Back Soon!

Hey! We're heading out on a last minute day trip to meet our new nephew!! I'll be back this evening with photos and the winner of the Owl journal. So leave a comment if you haven't yet!



Later!
Arian

Give Away--Owl Journal

We've been runnin our own little creative sweat shop here in the Armstrong household. Everyone has been hard at work on their projects and my cousin Karis has come to my rescue once again. She's been my magic printing fairy, helping me keep up with all the Christmas orders. I can't tell you how amazing it's been over the past two days to walk into the room and see a growing stack of prints that I didn't have to stay up all night to print. I could DEFINITELY get used to having such great help around!


So I've been able to focus on some creative projects...yay!! I drew this little owl on a new, large, lined moleskine journal and thought it'd be fun to give it away! So here's how it'll go down---leave a comment on this post telling me one of the best Christmas presents you have GIVEN to someone else. And I'll randomly pick one on Friday at 3:00pm Kentucky time (EST) and post the winner here on the blog. So don't forget to check back!

Have a good evening! We're gonna put up our Christmas tree! Since food poisoning foiled our live Christmas tree chopping plans this past weekend, I'm caving in and borrowing a pre-lit artificial one....better fake than never : )

Arian : )

The Armstrongs, Simply Put

We got our Jonathan Willis Simple Portraits back today. He's good. While other famous Cincinnati photographer Michael Wilson seems to capture the soul, Jon is so good at capturing personalities. Take a look through his galleries. I especially love his photos of his kids.


Thanks for all the Etsy love recently! I'm aiming to get all orders out this week. December 14th is the last day for Christmas orders so hop on over to the shop if you've got more shoppin to do.

Btw, one of the things I love about these photos is that I am wearing a dress I got from my grandma's closet and Daniel is wearing pants from my grandpa's army days. There's something really sweet about that to me....just a reminder that the people you see in this photo are a part of generations past and generations to come, people who have received love, faith, creativity, work ethic, personality traits, and life from parents, parents' parents, and their parents' parents.... People who hope to build onto what we've been given and hand down something even stronger and better to our kids, and our kids' kids, and their kids' kids...... kinda blows my mind.

Sleep well,
Arian

The Weekend: Highs and Lows

This weekend was full of high highs and low lows. The highs?--- Hudson's big night out at the theatre with mommy and daddy, getting our simple family portrait taken ( I will show you the results when we get them!), a Victorian tea party with my mom and mom-in-law, a Victorian home tour around Newport with family, another b-day party for Hudson....
The lows? Some stomach thing has hit Hudson and me hard today. Perhaps cold pizza for breakfast was a poor choice. It's hasn't been pretty. You've never seen the toy department at Target clear as fast as it did when Hudson tossed his cookies there today. Seriously, from crowded to vacant in about 1.3 seconds. So our trip to Papa's to cut down our first real Christmas tree turned into a trip to Papa's to sit by the fire, munch on saltine crackers, and, well, I will spare you the details.
But I did manage to get out the camera and snap a few shots...so many great scenes in and around Papa's house...





Well, I'm gonna try to sleep off the yuckiness. Stay well!

Arian

On The Drawing Board

(working on another Seabird shirt)

Hard at work today! I've called in some reinforcements to help me with the boys and with printing/shipping so that I can hopefully get my nights back. You know that you love what you do when you're regularly willing to do it til 2am.

We're taking Hudson to the opening night of A Christmas Carol at Playhouse in the Park for his birthday. And we've got a ton of family activities planned for tomorrow and Sunday too! So I should have lots of pics to show you!

Have a great weekend!

Arian

Seabird!

I just finished up this Seabird tshirt design. (Check out the shirts I did last year here and here) It's off to the printer and the new shirts will hopefully be available for their cd release show on the 12th (come by and snag one if you're a Cincinnati local!). I'm working on two more designs that should be done tomorrow.

I love doing t-shirts for bands! I get sneak peeks at their new music and get to create wearable art--not a bad gig!

By the way, the lovely Sara Janssen (of Happy Foody and Live Lightly Tour fame) is giving away one of my prints (of your choosing) on her blog so stop on by and leave a comment if you'd like. (psst..it's also your chance to cash in on another Buy One Get One offer!!)

Have a good one!
Arian : )

Score One For Christmas!

We're going to Papa's this weekend to cut down our first live Christmas tree and I've been brainstorming, researching, daydreaming about how we'll decorate it. When we moved here from Boston last year we gave away our artificial tree with all its trimmings so I get to start with a blank slate!

I've been admiring all the ornaments at Anthro, especially the birds. But I can't exactly afford a tree's-worth of Anthro ornaments.

So I was suuuper happy to score big while out shopping with Andrea yesterday. I got a bag full of these adorable little birds for super cheap and I'm so excited to decorate our "vintage bird" tree! (For locals: head to Home Emporium if you're interested. There are tons more and they are 75% off!) We're gonna add some pine cones, ribbon, some berries, more feathers...I'll be sure to show you pics!


And I just purchased our Christmas stockings from Etsy seller Cherryland. Aren't they so cute?! I'm so excited to get them! Yay for Etsy shopping!




Speaking of Etsy shopping, I've got a lot of orders to print, package, and ship. Happy December!!

Arian : )