Cara’s getting a crash course in how to deal with her new living situation… it’s not all home baking and nail polish parties :)

Spring popped up momentarily!  I got my first outdoor run of the season in, and then more freezing rain and snow, with some plain old regular rain thrown in for good measure.  Do I bother shovelling the driveway today, or just hope it warms up enough over the next couple of days to melt the snow for me :(

Think warm spring thoughts with Death (available as a poster at INPRNT)

Vote incentive: more looking forward to warmer weather, because ice cream!

Getting in the middle of someone else’s irrational feud is daaaaaangerous.  Too bad she didn’t do a better job of making friends…   We’re past the first official day of spring now and it was -23 out yesterday with the windchill.  So… spring when?  At least March break is over :)  The kids were actually pretty good this week but Sunday was bad.  The colder weather kept them in for most of the week and I think they finally got a bit sick of each other.

Vote incentive: a line up of imaginary cryptos (why are there so many Big Foot chasing shows on tv??)

New shirt on Woot! Bears!  Un-care Bears!  Violence!  Stuffing!  But no blood though cause Woot’s squeamish about that :P  UPDATE:  this one is sold out for now, I’ll update the link when it’s available again :(

Despite the crap weather here, spring t-shirt sales are starting.  Design By Humans is 20% off till the end of the month.

Women of the (zoo) world unite!  Ella’s getting bigger :)  Sara’s getting concussed.  I do a lot of anti-bullying seminars with the kids at the dojo where we talk about empathy and putting your self in someone else’s shoes, and then I thought about the polars: they’re just jerks.  Steven at least would probably be oblivious, and Butch is a follower, so Hulk just bosses everyone around.  He’s the kid who laughs at you when you trip in the yard and skin your knee.

Today, Evan informed me that bananas can’t talk because they don’t have eyes.  We also buzzed all their hair and my bathroom is covered in soft little kid fuzz.  Evan was agreeable, Sam was semi co-operative, and Owen made the best aggrieved faces the whole time.

New shirt Monday again on Woot:  Break Time around the water tower.

I read that lab grown beef is getting more and more cost effective to produce… I’m definitely curious to see where that leads.  I get that cattle are incredible polluters/resource hoovers so the environmental benefits could be extreme, but what about health?  Will a pound of petri meat have less fat than the traditional version?  Can they grow heart healthy burgers?  Between that and Tesla’s self driving car (and the flying car?) by this summer thing, I’m really curious to see what the next few decades bring… before we blow ourselves up of course.  Anyway, vote incentive:  this burger says hi.

Happy Easter Monday everyone!  Spring showed up for one day this weekend!  Friday was gorgeous, nearly 12 degrees.  I got my first 10k run of the year in, took the kids for a long walk, got some actual sun… and had to scrape ice off the car the very next morning :(  More of the same in the forecast for the next couple of days, but next week should be nice!  Should!  Unless environment Canada is built on LIES.

So I generally really dislike the term “bitch slap”… but here it’s kind of appropriate?  The whole karma thing tends to come around here eventually and as she’s a pretty terrible “person” (but she’s working on it…) we’ll see how big a beat down karma can bring… is “My Name is Earl” on Netflix?  Got a sudden urge to watch that again :)

More spring tee season sales :)  Free shipping (and Panda Hugs!) on now at Neatorama!

More “springish” vote incentives: green the colour, green the envy.

I have a feeling Sara and Vanity may hit it off…  We took the boys to a toddler cake decorating class before Easter and they made a bunny and a butterfly cake (I realized my error as I’m coming home with two full sized cakes, ugh.)  They had a blast, Nana and I did most of the work.  Owen actually tried, Evan just ate icing by the palm full as Nana covered his cake.  They had fun dumping sprinkles/etc. all over, and the very clean little girl sharing our table kept asking her mom why “that one” has icing in his hair/eye brows/ears.

They got to enjoy the fruits of their labour for dessert on Easter Sunday and I was trying to get Owen to use  a fork correctly; he kept picking up a chunk of cake in his free hand, mashing it onto the fork, then bringing the fork up to his mouth.  I tried a few times to demo, then used his hand to perform the same motion, then he looked at me, looked at the fork, put it down, and promptly dropped his face to cake level and just started in no hands… I am raising animals.

Available today only on Ubertee, and just in time for THRONES! (not that there will be any peaceful happy moments like this).

Vote incentive: some fun fan art of a tiger version of one of the bears; nice job!  If there’s a site or DA page or something you’d like me to link, let me know :)

Woot, steadily approaching 500 pages!  A milestone I though I’d reach a loooong time ago, but then my uterus played a nasty trick on us :)  Speaking of nasty, double potty training is SOOOO much fun you guys!  Evan keeps peeing on his socks.

So Sara is finally “accepted” into the group, or has come to “accept” that herself.  Cara is merely tearfully adaptable.  But who knows how long they’ll stay??  They’ve lived a very transient lifestyle… or perhaps the Discount Zoo is the obvious end of the line.  Hope they like gruel and fish heads.

Forgot to update the link on this one:  you can still get Zombie Carebears here.  And everything else in Woot’s Dooomcat back catalogue which recently changed a bit when Woot revised their price system:  all back cat tees were $18 each and are now $11.  I’m not entirely sure if that’s a permanent change, or if they’re just experimenting, but hopefully that sticks around for a bit.  Great time to collect all the Unstealthiest Ninja tees :)

Vote Incentive: working on a really “girly” tee.  And don’t forget to like BN on Facebook; the preview title card for the next arc always goes up there early!

In honour of the…return of cold weather??  (seriously, this week/weekend was horrible) get “Melting” at Woot!  Plus a bunch of other fun/funny/ridiculous food related shirts (on sale until April 30th).

Vote Incentive:  These commissions are from some time last year and they were a blast to do!  I was only passingly familiar with DOTA but there were quite a few fun characters and design details that matched up well with the bears.  Plus it’s always fun to draw them in clothes every once and a while :)  And ProHulk is always fun to draw.

Still working on potty training with the boys, probably for all summer I imagine.  Sam did the same thing to us: 2 steps forward, one step back… usually into a puddle of pee on the living room floor.  Anyway, Owen had a busy week.  He declared diapers are “weenie jails” and was excited about underwear, but rebelled against pull ups.  He came down stairs naked with pull up in hand and wet socks.  When pressed, he finally showed us where he had peed: on the carpet in the playroom, hidden under a pillow.  Devious little bugger.

Tanked is in need!  Maybe some more alcohol would dull that pain.

New shirt Monday again!  All shirts 20% off at Neatorama from today till May 10th, including a new ‘Jurassic Park’ design (my kids are really into “dinohors” right now).  And Link’s bad idea in the olive tees side sale at Woot.

And, in honour of the nearly National Holiday May the 4th, all kinds of Star Wars tees on sale here till May 11th!  Including this rather silly set:

Vote Incentive: Tanked in DOTA form (and pants!)

Not so subtle ‘Fire Fly’ reference (soooo looking forward to ‘Con Men’ though!)  I had my wisdom teeth out when I was in high school (two days before picture day, it was well planned :P) and I don’t really remember much, before or after.  Jim had his done much later, after college and I think we’d been dating a couple of years at that point.  We hadn’t made the step to combine bank accounts yet so when I went to pick him up I was pretty miffed that they expected me to pay for it ($1000 on MY visa?!  No thank you!).  I was grumbling at the nurse why didn’t he pay up front, make him do it now, then they wheeled him in and he looked totally drugged out of his mind, drooling blood all down his front.  Fine, he probably doesn’t remember his pin right now.  Gross.  Then I got to listen to three days of complaining/bring me a popsicle.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!  You can “celebrate” with this new design on tees or prints (I am a terrible person).

Plus “Tough Princesses” is available on Shirt.Woot (kid’s sizes 4 and 6 are still sold out though).  I’m loving the fact that that shirt is staying high on the chart despite only selling a handful of men’s sizes (usually men’s L and XL sell the most units per design on my Woot stats.)  Sam said he wants one too, I’ve noticed he’s partial to blonds… I don’t want to be one of those gender militant parents but I have talked him out of sparkly purple leggings at Old Navy once, and steered him away from a Barbie book he wanted.  I then felt guilty, but I seriously can’t stand Barbie.  If I had a girl I wouldn’t buy any Barbie crap.  Fortunately he loves ‘Tangled’.  None of them got into ‘Frozen’ though.

Vote incentive: Gimp’s turn to get DOTAized (I feel like I’d get splinters in my cheeks from that costume)

Because a door knob would be too easy.  And I’m not looking forward to this with our boys.  The kids at the dojo like to show me their wiggly loose teeth because they know I dislike it.  Ugh.  I’m also not giving my kids $5 every time a tooth comes out (or $10, or even some kids get new toys!  Seriously?!) because I’m cheap and they have to do more to earn their allowance then age naturally :)

Vote Incentive: the DOTA version of Vanity (I think his costume is trying to eat him).

New (old) shirt Monday: cat shirts side sale at Woot (on till May 25th)!  ‘You Weren’t Invited’ and ‘Alphacat’. Soooo many cats :)

Plus the Super Hero Clubhouse series is on special till the 20th… but they’re still out of kid’s sizes :(

Marvel version and DC version.

I think Nerd suffers from an overestimation of his own capacity, or he just tries too hard.  Who’s he trying to impress anyway?  This stems from a looooongstanding in joke at my house: as the oldest, my younger brothers were the constant bane of my existence and just so totally beneath me, not that they cared.  ”You’re not impressing Ali” was a running joke.  That and Jeff’s pathological need to get in the shower about 5 minutes before we had to go… EVERY DAMN TIME.

Unstealthy is back at Woot, and he’s being oblivious: summer weather!  Ninjas!  Ice cream!  Violence!  Can’t have one without the other apparently…

PLUS Ironic Sloth is ironic (and has bad posture)  :)

Vote incentive:  the DOTA version of Sara turned out really nice (don’t think I could do that outfit justice though.)

Nerd’s plans are going downhill… Got my first call home from school about a sick child.  Sam puked all over his shoes on Thursday so I had to go get him.  An hour longer and he would have been home on the bus anyway, but at least I didn’t have to clean it up?  I had nightmares that he’d vomited into the lego bin or something but fortunately, it was just on himself for the most part.  I did feel like I should go apologize to the janitor though.  He also threw up three more times at home so I guess we’re even…  He was totally fine in the morning and this just started coming on after lunch I guess.  It was pizza day and though I don’t think that had anything to do with it, I couldn’t stop imaging the horror of a whole class of 5 year olds throwing up…

Vote incentive: the DOTA version of Evil of course has a thing for fire…

New shirts up today!  ‘Unstealthy Yin Yang’ got a derby print:

And ‘Heart Attack’ is available until June 4 in a Woot side sale: (seriously, what a jerk.)

Until I had kids I didn’t know you could “kill” a tooth.  Owen smashed his right front tooth once and it turned grey.  I’m looking up possible causes online and freaking out over all this “necrotic pulp” stuff and called the dentist.  She’s like no worries, it’s just dead but it will still fall out like normal.  Just let me know if the gums around it turn puffy and start bleeding.  Grosssssss!  So Owen has a dead tooth and Evan chipped the crap out of his right front… they look ridiculous, but easy to tell apart.  I also found them on the potties the other day playing the “hittin’ game” (basically taking turns slapping each other in the face).  I don’t know who’s idea it was or how it got started.  I bet twin girls don’t do that :(

Vote incentive: Evil was up last week, so here’s his new best friend: Nerdly

Penguins and ice cream, and a truck! Cute kid’s (or whomever!) tee on Woot, plus cute (not so kid friendly?) BBQ Zombie tee!  (Really enjoying IZombie by the way, awesome show if you haven’t seen it yet!)

Cara’s a big tattle tale, and not used to group dynamics.  It may be a rough adjustment, free muffins and nail parties aside :)  I keep my nails trimmed pretty short all the time (habit formed from wearing contacts, and not wanting to scratch anybody in jiu-jitsu) and I can’t remember the last time I wore any polish.  The little girls at the dojo love to show their nails off when they’ve colored them though, and the last time I was teaching the 4-6 group one of the little boys had purple nails.  Super cute and his “bestest colour”.  Meanwhile, I’m going to a wedding next month and was trying to remember the last time I wore make up (my wedding in 08 doesn’t count as they did it for me).  I imagine all my stuff is old and gunky and I’m not even sure what colour to buy any more… plus will concealer cover all the bruises on my legs??  They’ll look nice with my formal dress :P

Vote incentive: the DOTA Crack looks ill-prepared for whatever he’s up to…

Did a t-shirt commission for a friend of mine.  Her daughter is turning 2 and she LOVES the Hulk, of all things.  She carries a stuffed Hulk around all the time and likes watching Avengers.  Try finding a kid friendly/sized tee with just the Hulk on it though… especially in the girl’s section :(  So I made these for her (the boy version is for her son).  They turned out pretty cute and now Sam wants one. (Serious lack of fun superhero shirts for girls though).

Anyway, I’m always up for commissions when I have time so if you have a custom tee idea you can email me through the contact page, or message me on FB.

Before anyone gets too excited, this IS a Death related arc, but not Death prominent exactly (and definitely not his origin arc, so sorry to that overly hopeful FB post :)  The twins turned 4 on Saturday!  I can’t believe they’re that old already, that kindergarten is just around the corner, and that they won’t freaking potty train!  Every time I buy yet another box of diapers I cross my fingers and hope it’s the last… blah.  They love getting rewards when they do well, but they can’t be bothered to tell me if they’ve pooped themselves (unless one rats on the other.  Maybe I should offer rewards for snitching).  They have 2 months before all day JK starts; I imagine they will draw it out as long as possible until I’m tearing my hair out :(

Vote incentive: the DOTA version of Death is suitably ominous (though not very stealthy)

Happy late Father’s Day!  Prints available here and shirts available here.

June is birthday month around here :)  The twins just turned 4 (omg, how did that happen??  I can still vividly remember tube feeding them in the NICU) and full day kindergarten is right around the corner (provided the potty training  thing finally clicks.  I am solo tired of cleaning pee off the floor.)  My birthday is 5 days after (I imagine the story of spending my birthday lying on the couch all day with a pillow pressed against my C sec incision except for when I had to struggle to sit up and pump every 3 God damn hours will be frequently held over their heads, and perhaps used in a wedding toast…)   Anyway, head on over to the BN FaceBook page for another FREE T-SHIRT GIVEAWAY to celebrate me! :)

The awesome folks at Neatoshop will send out free shirts to 2 random winners: to enter just like our page, like the post, share the post, and comment on which tee from the Dooomcat shop is your fav.  The contest closes at midnight on Friday July 3rd!

Also available on Neato now is the sequel shirt to ‘Father of the Year’  (this one without the text as some people requested).

And lastly, the vote incentive this week is the DOTA version of Lech, who is of course very manly looking.

Pool party time!  And Happy late 4th of July to my American friends and family.  We were away this weekend and I didn’t get to draw up a themed vote incentive for this year… I’ll have to come up with something awesome next time :)  It was a very quick weekend away and a family wedding (with a side trip to Legoland where only 1 of 3 had a melt down when we said it was time to go!) and we had way better than I expected behaviour.  Sam did throw up on the hotel room carpet (too much food/excitment/Lego/not enough sleep) but other than that I was impressed.  I imagine that may have been artificially inflated levels of politeness and listening due to the outing and they’re probably going to crash down to their usual levels of screeching belligerence… but I can dream.

Vote incentive: DOTA Gay is sparkly.

New stuff up on Woot today: silly cat shirt and silly zombie totes (should be later combined to form silly zombie cat… eating the dog!  Woot probably wouldn’t print that).

I finally jumped on the Twitter bandwagon so FOLLOW STUDIO DOOOMCAT on Twitter!  I’m going to attempt to update that regularly but I feel like I’m still getting used to Face Book.  Unfortunately, FB really seems to throttle all traffic and posts are pretty invisible on there (the average update gets seen by like a quarter of the people who actually like the page… so that’s helpful.  Hard to complain about the free platform though.)  Anyway, I guess Twitter is a bit better about that, unless of course you follow hundreds of people and everything just gets lost in the noise (and why does it keep asking me if I want to follow Kim Kardashian??)

Vote Incentive: I believe this is the last of the DOTA versions of the bears, and Cara looks kind of awesome/scary :)

New shirt up now on Woot! For that Venn diagram slice of people who love Fantastic Four AND Dr. Suess :)

Pool party!  My parents have a pool and the boys are all so different.  Sam is happily sliding/jumping/paddling around the deep end.  Evan is afraid to jump in, Owen just wants to float around in his life jacket.  Occasionally he rotates onto his back and gets stuck, but we’re making progress.  It’s damn hard to take them all in by myself though, someone always wants something and they’re usually at opposite ends :(

Vote Incentive: Another bear! A REALLY disgruntled bear!

New shirt Monday also involves lots of bears: Zen Panda and RAGE Bear, both from Woot.  Shirt Woot also announced the return of American Apparel blanks so that’s super exciting!  To me at least :)  AA shirts are a little more expensive, but the quality/longevity/softness and fit are all way better (I found the other brand to fit a little too loose and be cut a little too boxy, but that’s just me).  And they’re made in the US!  So now you have a choice of which blank you prefer; thanks Woot for giving us more options!

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!

Such heart felt family bonding moments… there’s no way this goes bad.  Plus follow us on Twitter now!

Vote incentive: a different animal chilling out for summer… looks relaxing, I am decidedly not having a relaxing summer (%*# twin potty training).

Probably the opposite of hot weather animals:  ’March of the Smartly Dressed Penguins‘ is new this week at Woot… which has a new Unstealthiest Ninja tee in the queue :)  Plus ‘Uni Prick‘, the dickiest unicorn ever (spell check really fought me on that one) and the ‘Oblivious Pirate’ is quickly going down!