Giving Etsy a go

Since I'm still learning to get around on the mac here and I really want to get these Lumplings out there for everyone to adopt, I'm going to give Etsy a try.

So as my test, the Lumpling seen above has just been put up for adoption on Etsy.  I'm sure that I forgot to include a million things, but hopefully it will work!

A new Amy Rue shop is up at Etsy

and that should link to it... I hope.

or

http://www.amyrue.etsy.com

I don't know if this will be how I do all adoptions in the future, or just for now.  If it makes life easier here in Lumpling land it might stay!  For right now, the regular amyrue.com is stagnant and I need to learn how to update it from this new system very soon.

Gubble & Bum are up right now and I'll probably add several more Lumplings later this evening!

hold your breath & let go....

Over the highway and through the woods we went to Grandma Grace's.

The one time of the year that I see my paternal side of the family.  We've all flocked to Grandma's every year for that one special day of Grandma's cooking.  

Grandma doesn't cook anymore.  She looks confused and Aunt B told me that she had tumors near her brain.  

But I made her famous orange cranberry cake and  even though it wasn't as good as Grandma's I was proud to see everyone attack it.

And my kids got to play on the rope swing.  I spent hours and hours of my childhood whirling on the rope swing outside of Grandma's.

See those blue stairs with the big E behind Finn?  Crumpled now, but still strong when I was a child, we would climb to the top and jump on the swing.  A cousin or uncle would grab the hanging rope and pull me high enough to kick branches.... sending spanish moss and acorns into the air.

The kids were so excited and once I was assured that the alligators had vacated Grandma's pond they jumped into the water fully clothed.

Their incredibly smart mama packed clean clothing for just this reason.

I never missed an opportunity to get in that pond, smooshing georgia red clay between my toes and catching minnows with my hands.

Grandma used to beg me not to leave...holding onto our arms and making fake crying noises to make us laugh.  But this time she accepted our hugs and didn't really seem to have the strength or clarity to protest.

It was a strange way to leave.

But oh how lucky are my kids that they know their Great Grandmother?

always in motion

Life has been hectic in Rue land, and I apologize to everyone waiting to adopt a Lumpling that it has taken me so very long to make a new herd!

I have a new herd almost ready...about a dozen of them.  I'll get pictures ready of them next week.

 I've just switched to a mac and I'm still learning all of the quirks.  The amyrue site is about to be overhauled, but maybe not in time for this new herd to launch. 

One of the obstacles in my way is that I haven't been able to transfer all of the email addys on the amyrue mailing list to the mac as a separate list!  So at this point I really don't know just how I'm going to email the list with the adoption news.  I might end up putting all of the names and addys in by hand.  Er, there are over 500 names on there!

We are hoping that switching to a mac will end all of my email woes.  On my pc I was getting about 800 spam emails a day!  It was overwhelming.  So if you have emailed me in the past six months and never heard from me...it was probably lost in all that crazy spam.   

Oh! We took the kids to see Mr. Magorium's and unfortunately didn't spot the Lumplings.  Well, Hans claimed that he saw one, but I didn't!  But we waited around to the very very end of the credits and saw a wee thank you to Amy Rue which was pretty neat.  I know that we will get the dvd and comb through the shop scenes in slow motion!

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

The trailer is up for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium!

Although I looked & looked I didn't see even a hint of the Lumplings in the toy store. But Lumplings are very small and I'll be first in line to see the movie at the theater just so I can strain my eyes there while looking for a familar Lumpling face.

Even if we never see one of the Lumplings... we know they're there!

Lumpling Love & Junkie Mumpin!

A great big ole thank you to everyone for coming to check out the newest herd of Lumplings today!

We'll get those birth certificates printed up this weekend and get all the Lumps on the road to their shiny new homes! My preschooler was hanging out with me during the adoption, reading her books and singing

"Five little Junkies Mumping on the bed..."

And I'm typing like a crazy person, but came to a screeching halt when I heard her song. Took me a minute to figure out what she was really trying to sing!

Dang, what do they teach in preschool these days?

Junkies mumping on the bed indeed.

Lucky Junkies!

Time to adopt a Lumpling!

The next Lumpling herd will go up at amyrue.com

this Friday at 2pm eastern!

As always, I will post full instructions on how to adopt a Lumpling when the herd shows up.

hot weather go away, cool weather come to stay!

Even though the weather here in Georgia is still hot as hell, I'm daydreaming of crisp fall days under a new quilt.

These sweet fabrics from American Jane for Moda are coming together in a disappearing nine patch quilt.

Last week this panda fabric came in from Repro Depot fabrics, and it's so cute I'm scared to cut it. But I'm seeing in my head a dress for my little Ella that will make her the envy of all the other preschoolers...and me!

I look at my cardigans each day and with a sigh promise them that they will be worn every single day very very soon.

Amy Had a little Lamb....

Amy had a little Lamb, it's fleece was white as snow...

& then that sweet little lamb found out that Amy Rue

turned an absolutely obscene age (eh, we can still say "early thirties" for the next ten years or so) today and that poor little lamb had to go...

Check out my hysterical gift from Hans. I was still rubbing the dreams from my eyes this morning when he gave me the Dead Sheep Head here, and I laughed and laughed!

The lamb is from Cherrybox Studios, where they have all sorts of other wonderful critters like Unicorns and Pink Pony heads on display. Absolutely brilliant job!

Another wonderful sheep painting came in the mail later in the day from our friend Don Bertram in Houston. I'll have to take pictures of it tomorrow!

Feeling oh so lucky and loved today,

and I have new laugh lines to prove it.

pussy cat wussy cat...

Mama! There are kittens underneath the Woodbridge!

Yeah? That's nice, sweetie.

One followed us here...can we keep her?

Uh, nope. Unless you learn to scoop cat poo.

She's so cute and black, Mama!

A black kitten? Uh oh.

Oh Dear.

Are we suckers?

Please meet little Miss Dibley, the newest member of our family, and our third black cat.

Dibley has a small white patch on her neck, like a Vicar. So we immediately named her after the Vicar of Dibley show that I love so much.

Our oldest cat, Tiggy, doesn't give a rat's ass about the new kitten, but Neko is out of her mind. Neko has been walking around pissed off at the world and growling at all of us.

Dibley is super sweet and just thrilled at having a bowl full of food in front of her. Tomorrow she goes for her first Vet visit and Ella is already worried about that thermometer going up the kitten's hoohaw.

Even though this has interrupted some Lumpling sewing time I still expect to launch a herd in about two weeks!

There are still three of Dibley's siblings living underneath the restaurant if anyone is local and looking for a new fur baby!

time to breathe

We've just returned from MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, riding on a cloud because my husband, Hans, had clean scans.

Cancer FREE!

For several weeks now I've been going through the motions of life, but not really feeling it. Fear shuts me down.

And I was completely terrified that the cancer was back, taking hold somewhere in his body. The almost 2 years of remission seemed too good to be true last week. I've read too many stories of people not making it this far with the same cancer.

But enough of that!

Layers of dust are being lifted from my mind. I'm so freaking happy.

The world feels a bit brighter today.

And now I'm taking my coffee here and I'm going to do some actual sewing.

There are Lumplings waiting to be born!

Happy happy little fuzzy Lumplings...just like me.

swim time

I'm sure you can tell which child is mine in this picture.

Yep, the one that isn't paying any attention to the swim instructors, but instead seems to be saying "wooooo! Where the party at, people?! I got my bikini on and I'm ready to live dangerous!"

And my other child seems to be saying.... um, well, I actually have no idea what that face means. But he was happier than he looks, I swear!

Okie, here my daughter looks sweet and innocent again. I tried to find a picture of my son not looking crazy and that didn't happen; he looks like a cartoon character in every single picture.

Today wrapped up the week of swim lessons for the kids and we are pleased to be done! I'm still terrified that my kids will flip out at the pool. The first year that Finn went he was what we call a "runner & a screamer". The swim instructor had to chase him down and plop him back in the pool.

But here's the rub of the week: Ella lost an earring! Gone! Poof! I tried to put another one in her ear, but it had already closed up even though it could have only been a few hours without the earring.

So tomorrow we make the trip back to the mall to get her ear repierced. And she knows what to expect this time which makes this trip more intimidating.

So I fully expect to be wobbly in the head tomorrow.

Yep, wobbly.

All the little Lumplings wave bye bye!

All of the Lumps were spoken for in just under 36 minutes today!

15 of them! Usually the herds are just at a dozen, but somehow more snuck in today.

I made a deal with myself that after this herd I would get down to business on revamping amyrue.com because it needs a serious overhaul. So we might have to wait a bit longer before the next herd comes up for adoption!

Thank you so much to everyone for coming to see the newest Lumpling herd today! I'm getting them all packed up and ready for the trip to their new homes!

Adoption time!

Hopefully this one will go off smoothly!

I'll be sending the email announcement out tomorrow, but blog readers get the early tip.

If you see a Lumpling that you would like to adopt, please email me at amy at amyrue.com and
I will send a Paypal invoice your way or a note letting you know the Lumpling was already snatched up.

Remember to ‘refresh’ the adopt page every few minutes, because I start putting up the ‘adopted’ notices as soon as I can!


Sometimes Lumplings go very fast and I will be typing my little heart out replying to emails, but I do reply to
every email.

If you don’t hear back from me, please check your ‘spam’ folder… sometimes those emails are sneaky.

Adoption fees are Paypal only.
Shipping for one Lumpling $6.00 in North America and $8.00 International.

Please remember that Lumplings should still be considered choking hazards with wee babies under age three.
Or anyone who likes to gnaw on little animals.

Hope we see you there!

Like we need another hole in our heads

Oh me, oh my, my little Miss has some new holes in her head.

I knew we were in trouble last week when some of the neighborhood girls showed off their sparkly new earrings to Ella. So it was off to the mall for us!

Ella asked me if it hurt to get your ears pierced and I told her that it didn't because I swear it never bothered me! But you see that face up there in the picture? That was the look she gave me right after saying, "but, but Mama, that did hurt!"

Whoops.

I had to beg and plead with my Mother to get my ears pierced when I was eight. Practically had to sacrifice small animals to get her to agree. I remember sitting on the counter at Treasury Drugs in Marietta scared out of my wits and wondering just why I begged for this. But I don't remember crap after that, except for a few years of glorious huge plastic earrings in the 80's.

And in my teens I stuck safety pins through my left ear about 5 more times. Never really bothered with my right ear, it was spared the torture. I also stuck a sharp safety pin in my nose, but that one took forever to get through...not painful, just tedious. But the safety pins never hurt my ears either, I didn't even bother with the ice to numb things. I did heat up the pins and dip them in alcohol first!

So responsible. pfft.

My very first job was at the mall piercing ears. I find it hard to believe now that someone looked at me and agreed that I would be trustworthy enough to put holes in people. For real, I wouldn't even trust me to do it now.

So I felt a little emotional taking my own daughter back to the mall where I pierced ears as a teenager. The mall where I met her Daddy. The mall where I spent hours with my best friend before her death, and when I dream of her, I still dream of her walking beside me, fishnets tattered, through that same mall.

Once the girls did the whole "one two three!!" thing and the earrings where in, I let out a huge sigh and then sucked my breath back in when I saw Ella's little lip tremble. She didn't cry, and neither did I after a few tense moments.

Finn looked on and rolled his eyes.

I was so nervous after everything that somehow I agreed to purchase 8 dollar Hello Kitty Lip glosses.

But now Ella is very proud of her sparkles, and feels all grown up. I always promised myself that I would take my daughter to get her ears pierced as soon as she asked, and I fulfilled that personal promise.

But now, what will I do when she gets a bit older and wants me to drop her off at the mall?

Maybe I'll show her how to put the right amount of tatters in her fishnets, and how to lace her boots the correct way.

I hope so. I hope that I will continue to fulfill my dreams of being the right sort of mom for my children.

While the sewing machine is away....

....the Lumplings don't play!

I broke my beautiful new sewing machine.

Something about screwing up the timing. So she is off at the repair place to get her inside bits tickled.

The lady at the sewing machine store was so sympathetic, she didn't even accuse me of machine abuse once! She even petted the sewing machine and told me how sorry she was that it wasn't working.

This lady obviously understands the bond between a girl and her machine.

I do have some Lumplings done, just not too many of them have baby Lumps. I will still launch a new herd for adoption sometime in the next couple of weeks.

One more day of school left!

Today was award day at Finn's school. He came home with awards in Computer, Language Arts, & Music.

We are awfully proud of him!

Happy Mama Day!

Hans & Finn surprised me with breakfast in bed.

Complete with fresh roses and mint from our garden.

I've never been so coddled!

Finn made this tile for me at school. The green lady is me...maybe with a perm? Check out my giant flowers!

Ella went into panic mode this morning when she saw Finn hand me a gift and wrapped up a shiny marble in Hello Kitty paper for me. She also drew this picture of wild sheep and their kitty. Um, I think the kitty is the one about to fly into the sun.

Tea Towels & rosy woes

I'm a bad blog mama, that's for sure.

I think about making a post daily...but then I get distracted by pretty things, like my roses here!

Unfortunately, that Easter Freeze wiped out the blooms from my large rose bed in the front. Usually we would have hundreds of hot pink blooms right now, and I really mean hundreds, cars slow down in front of the house during the first bloom, people come to a sudden stop when walking by and ask about the type of rose bush.

A portion of the rose bed from last year in the first blush

But now, there are only a few little blooms. The bushes are not dead, and for that I am grateful, but oh how I miss the blooms.

When I'm not cursing Jack Frost, a whole lotta needle threading has been going on.

I adore travel tea towels, but I need something more absorbent in the kitchen for drying hands after washing. So I took these mint vintage towels, then I cut up some of my older terry cloth bath towels that had a few worn spots and smacked them together.

Well, maybe I didn't actually "smack" them, but I sewed them together like a pillow case and then did an extra stitch around the edge after turning them right side out so they won't warp in the wash.

So now I have pretty towels for drying my hands than I have been obsessively washing.

It's all about the pretty. And maybe the washing.

All of my efforts to give love to my kitchen didn't prevent me from dropping one of my favorite bowls last weekend. Later that same day I dropped one of my Smurf glasses too, but luckily that one didn't break.

Oh, the horrors if a Smurf glass breaks.

You understand, right? Right?

Smurfs!

small pleasures mine

Tallulah Bankhead: "Why, it's as easy as ducking for apples."

Dorothy Parker: "Hah, change one letter in that sentence and you've got the story of my life."

Our new little fat belly tea pot has a brilliant strainer hiding in the spout, keeping the pesky leaves out of the cups.

Hans and I have been so thrilled with watching the tea leaves dance about that our eyeballs are floating from drinking so many cups.

Now I need a good source for loose leaf tea that we can afford given our million cups a day habit!

More small pleasures this week include sending off all of the Lumplings, making a new flower bed and moving my heucheras to a more friendly spot in the garden, walking the Renn Fest, Rocky Road ice cream, installing a new ceiling fan (can never have enough in Georgia!), leaving the windows open to enjoy the breeze and planting my rear end on the sofa sewing more Lumplings while watching _How Clean is Your House?_ on bbc america.

All in all, a near perfect week for me!

Do you remember the first time you realized that you lift another human?

The knowledge has gone to Finn's head and Ella is never safe these days! I'm waiting for day that she turns around and picks him up too.

Dover with love

Did you know that if you sign up at dover publications they will send you free clip art every week?

Everything from vintage luggage labels to holiday art from their famous clip art books.

Dover has been a constant in my life, and I love how they still sell the same coloring books that I had as a child. I'm looking forward to getting new copies of my old favorites for my munchkins.

oh my goodness

Hobo here was the love of the adoption and I had the most requests for her. She went super fast! I love her frilly ruff; it's a bit of trim that I've been holding onto for a long time, waiting for the perfect time to cut it. I think Hobo wears it well.

Finally got the website up and running about thirty minutes past when I needed it to work!

But new Lumpling parents were determined and adopted the Lumplings that could be seen, all of the other pictures had that lovely little red x.

I'm so sorry for any troubles that this caused anyone trying to get into the site for adoption today. After today, I'm having a stern talk with the ole website, and put the fear of Lump into it!

website woes

I just found out that the "shop" page on the amy rue website isn't working!

I'll try to fix it...not sure what is happening!

I'm still working on this. Trying to get the website published.

So sorry for all of the trouble!

*update* I'm republishing the entire site, and I think that it's working...toes crossed... The lumplings are going to be tardy today.

sigh.

The Lumplings are coming!

Tuesday, April 17th

1pm eastern standard
at amyrue.com

The Lumpling herd is finally coming to town!

I sent out an email to the mailing list last night and got a bunch of returned spam blocked notices! So if you didn't get the email, it's because you have a nice tight spam block that didn't like my mass email!

Did you think that I had forgotten about you?

I'm surprised I remember my own name!

Since my last post I went on holiday to Germany with my husband, his parents and my two munchkins. We met up with all of Hans' Uncles, Aunts, Cousins and more Cousins, and basically took over a hotel in Celle for a couple of days.

I fell in love with Hameln, Germany, where the Pied Piper fairy tale is based. All of the cobblestone streets, crooked old buildings and lace fluttering from windows spoke to my desperate for history soul.

It's hard to find charm like that here in America. I go to Savannah whenever possible to feel something close.

We got home just in time to hunt for Easter eggs and get our baskets in place for the bunny to come calling.

And that Bunny had a frozen cotton tail! Winter returned to North Georgia, turning all of our beautiful blooms to mush. Hans and I garden somewhat obsessively, but luckily we hadn't planted anything new yet!

And now....I'm catching my breath. Giving my home some cleaning love and attention, and just enjoying being here.

I'm looking at next Tuesday, April 17th being the adoption day for Lumplings.

The website is finally back up and seems to be working (fingers crossed!), so I can finally give these guys new homes!

I will post the official day and time tomorrow, as well as email the information to the mailing list.

Oh me, oh my, amyrue.com is still down and out!

Which means that any emails coming to amyrue.com are lost lost lost!

If amyrue.com comes back up before Easter, and you place an order, it will not ship until after Easter.

I just gotta hope that anyone placing an order feels curious enough to check the blog here!

I usually put a note up on the website when there will be an order delay, but with the site down like it is, I can't do that.

But, fingers crossed, everything should be back online and on track after Easter for the Lumplings to come up for adoption! I have about twelve of them...although a couple might end up in the Easter baskets of two very special wee rug rats.

Fuzzy Lumpling hugs & kisses to everyone until then!

Lumpling Launch on hold

I really wanted to launch the newest herd this week, but we've been bogged down with email problems. I can imagine the nightmare it would cause if I didn't get emails during adoption time, and I don't want to live that nightmare!

two tiny lumps who really wanted to be adopted this week!

So we are switching providers for the amyrue site, which is the reason amyrue.com is down right now, and hopefully when I get back from Germany everything will be straightened out!

Ack, well, I hope. Computer stuff. Shiver.

Speaking of emails not getting through... if you sent an email to amyrue or luna7, and we did not reply, that means we didn't receive it because of these glitches!

Please write back...we like you, we really do, and we want to reply to you!

Pillows...finally!

Three new pillows are finally up at amyrue.com.

It hasn't taken me forever or anything to get them here. Pfft.

Next we will have a Lumpling herd! I have to get this done by this week,

or it will have to wait until we get back from Germany.

So...I'm thinking maybe this Thursday?

I will see how far I get with sewing tonight, and if I can get everything done in time, I'll send out an update to the mailing list!

I have all of the big Lumplings finished, but now some of them need a baby Lump to hold. I have these cute as can be tiny baskets that I'm thinking of stuffing the bitty Lumps in for the Large Lumps to hold.

But sometimes these things don't work the same way that my mind sees it...so I'll just have to see how that goes!

And now we are...

And now we are.... seven, four and ready for spring!

I brought in forsythia branches a couple of weeks ago so that they could force bloom inside.

Here, in North Georgia, the forsythia is the first to shout "Spring!", and she isn't shy about it.

This is a picture of my smallest branches, poking out of an old silver mint julep cup, tarnished just the way I like all of my silver. It's much easier to say that you enjoy the tarnished look to avoid having to polish the silver every month.

The forsythia blooms have helped fuel our spring fever. Hans and I are already making our plans for the garden this year. I love this time when we dream up our next projects and almost itch with excitement to get back to our gardens.

And here we have the seven & four part of my life!

Ella's party was very exciting on Sunday. We had about 14 kids and their parents here to celebrate. Ella donned her party dress and showed true southern roots when she refused to wear shoes as well....just like her mama! We love to admire and buy shoes, just not really wear them so much!

There is a matching dress for her favorite baby doll, Coco. Coco also refused foot wear.

In a couple of weeks our crazy family will be heading to Germany. Finn & Ella will get to meet all of their Uncles and cousins, and we will somewhat follow the Grimm Brother's fairytale way as we visit some of the smaller towns.

Hans and I haven't been to Germany since 1995, when he asked me to marry him in Berlin.

He thought this through and waited until we were in a country where I couldn't speak the language so that I couldn't run very far!

Smart boy.

This trip will obviously be very different! We haven't taken a plane ride this long with the children before and I really hope we all handle it well!

I hope to have a Lumpling herd come up for adoption before we leave. Be sure to keep an eye on your email for the next amyrue.com announcement!

Celebrate!

If you read my husband, Hans' blog, then you already know that his PET/CT scans came out clean....NO CANCER! We don't have those biopsy results back yet, but the doctor said that he didn't see any cancer down there.

How fabulous is that?

We were both nervous, but putting on brave attitudes for each other. His surgeon, Dr. Hofstetter, was the first to tell us that the scans looked good and he just breezed by with that information. I had to interrupt him (goes against my southern girl training in manners!), and ask him to repeat it.

We were on a total high as we went to the airport to begin our journey home, but due to the storms across the SouthEast ended up waiting for 7 hours for the plane to take us home!

But that was ok... no cancer!

Now, this little girl here is too little to know just how important this past week was to her life.

All she knows is that this week she turns FOUR!

My baby, my little possum girl is going to be 4!

We are going to have a great big party with a Winnie The Pooh cake and balloons.

Ella is talking about her party non stop, I have no idea what she will talk about after this!

Ella at a party last weekend giving the blowy thing a go. What are those things called? I've always called it the blowy thing, I'm sure that's pretty wrong.

For the rest of this week I'll be cleaning the house and getting everything organized for the big day. Hell, we'll call this Spring Cleaning! Two birds with one stone type of thing.