I woke up this morning and decided I needed to make a green cousin for Gumball for this Great Big Puppet Show Birthday Party. The thing is he needs a name. Can you help me? Should it be Froggle? Nope that’s taken. Frumball? Croakers? What do you think?

Hey! Hey! We’re the Monkeys! We’re having a contest! Oh wait a minute. We’re not monkeys. We’re pink-kitten fantatics and thanks to my most favorite stalker lurker turned best-internet-buddy-ever, I have an actual Gumball-the-Kitten thingy to give away!

Really, all the credit goes to Bethany Actually. She’s even hosting the contest because I am too busy/lazy to handle the details. I’m just sort of quietly using this super-fun giveaway as a distraction so I can take a longer break from blogging. Don’t worry, I’m not going away. I’m just preoccupied.

So please, scoot along over there and have some FUN!!!

Since I haven’t had any birthday parties to put all my energy into, I’ve funneled some of my excess brain snappage into some packaging for a Gumball Takes Over the World Kit. Now everyone can play along! Put away your iron and heat-transfer paper, I’ve done it for you!

I think my next project will be ordering some Gumball t-shirts. I haven’t come up with a Secret Agent Josephine design that I can stick with longer than a month so I think when I make the big jump into screen printing (read: pay someone to screen print for me) it will be with Gumball. The front will be his cute little mug and the back will be his butt and the daring “kiss my asterisk” slogan. I know some of my relatives will raise their eyebrows and shake their head that I’ve slipped over to the dark side but I can’t help it. I think it’s funny and I’m keeping it real.

Which by the way is totally Toby’s fault. He’s the one who told me to put an asterisk on Gumball’s butt. Brilliant, no? This also comes from the guy who photoshopped my butt into an animated giff one day to shut me up when I was complaining that I needed to lose some weight. (Read this post to get the whole story). I’m going to start a category called “Toby humor” just so you can see why I keep him around…

That and the fact that he gave my little girl the prettiest eyes in the whole wide world. She may have gotten my color but the shape and the wide-set-ness is all him. From her nose up she looks like Toby. From the nose down she’s me. Poor kid. She’s got my round face and chin and will probably grow up to have my jowls and a double chin too.

Anyway, this post is not about genetics, it’s about GUMBALL!!! I took the photo above so you can see that Gumball has been kid tested and approved! I don’t know if the heat-transfer paper is safe for teething on but Gumball as a toy, is safe and great for throwing.

As far sewing goes, these may not be seamstress approved. He is a “lumpy pillow” after all. So he’s not perfect. I just thought I’d warn you before you rushed off to my Etsy Shop to buy yourself one. If you want a perfect Gumball you’re probably better off downloading your own pdf and making your own.

ALSO! One more thing: I’ve got some valentines up my sleeve that I’m printing for my Etsy Shop. So if you’re thinking of shopping, you might want to hold off until next week.

Have you guys seen this?

Gumball lives on! Gumball is still taking over the world! You don’t know how happy this makes me. Or maybe you do. These are not my pictures or my handiwork. The best EVER Gumball award goes to Falwyn. I love her!

New to Gumball? Start here.

I threw caution to the wind, blew off work and painting to make a stuffed dog today! I don’t know what hit me. I was working on the eternal couch cover project (I’m always altering it, one of these days it will be perfect and then it will be so brittle from the sun constantly beating on it, it will fall to shreds and I’ll have to start all over again) and I just got this crazy hair-brained idea that I should make Baby Bug a stuffed dog. You know, since I’m on this seemingly endless dog kick these days.

Before you go complimenting my sewing, let me just say that I am not a very good seamstress. I am horrid, in fact. Part of it is my sewing machine and the other part of it is that I am just a hack job artist with no attention span to be a perfectionist. If you look close, you will find puckers and gathers and back-tacking where there shouldn’t be back-tacking, knots where there shouldn’t be knots… It’s a big mess. My Aunt Keren, the seamstress, will not be allowed to examine it closely. This, like most of my sewing projects, will put her many years of kind teaching to shame. I’m sorry Aunt Keren.

It’s not all my fault though. My sewing machine doesn’t like me very much. I know this because it makes rats nests with the bobbin thread on a regular basis. This might be because I keep my sewing machine in this canvas tote and every time I haul it in and out of the closet, I think I break it. The tension is whacky. I don’t know what the numbers mean so I don’t even know how to fix it.

The little spool thing that holds the thread is busted off. I have to stick a skewer in the hole, where it used to be, and let my spool of thread wobble around on the skewer unbalanced. It’s really amazing that I bother to sew at all.

All that said, I had a blast making this little stuffed puppy. I used to make these sorts of things all the time when I was a kid and I used to visit my Aunt’s sewing room. And then there’s the Lumpy Cat Ranch of course. I think imperfect sewing is my thing. I know Baby Bug is too young to really appreciate the fun of this but I think someday we are going to really have a ball. Or a puppy or a doll or a kitten… or a truck.

It’s 4:30 in the morning (when I wrote this, posted later) on the day of Baby Bug’s big Pinkkkkity First Birthday Party and I can’t sleep. Why? Because I have 200 pictures in my camera that need to get out and be posted. So many pictures! If I don’t, I know all these memories will just be lost because after the birthday party I’ll probably have 200 more pictures and by then I’ll be too tired to go back and blog about something as old as going to Chuck E Cheese’s on Friday night.

Chuck E. Cheese, remember him? Man, I haven’t been since I was twelve. Not counting that one birthday party I went to for a friend’s kid’s birthday. I didn’t have kids then so it was not the same at all. When you have kids, or you are a kid, Chuck E. Cheese’s is the best place EVER. Well, except the noise and the pizza that you’re worried is not going to be all that great because it was cooked by the same sweaty pimply teenager who was just up on stage teaching all the five year old’s how to Macarena.

Anyway, Chuck E. Cheese did not disappoint. It was a blastola. Baby Bug loved every minute of it. I don’t think she cried once. I thought sure she’d be afraid of the big furry mouse who’s hands move mechanically and maybe his one arm is broken because sometimes it gets stuck in mid air awkwardly. But no, she LOVED the broken Chuckie. She wanted to get up on stage and climb all over his furry feet. “Kkkkkkkkittty,” she says reaching towards him over and over. Silly kid.

My niece, Rapunzel, played skeeball and some other popcorn game all night and scored us a bunch of tickets. Then my sister-in-law, being the experienced mom that she is, divided all the tickets evenly between the three kids. So that meant Baby Bug got to have a prize from the prize counter too. So many prizes! I felt like I was twelve again, forced to do math so I could win something good. We ended up with a soft squishy ball (it was the only really baby proof thing there) and Baby Bug immediately grabbed it and would not let go. She fell asleep in her car seat on the way home, clasping her new ball tightly to her chest.

Isn’t this what being a mom is all about? Taking your kids to Chuck E. Cheese so they can exhaust themselves by having too much fun? It was great. She slept the whole night and didn’t wake up once.

In the middle of the pinkkkity party preparation, I had to make a quick trip to the sticks to pick up my personal caterer (Mom). I’m also attending a wedding. So it’s not all pinkness all the time around here. We do get a few other things done too.

You might think I have beaten the pink obsession to death. But you would be wrong. Ha Ha Ha Ha! I’m going to take over the world and paint it pink! Well, not really but Gumball the Kitten is. I’ve uploaded some pdf’s of Gumball (FREE!!! Whoooeeee!) and you can download your very own version (in color or black and white) and make him into anything you want. I dare you. Gumball the Kitten stickers, Gumball the Kitten bikini top, Gumball the Kitten mobile, Gumball the Kitten oven mitts or just plain old Gumball the Kitten as a paper print out. Color him or don’t. Anything goes.

The only catch is, you have to take a picture of Gumball and send it to me or join my Gumball flickr group. You can shoot him from the front, you can shoot him from the back, you can shoot him from the side…as long as he is recognizable. It doesn’t matter to me. Come on, it’ll be fun. The most interesting photos I’ll post on my blog and give you some linkage. Maybe I’ll even make some Gumball swag, who knows where this could go.

And if you can’t think of anything fun to do with Gumball, email me and I’ll give you one of my one-hundred-and-one ideas.

Just do it. Do it for Baby Bug. But more do it for me, cause Baby Bug doesn’t really care that much.

Guess what? I LOVE iron on heat transfer paper. It’s like a whole new medium to me. I can make anything and iron it on fabric and then sew it into a pillow!!! ANYTHING! The possibilities are endless. Toby was not that impressed but I think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. My art! On fabric! Nothing can stop me now.

Sewing up the little gumball kitty pillows is not quite as fun as the instant gratification of the iron and peel process. I’m not as deft on the sewing machine as I’d like to be and my “circle” pillows morphed into the usual lumpy lopsided puffs. It’s okay though, I think they still look cute.

Baby Bug agrees with me. They have officially been tested and approved by a baby. I don’t know if the heat transfer gum is toxic but Baby Bug slobbered on hers and she seems to be fine.

After a full morning of pink kitty production, Baby Bug and I decided we needed a little break. We went for a walk to Starbucks and the beach. It was cold and windy. The wind blew the sand into little miniature dunes. We only stayed long enough to enjoy our lemon loaf and then we hustled back home as fast as we could. I try and keep Baby Bug’s hands covered in my jacket but she likes to be free. When we get home her little fingers are icicles.

Toby says tonight and last night are probably the coldest of the year. I believe him. And of course these are the nights our heater refuses to work. Sigh. You know what that means, a dreaded conversation with the landlord. Ick.

I hate to end a post on that note though… so think about fun pink asterisk butt pillows instead! Maybe I can snuggle my feet into the big bag of pillow stuffing. Or maybe I should just go to bed. I wanted to stay up and sew but as usual, as the clock nears nine-ish I start to feel less and less productive.

What a day. I feel like I got run over by a truck. I think I’m catching The Cold version 2.0. Why?!! This is sooo not cool. Stupid Park with all those sneezing kids.

I think today was a rough day because I’m on-fire-inspired to make pink kitty party stuff and my mind is not fully functioning on all the other tasks I need to do in a day.

I hauled Baby Bug with me all over town and out to lunch. A lunch out is fun for me but not necessarily 100% nutritious or fun for her. She can’t sit in her high chair for the seven million years that it takes for her to actually eat a full meal in a restaurant—mostly because I’m trapped there sitting next to her and I don’t have that much patience. Whereas at home, I can do other stuff while I wait for her—like wash the dishes and check my email. The other thing that makes restaurant lunches unproductive is that she’s taken to swiping her food off the table and onto the floor. This is such an annoying trick. I hear myself saying “no, baby no” over and over and I know I need to find a better way. My voice is just floating away in the breeze to never never land, never to be heard by anybody except the seething busboy who is hiding behind the flapping kitchen door cussing me out.

However, I think it’s good for Baby Bug to eat out. She needs to get used to it. I’ve been out with children before who never ate out and that was pure tortuous mayhem. I consider this training for both of us. I always leave a good tip on the table and I do the best job I can to scrape up all the spewed food from the floor in a five foot radius. This is tricky since usually by that time Baby Bug has no patience for sitting in the high chair any more and I have to hold her like a slimey food covered wiggling worm under one arm. Phew, just typing that makes me tired.

Anyway, I did find heat transfer paper and pillow stuffing and bells. I gave up on the squeaky toy idea. I’m going to put a little jingle bell inside instead. You can’t find squeaky squeeze balls anywhere… well, at least not where I looked and I didn’t really feel like paying $1.99 for dog toys. I need to remember that I did have a budget at one time. Wha? Budget? What’s that?

I’m dying to try the heat transfer paper tonight and whip up a sample pillow but my aching body says, no way Jose. So all you get is the digital file. Like the asterisk butt? I couldn’t resist.

g’night.