getting stuff done, knocking things off the list. you know the one- meetings, appointments, etc, that somehow get pushed back and ignored for far too long. definitely feels good to take care of some of those things, and i always wonder why it took so long when it really ends up not being all that bad after all.  i wish i could say that things will be quiet for the weekend, but i know that i'm going to be working like a madwoman to wrap up the summer shop. which, btw, is coming along rather nicely. i have been knocking out computer work every night after the kids go to bed. all product images were uploaded to the site last night, and today i am working on typing up descriptions. so they're in there, folks! it's happening! tonight though, it's harry potter. oh, i have been waiting.

other than that, i have been spending much of my time just following dotty around the house, in and out of rooms, in circles around the kitchen and living room. she's so fast- and wants to be everywhere, seeing everything, picking up anything along the way. and once she's lost interest in one thing, she just drops it where she's standing at that very moment and moves along. so i am constantly picking up this and that and kind of fighting a losing battle of keeping things in their place. she's full of questions right now too. it's just about the cutest thing, i will try to get a little recording. almost everything she says ends in a high pitched question mark kind of way. "day, yaaaa? doooy yaaaa? naaaaa? aaaaahhh? ayeee yaaaa?" and so on.

once again, henry has been bitten by the lego bug. he has these phases, where he is just absolutely sumberged in lego land for weeks on end. building things all day long. and then, out of no where, he'll just pack 'em up and lose interest for a while. he's been spending some pretty quiet mornings back in his room, just humming and building. lost in his own little world. that must be pretty nice- to not really have any care or concern about anything else but that thing that is right in front of you- and to be so in the moment. just peaced out. oh to be a kid.

wishing you a happy friday! i hope to be back at least once more today, if all goes well.

xo!

the best days of summer, part 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the best days of summer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

so far, that is.

2 months, 3 weeks, 2 days and 20 minutes- give or take.

so i was thinking: not blogging for a while. it kinda feels like that scene from so many movies- you know the one- where a person walks into a crowded party scene and suddenly the record scratches, silence falls on the room and everyone stops and stares. that's how this feels to me right now. silly, but true.

once i finally resolved to just do this already, it took me practically twenty minutes to remember how to change the dang banner on this blog. what the?! i never intended on being gone like that- not at all. but sometimes life throws you an octopus, and for a while, it gets the best of you. it got me.

anyhow, part of why it's taken me all this time to come back is because a) i didn't want to get into the whole boo-hoo, woe is me, life-is-kickin-my-ass session. and if i didn't write about that, i didn't really know what else i would write about. and b) i kinda feel like you must be pretty sick of listening to me whine about how hard things get every once in a while, how much i can never seem to find a balance, etc etc etc. but then something happened. the more time that went on, the farther i felt from all of this. and basically, i ended up losing my mojo. bigtime.

that's not to say that it's been totally bad. once summer officially arrived, things actually got pretty nice. we had family in town, we took loads of day trips, we celebrted 1st and 8th birthdays. we have had plenty of cookouts and late night camp fires with s'mores and ice cream and fireworks. we've spent time in the woods, watched henry enjoy the heck out of a farm camp, discovered new places, jumped in swimming holes and visited the zoo. we've eaten really, really good fresh summery foods. we've splashed in the pool, and gone to bed completely exhausted from full days. we've fully embraced the season.

and you know what? even though i was fretting all along about my absence, i finally let go of all that self imposed stress and just enjoyed life. it's been great to take a breather from the ol' internet- my pal and yours, but let's face it: sometimes the internet can feel sorta... eh at times, you know? pretty easy to get caught up in it all. all the tweeting, chatting, flickring, facebooking, stylehiving, myspacing, friendstering, tumblering, bloglining, etc. it's a lot, isn't it? sometimes so much that you forget to interact with the people right in front of your face. instead, you find yourself neeeeeding the updates. who's doing what. did so-and-so post new pics? has so-and-so returned from their vacation? what is so-and-so making for dinner? what's the latest celeb scandal? and what is so-and-so wearing today.

crazy, i know. but the time away provides an excellent reminder: you will be just fine if you didn't check in with all that stuff as much as you think you need to because your own life is pretty good. and that it feels a lot better to live through your own experiences than through someone elses. (this is not to say that i didn't miss you. or that i don't absolutely love to check in and see what's up. i promise you, I DO. it's just that whole balance thing, you know?)

so, that is that. i am not trying to get all preachy about our time on the internet here. just kinda wanted to let you know where i'm at with this whole Super Long Extended Yet Totally Unintended Break i just took.

i also wanted to briefly update you on where i'm at with the shop and all that (at the risk of making this post too wordy and boring, and i promise good stuff like pictures and news on the next collection).
you might remember that i was really struggling with the last collection being a sort of bust, technically speaking. lots of errors and double sales and email problems and all that. stuff that got me really discouraged and down, feeling like i was a giant failure. with no time to get stuff fixed, a hubby who works full time and was wrapping up freelance projects, i was contemplating etsy and other such things (quitting all together).

the good news is this: we've managed to get everything resolved on our end. we had to start fresh in a lot of ways (i lost tons of stuff- work, photos, emails, i had to recover emotionally from that) but we will keep on keepin' on right where we've been all these years. no big move to etsy or big cartel in any official kind of way, but i did add a handful of fabrics to my etsy shop, and will be adding some more throughout the month. i mentioned forever ago that i was going to offer up some most of this massive collection of fabric that i've been collecting (and hoarding) for the last 10 or so years. well, i have begun the process of making it available to you, my little fabric junkies. some will be on etsy, and a whole lot of it will end up in the next shop update. i've spent the last 3 nights cutting and bundling and preparing. will share photos of all that loot soon.

and now for a quick word on the next shop update. the small sizes thing... total bust! but the good news is that i still have all that stuff, and it's all going in this next collection which will be bascially the biggest and best shop update i've ever done. and i can say that, cause i'm looking at it. i figured i'd better come back with something really good after all this time of being away.

so that's that, folks.
let's get on with the eye candy.

 

 

 

 

if you need to contact me personally for any reason whatsoever, my email works again. and once the shop is up and running, so will that contact form that was busted for all this time :) chances are, if you wrote me at the jenny at frecklewonder email addy in the last handful of weeks, i did not get it. please try again, and please oh please, accept my most sincere apology for that.

i missed you all, it feels good to be back.

giant hugs,

jenny

a happy weekend

it was.

hope the week is off to a great start for you.
more soon,
j