Hawaii Stamps!

Have you seen these stamps at your local post office? They are Hawaiian style, yeah! So cool! They were designed by local artist Herb Kawainui Kane, who does amazing paintings of historical and mythical Hawaiʻi! If you've been to Kīlauea Volcano on the Big Island, you've probably seen some of his work at the museum there... his depictions of Hawaiian gods and goddesses are so iconic, and I really love how his paintings stay true to our history and moʻolelo.


I "borrowed" this picture from Kane's official website... I hope he won't mind! It features the Hawaiian Volcano goddess Pele, who travels from Kahiki to Hawaiʻi. At Pele's feet is Kamohoaliʻi, who is her shark brother; he is leading the way to Hawaiʻi (you can also see the stars that guided him... traditional means of long distance navigation relied on stars...no compasses or astrolabs here!) Cradled under her arm (as an egg, for safekeeping) is Pele's little sister Hiʻiakaikapoliopele, which means Hiʻiaka-in-the-bosom-of-Pele because she was so beloved by Pele. Anyway, fun huh? I love it!

New clutch

So you've probably already seen these as updates on my facebook and flickr, but for lack of a better thing to blog about, here ya go (stupid work/ thesis). Speaking of thesis, have you ever had anything hang above your head for years, constantly in your thoughts, yet you can never bring yourself to do it? And you know that actually doing it is much easier than say, raising children or trying to make a living (and you know that there are people all over the world who have to worry about much much more) but you still can't bring yourself to do it to get it over with? That is me and my thesis... incredibly self-centered of me. Hopefully this public self-admonishment will light a fire under my bottom :D

Anyway, here are two clutches that I made; the green one for a custom order, and I'm still deciding if I want to sell the blue one... it came out so pretty! It was the first time in a long time that I made a clutch, so it took me a few hours to finish them. It's the first time I've used my spoonflower berrysprite fabric, and I must say, trè bien!

Winners!

Thanks everyone for the good wishes; I'm so happy to announce the winners (that's right, TWO winners!) for my tiny shopify giveaway!

Isis (lollywear)
and Nadia Cupcake

Please email me your information so I can pass it along to my shopify contact; from there you'll be asked to sign up at shopify.com.

For everyone who didn't win.... Don't lose heart; many more giveaways coming up in the future, right here on berrysprite!

OMG, yayyy! PS... there's a giveaway!

Aaaaaah, Freakin' yay! I won the Shopify birthday giveaway contest over at SuperCuteKawaii!! That means I'll get a free shopify online store for a year, which means I can open my own standalone online shop! For those of you who don't know, shopify is a webhosting site that allows you to fully customize your own online selling space... so cool! I see this as a great step towards making sure Berrysprite is around for years and years to come :D Many mahalos (thanks) to Panda-san, Monsieur Le Bun and especially to Bunny-san for picking me as a winner! If you didn't already know about SuperCuteKawaii, check them out; they have an AWESOME blog and store that are both constantly updated with kawaii finds and trends... so many a late-night I have spent greedily reading about panda and bunny-san (and of course Monsieur Le Bun's) kawaii obsessions on this delectable website!


♥ ♥ ♥ PS; the people at shopify were super generous to me too and are going to give me a three-month free account to give to someone I know; I thought it be fun to do a mini giveaway in the spirit of SuperCuteKawaii's giveaway.

So here are the rules; you must have an online shop already (Etsy/Folksy/Yahoo/Artfire/ eBay, etc.) and you must leave a comment that states in 5 sentences or less why you'd love a shopify store of your very own. After contacting the winner for information (like their name, email, and current store url), I'll contact the people at shopify and let them know who gets a free three-month shop! Contest starts now, and the winner will be picked on Tuesday, Sept. 22... good luck!♥ ♥ ♥

Easy Chicken Alfredo with Broccoli

Here's what I made for dinner tonight; chicken alfredo with broccoli... it was very yummy, and relatively quick and easy to make. Just a note; the sauce not very thick, but that's how I like it! I tried to cut down on the fat, but sometimes you just can't get away from adding ingredients that have fat in them (like, what could you possibly substitute for Parmesan cheese?!)

(Makes enough for 2-4 people)
Ingredients :
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 small onion
2.5 cups of broccoli
2 tsp of minced garlic
salt and pepper
2 pats of butter
1 tablespoon of olive oil

Sauce:
2 cups of low fat milk
1 cup of Parmesan cheese
1 pat of butter
1 tsp of dried parsley flakes

Instructions:
Brown Chicken in butter and oil, add onions and garlic when chicken is about 3/4 of the way cooked. Remove chicken and onions from pan, and add all ingredients for sauce (make sure to keep stirring until cheese is well mixed in. Add chicken and onions and keep stirring. Add broccoli; keep on heat until broccoli is cooked (but still green and crunchy!) Serve with pasta noodles and bread. Yummy!



PS. This juice is really good! It's white grape and cherry... I think the flavors are really nice together, and probably any brand of juice with these flavors would be good too (I'm not a Welch's spokeswoman...this is just what they had at Sam's Club :D).

Custom orders lead to extra shop goodness

This weekend I was working on a few custom orders, which included some pandas and the ever popular pudding bearlet. So I thought I'd make a couple for my etsy shop! They'll be trickling in slowly; only one has glitter yarn for limb fur, and the other two have regular fuzzy yarn... the glitter guy is for a very special customer (I hope she likes him!) I had a hard time remembering the exact dimensions of my pudding bearlet, so their heads are a bit bigger than my old ones... they still look sweet, I think. It's going to be another busy week ahead, so I'm trying to get all my crafting in today!

We are sooooo embarrased...

Thanks to the super close eyes of a very nice reader, I have been alerted that September's calendar was:

• A) Off by a day!
• B) Friday was marked with an R
• C) Friday was missing
• D) All of the above

In the words of Homer Simpson... D'oh! I have to admit I was really rushing to get September's calendar out on time, and now look what happened! You can tell I am a total spaz. Anyway thanks very much to the anonymous reader, without your help I never would have known (and then how silly would that have been).

This time September's calendar includes Blacky the sleepy sheep's bedtime accessories, including hand painted toy blocks (featuring amigurumi faces) his chicken friend, and a teddy bear blanket and pillow... all ready to catch some Zzzz's!

Busy week ahead!

I'm going to have a super busy week ahead, so not much time for blogging, not much time at all! Finishing up some custom orders (still... apparently a three day weekend is not enough to do everything you want!). I also have to work more hours this week at my job because of the holiday :( So really just random thoughts/facts for this post:

• Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the genius of South Park, and I am constantly amazed by how similar the humor on the Venture Brothers is to my own... it makes me think if I knew the writers in real life we'd be good friends!
• When my dad watches the Scyfy Channel (lame... they changed it to Scyfy from Sci-Fi) I can actually feel my brain cells dying. I actually worked on my thesis today because of it.
• I made a crocheted flower in a new way over the weekend... I see huge potential for kawaii brooches and possibly a free crochet pattern in the future.

This little dude wakes me up on the dot at 7:30 am every morning (even on the weekends!) with his incessant chirping for attention... it's actually more like "bee---ep!" than an actual chirp. At least I don't need an alarm clock!

That's all for now folks :D

September Calendar!

September's calendar features Blacky, the lamb! To keep the Blacky's blackness popping, I decided to go with a plain background... though in my etsy shop he will come with little accessories too. To download this calender, just click on Blacky's photo in the right hand corner and download away :D.