Back from Brooklyn...

Phew! What a weekend! Filled with all sorts of surprises and mischief! But of course the highlight was Renegade! It was a great weekend, albeit a bit hot at times, and thank you so so much to everyone who was able to stop by! I came back much lighter than I came and so many cuties found great new homes in New York.

With all of the work I did in the past month, I still have way more animals and figures in my studio than I ever have at one time (maybe except for Christmas), which means I'll be having some updates soon and my Etsy shop will be getting "fatter"! After that it's Christmas Christmas Christmas. I want to back a lot more this December, which means I'll have to work harder this summer. :)

I shared a booth with the lovely Jessie of Cake Spy who tempted me with all her cupcake inspired cards and doodads. But sharing a tent means that I only have two little tables...which is what I usually have anyway. I had so many figures on Saturday morning that they all barely fit and each little guy or gal was certainly breaching each other's personal space bubble. As the weekend wore on, breathing room was established...sigh....

Me doing what I do best...sitting!

While we were in town we got meet up with so many of our friends. A big group of us went to this really neat restaurant called Surf Bar. It was sort of a Louisiana beach style place and had sand on the floor - I mean deep sand, it was all in my shoes - and the walls were covered in vintage beach and ocean related doodads, including real shadow boxed thorny lobsters. We sat in the back outside at a big picnic table and I had the same exact food we ate almost everyday in Costa Rica...it was great! Along the way I saw these two really cool building murals. One of happy and chipper squirrel and the other...I don't know, depressing?

I have really been wanting to go to this store called "Evolution" ever since I found out about it a few months ago. We were in Brooklyn though and the store was in Manhattan and we didn't feel like taking the train just for one store. So we started to head home on Monday around 1:00 and the gps took us through Manhattan, much to Ben's chagrin. Parking is all but non-existent or expensive, and so we still weren't planning on stopping at the store, when luck was on our side! Well...that's one way to put it. We noticed a slow oil leak on our car the night before, but right when we were mosying our way through Manhattan, the oil leak got a whole lot bigger. We pulled over near a bus stop and I was literally laying on the sidewalk trying to look under the car and check the oil pan plug and whatnot. It didn't seem like a quick fix so we found a nearby mechanic and left it with him for a few hours, praying that he could fix it before the day was out.

So, guess which store we weren't too far away from? Evolution! We had more than enough time to kill so we made our way there. It's a shop that's filled with natural curiosities and plenty of authentic specimens. It's a museum really. Of course my feelings about places that sell new taxidermy and insect mounts are always very split, because I find the animals to be so beautiful and spell-bounding, yet I wonder (and probably don't want to know) where they came from and how they died. Well...we didn't buy anything, not even the real human fetus skeleton, but I did enjoy having a look-see.

We walked around a bit more doing some window shopping, when we were resting on a heated "seat, but not really a seat" that was below some tall store windows when it started raining. Just a little. I tucked my feet in and they were dry with the shelter of the eave. At least for a little while. Before we knew it it was down pouring! The kind of rain that stops traffic on an interstate highway! Ben and I were trapped trying to squeeze our bodies against the indentation of the building facade while the rain splattered us. Of course who calls right then? The mechanic. I could barely hear him with the pounding rain but he had good news and our car was ready! Yippee! We waited for the rain to stop and walked back to pick up the car. It was dinner time then so we decided to find parking in the village and scarf down some pizza. And while we were at it, pick up some way too expensive, but oh so good cheese to bring home.

Crazy times!

And this is the lovely Brooklyn street we stayed at with our wonderful friends, Todd and Elena...thank you so much for your hospitality guys!! :)