The other week I got inspired by some fashions that I saw and came up with the idea to make a reversible hooded cape!  I love the idea of wearing a cape instead of a jacket because you know how some shirts’ sleeves just don’t do well under jackets?  Well the cape solves that all, plus can be a little bit more funky and stylish than a jacket!  These will be available for sale soon and I will let you know where!

I went to the Emily Griffith Opportunity School fabric sale this year, and it was amazing.  The reason that it was amazing however is quite sad; the program is shrinking and many of their classes are being cut as well as studio space, so they had to get rid of a ton of stuff.  I made out like a bandit gathering all of the following goodies for a measly $77!  This should last me quite a while!

I have an amazing jewelry collection that has been gathered over the years from thrift store, estate sales and garage sales.  The problem I’ve always had is that it was so disorganized that I could never find anything, all of my necklaces were tangled, and so I wound up just wearing the same things over and over and not taking advantage of some of my best pieces.  I saw an idea similar to this in a magazine and then modified it to fit my needs.  I used a wood panel covered in vinyl and got a bunch of miscellaneous knobs and drawer handles and this thrift store/tool surplus shop and vwalha!  Here it is…pretty great, huh?

My friend Theresa from work is a great artist, which she never really told anyone until one day she was bored and decided to draw me.  I think she did a great job – looks like me a lot, doesn’t it?  She even incorporated my vests which I am so into right now.  I scanned it and did live trace in illustrator to turn it into a vector graphic.  I just love it!  Thanks Theresa for making me look so cute!

On other notes, it’s been way too long since I have written and updated you on all that’s going on!  Let’s see, last I think I wrote I was just leaving for my tradeshow in Philly.  The show went really well and we had a successful time.  I fell in love with Philly and want to move there if I could only take Denver’s weather with me.  I don’t think I could do the winters or summers there.  Too hot and too cold for me.  I’m continuing to move forward quickly with Funklectic.  Lots of holiday orders have been coming in during September and I expect October to be even busier.  I’ve got the girls busy making loads of earrings and necklaces to keep my inventory full.

A few weeks ago Marc and I discovered a reservoir up in Longmont where they have a dog beach that has water that’s clean enough for humans to swim in too.  We made 2 trips up there before they closed (they close Labor day for the season) and swam all day with the dogs.  It was such an amazing time!  Kavi definitely liked to swim more than Barak (he would only go in to where he could still touch, and only to cool down or “kind of” chase a ball) but they both had a great time and were pooped for a day and a half after.  We also just discovered a dog day care place that has a dog swimming pool open year round where you can take your dogs to swim for $5 each.  We’re going to venture over there this weekend weather permitting.

This past weekend my good friend Lindsey came into town from LA (our mom’s were in the same hospital room as they gave birth to us, so we have actually known each other since birth - crazy huh?).  We putzed around Denver and Marc did an amazing job giving her a tour (he spits out all this info as we drive around town about Denver and I just don’t know where he stores it all).  I was also excited to learn that she, like us, is a vegetarian so we took her to City ‘O City and Watercourse to eat.  She enjoyed both immensely.  On Sunday we went up to Golden Gate Canyon State Park per the recommendation of my boss Eric, and it was so awesome.  We hiked around and saw some beautiful sites up in the Rocky Mtns.  We also drove up to this neat area where you can see 130 miles of the continental divide.  Wow!  It inspired me to do more hiking (nothing too hard core though!) since we have such easy access to it.  We took the dogs too and they had a great time!

My friend Theresa (the same one who drew my picture above) started a blog - http://be.funklectic.com/.  We are taking pictures of our outfits everyday and then posting them and writing about them.  It’s a sort of style diary thing that we both have always wanted to do and finally can since we see each other every day at work!  When we are old and grey we can look back and think either “wow, I was super cute and funky” or “what the heck was I thinking wearing that out of the house”!  Hopefully it’s the former!  Ok, well I think I’m off for now.  Talk more later!

I know I’ve been missing for quite some time, but I do have good reasons for this.  Here’s a little update about the life of Heidi B…

I started off my 4th of July holiday nice and relaxed in Glenwood Springs where Marc and I were visiting his parents.  Soon after our arrival I was suffering from extreme abdominal cramping.  It was finally so bad that we went to the hospital where they discovered I had some sort of abnormal mass in my abdomen and they would need to operate.  I was a little freaked out as I had never had surgery, but they said it shouldn’t be anything too bad.  That was Saturday night, so I slept there through the night with Marc at my side (the poor guy slept in one of those terribly uncomfortable hospital chairs).  Sunday AM I went into surgery (crying as they wheeled me in with thoughts running through my head of “what if I never wake up?”) and before I knew it I was in the recovery room and Marc was there immediately.  Everything went well and it turned out to be a cyst on my ovary that had ruptured (it was the size of a baseball!).  They got it all out and luckily were able to leave my ovary (they also removed my appendix so the good news is I’ll never have an appendicitis).  I stayed in the hospital one more day and with the amazing support of Marc I was able to go home on Monday night.  He was more than I could ever have asked for, calming me when I was in pain, getting the nurse for more medicine, and never left my side.  I am grateful to have such an amazing partner in my life.  I could not want more.  We drove home from Glenwood on Monday night as Marc had jury duty in Denver on Tuesday AM.  I was still feeling pretty groggy and in pain but the 3 hr trip wasn’t too bad.  I stayed home from work the rest of the week and by the end of it I was more sore from laying on the couch for 5 days straight than I was sore from my surgery.  Luckily they did it laproscopically so I only had 3 small incision.

I’m glad to report I’m pretty much fully recovered and back to the normal grind.  On that note I’ve been getting ready for my trade show next weekend in Philadelphia.  I am introducing some new products so I’ve been spending lots of time building new displays for them.  Plus, I got a corner booth (I signed up for the show a bit late and that was all they had left - I was stoked as they’re more expensive!) so I had to rethink my booth layout.  I’ve got it all figured out and am really close to being ready, although I do still have some things left to do - and we are already T minus 4 days…  I shall drink lots of coffee and not sleep very much.

Around the house things are good.  We are almost done tackling a major project which included scraping paint off the walls in one of the 2 bedrooms upstairs (it was red paint with black splatters on it - this is waht a guy does when he buys his first house…).  Once we had scraped all the paint, we had also scraped all the texture, so we rented a hopper from home depot (basically a drywall mud spitting machine that sprays texture on your walls) and after masking off the ENTIRE room, we sprayed texture.  Yesterday we painted 2 coats of primer, and today we shall paint 2 coats of paint.  Turquoise blue on 2 walls and dark brown on the other 2.  We got a nice new bed frame for a screamin’ good deal at this funky modern furniture store that was going out of business, it’s a platform bed with a dark brown headboard.  I love it - will take pics when it’s moved into the bedroom.  That also meant that we needed a new bed, as our last one was a full (can you believe - 2 adults and 2 dogs in a full bed?) and this one is a queen - can’t wait!  We got a memory foam mattress and I’m quite excited.  Tonight will either be spent on the new mattress or the couch, depending on how much work we get done (they hauled the old mattress away).  So speaking of, I better get back to the grind.  Hope that was a good update and sorry I’ve been MIA for so long.  I will try and post some pictures from the trade show and our new bedroom soon!

Until then…love, Heidi B