The Brass Cupcake

March 13, 2011

One of my favorite recipes…

As a kid my mom made our own cereals; my brother is allergic to artificial colors, flavors and preservatives, anything bought at the store was out of the question for us. As a money saving tool as well as for health reasons, I asked my mom for the recipe months ago and was graced with the cookbook she used; the More- With-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre.

One of my many favorite things about my mom is how she has always written notes in her cookbooks to record her life. She first tried the Simple Granola recipe on 12-15-1981 when I was just 3 years old… I made a batch this afternoon with a few substitutes that came out pretty awesome. Instead of 1 cup of honey, I used 1 cup of maple syrup from a family friends farm in Michigan with 1 package of broken walnuts…

All of the additional notes she wrote in were for tracking our sodium intake… My mother is a nurse and has always been very health conscious, which thankfully did pass down to me.

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February 11, 2011

Calling all Customizers and Craftsters!

Dearest Blythe Friends,

Many of you know Rob & Sioux, FroggyMonkey, Wendy of tinysea and Michelle from Blythelife.com. They and myself have been working on a plan to help Rob’s niece Alissia who is fighting a rare form of brain cancer and just had a stem cell transplant. Her family needs your help to cover the mounting medical costs of her care.

Do you want to help us out?? Are you a Blythe customizer?? Do you make awesome hats, dresses, or Blythe accessories? Then you can help us. We are looking for a customizer to donate their services as well as craftsters and artisans to donate hand made items for an auction to raise funds to be donated to Alissia’s family to cover their mounting medical expenses.

If you’re not the crafty kind, you can still help! We will also be accepting items such as nib re-ment, etc. Or if you’d like to make a monetary donation, please check out her parents’ site4alissia.blogspot.com as well as to keep up to date on her progress.

If you are interested in donating your skills, you may leave us a comment on our website which we have set up for the auction 4alissia.com or you may contact any of us via Blythe Kingdom.

Thank you.

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January 31, 2011

This one is for Alissia

Through the world of Blythe and Flickr I have met a ton of amazing people… a few of them in person and many not, but this has never affected the relationship built between us. Months ago an amazing photographer milk & kisses told us about her niece, Alissia who was struggling with being sick. It was right before Alissia’s 3rd birthday we found out it was brain cancer. Alissia now needs a stem cell transplant.

I feel for this family and for Alissia, who shares the same birthday as me. In my own family we have gone through 3 separate brain surgeries… my mother had 2 when I turned 13 years old for a cyst at the base of her spinal cord blocking fluids… and my brother had his surgery 5 years ago for an aneurysm. I know how scary this can be, so I feel strongly about helping when and where you can.

Here is what I ask… please visit the site her family has set up for her IF you can donate… and if not, bare minimum please keep her in your prayers.

http://4alissia.blogspot.com/2011/01/for-alissia.html

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January 26, 2011

Get Crafty & Pay It Forward…

I have been blessed with meeting many crafty intelligent people through the Blythe hobby… so I want to give something back to the world out there…

Pay it Forward 2011: As an arty- sewing type I promise to send something handmade to the first 5 people who leave a comment here. They must in turn post this & send something they make to the first 5 people who comment on their status. *Rules: it must be handmade by you & it must be sent to your 5 people sometime in 2011.

As people comment on the photo on Flickr I will post their names here and blog about the craft items I make. My goal is to not just make 5 identical items, but to tailor each piece to the individual… We shall see how this goes!

1. Wendy- SimplyMinty

2. Abigail Warach- Abigail’s Knits and PieFairyPrincess

A Cupcake A Day

I’ve always admired people who could do a 365 photography project. To have the time and commitment to dedicate to one shot a day, while it may not seem like much to some people, it does to me. Especially because I am not satisfied with just snapping a quick pic of one of my girls and uploading it. I don’t photo shop but I do try to have a dialogue with my photos. My dollies each have a personality and a lot to say.

So this is the year I’m attempting it!! I started on my birthday without really telling anyone. No build up, therefore no anticipation and no let down for failure.

I couldn’t chose just one of my girls to spend the entire year with… Mainly because I don’t have a “favorite.” So it’s one cupcake per day to journal my 32nd year on this planet.

I hope you enjoy the sweets!

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Tagged as Blythe, daily, flickr, photography

November 8, 2010

Resuming Normalcy!

Well it only took a week to recover from Halloween and I am now able to go back to having a normal life!! I hate to say that I despise Halloween because I don’t actually but I do hate how much of my life gets totally screwed by it. After checking my hours I realized that I worked 2 weeks all in the space of one! Yup 70 hours were put in during Halloween week!

So now I am getting back to normal and am enjoying life again!! The good news around our house is this…my darling hubby has found a job!!! He also is starting the day before my birthday!! I really couldn’t ask for a better birthday present! It cracks me up inside because the other day I was talking with one of our Santas at work who knew that my birthday was coming up and asked what I wanted for my birthday…I know that sounds a bit daffy but I work in the costume business so trust me that it is normal. I really wanted to ask Santa to give my husband a job for my birthday but figured that was not really a possibility, so instead I said I wanted some god luck for a change. That night I came home to find out that he had been offered a job in the mail room of one of the larger banks in the area. *sigh* So Santa answered my birthday wish without me even having to say all of the words!!! So yes my dear friends I do believe in Santa!!

Also I have a new little girl who has moved in…

She had a bit of a rocky start here… the day that she moved in… we kind of hit rock bottom financially so she immediately had to go up for adoption again. But we lucked out and now that we see a light at the end of the tunnel, she gets to stay!! I adopted her from Carmen, a wonderful Twitter/Flickr Blythe friend! She was customized by Val… who also did my Sydney, and has a haircut by Squirrel Junkie. So life is again getting back to normal around here… and we are all feeling a bit better now that Halloween is over and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel… If you have an idea for a name for my new little one… please leave a comment!

Busy, busy, busy

The launch of my etsy shop has been a pretty good success! I hope that everyone has checked it out! I’m trying to update it at least every 2 weeks with new items! We’ll see how that goes with my busiest month of the year coming up at work!

Yes, my dear readers… For those who didn’t know, I run a professional costume shop! Which means from now until November I will be crazy busy with Halloween! So if you don’t hear from me on twitter or flickr fir the next 5 weeks, it’s because I’m buried under a mountain of costumes!

Once I survive this I do hope to go back to posting on a regular basis… At least I have good intentions! So hope you are all well and see you on the flip side!

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August 31, 2010

The Brass Cupcake is now on Etsy!!

Not that the world needs another Blythe related Etsy shop, but I have had so many requests from people I have gifted items to for a shop to be opened, that I just couldn’t ignore it anymore! So for your buying and viewing pleasure I have opened up a shop!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/jzumpf

At my Etsy you will be able to find all handmade items by me such as dresses, knit hats and most importantly Blythe carry bags! I would love it if you would stop by, check out the items I have up and make a purchase if you are so inclined!

Here are some examples of the items you will find available:

I do hope that you will stop by! I’m always open to custom orders so please let me know if there is anything I can make for you!

I’m such a slacker…

I promised myself that I would write the whole story of our wedding… you can see how far that has got me… to day 2. But I will and just archive it at some point. Right now I’m just too excited about our latest Goodwill find!!

Yesterday Matt and I headed to Goodwill, not because we really were looking for anything in particular, mainly just to browse. Although there are always things that newlyweds need. We’d love a coffee table but aren’t looking to spend tons of course! That and Matt’s favorite tea mug handle broke off the other night. We were both very sad as it was a gift from me on our first Valentine’s together. So we are wandering around through the dish section and spotted a bag of yellow tea mugs with saucers in it. Then we saw a second bag with the matching dinner plates, bowls and dessert plates. We took a look at the pattern and fell in love with it.

We bought the whole set of the dishes and were excited that all 30 pieces, (it is a service of 6) cost a total of $9.99! We both dream of turning our kitchen into a 70;s dream kitchen. Having been born in the 70′s this is the kind of stuff we grew up with.

It wasn’t until we got home that we learned more about the dishes. They were produced by Mikasa for only 1 year, 1974-1975 designed by Ben Seibel and are quite the rare item. The official pattern is Mikasa Duplex Duet #2501. From checking ebay and a few other places we have learned that just got about $200- $300 worth of 70′s dishes and all because I like the color yellow and Matt needed a tea mug. Just goes to remind all of us that you can’t forget to check out Goodwill and thrift stores for hard to find items. Now if I could just find a Kenner Blythe at Goodwill.

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July 7, 2010

The wedding… Day 2.

Day two of the wedding started off okay. Matt had to work and I was off. With all the trauma from the night before you would think I was able to get some sleep but I was still up at a reasonable hour. I did the usual routine and got ready for the day. I had some small things still to get ready for the wedding, such as to make my wedding veil. So I sat and had a cup of coffee and did that while checking in with Mom and my cousin Steph at the hotel as well as the hospital. My godmother was still pretty out of it from what we could understand so we were trying to figure out how to get my mother and cousin on to a bus so that they could get in to Philly. This seriously is one of the few times when I actually wish I had a car and a license. But alas they got to understand how it is for me and millions of others to use mass transit.

Of course my mother has no patience and doesn’t listen to what I tell her about bus schedules… so she called a cab. $80 later, she calls me from the hospital in Philadelphia. Thankfully by that time I was already headed in to the city to meet up with my father. I stopped very quickly at the hospital to say hello rescue my cousin from the hospital to go with me to pick up my father and his girlfriend. This was one of the many other stresses living inside of me… my parents have not been in the same room since their divorce was finalized my senior year of high school. Steph and I hopped a cab to cross the city, Dad and Terry were arriving at 30th Street Station in West Philly and I was already running behind from stopping at the hospital. And for the first time in over 24 hours, a form of transit arrived on time! So poor Dad was waiting for me for 30 minutes because traffic in the city on a Friday is retarded, always.

We arrived at the train station and there were hugs! There was no drama!! I was so happy to just hug my dad and not have to call an ambulance!

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