Today we are welcoming Candace and Nicole from Crafty Sisters. These awesome sisters braved the friendly skies to visit us all the way from the Northwest. They had to deal with jet lag, a pat-down from overzealous airline security, tiny tiny airplane seats, lack of airline peanuts, the forced viewing of Speed 2 with subtitles, the screaming banchee kid who ran up and down the aisle the entire flight, 1/2 a diet coke to share between the two of them and a nice bang on the elbow from the cart that carried it. And all that so that they could lose their luggage in Atlanta. We owe them big time. So, I had my buddy Tom Selleck and his mustache work overtime to get the Green Room prepared.
He and his buds, William Shatner and Brad Pitt went out and cut down a live tree and plan on decorating it. Unfortunately, being the manly-men that they are, they chose the biggest tree they could find and hauled it to the studio in a large flatbed truck that Brad had borrowed from his wife’s movie set. Of course, the darn tree wouldn’t fit through the door and they’ve spent the last hour hacking away at it so that they can get it inside. It now looks less like a manly-man tree and more like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.
Ornaments will do wonders though, and they have plenty of help for that. Brad is babysitting again and has several dozen children here armed with garland and ornaments. Brad took a moment and called Angie to get permission to sit down with us for the interview. Angie required him to take a photo of Candace and Nicole and email it to her. I’m guessing the answer was no because he went back to decorating the tree and is currently breaking up a fight between several of the youngsters and pulling sticky candy cane off of his shoe.
Bill ran to rescue his favorite phaser from one of the boys. I think he was concerned that it wasn’t set on “stun”. Personally, a little stunning in the kid department wouldn’t have hurt my feelings. Just saying. Anyway, that leaves Tom and his mustache. So, lets go in the other room where it is quiet.
Suzy: Tell me a little about yourself, your family, your other hobbies…
Nicole : We are sisters that love to craft and spend time with each other while trying to raise our little families. We are lucky enough to live close by each other and have a lot of fun conspiring on our big plans for crafts and building stuff. We really are like yin and yang, we work well together and feel inspired when we get together to figure out what we are doing with a project. Plus the nice thing is that because we are sisters we can tell each other the blunt truth and whether or not this or that craft bites or if it is really cool!
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Candace: We grew up in Central Washington~~the home of Tree Top apple juice! We have 4 brothers and amazing parents! Our Dad is a Agricultural magazine publisher/editor but really a fearless jack of all trades and our Mom is an expert seamstress, amazing cook and brilliant gardener too, both of them are our biggest cheerleaders and examples of that if you put your mind to something and if you have the right tools you can do anything!
Nicole: Candace is a really really good cook, always daring to try new recipes and perfect them!
Candace: Nicole loves to garden and play in the dirt!
Suzy: When and why did you start blogging, and where would you like your blogging to lead?
Nicole: Candace actually was the one that wanted us to give this blogging thing a go…..a little over a year ago she discovered the wonderful world of blogging and was inspired by all the talented DIY gals out there, so willing to share their amazing ideas and talents to help others beautify their homes and help their families. She figured it would be a great way to motivate us to actually finish and document all of our fun projects we always wanted to do and to help others. We had no idea that anyone would even notice us, let alone come back to visit. We have made so many great friends and have truly enjoyed getting to know so many great people!
Suzy: Can you tell us a few things that most folks don’t know about you?
Candace: We hate seafood. Seriously HATE. We lived in Korea when we were little kids and had to go to the markets with our Mom where the ceilings were strung with dried fish. It’s hard to even describe the smell…..that was all it took and neither of us will go near the stuff!
Suzy: Name a few of your favorite websites that you go to for inspiration.
Nicole: Pottery Barn, Ballard Designs, Restoration Hardware , and Etsy.
Suzy: Since I’m kinda a crafty blog, I have to ask. What type of craft don’t you already do, that you might one day want to learn?
Candace: Serious wood working. Like “real” furniture building- building your own legs, working drawers, stain-able (so all my cruddy cuts aren’t spackled in!) Plus we’d love to learn how to design graphics for our projects using the computer.
Suzy: Since I’m also kinda a sitcom-type blog, do you have a favorite television star? Tom wants to know….
Nicole: Dwight Shrute from the Office is hard to beat in the laugh department. Just looking at him in his mustard colored shirt makes me laugh. Funniest episode he was in was when he killed Angela’s cat by putting it in the freezer….good stuff.:)
Suzy: Ah, cat humor. We here at Suzy’s Artsy Craftsy Sitcom definitely appreciate that. So, how do you make time in your day to blog? I know first hand how time-consuming a good blog is. How do you schedule it all in?
Candace: That’s a good question…..I don’t know how we do either. Our families come first so it means we don’t consistently post everyday but take comfort that we’d rather have quality than quantity. We usually hop on the computer to answer questions in the quiet hours of the morning and before bed at night, while the kiddo’s are still asleep and then once we drop them off at school there is a unofficial scheduled phone call from the school parking lot at 9:05am to brainstorm together.
Nicole: Candace is really good with making sure things get done, get answered, get researched. Our blog wouldn’t survive without her. In fact I kinda had to laugh at a comment made to us by a sweet gal we met through our boutique’s this year. She said “Oh someone told me to go check out your blog, that there were actually 2 blogs but don’t worry about the one- it’s OK, make sure you go to the other one.” It was so innocent but pretty much sums it up…Crafty Sisters=good blogging because of Candace, Sweet Pickles=updates once or twice a month because of Nicole. I’m glad I can laugh at myself and even more thankful for my sister because we would not be without her. I genuinely love and adore my sister and consider myself so lucky to have her, to live close to her and that we actually are best friends. It’s pretty great!:)
Suzy: Ya know, that teamwork thing is pretty awesome. Unfortunately, Tom draws the line at actually crafty things. He’s too busy being famous. At least that is what he tells me. So ladies, I believe a crafter’s space tells alot about them. Can you tell me about yours?
Candace: WYSIWYG I think describes it best. I think everyone has become very familiar with out kitchen counters! It’s the heart of the home, where everything and everyone revolves around. I can’t imagine being tucked away in some room (although it’s a lovely dream….), I’d miss out on my family although our hubbies would be more than happy that our “stuff” was tucked away somewhere else.
Suzy: Is there anything that you would like me to particularly promote? Any special tutorials coming up? Any sponsors? Giveaways? Your Etsy shop?
Nicole: We’ll have some tutorials for making some ornaments, and hey it wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t give something away. We are so excited with the new look of our site (we just did a mega makeover last month) and we are slowly but surely getting all the links in, our Etsy shop, Sweet Pickle Designs, in the sidebar, buttons right and setting up our list of sponsors. It’s a fun time of the year to blog!
And remember, if you and your blog would like to join the party, please email me at myers6281(at)hotmail.com. I am always looking for new guest stars. And just think of all the awe in your friends and family’s eyes when you tell them you were actually on a sitcom! Well, maybe a sitcom in my mind, but lets not get too literal.
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