4th of July + 80/35 festival (and the Flaming Lips!) /  by jen geigley

Alright! So here's how our super rad Fourth weekend went down.
The 80/35 Music Festival. Two days of indie music fun (and we even brought Lo to some of it.) It had been awhile since we had been to an outdoor music festival but we were so happy to see these kinds of bands being brought to downtown Des Moines. Perfect summer weather, a diverse lineup of rock, indie, hip hop and punk bands. It was the best 4th we've had in awhile.

We saw...
Ingrid Michaelson (...who wanted to change up 'The Way I Am', and so she sang all of 'Ice Ice Baby' and 'The Fresh Prince of Bell Air' - yo homes, smell ya later! - before asking us all to clap-clap - clap for her hit song. And she's so totally adorable live.)

Cracker (Okay, they're older now but they impressed the hell out of us. I was a big fan in the 90s.)

Poison Control Center (Fun, as you can see.)

Dirty Little Rabbits (Weird and theatrical and awesome, with Stella Katsoudas of Sister Soleil and Shawn Crahan of Slipknot - loved them. )

Pieta Brown (Loved, loved her.)

A gyro from The Gyro Man. A treat straight from my college days. So tasty and brings back memories.

We finally stepped inside this huge new sculpture in Western Gateway Park downtown.

And took Lo to her first official show. (She saw some pretty amazing bands for being a one-year-old.)
The Roots (Sorry for the not-great photo.) What an amazing act to see live. Lotus rocked out on our blanket 'till almost 11:00 pm.


And wow. The Flaming Lips. If all you know of the Flaming Lips is 'She Don't Use Jelly,' you are sadly missing out on a lot. And this show... Confetti. Painted naked dreadlock girls. People dressed in Telletubby costumes with flashlights. Huge balloons. Trippy graphics. The music. And a message... about the war, about politics, about our soldiers. Nothing was left out and this show will stay with me for a long time.

we'll sink with kalifornija... /  by jen geigley


So we're back, and our trip to San Diego was awesome. We stayed on Mission Beach, went to Coronado island, La Jolla and ate some killer food. There were some challenging moments during our first family vacation, but mostly fun ones. And by day three or so, I had finally relaxed and let the California mentality take over.

We even had a celebrity encounter at Starbucks (of all places.)

Pro-skateboarder Sergie Ventura, which couldn't have been more exciting or perfect for Bo and I. We had seen him skate before and it was so cool to meet him in person. We were just talking to the Starbucks dude about listening to Jason Ellis on Sirius, and then Sergie walked up and said, 'Hey, Jason is a friend of mine.' Whoa.

On our daily walk up and down Mission Blvd, we would pass these paintings on the sides of beach houses. The unicorn princess was my favorite.


...and I loved these sweet beach cruisers.


Bo's t-shirt caused quite a stir on the boardwalk...


The front of the shirt says "I can get you a toe."

So a guy yells to Bo "by 3:00 this afternoon!"

Bo shouts back "with nail polish."

Another guy joked that he was going to jump us for said shirt. Lovely.


And in keeping with the apparent Lebowski theme, Bo bought groceries at Ralphs wearing his Achiever shirt. And he signed up for a Ralph's store discount card just so he could keep it in his wallet. (We don't even have Ralphs in Iowa. Sigh.)

My two favorite people in the world...




I turned 31 while we were on our trip. We ate at the Fish Market and it may very well have been the best birthday ever.





A lot of our vacation revolved around food.
Yum.
We ate here...




...and shopped here.


Our sweet beach baby...



Bo (Iowa Boy) surfed like a pro, didn't get eaten by a shark, but did manage to injure both of his big toes on two separate occasions. (I will spare you the photo.) He's still pretty freaking amazing. I mean, dude, he skateboards, snowboards, kayaks, off-road unicycles, amongst like 18 other extreme sport hobbies. And he surfs. When he can. Because we live nowhere near water. And that kicks serious ass.


Our trip wouldn't be complete without seeing some of these...


I miss waking up to the ocean every day, but ahhhhhh, home sweet home. That's always how it goes.

biz, tulips and a vespa... /  by jen geigley

So I know I've posted about Yo Gabba Gabba before, but you must see this. It's still basically the only show L will watch, so we see a lot of it at our house. Biz Markie has a segment called 'Biz's Beat of the Day' where he beat-boxes. So naturally our one-year-old would pick this up.



Bo got a 77 Vespa/Piaggio Bravo off craigslist. Which he thought was a scooter-type Vespa, but it's more of a moped.

But now we don't care, because we found Moped Army. And mopeds are much cooler than you would think. Bo is starting a Des Moines branch ... the BuzzBombs. Swarm and destroy.


Think I'm joking? Check out the Chicago branch, Peddy Cash. Now you want to join us, don't you.


And I'm on the catwalk, on the catwalk, yeah.
I shake my little tush on the catwalk.

So lately L is suddenly so much more grown up and full of personality. It's so much fun to see her mind at work. In the photo below, she was mad because she was trying to play her NIN drum with her drum sticks while riding the skateboard I was pushing back and forth, and when I stopped pushing the skateboard to take a photo, she was on the verge of tears. So much drama in the LBC.

And check out this look.


L and I went to our first Tulip festival in Pella. We had a blast seeing the locals wearing their clogs, the windmills, eating Dutch letters from Jaarsma Bakery and of course seeing every type and color of tulip you could imagine. It was a fun day and I hope to go back every year.



And I got to hang out with scrapper buddies Brandy and Tonya on Thursday. We hit Valley Junction for a quick photo in front of this crazy metal wall before we had dinner. And of course we made total fools of ourselves (and took photos with the self-timer on the windshield of a parked van) in front of all the people at the Farmers' Market. Which isn't embarrassing at all.

... and what it all comes down to /  by jen geigley

Yes, another Alanis blog post title. But look below and you'll see why.

Today my guest Dare is officially up! Check it out here.

Thanks so much to all the girls. Especially Kristina for asking me to do this, and Jamaica for all her help and love and guidance and graphic design comradery. (That can't be spelled right.)
All of the girls are so talented and inspiring and totally sweet.

So here is my Dare. What started out as an innocent one-page thing quickly morphed into this monster. (Sorry, there are a lot of photos here. I need TypePad.




















Happy weekend to you!

... and the other one is giving a high five /  by jen geigley

So yeah, where have I been? I've been told it's been too long since I've updated but life is busy, ya know?

Well, Emma rocked her Bat Mitzvah (her mama's exact words.) So proud of that girl. (And she looked too cute in her Converse. They're sequined like Avril Lavigne's.)




I applied for the design team at Memory Bound. They announce the winners on April 30, so wish me luck. I know they got an overwhelming response, so the competition's fierce.

And I finished up my "inspire me" mini from Kristina's class. If you weren't able to take her class in person, she sells kits on her etsy store, so go out and get one - you won't be sorry you did. I'm still messing with the "my loves" mini and it's turning out to be killer.















And speaking of Kristi, my Dare comes out this Friday! She asked me to be a guest designer for The Dares and so I sent all the girls some Etsy love from my shop and they're gonna rock a page this week. I'll share photos of what I did soon. This is too exciting for me, seriously.

April Red Velvet kit! /  by jen geigley


The April Red Velvet Kit ("Lucky") was up this morning, and it's already sold out on Etsy. (Ummm, hello, it's not even noon yet?)

Check out the photo (by Red Velvet Art) ... so much good stuff I can't even stand it. Some of my Etsy tags are included in this set (along with a little wood grain alpha, a little ledger paper, a little BamPop) ... can you say 'Lucky girl?' 'Cause I am.

so much... /  by jen geigley

Things have seemed so hectic lately that it's nice to slow down. Craft Saturday went really well and was a lot of fun - Erin and I would definitely like to do it again. Here are some shots from that day... although the best part of the whole thing might have been our dinner at the Royal Mile afterwards. We were starving by the end of the day and a cheeseburger never tasted so good.


I've been working on rock placecards for my niece's Bat Mitzvah in Chicago next month. I love seeing them all piled up together. We're excited for our trip to visit the Chicago 'burbs soon.


And Lotus has been donning pigtails this past week for the first time. I feel like her hair is always in her eyes, and she looks so cute with her hair back from her face. Even though they're not the tidiest pigtails. I haven't perfected my hairstyling techniques yet, and I have to be fast to get those tiny rubber bands in before she figures out what I'm doing.


I woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago and saw the Paul Frank monkey taking a ride in Lotus' Playskool airplane with Hello Kitty and the Little People pilot - which is all Bo's doing (leftover from playtime the night before.) It made me smile - he's a really good dad and he's imaginative and silly in a way that I admire. I get caught up in enforcing her naptimes and monitoring her food intake (although I admit that I am good at making up funny songs to sing)... but this is just a reminder that sometimes I need to slow down and not take things too seriously.


I got some very sad news from a friend today and my heart goes out to her. It's so sudden... I emailed her to wish her a happy 30th b-day today, and she told me what happened. Life is fragile (and turns on you when you least expect it) and you've got to be grateful every day for the people in your life and the little things you take for granted. She's strong and I know she'll be okay, and I hope I can be a good friend to her through this even though I can't find the right words to say right now. I wish that I could provide just the right amount of comfort or do the perfect thing that would help her. Just 'being there' for her doesn't seem like enough.

tiny ice pellets, sippy cup boot camp and packages... /  by jen geigley

Today it has been snowing tiny ice pellets, which is just depressing. This morning, it was almost like tiny hail, but now it's kind of snow pellets. It needs to stop. Thank God we're going to California soon.

Today is day two of Lotus' sippy-cup boot camp. I finally realized that if I stop giving her bottles, she'll eventually get the hang of this cup business. And it's working... not that she hasn't put up a fight now and then.

She's such a sweetie and it's so awesome to hear the words she's been starting to say... "pretty," "dude," "mama" (finally - and she doesn't say it often, only if she's in distress.) And "bah" which means "bye," which comes out sounding almost like she's from the South.

And in other fun news, I finally packaged up some goodies to send out to The Dares girls. Which is so exciting. Kristina asked me to be a guest designer in April and to come up with a dare! Which is too rad for words. So I sent them all some Etsy love from my shop, which they'll use on their page for the Dare that week.

Stoked.



And more of my Etsy stuff will be included in the April Red Velvet kit, which comes out soon. Check it!