Featured Seller Interview: Emmamaha

I am excited to share with you that I have conducted my very own Featured Seller Interview! 

Please meet Emmamaha. 

I chose Maha to interview first because she is incredibly talented (I personally own several items from her shop), my girls LOVE her hair clips (which says something because they pull just about everything else out within minutes), and my experiences with Maha, the shop owner, have always been inspiring and well, lovely.  Maha uses felt and other materials to create pretty accessories for your child, yourself, and your home.  In her own words, her creations are influenced by nature, simple design, composition, color and texture. She imbues a little bit of romance in everything she makes.

The small glimpse into her shop in the photo above features:
1. The Cora, (upper left). 2. Caravan to Petra Barrettes/ Hair Clips, (upper right).  4. Festive Beaded Felt and Lace Ornaments, (lower left). 5. Magenta Dahlia Earrings, (lower right). 6. The Neriah, (center).

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi, my name is Maha and you can find me puttering behind the scenes in my accessories shop Emmamaha. I am a mom to a precocious 3 year old named Emma who keeps me on my toes! I spend my days making sure Emma sticks to a balanced schedule while trying to squeeze in some Etsy time at least for a few hours a day. In those late night hours, after Emma goes to sleep, I like to paint, craft, and make treasuries. I am so grateful for Etsy and the distraction it allows me to be creative everyday, in my life.

How would you describe yourself in three words.

Introverted, exhausted, and cautious.

What inspires you?

Oh, that one's easy: Emma. I became a Mom and my earth shifted. I would never have thought to open an Etsy store if it weren't for Emma. I've been making things and painting since I was a skinny kid in middle school. Emma set me in focus. I am also inspired by all my Etsy counterparts. There is amazing talent and imagination out there. I love how it breeds this wonderful artistic community where we all inspire each other to look at things in a different way and are better crafters and artists and people for it.

What are some of your favorite books, movies, musicians?

Uh-oh. Do you have a few hours?! I have a B.A in English Literature. I love to read! My current attempts are (and it is so hard to actually stay with a book with a an active 3 year old running circles around me) but I am trying (emphasis on trying) to read:

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecco

How to Behave so Your Preschooler Will, Too! by Dr. Sal Severe

A Collection of Dr. Suess

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Movies:

All the old ones. I was raised on black and white movies.

Anything with Katherine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Carol Lombard, Deborah Kerr, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant.

Nowadays I'll see anything with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Johnny Depp, Cate Blanchette, Ryan Gosling or Patricia Clarkson.

Music is also one of my loves and I love everything, but mostly alternative:

The Shins, Nick Drake, Simon and Garfunkel, Nirvana, Kings of Leon, Green Day, Gnarls Barkley, Jeff Buckley, R.E.M, Ryan Adams..and by the way this is me just easing you into it!

Some things that might surprise us about you are....?

I am a vegetarian.

I don't look good with make-up. Save for the occasional lip tint, I avoid it. I look like a clown otherwise.

I speak English, (some) French and Arabic

I used to be a teacher.

I am freakishly OCD about grey hairs and I have to get them all out.

I've traveled through most of Europe. My Dad traveled for his work and took us every summer to all the places he'd been to! I've been to France, Switzerland, Greece, Rhodes, Austria, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia, back then). Hopefully, I'll manage to save enough someday to take Emma to a few of those places:)

If you could have anyone over to dinner, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

No one alive interests me at the moment, though with Alan Greenspan, I'd like to pick his brain a little. I would love to have Eleanor Roosevelt and T.S. Elliot. And you had a question about famous quotes I like. 
Several of them were from Eleanor Roosevelt:

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Any guilty pleasures?

Oh yes! I reward myself after a long day with chocolate cake, black forest preferably. And if anyone from Europe is reading this, since it is a staple there: I love Marrons Glaces. They are chestnuts, that were already shelled and cooked in rich sugar. They end up being fragrant, flaky and just melt in your mouth. So yummy (and I'm drooling right now). I also love Dancing with the Stars. I rearrange my whole week just to catch the show!

Thank you Maha, for sharing a little of yourself with us. 
Have you visited Emmamaha? Please say yes and go back again! 

(Oh, and check out her sold section for more of her lovely creations!  Most of her treasurable, dreamy dress-up crowns for little ones are here.  But don't fret, she'll make more if you ask her to!)

blog: http://emmaandmaha.blogspot.com/
flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmaandmaha/
twitter: http://twitter.com/emmamaha

Le Carnaval

Recently we visited a carnival that had traveled into town.  It wasn't a circus, just rides, games, and the yummy kind of foods that are only sold out of mobile booths with lights.  I slid down the Super Slide on a potato sack.  Twice.  I watched my children discover the strange experience of being lost in a hall of mirrors, and my wonderful husband teaching them how to feel their way out (after we had a few bumped noses). 

I can't wait to do it again.

Thanks to elisaann and her beautiful treasury, my Tea at the Beach photograph made it to the front page of Etsy this morning.  She has a beautiful shop, please stop by and check it out!

Image Credit: Public Domain

Here is an easy Montessori activity for the day, using things you already have....

Containers & Lids!

Time to raid your pantry, recycle bin, etc.  Gather up a variety of containers and keep the lids!

  Good choices include baby food jars, peanut butter jars, different sizes and shapes of Tupperware containers, fabric softener bottles with screw-top lids, plastic gallon jugs for milk or water, pickle jars, coffee cans (make sure there are no sharp edges inside the can), cardboard oatmeal cylinder with lid, spice jars, parmesan cheese container lids with the shaker holes,  and butter tubs. 

Next, wash out the containers and lids and allow them to dry.

Then, it is time to begin!  You may present the activity to your child beginning with the lids on.  Show them how to take off the lid, and the correct method to put the lid back on the container.  With a variety of shapes and sized containers, there will also be a variety of motor skills the child will practice in order to put the lids back on (twist, snap, press, etc.).

 Once your child is able to take off and replace the lids by themselves, spread out the assortment of lids and mix them up on the floor, table, or tray in front of the child.  The child can then match them back up with the correct container and replace the lid.  This may require some trial and error, but that is part of the fun!

The lids can also be used later for tracing around, printing with (by dipping them in paint and pressing onto a piece of paper), or as cooking cutters when working with homemade salt dough or Play Doh.

Have fun!

♥

Stay tuned for my very FIRST Featured Seller interview, with a shop owner who creates beautifully sweet items, and is likewise beautifully sweet herself. 

I will also be having my first giveaway soon.  More details to come.

♥