Little Lizzie

Making Craigslist easy!

I love hunting for bargains on Craigslist. My most recent purchase was a fabulous pottery barn sectional sofa. After swearing to never attempt slipcovers again I may try with the couch but we'll see...

Anyway, if you're like me you can start looking for something on Craigslist and then realize you've spent an hour and haven't looked up what you meant to in the first place. I usually narrow down my search by my exact city unless it's something I'm desperate for and then I will include the surrounding cities.

Oh but I found something that I love. There's a Firefox add on that lets you preview the pictures from the listings in the search results without having to click through to the actual listing! It's fabulous! You can cut a lot of time out this way. Here's a screenshot of me searching for a "wooden playset". You can see how it shows the pics on the actual search page and also when you roll over a pic with your mouse you see it bigger in a preview pane on the right.

Here's the Craigstoolbox download. You can download it for explorer or firefox.

Also, I don't know how many of you use a blog subscription service like bloglines or google reader but they are really cool so you should check them out. I use google reader because I never really liked bloglines. Anyway, you can turn any Craigslist search into a "subscription" and be notified whenever new listings are added.

Whenever you search just scroll to the bottom and there is an RSS feed button.

So whenever I check google reader it shows me all the new listings from the categories I'm interested in. So cool! I will have to write a separate post on subscription services as once you figure out how to use them they are so helpful!

You can subscribe to my blog by clicking the button up in the address bar.

5 years old

My little girl turned 5 yesterday! It's hard to believe. Of course the night before I got the brilliant midnight idea to make her a felt Birthday crown. So I grabbed some scraps I had and whipped this up. It's pretty plain but she loved it. If you want to see a very cute tutorial on how to make felt crowns there's a great one at Juicy Bits She even has a template for you to use. I was in such a hurry I just laid the felt out and went to town with my mini rotary cutter.

Yes, I'm still here

I know it seems like I've fallen off the face of the earth but I haven't. I'm just 36 weeks pregnant and counting the days until the end. Also I'm so excited because it looks like we will be getting a new house if everything goes well. My Mom and I have been talking for a while about all of us getting something together (I also have one younger brother still living at home). We found a great stacked Duplex with lots of space for my Mom and brother in the upstairs unit and plenty of space for all my crazies downstairs. We are having the inspection done today and I'm praying that everything goes well. So then it will be pack in the next four weeks, have a baby and move....just like that easy peasy lol!

Adorable Tutorial and Computer woes

My computer has died. Well it actually just seems to have some sort of poltergeist as it starts up fine and then after a minute or so turns itself off and starts up again. I have a friend coming over to try and recover the stuff I want off of it and put it on Kenny's old computer. We'll see how that goes...

In the meantime I found this adorable tutorial by Larissa from mmmcrafts
on how to make a tooth fairy pillow.

She includes a pattern so go download it!

I love free stuff!

I found a fun blog with free downloads! Amy of Living Locurto designed the cutest valentines cards. You can download them for free here. I've added her link to the sidebar so check it out if you are ever in need of some free cuteness. 

WooHoo thank you Senator DeMint! This just in CPSC issues a stay...

Looks like Senator DeMint of South Carolina will be introducing legislation next week to reform CPSIA. It seeks to delay the enforcement 6 months, allow component testing, prevent retro-active enforcement and require the CPSC to publish a small business compliance guide for those of us who don't have a multitude of staff to help figure this stuff out. You can read Senator DeMint's proposal on his site here

Let's hope this gets traction before the small fish get fried.

*Update*  Apparently the CPSC is issuing a stay in enforcement of CPSIA for one year to sort it all out. You can see the statement here

Thanks goodness! Hopefully we can get things worked out by 2/10/10 so that reasonable testing can be accessed and completed by all businesses large or small that cater to children.

Zakka makes me smile!

Zakka is a fashion and design phenomenon from Japan that can be described as "everything and anything that improves your home, life and outlook". Rather broad isn't it? Here's the Wikipedia entry Zakka
I stumbled on to Zakka because of the Artist Shinzi Katoh who is apparently the most famous Zakka designer. From his site:
ZAKKA -- the things that make people feel happy and exist like a comfortable air.
This is what we always keep in our heart when we create new designs.

You can see tons of examples of his work and purchase products on the UK site here.
I love anything that's retro, or vintage looking. To me Zakka is just plain fun and cute. Here are some of my favorites from the UK shop.

These lotion bottles


I love all of the "letter sets"

and the postcards

The Print & Pattern blog has some really cute examples of Zakka.

Oh and here's a flickr group of Shinzi Katoh collectors for you to peruse.

Get some great deals!

Due to the madness known as CPSIA there are a lot of deals to be found. Sally over at the Polka Dot Mom posted some of her finds on etsy and I too have seen a lot of people just trying to get rid of their merchandise before it becomes banned as a hazardous material. You can search CPSIA Sale on etsy and find scads of items. I definitely need to get Claire some hair clips and I think these are adorable from HairSprinkles.
  

Baby Vagabond has some cute baby dresses on sale.

 I love these personalized towels from  Plain Jane Baby's shop
 

You can get some really cute Robot finger puppets from  Little Bird Creations
 

The list goes on and on but it gets depressing thinking about all the great items that will be unavailable in a matter of weeks. So get them while you can...and hope that someone with any sense can make some changes to this legislation before it puts too many people out of business.

New (to me) camera fun

Like any of my creative endeavors, when I decide to learn something new I tend to become obsessed with it. I got my new camera and have been playing and reading and testing and practicing so I can learn how to use it to it's full potential. I joined the most fabulous site called Clickin' Moms and have learned a ton from the ladies there. The talent pool is huge so it can be a little intimidating at first but everyone is so nice you soon forget to be self conscious and just start asking a lot of questions. I have already learned so much! I have also signed up to take photography classes at our local Junior College and hope to learn a ton more. Here are a couple of shots I took of Claire today on the porch. She's posing with one of the cupcakes I made her for Christmas. I will have to post on my adventures with play felt food later ;)

You can click on the pics to see a larger version.

More fun with CPSIA

So I thought I'd have a little fun *said in my most sarcastic voice* and give a few examples of the cost of testing products so that they comply with the new CPSIA. To be completely honest I haven't listed on ebay in a good long while as I've been busy with kids but I can post a few examples of items that sold and how much they would cost to test now. So here was my best selling item on ebay. This strawberry outfit sold fo $120. Now trust me the big sellers on ebay got that and a lot more for their offerings but I didn't list a ton so I'd say I was more like a medium fish in a large pond ;)

So this little dress and bloomers has a lot of tiny details which I love to add to my items. Off the top of my head here's what makes the outfit
*5 different fabrics
*2 different elastics
*2 different types of ric-rac trims
*3 different types of buttons
*4 different types of thread

@ $70 per component that comes to $1,120.00 to test this dress set. I am not including phthalates testing in this but if I did that would an extra $350 per component.

Here's one of my favs

*3 different fabrics
*3 different kinds of thread
*2 different kinds of elastic
Total cost to test: $560.00  ooh much more reasonable
Forget the flower in her hair I'm ignoring that lol!

You get the point...it's just silly and absurd.

I got this idea from a few etsy sellers who decided to give an example of what their items would cost if they had to test. You see some of the listings here.