Tomorrow night (Wednesday 11/14) is the fantastic DIY Lounge/Collage opening party! It sounds awesome. Jen promises there will be raffles, prizes, in-store discounts, tasty refreshments and music by DJ Richard Rockstar!

The only thing I don’t like about all the cool stuff going on on Alberta, like Amy’s book party last week, is what a PITA it is to get over there from Southeast — I feel like I know all the tricks and twists of eastside Tri-Met like the back of my hand and I have not gotten the most efficient Division-to-Alberta route down, especially at night. (If anyone at Tri-Met is reading this, please consider adding a north-south route somewhere between MLK and 39th, thanks.) Oh well, it’s well worth reserving the car for!

If you go:
DIY Lounge/Collage party
Wednesday, Nov. 14 from 6-9 pm
1639 NE Alberta St., Portland

On another Portland note, I ordered one of Alicia‘s super lovely Santa Lucia doll kits today — I’m so excited about it!

thanks to Alicia for the beautiful photos…

She has put together everything to make these five lovelies (see the wonderfully exhaustive list below) — all you’ll need is pinking shears, needle and thread, scissors, and paintbrushes and you too will have a set of pretty little dolls to celebrate with next month.

Each kit contains:

5 doll pins
5 doll-pin stands
5 doll head beads
(5) 8″ square pieces of calico (for dresses)
5 pieces white pipecleaner (for arms)
3 pieces silver pipecleaner (for candles)
1 piece green pipecleaner (for crown)
Yarn bobbin (for sashes)
Custom acrylic paint set
Varnish and glitter pots
Full-color instruction cards
Dress pattern

I am secretly very excited that Andrew and I are staying in Oregon for the first time ever this Christmas — I’ll be sad to miss everyone on the East Coast, but I’ll be back for a visit in January so that will be cool. Work has been so crazy for both of us that a chance to relax over the holiday with no flights involved sounds fantastic. I bought a little light-up tree for us at Fred Meyer today and I’m planning to make (and swap for) some fun little ornaments, and with these pretty dolls and some candles and the felt stockings I want to sew, I think it will be a nice, low-key Christmas up on Mt. Hood!