Mini Janome in the House!

There's a Mini Janome in the house! Micaela kept asking when she would get a Janome machine like mine, so guess what Mommy got her for Christmas? Yup, I got her her very own Janome. (This year we decided we- the parents would be the heros instead of Santa getting all the credit for the cool gifts). This is not a toy, its real and Micaela is thrilled. We've been super busy and have not had time to play but soon she'll be making her 'own' projects on her 'own' machine very soon. Now she says she wants a mini embroidery machine. Lord, what will it be next?

Of course, Oreo had to be in the picture. I'll post the big present from Daddy soon! Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas Embroidery

Here are a few things I made to give for Christmas... I am so mad at myself for not taking pictures of everything! In some cases I was literally sewing right up until I walked out the door and in the rush did not have a chance to snap a picture.

The biggest item I made was a this set of 11 napkins and a matching runner for my mother in law & father in law. There's one napkin for each family member. It's hard to photograph 11 napkins at once clearly but I think you get the idea. These will also serve as placecards kinda sorta. I used all lower case to keep the font small. I love the white ric rac and the green trim!

I don't know of more people coming into the family anytime soon but I have some blank napkins set aside for when new members join the family (like the grandchildren getting married). The matching runner is 72 inches long but it was too hard to photograph full length. I embroidered one end with the family name, est. (for established) and my mother & father in law's wedding date. I love the ribbon 'fringe' on the ends.

Once I got all the names programed into my machine, the second set was not as difficult to make, it also helped that it's a younger family with just two children and obviously no grandchildren yet...lol. This is the set I made for my brother in law & sister in law who got married just three years ago. I did white napkins for them just so the sets would not be completely alike.
I embroidered the runner the same, just updated with their totally coool 8-8-2008 wedding date.
I was done with red and green after all of that! Now I have a year to make a set for us! Thanks for stopping by.

Oreo tricks

We have discovered Oreo knows a few tricks. The cutest one is sitting on his hind legs for what seems like an eternity. I say 'discovered' because we couldn't have taught him this in the short three weeks we've had him. Check this out...
He just sits like this... we say he's sitting handsome. Thanks for stoping by!

Pinkalicious!

Pinkalicious, The Musical was in town a couple of weeks ago and Micaela and I went to see it with another Mother & Daughter 'couple'. This was Micaela's FIRST time at the Eisemann Center in Richardson and she loved it.

We debated about what to wear and in the end chose a dress I purchased for her 3 years ago. I've patiently been waiting for her to grow into the dress and the day finally came. I was so glad this dress was PINK and not another color...lol. I have so many outfits I have bought way in advance of her being able to wear, I am glad the timing on this one worked out perfectly! Thanks for stopping by.

Devin B & B

Here's a set I made for a new little cowboy in Nevada.

Mini Sewing Machine Cover

Micaela has a tiny battery operated sewing machine that my Mom got her this summer, she loves it! She's been 'requesting' (nagging) that her machine does not have a cover like all of mine. I've been on the search for the perfect fabric for her since she's not fond of my red, black & yellow color scheme and recently while at Quilt Asylum I found some adorable "sewing theme" fabric called SEW by the Henley Studio. I knew she would love it because it's got PINK, her favorite color.

After much deliberation, we picked out a group of fabrics, ribbon and trim and went to work. After about an hour she was konked out on the day bed and I kept working until it was done. This is what we came up with! I think it turned out super cute. Sadly, I know she is going to outgrow this machine and we'll have to make another one to fit her next one!

Thanks for stopping by!

Adoption Day

We have a new member of the family, meet Oreo- our new dog. We adopted him from our SPCA center over Thanksgiving and Micaela is "over the moon" excited. Oreo is an early Christmas present from my parents. He's a daschund, my family's favorite breed! Thanks for stopping by!

Soccer Party

Our soccer season is over, we have our Saturday's back! We had a pizza party party to celebrate. Here's our sweets table... nothing really significant to write about except I wanted to share how I put the letters on the wall. I cut these out of felt sheets just like I did the ones on the blanket a few days ago. I 'temporary' adhered them to the wall using fabric basting spray. It was fast, easy and did not leave any residue on the wall. Thanks for stopping by!

Soccer Blanket

Our daughter plays soccer and during the last few games it was really chilly. I thought it would be fun to make an extra wide blanket in the team colors with the team name on it so when the girls sit on the sidelines they can keep warm.

I bought 3 yards of fleece 60 inches wide and trimmed it down to 45 inches. I took black felt I purchased by the yard and drew on letters freehand with chalk. I cut the letters out, used some temporary basting spray adhesive to place them on the blanket and then stitched around each letter. It was a little challenging manuevering all the fabric in the machine but I think it turned out cute and most of all the girls loved it! Go Team!

Orange B&B set

A customer requested an orange burp cloth and bib set for a friend. She specified orange, a non scripty font and a dragon fly. This is what I came up with.

I did not think it would turn out so cute. The dragonfly is redwork which is mimicks old fashioned embroidery, I really like the way it stitched out. Thanks for stopping by!

Meeting Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders

Everyone in my family is a die hard Dallas Cowboy fan! We are fortunate to have two Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders in the family, my cousins Ashton & Alyssa. Before the season started a couple of months ago, we got to go to Cowboy Stadium for a Friends & Family night. Micaela was beyond thrilled to see her cousins in the actual DCC uniform and visit the enormous stadium!

Ashton is a 3 year veteran and Alyssa is a rookie. Its crazy how these girls have grown up so fast, I vividly remember going to their parents wedding and when their Mom was pregnant expecting them! This side of the family is quite large and Alyssa & Ashton had a huge group of family and friends cheering them on for the event, Micaela was so proud to hold up a sign while we sat in the stands.

Micaela had fun dancing around the field after the event was over, she asked me to take a picture of her laying on the helmet. I think we have a future cheerleader in about 15 years!

Halloween Party

We had our second annual Halloween Party on Sunday! We celebrated Micaela's 6 1/2 birthday since we never got around to celebrating with friends during April. Here are a few of my favorite pictures!

The girls made a pumpkins out of old fence posts. When we replaced our gate recently, my husband thought I was crazy when I asked him to save the wood for craft projects. After much convincing, he saved a few pieces. These little pumpkins are made from the posts. Hubby cut the post into blocks, sanded them down, added a light coat of pumpkin orange paint and a little stump made out of a dowl. The girls cut faces out of felt and glued them on, it was cute and very inexpensive! Ahh, our sweets table. This is what happens when you forget to take a picture at the begining of the party before everyone arrives. Some of the letter candy dishes had already been refilled a couple of times by the time I remembered the camera. Nothing too elaborate here. I used fabric for the tablecloth, covered the drink bottles with Halloween scrapbook paper, did store bought cookies, cupcakes and a little 3 inch cake for Micaela. Most of all, I love our new letter candy dishes (I wish I could by several alphabet sets so I could spell out many words for every occassion).

The Pinata-- a total Mexican tradition! I found this cute pumpkin pinata at the party store and thought it would be fun to add an M monogram. I cut out the M with the Storybook cartridge on the Cricut, I think it turned out cute!

All in all it was a great party-- me and hubby were very tired but our little girl was happy and that is all that counts. Thanks for stopping by!

Santiago B & B

This is my first international order, this is headed to Mexico! This is not the greatest picture-- I forgot to take a picture at home and this was the best my soon to be replaced iPhone could do. Thanks for stopping by!

Autumn Backyard

Our lawn is looking a little better now that the temperatures have stopped being in the 100's for a few weeks. We are getting ready for our annual Halloween Party in a few days, here's a quick snapshot of our backyard.
Hope you are having a great autumn day!

Heather Witch

'Tis the season for witch stuff! I made this for a teacher friend for Halloween. She loves to decorate for holidays so I hope she likes this.

Three Twin Sets

I had a local custom order for a set of twin girls. The buyer wanted three pairs of matching burp clothes (no bibs) for twin girls who are totally into pink and green. Here's what I came up with.
This order turned out to be alot more difficult than I expected. Gia and Gemma don't work in well all fonts that are the same size. I had to try out many to avoid using a smaller font for the longer name. Nonetheless, I am glad to get this project photographed and out the door so I can move on to the next thing!

This is one of the standard fonts I use often. I don't usually do monochrome color schemes but the machine got ahead of me on the name part and I just had to let it keep going without changing the thread. Originally I was going to do a contrasting light green.

I had been wanting to try out these scroll designs for a while. I love how simple and elegant the scroll looks with the name in a contrasting color. The scroll fabric is from a local quilting store Quilt Asylum, I purchased it to do some funky Halloween stuff originally.
This is my favorite of the three sets. I love including middle names in personalized items if I can fit it in. The scrolls with flowers are from the same designer as the scroll above. It's hard to tell in the picture but the striped fabric has a faint scroll pattern in it.
Thanks for stopping by! Happy Sewing!

Fall Gardening

Our yard is in deep recovery mode from the summer heat and drought. I am focusing on keeping what I have left alive and adding a few containers for color. Trying to use what I learned at the Green Seminar on Fall Gardening I attended last week.
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Planted all these pots myself.... Coleus in the back, orange celosia and red zinnias.. (probably too much for one pot)... we'll see in a few weeks how crowded this gets.

This is another coleus variety, I love the colors in this plant, the green and purple are so bright!

And last but not least, a Yellow chrysanthemum.

I really wanted to plant more but we are in a drought and are under Stage 2 water restrictions for our area. I don't want to go overboard with a bunch of plants that I should not be watering especially if we evolve to stage 3 water restrictions. Thanks for stopping by!

Pumpkin Barrettes

Autumn is finally here. The temperatures in the DFW area are finally comfortable. To kick off the first day of fall, here are some new pumpkin barrettes I embroidered. I made these for my daughter and some of her friends, aren't they adorable! These are available in my Etsy store.

Thanks for stopping by!

Little Name Pillow

Joint Mommy & Micaela sewing project. Micaela sewed the straight seams and chose the fabric, ribbon and embroidery design.
We desperately needed 'another' item for her bed! Thanks for stopping by!

Pennant Banner

Here's a simple pennant banner I made for a dear friend's daughter's birthday party. Katie turned five and had a princess party.
Hope you are staying cool this summer!

Bats in Austin

On our way home from Big Bend we stopped in Austin to spend the night. We arrived just in time to find our way over to the the Congress Avenue bridge in the dowtown area where 1.5 million bats live. This is the largest urban bat colony in North America.

I've heard of this place for years but was never in the area at the right time to 'observe'. People come from all over to watch this.

Bats eat several thousand insects a night! They love mosquitos! They play a key role in maintaining the balance of nature and greatly reduce the need for toxic pesticides. I now have a whole new appreciation for bats!

We arrived a little early and had time to enjoy popsicles and visiting with the other several hundred people who were there to watch the bats.

Here's a short video I took when the 1.5 million took flight for dinner, it was truly amazing to watch!

Big Bend National Park

Earlier this month we took a ten day trip to Big Bend National Park with my parents in their new motorhome. We had an incredible time, it was so much fun. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures!

Thanks for stopping by

Pooh Set

Here's a Winnie the Pooh Burp and Bib set I made especially for the friend of a neighbor. This fabric came from my mother's stash. I was glad to use it for someone who was "into" Pooh Bear. I love the vibrant colors in the fabric, the scenes are so cute... no two burp clothes will ever be the same. Thanks for stopping by!

Baby Set for Jones

This is a set I custom made for a friend of a friend. She wanted bright primary colors, I love this blue polka dot print! Jones is the the baby's first name-- it's kinda different and very distinguished!

First Sewing Lesson for Micaela

It's summer and we are staying up late, especially weekends. Micaela has been bugging me to teach her to sew so tonight was her first lesson...

I am teaching her to sew EXACTLY the way my mother taught me, on ruled notebook paper!

I set the machine on turtle speed and let her go... She loves it! She got the hang of it in no time.
Now she wants to use my machine all of the time!

Sewing Room Progress

Here's a picture of my sewing area in our guest room. As you can see the sewing is starting to take over the room, oh well-- we don't have guests that often anyway. The room is a work in progress as you can tell.

The black sewing cabinet is the one I painted this spring. The oak desk was my desk as a teen, I think I got it for my 13th birthday. I found the CD racks at the Habitat for Humanity store and thought they would work well for arranging fat quarters and small quantities of fabric.

More progress to come... Thanks for stopping by.

BBQ anyone

I love summer and I love patriotic decorations. Embroidered this to kick off summer Memorial Day BBQ and had forgotten to post. Can't take credit for the grill portion of the embroidery, only our name. Thanks for stopping by!

Allen USA Celebration

Last night we went to the Allen USA celebration. Allen is the next city south of McKinney on Hwy 75. This is a huge event that draws more than 75,000 people and what is most impressive about the event is they make it extremely green by having a ZERO WASTE policy.

Here is a picture of the bins they have throughout the park.



Here is a video of the fireworks. Thanks for stopping by!

This week I had to attend the Keep Texas Beautiful annual conference in Austin. On our way back we made a quick stop at the State Capital. This was Micaela's first visit and she was VERY impressed.

Here are a few snapshots

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend.

Luau Party

This past Sunday I hosted a little Luau Party for our daughter and several of her friends. The last day of school was Friday and we were celebrating them all going to first grade.

It was hectic during the party and sadly this is the only picture I got of the food table. All the food was not out yet and now I notice the pineapple upside down cake was still covered and I cut off the flamingo's (centerpiece) head. Oh well, I think you will get the general idea.

I used hot pink, yellow and orange satin yardage to drape the table and used a variety of things under the fabric to make it different heights.

One of my favorite things on the table is this swimming pool & jacuzzi chip and dip set and a pair of Micaela's flip flops from when she was a baby. I purchased the flip flops (and a matching swim suit) when I was pregnant and I remember when she was 3 months old and her feet were still too small for them. Now at six she has giant feet and I am reminded of how much she is grown!

The flip flop plates on the table are plastic and a perfect size for little girls. I've had them for several years and love using them over and over without creating litter for the landfills.

Here is a close up of the flip flop cookies I decorated. These are Nutter Butter cookies with the thong piped in with icing. So cute and easy to make. I can't take credit for the idea, I found it on this blog: http://alittleloveliness.blogspot.com/2009/05/if-shoe-cookie-fits.html.

Here are some of the decorations outside as you approached the front door. Love this hula girl, only $1 at Dollar Tree.

Walking up our sidewalk to the front door, the garden flag and a flip flop sign.

Flip Flop sign on our ledge at the front door. Someone suggested I change the sign to be "Fipps Flop This Way" (to be our last name-- ).

Here's a picture of the back yard. Not everything is blooming because it's been so darn hot and windy but I still love our big flower bed.

The activities during the party included lots of beach themed music and of course-- Hula Hoops!

Fruity drinks with little umbrellas. I wasn't going to go the margarita glass route but when I found these that came apart and nested, I decided they were worth the investment. The girls loved them because they were like adult glasses and they were pink. We'll reuse these year after year...

The Limbo--

A Flamingo Pinata.

I searched high and low at many stores all over Dallas and never found a Flip Flop Pinata. After the 5th store a couple of days before the party, I settled for a pink flamingo. I just didn't want a bunch of cute little girls "beating the guts out of a flamingo" but my 6 year old assured me, it would be okay because the flamingo "was not alive!"

Towards the end I gave each girl a bottle of bubbles and they blew bubbles.

All in all it was a great party and we look forward to making it an annual tradition. A video of the actual party is in the blog post below. Thanks for stopping by...

Linking to

Between Naps on the Porch http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/2011/06/summertime-beach-tablescape-welcome-to.html

A Stroll Thru Life http://astrollthrulife.blogspot.com/2011/06/68th-table-top-tuesday.html