My First Embroidered Baby Gift

I was invited to a friends baby shower a couple of weekends ago. I was so excited because I knew I could make a few bibs and burp clothes! So, I call the hostess to rsvp and kindly ask for the baby to be's name. I am told they haven't decided but they know it's a boy. Holy cow, how am I going to make a personalized gift if I don't have the name?

Well, I resorted to the next best thing. I asked the Mom to be for a picture of the bedding. I shopped at three different stores until I found some fabric to coordinate and made a couple of burp clothes and bibs using just the last name.


Here's how they turned out...
And the matching bibs.


The Mommy was thrilled and I was pleased with my results. In the gift, I included a card with an IOU for more once they pick out the name. I am looking forward to making more once they pick out the name- Jack, Daniel or Alexander, which ever it turns out to be!

A Bunch of Bibs

I so wish I had had my embroidery machine when Micaela was a baby. She would have never had a plain bib! Thank goodness we have a few babies in the family. Here is a bunch of bibs I made for our neice Megan.


You can see I am improving, one bib at a time....


My first embroidery attempt using a downloaded purchased font and doing an entire word... This took me a while to figure out, perhaps if I had read past the first few chapters in the manual, I would have figured it out faster. Should have made all the letters bigger, but I actually hadn't figured out that part of my machine at the time--again, a chapter I didn't think I needed to read. LOL.





I do well with single letters. Here's my second bib. I like this alphabet with princess crowns over each letter, it's my favorite. You can find it at http://www.funstitch.com/ at this link.

Figured out I needed a "topping" on fuzzy fabrics to keep fuzzies from interferring with embroidery design. Ta-da, a perfect M. Love this one! This font is also from http://www.funstitch.com/, it's called Script and you can see it here.


Getting brave with downloaded fonts, here's one with thick letters, pleased with how this turned out. This is a font from http://www.8pawsandaclaw.com/, it's called Hobo and you can see it here.

Moving on to burp clothes and totebags... Thanks for stopping by.

PS: I am headed to a Cricut SWARM this weekend and will be doing some scrapbook pages and cards, stay tuned for some paper crafts in the next few days.

Embroidering everything in sight!

You all know I just got an embroidery machine for my birthday... Well, I have been having a ball! I should have gotten one of these machines years ago, they are so much fun! I could have made tons of things for Micaela when she was a baby. Oh, well now I am just going to play catch up. I literally find myself looking through her closet for items to embroider/monogram. My hubby has made it clear, I can't do any of his stuff so as a last resort when I feel the NEED to embroider, I just find some of Micaela's doll's clothes!

Here are some of my projects....

This was my very first clothing item to embroider. I think I did okay.

Here's a close up of the M. This font if from www.FunStich.com, it's called Princess Crown. You can find it here.
Here's a lunch box that has seen better days. This is one of Micaela's many lunch bags. Yes, I am even embroidering our "used" items.... LOL.

This is one of Micaela's doll/blanky things. I was trying out this new font, same one as lunch box above.

The newness will wear off soon. Thanks for stopping by.

I am back!

I am back and my New Year's Resolution is to keep this blog up to date. I have missed blogging so much. I've been crafting just haven't had time to post. I've been uploading some past projects to fill in the gap. Thanks for sticking with me!

Green Tip

Invest a few hours to make your home more energy efficient. Caulk or weather strip the leaks around your windows and doors. Add gaskets to your outlets and switches. With $25 in materials you can save hundreds in heating and cooling costs.

My Birthday Present...

This is my new toy, my Janome Memory Craft 200E. I am so excited!

I have been wanting an embroidery machine for years and for my big milestone birthday, my parents got me one! Thank you Mom and Dad.

I have sewn ever since I was a little girl. I loved Home Ec in junior high and high school- Always drooled over these machines, and now I have one. I am going to monogram anything that will stand still. Micaela says I can put an M on anything of hers as long as it's pink. Hubby has already announced and made it very clear that his wardrobe is off limits.

Soon I will start posting some projects and I guess I am going to have to add Sewing to the title banner at top of the blog. Thanks for stopping by!

It's my birthday....

and this is where my hubby is taking me for the weekend.

Isn't this a gorgeous Bed & Breakfast...

Happy New Year TableScape

My KA friend Cindy in Baltimore is hosting a New Year's Eve party. She always comes up with the coolest tablescapes. Isn't this cool? Just a bunch of clocks. I love the elegant look!

Snow on Christmas Day

We're having a White Christmas! Thank you for reading my blog!

'T was the Night Before Christmas...

You know how much I love Mary Engelbreit! Well I finally added The Night Before Christmas to our collection. Micaela of course loves the story. The neat thing is that she is slowly learning to recognize Mary's work. I just find her illustrations so detailed and beautiful.

Christmas Book

I am just in love with these Natasha Wing Books. We are slowly building our collection to have all of her books. This one is The Night Before The Night Before Christmas. So sweet. I think you all will love it.

Gift Card Holders

The Teacher Appreciation Committee at one of our daughter's schools specifically suggested gift cards for the teachers for Christmas gifts. All of the gift cards from the children were mounted on a wreath and given to the teacher on the last day of class. I loved the idea because it certainly made the shopping easier! But, I couldn't just hand over the gift card stuck on the card from the store so this is what I came up with...


I love that Winter Woodland font! Here is what the inside looked like...


I used the Sissix Gift Card Holder die to cut out the Garden Green (SU) base. I dressed up the holders with some ribbon and a simple heart shaped rhinestone.


To personalize it, I added a die cut of each teachers monogram using the font from the new Winter Woodland Cricut cartridge. (Real Red & White card stock).


The teachers really seemed to love them!

Princess Crown Favor Box

Here's a cute little Princess Crown Favor Box I made using the new Sweet Treats for the Cricut. I cut it at 3 inches and it was a perfect size for filling with a small bag of sweets. I made the name plate by printing white card stock on computer and then punching out with scallopped oval punch from Stampin' Up!

Card Stock: Pink Passion Stampin' Up

Ribbon: Purple Lame

Rhinestones & Stickles.

Green Tip

Switching to CFL (compact flourescent lights) eliminates 300 lbs of CO2 a year. If everyone switches to CFL, that's like eliminating 7 million cars from the road.

Thanksgiving Book

Here is another Natasha Wing book. I have mentioned the Valentines Day and Easter ones previously. This Thanksgiving one is just as cute.

Getting Ready for Christmas

The old Collin County Courthouse now McKinney Performing Arts Center in our downtown square is getting all dressed up for Christmas.

Pretty Halloween Cookies

My friend Rhonda (mentioned here) hosted a Halloween Party for her little girl. She had a incredible food spread, everything was delicious and lovely. My favorite thing was her cookies. Don't these look picture perfect? Mine never look that good!

Thank you Rhonda for inviting us. Happy Halloween everybody!

Halloween Books

Just want to mention my usual Natasha Wing holiday book. Here's the one for Halloween. The Night before Halloween. It's super cute, just like all the others.

U2 Concert @ Cowboy Stadium

I had a very unexpected opportunity to attend the U2 concert at the brand new Cowboy Stadium this last week. It was pretty incredible to be there with 100,000 other people.

I won't bore you with a bunch of photos but here is one of my favorites, snapped with my phone.

Autumn in St. Louis

We just recently visited the in laws in St. Louis and I was mesmerized at the beautiful autumn colors. Here is on of my favorite snapshots.

Another Halloween Book

Ok, so I am obviously into seasonal books. We missed ordering this one from the school so I got it from Amazon. Room on the Broom is the most adorable one so far. We loved the Mary E book last week but the story in this one is adorable. I practically have the whole thing memorized because I have read it to Micaela over and over and over. She absolutely loves it (and so do I).

We rate this one 5 stars, get it-- you will love it too!

Tis the Season for demos

I haven't done alot of KA work lately. It's always fun to promote the things I heart!

Our Newest Halloween Book

October means it's time for Halloween Books. Here's a new one I just purchased by Mary Engelbreit. I have loved "Mary E" for ever! Many years ago when I was a recent college graduate I had the opportunity to work in her store in the Dallas Galleria. It was alot of fun working amongst her stuff. Now that Micaela is a little older I am going to start adding some of her books to our library.

Queen of Halloween is adorable. Mary's illustrations are wonderful and Micaela loved the paper doll in the back. We highly recommend it!

Pumpkin Treat Holder

My friend and sideline Mary Gardina made this adorable pumpkin treat holder. Isn't it adorable!

Mister Turkey

Here's a the swap I made for my upline's group meeting tonight.

Punches Used: Wide Oval, Scallopped Oval, Large Oval, Small Oval, 1" cirlce, Scallopped Circle.

Card stock colors: Chocolate Chip, Ruby Red, More Mustal, Pumpkin Pie.

Original idea was from Rebecca Williams, posted here. Thanks for stopping by....