18 inches in responsibility...

Tomorrow my due date will be 2 months away and I have been thinking a lot about this life changing practice that so many people journey through.  I have been putting the finishing details on the nursery and getting super pumped to plow through my "Crafting To Do" list so that I can work on awesome things for my babe-to-be guilt free, which is a feeling I embrace as often as possible in my life.  My thoughts lately circle around this idea of "18 inches in responsibility"... I can't think of a possible better way to describe it.  As it is, my responsibility to this baby includes no alcohol, shrimp, or deli meat.  (Yes, I realize I'm being vague and am doing it for dramatic exaggeration - please no emails about everything else you shouldn't have while pregnant.)  However, when this babe travels 18 inches south, all of a sudden my responsibility drastically changes in ways I can't even imagine being a first time mommy.  I have great ideas of what sort of parent I want to be and definite ideas about what sort of parent I do not wish to be.  If I am sleep deprived and irritable, don't take it out on the baby or the husband.  If a pacifier falls on the floor, check it for pet hair and keep on rolling...   Don't take your child to superstores at 10:00 at night... it's the perfect combination for disaster.  But it's those "other" things that worry me.  Not too much, mind you, because I don't know what those "other" things are, so I can't get too worked up about them.  But I am a planner.  A type A, organized, planner who is about to throw up her arms and welcome chaos and make a pledge to roll with it as I go. 

I feel very fortunate in life.  I know people, professionally and personally... very personally, who struggle a great deal with the idea of creating a family and I can't help but feel a little bit guilty for how easy this came to us... I wish everyone who wants it the excitement of welcoming the unknown chaos and a closet full of clothes that smell like baby spit up.  :)

The crafting to do list is looking very good these days... I've even had some new orders come in, which is awesome.  I also have been getting inspired for what I want to do for the craft show I'm in that is quickly approaching.

Previously:

A Baby Quilt

Gender Reveal Onesies & Burp Cloths

A Dan Patrick Logo Onesie

Baby Shower Gift Onesies

Six Custom Tumblers & Two Sippy Cups

A Jungle Themed Nursery Poster

Two Twelve?? Stockings

I am proud to say that currently the to do list looks more like this:

A Baby Quilt

Gender Reveal Onesies & Burp Cloths

A Dan Patrick Logo Onesie

Baby Shower Gift Onesies

Six Custom Tumblers & Two Sippy Cups

A Jungle Themed Nursery Poster

18 Stockings

Red Apron

Baby Shirt

4 Tumblers

Etched Vinyl Window Decals

For now, I will leave you with pictures of things that again remind me that it is fall.  A cozy baby quilt and personalized pumpkin decals.  :) 

Fall

There are lots of signs that fall is almost upon us!  The weather is cool and our air conditioning has been turned off for about a week now, which I love!  Football is underway.  And most importantly, I will never forget fall because the first day of fall lands on one of my best friend's birthdays.  Not to mention my mother-in-laws birthday... which I will remind my husband of closer to the actual date.  :)

With summer being my least favorite season I am not sad to see it go.  And even though I find myself almost the size of a pumpkin this fall, I am still welcoming it with open arms.  It makes me want to make a hot chocolate and get cozy with my crafts.  Serious motivation weather...

And just in time too.  From the last blog, my updated "To Do" list now looks like this:

A Baby Quilt

Gender Reveal Onesies & Burp Cloths

A Dan Patrick Logo Onesie

Baby Shower Gift Onesies

Six Custom Tumblers & Two Sippy Cups

A Jungle Themed Nursery Poster

Two Twelve?? Stockings

I had never heard of Dan Patrick until a friend of mine asked me to make her new babe a onesie that looked similar to the logo of the show.  For those of you like me who did not know, Dan Patrick has a sports show with a group of guys he calls "the Danette's."  One of his "Danette's" is named Seton, which is what my friend and her husband named their little guy.  They wanted to take a picture and send it into the show.  What did I get most excited about?  A custom design order!!  :)  (It's the little things, ya know?)

Here is the Dan Patrick logo that I used to mimic my design after:

 

Here is the onesie that I created for the new Seton... I am so happy with the way it turned out, I can't wait to see a picture of him in his new garb.

 

 

 



I hope everyone has had a great weekend, will have a great upcoming week, and finds something to relish in enjoyment over.  :)

Life.

No, it's not philosophical... it's cereal.  Have you had this stuff?  It is freaking amazing!!  It seems to be my prego craving of the week.  I am hoping it keeps me energized to get through all of my projects before going out of town next week.

I am currently working on:

• A Baby Quilt
• Gender Reveal Onesies & Burp Cloths
• A Dan Patrick Logo Onesie
• Baby Shower Gift Onesies
• Six Custom Tumblers & Two Sippy Cups
• A Jungle Themed Nursery Poster
• Two Stockings

Whew!  I will have pictures and updates as those things wrap up... and with more discussions of more stocking orders, I think it's going to be a busy fall.

Did I mention that none of that is for the nursery I'll be working on as well?  :)

I'm in a lot of denial about the fact that I am already having my doctor's appointments every other week.  I will have 5 of those, then move to weekly appointments... and then baby boy will be here!

With all the people I know who have either recently had babies or are anticipating the arrival soon, my nursery posters have become one of my favorite "Welcome to the World" gifts.  They can't be given ahead of time... unless your psychic... in which case, we should talk.  :)

I think they're such a fun and unique way of capturing some of your babes stats.

 

 

 

 

So those are the nursery prints so far!  I am running errands today to get a frame and a mat for the Jungle one that I made most recently.  Will share soon!  Wish me luck on getting all those projects accomplished before the week's over.  :)

 

Happy Hump Day!!



Too soon?

Is it too soon to start listening to Christmas music?  I have found a secret pleasure finding and shaping the perfect Christmas station on my Pandora and I find I am listening to it more and more. 

Christmas music in general puts me in one of those Cloud 9/Over the Moon/Wonderment kind of moods... but I think this year knowing Christmas should be extra special, it puts me in a heightened state of excitement.  :)

I am, at this very moment, putting off filing nail holes with wood putty and taping off the floors and trims in the nursery.  Blogging sounded like a much better plan.  :)  So Christmas music and thinking of how wonderful this babe's nursery will be when it's all over with has me feeling pretty good.  Currently, the nursery looks like this:

It is getting really fun to start walking by and seeing it coming together.  I keep telling Harley, "You are so close to being done with "your" part... and then Mama is taking over!!

I'm excited to get the crib, dresser, and glider in the room and figure out how it all fits best in the room.... and then!!!  Well, then comes the really fun part!!

I opted to make all of the crib bedding.  My mother thinks this makes me slightly nuts, but really... I can't help it when I start to shop for crib bedding.  Take this one for example:

Is it cute?  Sure... that's not the issue.  This is the issue... it costs $600.00.  No, I didn't mis-type that... Six-hundred dollars...  And I'm totally pro if someone has the means and wants to do that for their kid... but here's the real kicker.  In today's "Baby Rules" you're not supposed to use a blanket or a bumper.  So what do you get?  A $600 sheet and bed skirt.  Now all of a sudden, a baby blue sheet and a gingham crib skirt isn't looking so good.  So I found an awesome crib sheet tutorial online and I CAN NOT wait to start making this baby boy some sheets!!  Here are the fabrics I picked out for him to dream his sweet dreams on. 

Ohhh, they make me happy just to look at!  I am perfectly content living in this fantasy world that just because he has fabulous fabrics he might sleep through the night... :)  But I think the reality is, if I'm getting up all throughout the night, at least I will be picking up that upset babe off some wonderful threads.  :)  Haha

Okay, well, back to the wood putty!  I hope everyone has a wonderful Monday!!

de·bat·a·ble

de·bat·a·ble/diˈbātəbəl/

Adjective:

Open to discussion or argument.

Yep... that's pretty much how I'm feeling right now.  Debatable. 

It's debatable whether it is lame to spend your Friday night uploading pictures onto Facebook... or dedicated marketing...

I feel like pricing is also always debatable.  How do you find the right balance between pricing what you make at a level that says, "I value my product and my time and this is what that costs" and "It's only cool if people actually will buy what you make." 

I am in the market for a newborn photographer in the KC area and I found a website I fell in love with, just to find out she charges $800 for a 2-4 hour shoot.  It was a tough call, but I opted to pay the mortgage instead.

I'm in a debatable place about what to do job wise too.  Technically, it's a quandary... but I think only my friend LE would appreciate the technicality there...

Life is funny if you have the time to think about it.  It's a beautiful Friday here... cool and still smelling of rain.  I'm getting great responses from people about all my photos on Facebook.  And my hubby just brought me a king size Hershey's bar...  :)  Ahh... now that's love.

Maybe debatable is an okay place to be for a little bit... maybe that is where the answers will come from....

In the mean time I have stayed busy with an Etsy sell (photo below) and am continueing working on a baby quilt for a friend and keeping those crib sheet fabrics in the corner of my eye for when I can start to go to town on nursery crafting!

Happy Weekend!!

Julie & Julia

This blog is sort of like having a treadmill (yep, I just had to Google the correct spelling of treadmill - probably a bad sign) in your house.  You get it feeling super motivated to be dedicated and inspirational... and after a while it starts to hold your clothes while they air dry.  And then it becomes something non-existent that only produces feelings of guilt and shame when you think about it.

I think I am going to blame dog sitting over the weekend and watching Julie and Julia (or Julia and Julie) about the girl who starts a cooking blog.  I thought to myself, "and I don't even have to cook to make mine work!"

So maybe we'll try this again and see where it goes.  Yesterday I told myself I was going to do the dishes and mop the floors - which for the record, did eventually get done.  But I found myself completely immersed in the idea of making a fabric basket.  I am happy to say, after searching the Internet for what I felt was the cutest one and discovering that the tutorial for it used the metric system that I was able to convert everything as needed and created a pretty cute little basket.  Emphasis on little... but that gives me new motivation to try different measurements to make the perfect basket size.

I was very impressed at how it stayed up so well on it's own.  Harley's response, "What are you going to use that for?"  My answer... I don't know yet... but we'll see.  :)

Merry & Bright... Really Bright!

Hello?  (tap tap tap) Is this thing on??

For those of you still checking in to see whether or not I would ever stray back this way... thank you my loyal fan base.  :)  I am back!  Let me begin by wishing you and yours a very merry (and a little belated) Christmas.  I hope that wrapping up 2011 and all of 2012 brings you great joy and happiness.

I am celebrating... that I ended up surviving the holiday season.  Or as I have said about a thousand times around my house "Stocking Season."  And I'm not gonna lie... I am somewhat surprised I lived through it.  :)  This season brought along with it a record breaking sales season.  As I look back over my "books" in November and December alone I made 80 tumblers, 18 stockings, a couple of signs, some really cute "cookies for Santa" plates, a blanket, a dog bandanna, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Okay, maybe I got a little carried away on that last one... but I do feel like I made a ton of things in November and December.  So, of course is now the time that I give a great big THANK YOU to everyone who purchased In Stitches items for their holiday gifts.  You flatter me and make me want to come up with bigger and better gifts for next year.  (Which is my explanation to Harley for sitting on Pintrest and Google Reader for the past three hours getting inspired.)  :)

I know my last blog, however long ago said that I needed to get Photoshop before posting anymore crafts, and unfortunately that is still true today as it was then... but be sure to check back!  Because once I get it, I will have SO many great things to share with you.  I am very excited to get back to blogging and showing off my goodies... in a very PG kind of way.  :)

Since the last blog followed some home renovation I will roll right along with that and show you what my new hubby did for me in the kitchen.  It's like the light from above shining down on me... well, no... it's exactly that.  :)  I now have WONDERFUL can lights in the kitchen.  (On an inappropriate note, I wanted to title this blog "Check out my new cans" (HAHA!)  But we must always be aware that my Nana reads this...  :)  And I didn't want to make her panic!) 

Here is the kitchen before.  Yep, that's right.  One measly 60 watt bulb not even centered in the kitchen.  The counters, sink, and stove area are all over on the left... farthest from the light, and if you are standing in front of the counter blocking the light, forget about it...  The tap is already in place for the new lights, but it wasn't until after that that I had my "OH WAIT!  We need a BEFORE shot!" realization.

My attic cowboy.  Apparently the attic is dusty.

This is where I got excited because the holes were cut and really sad about all the cleaning I was going to have to do.

There was a major tragedy during the project.  (Majorly hilarious from my point of view...)  Harley's ladder fell as he was climbing into the attic and he was hanging onto the attic opening and the box of new lights fell and hit him in the face.  I didn't think it was funny because he got hurt... I thought it was funny because my parents let me watch America's Funniest Home Videos and I have been conditioned to laugh at such things.  Anyway... he didn't bleed much!

There they are folks... my new lights!  THEY ARE FANTASTIC!

It is like a dream to have lights over by the counters now.  I couldn't be happier!

Please check back in.  I already have orders and projects lined up for 2012, but I think I'm taking the week off.  I am going to get Photoshop and then start sharing all of my projects with you.  :)  Yay!

My goal for 2012:  All of my gifts will be completed and wrapped (but without ribbon... the cat still tests my patience each year by chewing off all my beautifully curled ribbons) by December 1st.  That way I can accommodate all of the orders without wondering how in the world I will get my gifts done too.  :) 

2012 is going to hold some BIG things for In Stitches.  Stay tuned for all the exciting details.  :)

I'm alive!!

My Nana shared with me that there were some blog readers who were concerned about my well being due to lack of blogging!  :)  My profound apology to those readers for any concern.  Life has been full and busy with bridal showers, transitioning out of one job and training to learn another, I'm working on finalizing wedding details, and still making In Stitches products for people, and as if that wasn't enough, I have been working on home renovation.  (And of course when I say "I" I mean Harley.)  :)

I am happy to report that due to some way generous gifts cards from family and friends to Home Depot and the amazing talent from Harley, that I have the most beautiful closet!!  I thought I would share pictures of what has been keeping me busy and at Home Depot away from the computer and away from my ability to blog.  :)

I am still working on several orders, in fact when I wrote out the "to do" list I had to take some deep breaths...  :)  But it will all work out in the end!!  And I get to try some new things, which is really exciting for me.  So more to come with that.

For now, some before, middle, and after pictures of the reno and the new closet. 

This is the before picture of the closet door.  Just your average door.

When you open the door you realize that the closet is 9 feet long.

And so what did they decide?  Oh, let's put two poles in the 30" width and call it a "walk-in"....

Here is the other side of what it looked like before.  Not my idea of a walk-in... and also a little embarassing to think about everyone seeing what was in my closet...

Here is Harley after the demo began.  The door frame is out, the floor is messy, and I stuck with what I knew - taking pictures!  :)  And that mess to the left was put there by someone else!!  Haha

My very own Mr. Fix-It.  In a good mood that he didn't cut out a load bearing wall and bring the house down.  After being enlightened of the potential disaster, I too was happy with the outcome.

This is the wall cut out to the desired size with the studs still there.  Turns out, houses built in the 50's used a mixture of plaster and concrete in their walls... so there were a few blades injured during this process.

The studs are gone, well, all but one.  ;)

Framed out, mudded, and ready to paint.

I did help with painting.  :)  This is one of my favorite pictures from the renovation.

Ooooooh Ahhhhhhh

Complete with the oganizational system!!

There are still some things that need to be done.  The hardwood needs to be replaced in the floor where there used to be wall, and the doors need to go on.  But I couldn't be happier!  :)  Life if sort of rocking right now.  :)  I hope it is for everyone else too!  Enjoy your weekend everyone!!

Happy Tuesday

I just saw that the last post was made 9/2 and I thought, "Who is running this blog?  She should post more often!"  ;)   And not that excuses are ever a good thing (haha, that makes me think of a funny thing I once heard about the correlation between excuses and... well... never mind) but I did have a computer virus in between posts.  Get this, because I was looking for CRAFT SHOWS!  And I hit an unsafe link... Anyway, that has all been fixed and I am back in business.
After a lovely weekend that included a family bridal shower and engagement photos (which the fiance did so well at) I find myself in a very happy mood this week.  I am hoping to hear lots of good news about sororities and about my new job that I will transition into.  I think that hearing some of those things will help me let go of some of the worries I have been having.  In the mean time, I have over controlled/organized some areas of my life and made a list of the products I have made and still not posted about!! 

I am still making tumblers like crazy, in fact I just got an order of 50 in yesterday, which is perfect timing... However, today I feel like showing you all of the adorable onesies that I have made recently. I feel okay saying adorable because I really do love them. I hope you think so as well. And I also hope you have a lovely Tuesday. :)