Ready for the pumpkin patch!

We are hoping to get over to the pumpkin patch this weekend or next, so tonight I whipped up our annual pumpkin shirts. I really like this years! I snapped up this great jack o' lantern cotton lycra about four months ago in anticipation of using it for these shirts. I found really cute embroideries that match pretty well, and I was so happy!

Here are the girls:


And apparently here Abby is showing off her crazy eyes LOL:

So we are all ready to go and get pumpkins!!

Supergirls!

The girls love to run around with a playsilk tied around their necks, yelling, "SUPERGIRLS!!!" and jumping all around. It cracks me up!

Awhile back, I ran across a seller who makes pretend capes. I filed her away in my etsy favorites, and decided to finally splurge and just order them. The seller is fabulous, and I received these custom capes very quickly! I highly recommend Superfly Kidz! Of course, it was easy to decide that they would most definitely love the princess capes!




Aren't they just cute? The capes are very well made, I was very happy. The crowns on the back are so perfect, and I love how the two capes are reversed :) And they were thrilled when we got them in the mail!

Andraya has finally adopted a favorite toy. I was really wondering if she was just going to be one of those kids that never did that! Abby goes through phases of what is her favorite, but ever since she was about 1, she has had one favorite toy or another that she drug everywhere with her (the most consistent being Normal Baby - her name for a dolly she has). But Draya never did that. Until now.

She got the cutest little dolly, that is a princess doll with hair. It's just a cheaper Little Mommy Doll, even though I had tried to provide her with a favorite doll in her Bitty Baby and Chou Chou dolls, she was having none of that. What is ironic is Normal Baby is a Little Mommy Doll with no hair. I just think those dolls are so perfectly loveable.

Here she is, their first official photo together:


And a lot of times I will catch her just sitting there loving on this baby. It's so cute!


I made a huge mistake the first night we had this baby though! I was holding it (babysitting it), and I picked up a brush and just starting brushing her hair, it was a little tousled. Draya came flying in and just started yelling at me! "NO COMB BABY HAIR MOMMY! NO COMB BABY HAIR!!" Apparently that was NOT allowed :) She was soo disgruntled, she grabbed her baby from me, and made a big show of rubbing her hands over her head and messing the hair back up to undo the damage I had done. It took all I had to not bust out laughing, but she was so serious, I knew that would just make it worse! Now the poor dolly is just destined to have messy hair forever.

When Big Sister decides she is a hairdresser

Now that is a fashion statement! I can't believe she sat still long enough for Abby to do that! :)

Shameless Book Recommendation

I got the most exciting phone call tonight.....my mother in law, Juli, called and asked me to look at a website. In looking at this website, it took me awhile to take it all in:

The BumbleBee Book

Not only did she write a book inspired by my niece, Samantha, and my daughter, Abby, but the girls illustrated it! If you click view excerpt, you can see some of their artwork!

I had no idea she was doing this, and I was just floored. It will be at Borders here semi-locally, and in early November there will be a book signing with her and all the girls!

Abby is going to be so excited when we get a copy of this! I can't wait to see the look on her face!!! And I just get all sappy thinking about reading this to both of them now (the book is dedicated to Andraya), and then someday reading it to my grandkids, too. Makes me all mushy :)

The girls best friends

I am just plowing through custom orders right now, getting caught up more everyday! I am just having a little happy mama reflection today.

We feel so lucky to have two sweet little girls, and we also love their best friends :) It's so sweet to see the girls with their puppies, and see how much they baby them and love them.

Andraya and Whip:


Abby and Stretch:


It's funny to me how each of the dogs has really adopted a favorite girl! You can tell how much Whip loves to play with Draya, and Stretch always runs for Abby. It's quite sweet.

Ridiculously Excited

I am so excited! I have been working behind the scenes on some great collaborations with some other WAHMs, and they are coming together!!

Later this month, I will have the honor of sewing up some shirts to go with gorgeous yarn from Nurturing Threads. Stacy and Jessica are awesome mamas, and I cannot wait to see what colorways Stacy comes up with to match the fabrics I sent! And I am quite lucky that I will have the opportunity to pet some of their lovely yarn while sewing up shirts to match it! I guarantee I won't drool on it though :)

And I have decided to take the knitting plunge. It's just too tempting! I am taking a beginning knitting class the first week of October, so we'll see how that goes!! I hope I have more success than Sarah, but I am not holding my breath yet! ;) If not, I have plenty of knitting friends to send my lovely yarn collection on to where it will be loved and used!!

A little something extra....

I always struggle with in stock items, when to embellish and when to not embellish?? On one hand, sweet little matchings sets are the things I love most for my daughters, but at the same time, when the shirt only goes with one pair of pants, I feel the need for more mix and match-ability.

So I try to be flexible with customers and their wants for coordination in the tops and bottoms. So when a mama asked if I could add an owl embroidery to my owl wool set, I was happy to oblige!

It's so sweet with this little detail, just the perfect little extra something:

I was surfing around reading a blog the other day (and to be honest, I can't remember which one or I would give credit), and the blogger had posted a picture of herself. It's funny that I read blogs and get a mental picture of the author, and then a lot of times I am surprised in one way or another at how off my mental picture can be.

So I resolved to post a picture of myself. Of course when I decide to do this is a day when my husband won't be home, and my four year old has deemed the camera too "complicated and I don't want to touch it" and my two year old is not looking like a good option.

So, here I am - in all my self photograph glory:

This is me, the author of this blog! And yes, it took some creative cropping to remove the background I blog in - our office/playroom that has a constant supply of toys scattered about. :)

Sewing Girl is here!

Isn't she cute?!?!?!

I love her! Best $3 I have ever spent :) Abby is thrilled because I put her on her side, and is doubly thrilled that she is *purple*. That kid cracks me up!

Now that you need one too, I got her here.

Recent Work, and my favorite thing to make!

I just finished up another custom order, with some very fun things included in it!!


This customer requested one of my very favorite things to make, a bamboo velour baby lap tee:

I just adore making these. As many of you know, bamboo velour is the softest and silkiest fuzzy fabric ever. It's so nice and snuggly. And making these tiny little tops out of it just gives me baby lust!


Some other things for the same customer included this VW mock layer tee:

And an Ooga Booga mock layer tee:

I love to do these mock layer tees with the last bits of my popular and super cute fabrics. It allows me to use the final scraps of these great knits, and I just think they are adorable!

I am excited for my stocking tomorrow evening, I can't wait to see what my next custom customers design!

Do I need another hobby?

Here we are again, it's September. And in our high desert climate, there is a good hint of fall in the air, especially on those chilly mornings. And again this year, that hint of fall is making me think, "I need to learn to knit!"

I have daydreams of knitting up beautiful things out of my yarn stash (what's that you say, why do you have a yarn stash when you don't know how to do a thing with it? Yeah, well, everyone has their issues, let it be!). I have beautiful colorways that really inspire me....my most recent addition was "Snow Angel" by Nurturing Threads. It's gorgeous, a mix of blue and purple. My oldest girly would look fanstastic in it!

And I wander around knitting blogs, including Jessica's, and I get this little burn of desire to pick up my non existent knitting needles and crank out beautiful things.

I have tried to knit before, I have! So far, I have not been good at it! I think taking a class would help me immensely, I am very visual, and I need someone that is patient! I have been waiting for my local yarn store to offer a beginning class again, should be very soon.

Of course, the question is still nagging me - do I need another hobby? I mean, really? Especially a hobby that validates my need to collect fibers of different sorts? Something for me to ponder on this chilly Saturday morning.

Stripes!

So, I admit, I have never been a huge fan of stripes, or sewing them. There are often a pain in the butt to line up, especially if they are not perfectly perpendicular to the grain!

But for some reason, right now, I LOVE stripes. I adore stripes. It's just crazy! My last post, there were the stripe/solid combinations for the girlies. And then I got in this euro bird knit that had a matching stripe. I just adore this:

I am also trying to be a better sewing mommy for this fall/winter. We moved here last year, and it was definitely colder than the mild climate we came from, and I did not have the girlies prepared well. My mother, thank goodness, ordered me a bumch of velour fleece for leggings and pants for the girls this year so they are warmer. When it's 8 degrees in the morning, jeans are a little cold!! I was so excited when I went to the box of velour fleece and found the *perfect* shade to match that shirt:

It was quite the sewing nerd moment, but I was *thrilled* and my husband was not nearly as excited as me when I showed him. Hopefully someone out there can understand how this was all meant to be, and the excitement of it all!

I usually don't like pictures of the clothing just laid out when it is for my kids, but Abby protested trying these on the day I made them, since it was over 100 degrees. She is obviously not made to be a runway model.

Over Labor Day Weekend, my husband went hunting with his father, and the girls and I hung around the house and got a lot of stuff done! One of the best things I did that weekend was delved into the world of felting wool interlock and dying (dye-ing?) it beautiful colors! Oh my, what fun! Now if only wool interlock were not so expensive.

I loved wool interlock pants for my daughters when they were younger and cloth diapered because they are just normal pants that happen to double as a cloth diaper cover! But of course I was too afraid of wool until now, when we are done with diapers for the most part!

I got over that regret pretty quickly, and put my energy into turning the wool interlock into sets for my shop:

They are all dyed with acid dyes from Dharma in the washing machine with very hot water, and set with vinegar. They are all felted to a super yummy medium weight. I was shocked, though, I bought three yards of wool interlock from a coop and this is all I got out of it! LOL! I do have some large scraps, but still! It's a super yummy wool/lycra blend. I can't even pick a favorite out of these outfits, they are all so different. Although to make it more fun for me, I paired them with some of my all time favorite knits. Those hedgehogs from Japan (courtesy of Shanna a couple years ago!) are so soft and just lovely. I am hoarding the ones on pink for Draya this winter!

Speaking of sewing nerd moments, someone on Sewing Mamas linked to these fab car decals on Etsy, made by Holly. Now, that is a really cute sewing nerd, but when I saw the Sewing Girl, I had to have her, in purple, for my car. I can't wait for it to arrive! Funny thing, my husband just kindly laughed when I showed him. I am not sure he understood that I was serious, I was getting one! :) Good thing he doesn't drive my car all to0 often!

What? This is the most neglected blog you have ever seen?

I know, I know! This IS the most neglected blog in the world, poor thing. Many of you probably ask - why does she have a blog?

But I have excuses, and good ones at that!

I got a little overwhelmed with orders in April/May/June. Well, that's an understatement. I extended myself too far, didn't take any new orders at all after the first or second week in May, and did not finish up the current orders until the end of June, and that was sewing my fingers to the bone. I was doing it for a reason, though, I knew we would need extra money when we moved into our new home!


That's right, we are now homeowners! Or will be after what seems like a million more payments, but don't sweat the small stuff, right?


It was very poetic, we signed papers for our home on July 14, our seventh wedding anniversary, and then got the keys on the 18th. I have a few things to say about home buying, and none of them positive. It is the most frustrating, unclear, horrible process I have ever been through and the thing that irked me the most was that all these people who are supposed to be "helping" you along the way act as though nothing is a big deal. And I understand that to them, because they see it every day, it isn't a big deal, happens all the time, blah blah blah. However, for us, first time homebuyers who have very little clue what to expect, it's a HUGE deal. That was so frustrating for us.

But all is well, we got the house, we have moved in and settled, and we are very happy. Buying a home here also gives us a sense of permanancy we have never felt anywhere else. The first place we lived after being married we LOVED, and probably would have happily died there, but it wasn't logistical. My hubby was driving an hour one way to work, and I was driving half an hour the opposite direction. It was not a good long term situation. The next place we lived, we learned a lot there, so all of you know the types of experiences that you"learn" from. Enough said. But now we live where we always have wanted to live, and we are both so happy and ready to just stay here forever. It's a good calming feeling.

So, see, good excuse!!

We took a short family vacation over to the Oregon coast after we were all settled in, to sort of destress and unwind before my husband had to return to work. We flew kites (Draya's kite lasted all of 30 seconds before it blew into trees, not to be retrieved), ate clam chowder, went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and all around had a great time.

The girls loved the sand on the beach!

And kites while we still had two:

Then, on the way home from the coast, we took Highway 242, which is a historic highway that is only open part of the year, and it's so pretty and such a fun drive. The best part of the drive is the Dee Wright Observatory.

It's on a huge lava flow, and the house is made out of obsidian. It has peeking holes you look out that point towards each mountain in the Cascades. It's such a fun place. My husband and I enjoyed the history and everything there, but the girls? Eh, they were ALL about the chipmunks!

Isn't he cute? Brave little suckers, too....they came right up to the girls and were begging for more crackers! They had no shame!







It was a fun little trip!

And we also lost our minds enough to get the girls a new puppy - he was a housewarming present!


He is obviously horribly abused



"MOM, he was COLD!!!"

His breeders had called him Whip, and so we adopted the name of Cool Whip :) I love pembroke welsh corgis so much, so I am very happy with our new addition.

So, as you can tell, I basically took the whole summer off of sewing, and it was lovely. I even had intentions of just closing down my business, never to return. I think all that sewing in April/May/June majorly burned me out. But about the beginning of August, I started feeling that itch to create. After sewing up some cute stuff for the girls, I decided that I would in fact stock my cart again, but on a much smaller scale. Another reason I got overwhelmed this spring is that I not only stocked custom slots in my store, but I also accepted customs via email. It was just.too.much. So now I am having be a meany butt and tell everyone to stalk my store if they want a custom. It's very hard for me to say no, but it's also so much healthier for me to say no. I think I have struck a good compromise.

My favorite outfits for the girls so far for fall:

These were made from this great interlock my sister picked up at Hancock's last year. It's striped on one side, solid on the other, and that stuff is THICK. It will be so nice and snuggly when it's cold here this winter. And aren't they just too cute?

That is my quick and dirty update with a peppering of excuses as to why this blog has been soooo boring. I am also planning on making this blog not just about sewing, but about all fun things we do!