Big Bright and Beautiful Bags

I used to carry cute little handbags and prided myself with how much I could fit in a tiny little bag. Well those days are certainly LONG gone and their disappearance coincided with the arrival of a certain little someone. Now I find my collection of cute totes ever growing along with the pile of pull ups, wipes, snack cups, drink boxes, toys, crayons, books, and my own stuff like wallet and cell phone that all need to fit in them ever growing.

These days I'm carrying this sizable bag from, gasp the ultra uncool Land's End, and I'm lovin' it. It fits all my stuff and camera with room to spare. Plus it's so colorful it's bound to match nearly anything I'm wearing. Yes I'm one of those people, type A enough to bother changing what I'm carrying to match today's outfit. The only downside is no zipper, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices for fashion!

One of the reasons I got a sewing machine all those years ago in the first place was to make my own bags. Fast forward a few years and actually using it to make anything has become one of this year's resolutions. As you know from past posts, I've had some sucess but definitely have a LONG way to go. Spent some of my baby free time yesterday while the MIL watched our kiddo at Barnes & Noble in the craft section reading up on how to make it around the dreaded curve.

Since I am so far from making my own little, I mean my own big bag to carry I'm always excited to see a chance to carry an exclusive design and not have wait until I can maintain a seam allowance and learn all that right side to right side stuff. Keri over at Quaint and Quirky is celebrating her one year blogiversary and giving away this lovely one she made. After the last few dreary days of MI weather and being in a car accident I could use a little ray of sunshine don't cha think? So when I saw the big bright flower on it, I knew it would be just the thing to cheer me up. So go on over, say hi, and enter. Once I get up and posting my own craftiness more, I even hope to sign up for her Sew Craft Blog. I'm really a scrapbooking and papercrafts gal, but trying to branch out into more general crafty goodness, wonder what category I'd fit in.

She is very crafty and sells handmade things on Etsy, where I love to waste way too much time browsing. She even has a blog post on Henry VIII, for those of you not in the know British history is an obsession of mine and besides scrapbooking and crafting books often the only other thing I read. I have the book she mentions too, the author Alison Weir is supposed to be in my area next month. Keep your fingers crossed that she actually makes it for the book signing. She's my all time favorite author and the one who started my whole love of England. I'm more excited about meeting her than any movie star. Yep, I'm a big history nerd! And how lucky was Keri to go to England for her honeymoon! That's where I wanted to go, but settled for Maui instead because I hate flying and when we lived in CA it wasn't ever going to be a shorter plane ride there. When Brad moved me against my will to NM from CA if we hadn't gotten pregnant within the first year, we were going to go to England, well you all know how that turned out! Not that I'd ever trade ER for a trip to England...