Life in plastic, it's fantastic!

We loaded our brood in the car and drove East yesterday to meet up with Paula and her lovely brood in Indianapolis for a day full of Barbie fun at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. Yes, I know there are other exhibits there but we spent pretty much 90% of our time in the Barbie area... are you surprised?



Paula and I were immediately drawn to this wall of inspiration. Cool, eh?



The kids had so much fun playing pretend in all the Barbie exhibits...



Taking phone calls...





Modeling... (that's Jennifer and her son Wyatt in the back taking pictures of supermodels Amelia and Sydney!)



Being paparazzi...



Draping... (a la Project Runway)



Hmmm.. that's not half bad, eh?



Posing...



Running... (This was our view most of the day since Sydney and Amelia became BFFs instantly. After all, they are both "five and a half," as they would have you know.)



Ridin'...



And crusin'... (possibly one of my fave pictures EVER! Check out how comfortable Wyatt is with "the girls", haha)



It was a BLAST and Sydney's already asking when she can go see her BFF again. :)

Meeeeeoooooowwwwww!
(that's me letting the cat out of the bag!)

Thanks for giving Jon such a warm welcome on his blog writing debut last week. I'm hoping your words of encouragement will give him the confidence he needs to take over more often when I'm in this state of craziness.

Soooo, I've just been given the green light to make the big announcement so without much further ado: I AM WRITING A BOOK!!! With WILEY!!! WOOOHOOOO!



Sorry, that's about as much as I can say about it at this point. But I can say that I am super excited that the folks at Wiley took such an interest in me and even more excited that they thought my idea for a book (right down to the title, which, again, I can't share at this moment) was as cool as I thought it was. eeeee!

In addition to reading a bazillion contract pages and signing on the dotted line til my hand cramped up, I've also been working on a whole new set of sewing patterns, due out this Fall...



And when Jon said "up to her neck in cut up fabric" he wasn't kidding! Here's a little snapshot of my studio floor right at this moment. I'm somewhere under the pile of ModBlooms, I think.



Oh, and I've also been proofing tons of strike offs for my next fabric collection... also to be released this Fall. Here's a little sneak...



I truly cannot wait to be able to share this collection in its full glory. It is my most sophisticated line to date and showcases some of the best drawing I've ever done... plus it has the widest range of print sizes of any of my existing collections... pattern sizes range from a teeny-tiny 1/2" to a full 24" repeat, and everything in between!

So, now that the cat's finally out of the bag hopefully you'll believe me when I say that things are about to get CRAZY around here. I know I say that every time but this. time. it's. for. reals. YO!

As if book-writing, pattern-making and fabric-designing wasn't enough to fill up my day, I'll also be doing a little bit of traveling, this time around the lovely Midwestern "I" States of Indiana, Iowa and Illinois. Tomorrow I'm headed to the beautiful city of Indianapolis where we'll meet up with the lovely duo of Paula Prass and Jennifer Storey for a little R&R with the fam. On Friday, I am continuing my WDT in the city of Clinton, Iowa where I'll be giving a lecture at Sew Many Things (holler if you're coming!). And finally, on Saturday, we are all headed up to Chicago to spend a little quality time with loved ones before school starts.

OK, OK, since I'm feeling happy and grateful, I'll give you a one more teensy tiny fabric sneak...

Day at the Museum

Last Saturday we took an impromptu road trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum. I say impromptu because we had planned to go to Chicago but due to some unforeseen circumstances we were not able to go, so since we were all psyched up to go somewhere we decided to visit the #1 rated children's museum in the nation. It did NOT disappoint!

We saw gorgeous Chinese dragons...



... and HUGE dinosaurs!



Some of these had real fossilized bones, so that was exciting!



Then we saw miniature villages...



And played in tiny doll houses...



Even had lunch with the three bears...



We tried to stand as tall as the polar bear...



And pretended to be "under the sea"...



We saw incredible glass sculptures by Chihuly...





And marveled at the beauty of the glowing, colorful organic shapes above us...



All in all it was an amazing trip. And hey, did you notice that Sydney wore her Frida dress and matching head scarf? Yes, we finally gave it a test drive and it passed the Sydney test with flying colors! PHEW!