The Monday Blog

Finding Peace in the Midst of the Christmas Crazy

2014-12-14T14:39:00.001-08:00

I don't know about you, but usually, around the first week of December, I look ahead at my month and feel like I have so many empty squares on my calendar and get this wonderful sense of "it's going to be a good, peaceful Christmas season this year." And then, the second week of December hits and I'm spinning like crazy, feeling like I don't have a moment to breathe, and struggling to find any openings for intentional time with the people I love. I don't think my extroverted social-ness helps at all since I jump at any opportunity to do anything and be in involved in everything.

I know I'm not alone in the Christmas Crazy—I have heard so many friends say that they just need to “get through Christmas,” or they have a case of the “bah-humbugs.” Others talk about how they feel like there is just too much materialism to even know where to start with turning the focus back on the reason we celebrate Christmas. A lot of "I wants" fill my house these days. Jace has every toy commercial memorized and can tell me, word for word, at the dinner table what's so great about the Flipeez hats, that they carry them at Walmart, and that they’re only $19.95. Or how a certain toy works or which ones are "batteries not included" toys. We're not too crazy yet, though, because all I have to say is "put it on your Christmas list" and he'll put the "I want" aside. A Christmas list has yet to be anything concrete in his mind—it’s still something vague that we just talk about. And while I love the hustle and bustle of stores at Christmas time, I don't dare enter them with Nolan because nothing can make my husband cranky faster than a crowded Walmart or Target.

Family gatherings can often times equal more stress than fun. Suddenly Christmas comes around and there's pressure to fit this Norman Rockwell image of the perfect family. And deeper hurts can come to light and be more painful around the holidays. Christmas can mark one more year of dealing with infertility, broken relationships, singleness, loss of loved ones. Or perhaps it's the new pains of breaking relationships, medical diagnoses, unemployment, or impending crises. Pain becomes magnified.

It's so easy to feel the need to fix life in order to have the perfect holiday. And in that process, we really just make it all crazier and end up enjoying it less. Last year, on Christmas Eve, we were having a bad day. I had piled too many things on my plate leading up to Christmas, so the 24th became a bit of a make up day. Everything I had dreamed of achieving all month long had its last chance to become reality. Nolan was at work and the kids were driving me crazy. I may have started yelling at some point that it was Christmas Eve and it was supposed to be special!!!!! That’s when I realized I needed a Christmas re-set. I looked around and saw that I had decorated with so many words that were intended to keep my mind in the right place through the season-- words like, "O Come Let us Adore Him," and "Peace" and "Joy" and "Believe." But instead of allowing them to be reminders, they had become a part of the scenery in my home and were overlooked. All it took was pausing, reading some verses that went along with those words, and remembering WHY I wanted Christmas Eve to be so special to reset my focus and, in turn, reset my family.

Because the perfect Christmas is something WE can never achieve. Instead, the perfect Christmas has already happened—when a perfect God joined us on this earth as a perfect baby in what would be considered the most imperfect environment. It is when we take our focus off of all that we need to do for Christmas, and, instead, look to the perfect One and truly receive Him, then we are free to enjoy Christmas—free to enjoy the celebration of His birth.

As I've been concentrating on how to approach this Christmas season in a way that won't need as dramatic of a reset as last year, I keep coming back to Jesus as the Prince of Peace. Life can be exhausting and chaotic and hard sometimes. Whether it be within your own little world, or the world around you at large, it just gets ugly. Sometimes I want to burry my head and ignore current events, or at least half of Facebook's take on them. Or I just want to yell at people and speak some truth into them (or at least Jill's version of truth). And when I let these things roll around me and start to weigh heavy on me, I start feeling a deep need for His Peace. Which means I feel a deep need for Jesus.

This past year I feel like I've fallen in love with Jesus so much more than ever before. I've come to know Him differently than I used to view Him. Much more personally. I've seen more of His sense of humor and sarcasm. And I've felt His love and presence powerfully. At my church we just finished up a series that looked at the trinity, and I loved how just one week of looking at Jesus and His role in the trinity blew my mind. Jesus is God. Jesus was not created, He was. So when Jesus entered this world as a baby, it was God making that choice to put Himself here with the end goal of dying for our sins. And in His time of walking in human form among us, He knew pain and He knew grief. He knew demands and burdens and relational conflict. He knew betrayal and celebration. He walked through it all. And then, He made the ultimate sacrifice by enduring torture and death in order to save us from our sins.

Focusing on the real meaning of Christmas isn't just thinking about a baby in a manger. It's about that baby's purpose, that baby's life, that baby's death and then that baby's resurection. And the fact that the entire story exists because we have a God who loves us so dearly that He humbled Himself to take the form of humanness, suffered and died, rose again, all so that we can have a relationship with Him. Let that settle over you. That truth brings peace. In this season where the world is getting Christmas-crazy, we can have peace.

In John 16:33 Jesus, who was hours away from his arrest, told His disciples, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." Jesus knew the troubles His disciples would face and He knows the troubles you face—big or small. He knows the season you're in and He gives peace.

A little earlier that same evening, in John 14:25-27, Jesus also had spoken of the peace He gives. "All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." I love how the commentary in my Bible explains the peace in this passage: "The term [peace] speaks, in effect, of the salvation that Christ's redemptive work will achieve for His disciples--total well-being and inner rest of the spirit, in fellowship with God. All true peace is His gift, which the repetition emphasizes. 'I do not give... as the world gives' In its greetings of peace the world can only express a longing or a wish. But Jesus's peace is real and present."

And Isaiah 26:3 says, "You will keep him in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in You." Another translation says "him whose mind is stayed on you." I have that verse written on a chalkboard in my kitchen because I want that reminder. Focus on Him and He will keep me in perfect peace. Trust in Him and He will keep me in perfect peace.

Jesus' peace is real and present and perfect. I love that. It's not something that we have to long or wish for--like the world does. It's here with us. We have the Holy Spirit in us and among us, teaching us and reminding us of Who He is and what He taught. We don't have to jump through hoops to receive it. We just need to look to Him. When your in-laws are driving you crazy, Jesus' peace is real and present. When your kids are fighting and bickering and you don't think you can hear the phrase "I want" one more time, Jesus' peace is real and and present. When the recipe you found on Pinterest that was supposed to be amazing turns out disgusting, Jesus' peace is real and present. Or when your Christmas tree falls down during the night because your cats climbed it, and you find yourself picking up shattered ornaments, Jesus' peace is real and present.

The crazy doesn't have to rule Christmas. Jesus rules Christmas. And He wants to be your Prince of Peace this season. He wants you to celebrate and rejoice in His birth because He came for you. And His peace isn't something that is rationed out or given in small portions. 2 Peter 1:2 tells us, "Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord." Do you know God? Do you know Jesus? If you do, then this peace we've been talking about, this Peace that settles in and quiets our hearts, this Peace that is something the world can never give us, this Peace that has victory over all the bad and ugly, this Peace is yours, and it's yours in abundance.

The Best Chocolate Cream Pie

2014-11-23T22:41:00.001-08:00

Well hello there. It’s been a while. I have been in a crazy, busy, fun, festive season with my shop and a great two weekends of successful holiday bazaars. But I just emailed a friend the recipe for my FAVORITE chocolate cream pie and thought I’d share it with you too. I mentioned it in THIS post about my favorite pie crust (seriously- it is the best). But I never got to sharing the pie itself with you.

The pics aren’t so pretty, and are a few years old, but believe me—the pie is amazing. It’s a legend in my family—eaten every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas for as long as I can remember, and now is a legend with my in-laws. Nolan’s sister left a message with details about what I should bring to Thanksgiving the other day, and the entire time her husband was in the background yelling that I have to bring the pie. I’ve never met a chocolate cream pie that compares.

The recipe comes from the Betty Crocker cookbook, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere online. I don’t have any pictures of the process—just a straight up recipe and instructions that, believe me, you will not regret following for Thanksgiving this week. Enjoy!

Ingredients

Pastry for one-crust pie (THIS is my favorite and I think it pairs wonderfully with this pie)

4 large egg yolks

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/3 cup cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, cut up

1. Bake pastry for pie crust

2. Beat egg yolks with fork in medium bowl; set aside. Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt in 2-quart saucepan. Gradually stir in milk. Add chocolate. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir 1 minute.

3. Immediately stir at least half of the hot mixture gradually into egg yolks, then stir back into hot mixture in saucepan. Boil and stir 1 minute; remove from heat. Stir in vanilla. Pour into pie crust. Press plastic wrap on filling to prevent a tough layer from forming on top. Refrigerate at least 2 hours until set.

4. Remove plastic wrap. Top pie with sweetened whipped cream (and I think that homemade whipped cream really is the only way to go)

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Book Page Pumpkins & Dollar Tree’s Anniversary

2014-09-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

I’m excited to be partnering with Dollar Tree to share their special Anniversary Event Bonus Buys with you!

I have been anxiously looking forward to Dollar Tree’s fall stock because I love their foam pumpkins. They seriously have the best deal for decorative pumpkins ($1), which I love to cover with book pages. So checking out the Dollar Tree Anniversary Celebration gave me a great opportunity to go get some. All it took was some torn up book pages, decoupage medium, and a little shimmery paint for the stem.

It’s a simple, quick project that even Jace can help me with, and I love the addition it makes to my fall décor.

If you’re wanting to make one (or more) of these yourself, I suggest heading over to Dollar Tree right away—they’re having a HUGE anniversary celebration through October 11. A lot of the items they regularly carry are available in larger sizes for the same $1 price, so you’ll find some great deals. I don’t know about you, but I love snacking while I craft, and several of their snacks are a part of this—including 14-oz. packs of Marie Callender’s® Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix. Or you could pick up some cleaning, health or beauty supplies. The deals are great—allowing you to get up to 58% more free!

Needing a little more information? Go HERE to check out details on the Anniversary Celebration. Also, I thought it was cool to see all the ways Dollar Tree is involved in social media. Find them on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, or subscribe to their email list HERE.

Thanks for stopping by!

Reflecting—A collapsed lung and thoughts on joy, thankfulness and the fruit of the Spirit

2014-09-17T14:56:00.001-07:00

The month of August became a lost month for me—summer was humming by and July was filled with swim lessons, park dates, filling shop orders, hanging out with friends and having my parents visit for a week. But then, on the morning of Monday August 4, my left lung decided to collapse. It had happened in my right lung seven and a half years ago, so at least I was familiar with the pain and knew to have Nolan take me to the hospital right away. We knew what to expect—a chest tube and most likely a stay in the hospital. Last time it took a week with a Thoracic Vent (a small chest tube that goes between your lung and chest cavity with a box that gets stitched to your chest and allows the air to escape from your lung) attached to suction to get my lung to properly re-inflate and stay that way. I wasn’t frightened by what was happening, just dreading what was to come.

(In the ER, just after receiving my xray results, waiting for Nolan to return from dropping the kids off at a neighbor’s.)

It turns out my left lung is more stubborn than my right, and after a week of a full chest tube (much larger than the previous thoracic vent, inserted a few inches below my armpit and so much more painful) attached to suction off and on and daily x-rays, my lung wasn’t recovering and I needed surgery. A Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) was performed. This is when they add a secondary chest tube (a few inches back from the first one), use one tube to insert a video camera to show them were to go, and the other tube to insert instruments and rough up the lining of my chest cavity and add talc powder, causing my lung to scar to the cavity once it was re-inflated. To sum all that up—I pretty much have a bionic lung now because there is so much scar tissue keeping it in place that it wouldn’t dare collapse again. After a lot more pain, an amazing team of nurses, and a few more days, I was finally discharged 14 days after being admitted.

(A few days into my hospital stay—things to be thankful for: Cuddles with Jace | My Pleur-Evac box that connected my chest tube to suction, allowing my lung to stay inflated | A new IV site that was so much more comfortable | Nolan’s work was amazing and he was able to use family medical leave to spend time with me at the hospital)

In the midst of the regular meds, checking of vitals, daily reports from doctors, light headedness and nausea from medications, and pain (so much pain), I would say that the overarching word to describe my emotional state was joyful. And I don’t mean happy joyful, but holy joyful. A while back I began reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts (confession: I have yet to finish the book. But what I have read has had a profound impact on me), and so much of what she taught about joy and thankfulness kept ringing throughout my heart. She describes the joy I felt as “chara,” a joy that is found in the Greek word for grace, “charis.” It is a joy that comes with grace. And, “deep chara joy is found only at the table of euCHARisteo—the table of thanksgiving.”

(Post surgery things to be thankful for: Oxygen | My pain medication that I could bolster with a button | two Pleur-Evacs attached to my chest tubes | Compression leggings to prevent blog clots, but also provided a level of comfort to my hurting body.)

I love Ann’s break down of explaining how joy is in the middle of this word for thanks. “As long as thanks as possible, then joy is always possible.” So in the midst of pain, sitting in the ER, beginning to cry and feeling an overwhelming sense of loneliness since Nolan was not back from dropping the kids off yet and my nurse had said I wasn’t allowed to use my phone—over the PA system all emergency doctors were called up to the maternity floor because a baby was coding after an emergency c-section. I could be thankful—my babies were safe. I would recover. (And that baby ended up being just fine.)

In the midst of not knowing how long I would be in this situation—A friend from church immediately organized meals to be brought to my family. We ended up receiving 4 weeks of meals, plus a few more that friends brought later. I could be thankful.

In the midst of being apart from my kids—My mom, who had just returned home to Colorado the day before my lung collapsed, flew back out to take care of Jace and Reese (and Nolan too), and our house. She and Nolan kept life so normal for my kids that they were hardly phased by my absence. Life continued as normal, and probably a little better than that. I could be thankful.

In the midst of facing what was described as a “very painful” surgery and seeing that burden weigh on my husband’s shoulders—My diagnosis had a solution. And we would see the end. It was fixable, not life threatening and short term. Nothing like facing cancer with chemotherapy and radiation and statistics that were life threatening. I could be thankful.

(My face after the second chest tube was removed and I was going home that day.)

Perspective helped with the thankfulness. And then thankfulness brought joy. But even more than that, I feel like this entire experience showed me the power of the Holy Spirit within me. Faith comes fairly easily to me in that I don’t often need proof that God is God and Jesus died for my sins and heaven is real and that by accepting Jesus I will join Him there when I die. But I do have those moments of wondering if I’ve just been duped, and bought into some great, long lasting story that has been crafted by man. But each time I have those mind wonderings, my heart asks God to show me It’s true. And He always responds—sometimes in small ways that whisper to my heart and other times that yell just in case I’m not listening. And in drawing near to Him, in seeking His heart, in getting to know Him and be aware of His presence, and in inviting the Holy Spirit to be a part of my daily life, He has been gently transforming me.

(Heading home from the hospital!)

I learned about the fruit of the spirit from an early age in Sunday school. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23). Those fruits (emphasis on the plural), established themselves as something to be individually worked on by me. Like, it was my job to work on being a loving person. And then, once I mastered love, I could start improving my joy. There’s no telling how many times I’ve prayed, “God give me more patience (forebearance).” And I’m sure, deep down inside, the thought rested that my standing with God—His opinion of me—was based on how much of that fruit I was building in my life.

But my thinking on all this was mixed up—after all, fruit in that passage is singular. The result of a life lived with the spirit is fruit. Fruit is the result of God working in my life, not me working on my life. Instead of praying “God give me more gentleness,” my prayer should be “God give me You.” The fruit is not my doing, it’s His.

So as I laid in my hospital bed, days running into one another and seeing every ounce of pride stripped away by my dependence on nurses to do things the non-hospitalized me would totally cringe at, the Holy Spirit’s power was evident. It was surreal to see the love, joy, peace, forbearance, gentleness and self-control show themselves in my thoughts, words and attitude. I saw fruit. And it was affirmed through the words of my nurses, cleaning staff and friends on Facebook and Instagram. Through all those moments in the past of doubt and reassurance, through my seeking and fumbling, and all the times I’ve felt like a spiritual fake, God was working. And so, at my weakest, He was strongest (2 Corinthians 12:9).

It’s pretty awe-inspiring to look back and see God’s Power at work. To know that He created every inch of me (even my dramatic lungs), that not a thing I’ve said or done has been a surprise to Him and that He uses me, even at my weakest. To see that the same Power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is dwelling in me, and that Power showed itself through a 14 day hospital stay. And so my thankfulness begins again—this time for who He is and what He’s doing in me. And from that thankfulness comes joy.

I suppose August wasn’t lost after all. If anything, it was gained.

For the Extroverts & Introverts: How to be a welcoming group of people

2014-07-06T22:28:00.001-07:00

I am definitely an extrovert. Watch me with a group of people and there is no doubt about it. But I have gained some introvertedness since becoming a mom. (Perhaps this stems from the fact that I can never be alone? I can’t even go to the bathroom in peace after the kids go to bed. The cat LOUDLY insists on being with me.) And maybe it’s that blend of extro-intro, combined with my passion for understanding personality types/learning styles/love languages/spiritual gifts—shall we just say people? that makes me very sensitive to how other people are connecting in social settings.

For the past year and a half I’ve been a part of a great group of ladies make up my mom’s group. They have become dear, sweet friends who share my heart. We can be honest and real with one another, support each other through difficulties and find plenty of cause for celebration. We have sweated through zumba and done some awkward yoga stretches together. I feel like we’ve done a good job of reaching out to new moms and drawn them in quickly. But even then, I had a reminder last week of what it feels like to be an outsider. The kids and I were having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad morning, followed by being late. I just felt off and eventually the kids and I left because Jace’s ice had the audacity to melt in his water. But what my park day reminded me of was how each person in a group greatly affects the health and outreach of a group. And the entire responsibility of your outward reaching should not be fall on the leader.

Here are a few things I think all members of a group should be mindful of:

Newcomers Regardless of how long you’ve been a part of the group, if you don’t know the person who just walked in the room, showed up at the park, or headed toward your gathering has been there before, you should be welcoming to them. There is no magic timeframe for how long you have to be a part of a group before you can help be welcoming to newcomers. Some simple things you can say are, “Hi, is this your first time?” If it isn’t, that’s fine! Tell them how long you’ve been a part of the group and ask how long they’ve been coming. Maybe they had been away for a while and needed to feel noticed, and there you are noticing! If it is their first time, ask how they found out about the group. Introduce them to others. Don’t be afraid to ask for their name more than once. It’s ok to say, “I’m so sorry, but what was your name again?” Find connection points—do they work, does their husband work, where do their kids go to school, etc. If they have something in common with someone else in your group, introduce them.

Introverts An introvert needs social gatherings, yet they are very intimidated by them. They have to mentally prepare for joining a group and need to feel welcomed in. I recently read THIS blog post (please, go read it!), and it perfectly described my introverted friends. Be watching for anyone who shows up after you. If you are standing in a circle talking, make room for them to join the circle. If you are sitting at a table, scoot closer to make room and tell them you’ve done so. If you are in a conversation, allow them to join in by giving a brief synopsis of what is being talked about. Bring them in. Don’t expect them to push their way in. They would rather turn around and go back home than feel like they have to be pushy to join the group.

Extroverts who might be having a bad day Your friend who is an extrovert and normally the center of attention and initiator of conversation may be having a bad day. She might be tired. She might be lonely. I really like THIS post about myths about extroverts. Just as I said about the introverts, be watching for people who show up after you and don’t assume she’ll want to squeeze her way in and pick up in the middle of the conversation. It’s always nice, even if you’re an extrovert, when people put the effort into making you feel wanted and liked.

Latecomers We all know that it’s good to be on time to things. But as a mom, sometimes your day is just rough. And that means you might be late. Or maybe it wasn’t rough but you’re still late. And if you’re late, you’re aware of it. It bothers you, but there’s no way around it. You probably got upset at your kids because of it (even if it wasn’t their fault). And if you’re like me, sometimes you’d rather just not go than be late (a fact that I had to get over quickly after becoming a mom because otherwise we’d never go anywhere). So, as a member of a group who either showed up early, on time, or not last, please be mindful of latecomers. It takes so much courage for them to enter the room late. Be kind to them. Make sure there is a place for them to sit. If materials have been handed out, give them one as well. But don’t make their lateness a big deal. Tell them you’re glad they made it but don’t ask, “rough morning?” Help them become a part of what’s going on but don’t emphasize that they missed out on something by being late. Invite them in.

Regardless of if you are an introvert, extrovert, fairly new or seasoned attendee, it’s your responsibility to help a group be healthy. Keep your eyes open and be aware. It might take some effort at first, but eventually it can become more natural. It’ll be worth it. You’ll still have a great time hanging out with your friends while making a big difference to someone who probably desperately needs to feel connected.

How about you? What else would you add to this list for what to be mindful of?

And for those of you who are new, or have tried joining a group but not felt welcomed, I’ve been there! In the past year and a half I have been the new person at a mom’s group, church, Bible study and park play dates. I have so many thoughts I’d love to share about how to get connected quickly when you’re the new person, and will be sharing them soon!

Thanks for stopping by!

Road Trip With Kids: Activities & Staying Sane when Driving Solo

2014-06-30T00:00:00.001-07:00

The kids (ages 1.5 and 4) and I spent the last week and a half in California meeting my newest nephew (who is adorable and we absolutely LOVE), visiting my grandparents and some aunts and uncles, and having a blast on the coast with my parents in Cambria. We built sandcastles and let the sun kiss our cheeks.

And my kids were irresistible to some Chinese tourists. I don’t blame them. My kids look just about as grilled-cheese-and-french-fries American as you can get.

And the most impressive part of the trip? We drove there and back just the three of us. Nolan is in the middle of a crazy busy construction season at work and there was no chance at our entire family making the trip. But when my mom offered to have us join them, I proved to have enough determination and stubbornness to not let the idea of a 12+ hour drive by myself daunt me. I figured that with some careful planning and lots of preparedness and the awareness that my attitude was the biggest influence on the trip, we could make it happen. Two years ago I shared THIS post about road trip activities for two year olds. This time around I took a similar approach to the kind of activities I packed, but my set up was different.

(Excuse the horrible lighting—I took these at night)

I brought a wide variety of things for the kids to do: bubble guns for a rest stops (Target), an Etch-a-Sketch, pipe cleaners, balloons filled with Play Doh (idea from HERE), hand puppet book, coloring books & crayons, 2 play lap tops, Leap Pad, dry erase board & dry erase crayons (which do melt in direct sunlight), baby books, Old Maid Cards, magnetic Planes book (Walmart), bag full of Matchbox cars, activity books (Target), clipboard and cookie sheet (magnetic), small tote box, play dishes set (Target), books for Jace. Not pictured: Ipad and mini dvd player.

Most of the activities were loaded into my large 31 tote bag (which I LOVE), and a few more in the red bucket (Target dollar spot).

The tote bag was put on the floor at Reese’s feet. Tip for you when choosing where your kids sit: put the one who will need your help the most behind the passenger seat. This way you can easily reach them and hand them things will driving. It took a lot more focus/coordination to give something to Jace behind me, so it was a good thing he didn’t need as much from me.

The red tub went between the two kids and at each spot I would trade out which activities were in it. Then, as they needed something else to do, I could tell Jace to get ____ from the red bucket. It allowed Jace to be helpful. This was one of the best things I did. Other times I had to reach in the tote on the floor to grab things, and I became really good at feeling which toy was which, but the red tub was very helpful.

Up front there were three things that made my trip a lot better—an extra mirror (SIMILAR) that allowed me to keep an eye on the kids, a bucket full of squeezies, fruit snacks, capri suns and candy and snacks for myself, and audio books. The mirror was so helpful to be able to easily look at the kids and there were a few times that I caught Jace about to touch his sister in a way that would freak her out. I love that thing. The snacks were handy when Reese reached the point where nothing else would contain her. I found some baby-safe fruit snacks at Target that made me feel comfortable handing them back because I didn’t have to worry about her choking on them. And the squeezies are always a big hit with both kids.

Audio books kept me alert, awake and from getting bored. I signed up for the free Audible trial on Amazon and was able to download two free books to my phone. It hooks up to my stereo, and I just turned the volume to only play out of the front speakers. Anne Shirley kept me company on the way down (Anne of Green Gables is a 10 hour audio book), and Margaret Feinberg (The Sacred Echo) and Anne (Anne of the Island) kept me company on the way home. I wanted books that were ok for Jace’s absorbent ears to take in while still keeping my attention and these were perfect. In the back seat the kids traded off between Frozen and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on the mini DVD player.

We survived and I’d say we survived well. There were several awful moments of Reese practicing the worst ways she could scream the word “Nnnnnno! Nnnnnooooo! NO!” with a grin on her face as Jace sobbed beside her because “Reesey is hurting my ears!” Or the fact that I made the mistake of rubbing Reese’s foot to try and console her once, and from then on, if I didn’t respond immediately to the command, “Feet!” she would break out screaming the word over and over again. She especially wanted her feet rubbed when I was driving through tight curves. But we made it. And I think one of the biggest reasons is because I went into it knowing I had to keep it together. So when Jace whined (which wasn’t often), I didn’t whine back. And when Reese screamed, I didn’t scream back (except for a few times when I just needed the relief of yelling). And I figured we’d have to stop over and over again. So it didn’t frustrate me that what could have been a 12 hour drive turned into an 18 hour drive each way (thankfully we stayed the night with my aunt and uncle part way).

We had a great trip. We’re happy to be home. And now I’m exciting to get on with summer!

Thanks for stopping by!

Her Children Call Her Happy

2014-06-15T22:11:00.001-07:00

I’m questioning my sanity today as I get ready for the kids and I to drive 12 hours to meet up with my parents and grandparents to then drive another 3 hours to go meet my newest nephew. I’m hoping that as long as I have enough snacks within reach for the kids that they’ll stay happy. We had a rough evening the other day. I don’t know why, but my anxiety level was pretty high, and I didn’t do a very good job of keeping it together when Jace did the littlest things that set me off in the biggest ways. It’s a good thing Short-Tempered-Mommy didn’t show up until after Daddy came home and could take the kids outside.

So as I was trying to think of what to post about today, I went looking back through old posts over on Satisfied with Adequate and was pretty convicted by what I wrote last May. And I thought I’d share it with you because maybe you’ve been in a similar place recently?

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One of my greatest hopes for my children is that someday they will look back at their childhood and remember our home as a happy one. Of course they’ll have memories of me yelling at them, tension between their dad and me over [insert countless scenarios here], and sibling squabbles. I’m sure there will be remembrances of sorrow, pain and loss. But ultimately, I would love it if a general sense of joy settles over their memories of the growing up years.

I’ve found myself thinking a lot about how my own attitude and behavior is key to this dream coming true. A while back I spent a few months camped out in Proverbs 31, intent upon truly learning from this example of a woman worth far more than precious jewels. I determined to glean attributes from her that could be applied to my daily dish-washing, nose-wiping, diaper-changing, patience-testing days. And the verse that has been repeating itself in my mind lately comes from the conclusion of this woman’s description.

“Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.” Proverbs 31:28.
Know what’s so special about the meaning of the word blessed in this verse? My Bible’s commentary explained, “Blessed… that is, one who enjoys happy circumstances and from whom joy radiates to others.” Her children call her happy and radiating joy. They see that she is happy with her life and respond about it.

It would be easy to say that she was the model woman, so of course her children would say that about her. But she wasn’t just handed that title; she worked hard for it. All of the hard work she did—her dependability, attention to detail, relationships built—culminating in her role as a wife of noble character brought her joy. A genuine and real joy that was visible to those closest to her: her family. She didn’t make them feel guilty about all she did for them. She didn’t complain about her work load and begrudge them for it. Instead, she found joy in her circumstances.

It made me think about my responsibilities—both in caring for my home and caring for my children. If I were to do the work I need to do, to the extent I should do it, would I have a joyful spirit about it? Is my grumbling because I know I should and could be doing better at taking responsibility for my home, actions and attitude? How often do I reflect a joyful spirit over managing my household? When I talk with friends, do I reflect joy in serving my family? As my children get older, will they call me blessed, or happy about my circumstances?

We can have really good days and we can have really bad days in my home. It seems that one of the only constants is that, at some point, my three year old will have an emotional melt down (and some days, that point happens every hour… half hour… five minutes). And as awful and exhausting and exasperating as those melt downs may be, they are not what ruin the day. It is my response that is the deciding factor. If I join him in the pity party of the century—resenting his behavior, dwelling on unaccomplished plans, admitting defeat and betraying my age by straight up pouting—happiness cannot be present in our home. But if I remember that I am the adult, I am called by God to this great position of motherhood, and God will equip me for my ministry (2 Corinthians 3:4-6), then my day is changed. My children will arise and call me blessed.

Being happy in my circumstances doesn’t mean that they are ideal. It doesn’t mean that I have achieved all that I can in motherhood. And my children certainly aren’t perfect. We all lose it sometimes. But in the end, I can take responsibility for myself. I can oversee the affairs of my household and do it with a joyful spirit. Because what greater reward will there be for my hard work than to have my children arise and call me blessed?

Shop Talk: The Work of Running a Shop

2014-06-09T00:00:00.001-07:00

This post is the fourth in my ongoing series about being an Etsy shop owner. My previous posts can are: Etsy & The Stay at Home Mom, Developing Your Product, Pricing Your Items and Six Etsy Tips (an older post).

The best part about having an Etsy shop (in my opinion) is when complete strangers see something you made and like it enough to spend money on it. It’s the final reward in creative process in which you poured out a part of yourself in its creation. And that’s what everyone hopes for when they open a shop. They want the affirmation of their art—the compensation for their effort. But what seems to be easily forgotten or ignored in the early stages is of shop ownership is the amount of non-crafty work it takes. And while that work may not seem very fun, don’t say you don’t have time for it and then be disappointed by a lack of sales.

Today I’m going to talk about 4 key aspects of having an Etsy shop that are worth putting the work into: market research, search engine optimization (SEO), listing renewals and customer service. And I would like to preface these points with the fact that the effectiveness of the work you do goes hand in hand with the number of listings you have in your shop. I saw a dramatic increase in both traffic and sales when I implemented these four points in my shop. Then, when I reached over 100 items listed in my shop, the additional increase blew me away. So if you’re hoping to see your business grow, I highly recommend you keep plugging away at reaching 100 items while working on these four points.

Market Research
As I shared in THIS post, one of the first steps in developing one of my products is adding it to my list of ideas.

But before an idea makes my list of things to make, I do a little research to see if it’s even worth my time. I love the Etsy App for checking out my competition.

I go into the search section of the app, type in my product idea, and see how many listings come up in the search. In the first photo, I entered “bow tie garland.” As you can see, 228 items came up. In the scope of Etsy competition, I consider anything under 500 to be pretty low. If it’s lower than 50, then I figure either I need to rethink how I’m wording my product name or there may not be a market for that idea (although, it’s always possible you’ve found an untapped market that is highly needed, but that’s a little rare). If I see that the competition number is in a fairly sweet spot—as it is with the bow tie garlands—then I scroll through and look at what the competition is. If there is nothing like mine, then I feel really confident in moving forward. I also check out what the prices are like and what the cost covers—I don’t use it to price mine (as I talked about in THIS post) but do use it to see if my pricing would be in the right range. How long are the garlands compared to mine? What are the size of the bows on them? Are those shops actually selling their similar items? After doing my research I felt good about listing my bow tie garlands. And they’ve sold well!

In the second photo you see that I searched for “Frozen Party Pack.” I had the idea for THIS product that would include a crown for the party girl, hair clip party favors and a snowflake garland. As you can see, with 477 items coming up, I was in the range I like to be in, but definitely at the top end. After scrolling through I knew that my concept of each item being crocheted was unique and my price range was reasonable. But I also knew that crochet items was a fairly small target market. So I added them to my shop because I wanted a broader price range but didn’t have expectations of a ton of sales. I have sold 1 party pack with additional hair clip party favors, and another order for 20 hair clip party favors. So while it hasn’t been a large number of sales by any means, the profit from those two orders was higher than a month’s worth of sales in previous months.

The third photo was a search for “bow headband.” There are so many of those on Etsy that initially my search didn’t give me a number. It took narrowing down my selection through sub categories to finally list an item count of 2821. I could look at that and confidently say that bows would not be my niche. But it didn’t mean that I couldn’t put bows in my shop. My bows (these and these) are a little more unique because of their shape and material, but still, they don’t come up easily in searches. They’re worth having listed, though, because they make a great add on item. If someone arrived at my shop because of one of my unique items, it’s worth it to have smaller products that don’t add much extra in shipping. Just last week I sold 2 star garlands and a bow headband to a customer. So while it’s good to have these types of item in the shop, I’m not disappointed when they don’t sell.

Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something I was scared of for a long time. It sounded intimidating, time consuming, and like a science I just didn’t want to put the effort into learning. In the book How to Start a Home Based Etsy Business Gina really pushed the importance of SEO. I knew I needed to do it if I wanted more traffic, but again it was intimidating. And then Gina did a step by step tutorial for how to use Google’s Ad Words Keyword Planner Tool to know what to put in the “Tags” section of a listing. I can’t tell you enough how important this is. It really only takes a couple extra minutes to do this when creating a listing and I can use the same tags for all my similar products. If you don’t do anything else I recommend in this post, DO THIS. Hop on over to Gina’s tutorial HERE and follow what she says.

Listing Renewals
As I mentioned in THIS post it costs money to get sales. I’ve found that renewing items regularly is key to getting views and sales. I try to renew at least one item each day. Some items automatically renew themselves after a sale if I have more than one in stock. But on the days that I’m not getting sales, I renew something. And I’ve noticed that after I renew an item, it gets viewed more. There is a spot on the Etsy home page that will show items that just got listed, and that can get you some attention. It keeps things fresh in the search engines. And there’s a sort option of “most recent” in the Etsy search. All great reasons to keep renewing.

Customer Service
I get a fair number of private conversations about listings. Most commonly it’s people asking, “I need this by ____ date. Would I be able to get this in time?” I’ve noticed that if I respond within a half hour of that question, they buy the item. Over and over again, I respond, “Thank you so much for your interest in ____. I could have it in the mail this afternoon (or tomorrow, or whatever is reasonable). I ship via USPS First Class, and typically my orders arrive within 3 days. I feel confident that you would receive it by ____ unless there is an error on the part of the postal service (which rarely happens). Let me know if you have any further questions!” The times that I haven’t been able to get back to a potential customer quickly, I don’t make the sale. I figure the longer I take to respond, the more time they have to find someone else to buy from. Utilizing my smart phone is key to this—I’m notified via email of a conversation, and then I hop on the app to respond. When a custom item is requested, I make their listing in the app and can send them the link right away. Speed (on my part, not necessarily theirs) is huge.

I want to make sure my customer feels like they received royal treatment from me. A happy customer is more likely to buy more and refer you to their friends. I had a customer contact me about my small zipper pouch asking if I could do a custom size. We had a few messages back and forth to get the correct dimensions and colors before I created the custom listing for her. When she went to buy the item, she noticed my wristlet key chains and added one to the order. Then, after receiving it, she was so happy with the product that she ordered another one for her husband. Those were 3 items I wouldn’t have sold had I not had good communication with her from the start. The other day a lady contacted me about my bow tie garlands asking if I could make a large number of the bows but not put them on the string. It turns out she was an event planner. The order grew from 60 to 65 to 70 through our conversations. This was a significant order that I could have missed out on had I not been quick to respond, eager to be of service, and professional in my communication. And now I’ve [hopefully] made a good connection with someone who is in a business that would allow her to be a returning customer.

I know all four of these points are work, but it takes work to make a business earn money. And that work is worth it. Your hours and hours of creation are worthless if you don’t sell those items. And selling those items happens a lot more often when you do your research, utilize SEO, renew your listings and provide excellent customer service.

How about my fellow sellers? What would you add to the list of work that makes your business grow?

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

First Monday

2014-06-02T00:18:00.001-07:00

Good morning and happy Monday! Today is going to be a little check-in style. We’ve had a busy weekend around our house. Nolan was gone at Manfest—our church’s men’s retreat. So that means the kids and I spent as many hours away from the house as possible and then I stayed up as late as possible after putting them to bed. And that means I’m tired. So as I sit here in my bed with episode after episode of The Good Wife playing through Hulu Plus (we ran out of shows on Netflix so we had to move to Hulu…), and dreaming of the cup of coffee I’ll drink in the morning, I thought I’d share some little glimpses into my life.

On My Heart
Jace and I have been in a season of battling. He is very four with a mind, whit, and logic that is growing faster than this momma is ready to keep up with. I find that we argue hypothetical situations all.the.time. “Mommy, when Carley comes over what if she wants to watch The Little Mermaid and we don’t have that movie. Then she’ll be sad and she’s going to get mad at me and we won’t have any fun…” “I can’t take my plate to the sink because my legs are really tired, and what if while I’m walking to the sink I fall and hurt my leg and then my knee will be cracked and then I won’t be able to walk ever again…” He can think of every possible negative scenario, and helping him filter through reality and all the hypothetical situations he can think of gets exhausting. Over and over again I repeat, “Jace, pause. Trust me.”

I was mentioning this at my weekly Bible study a few weeks ago and a friend made the comment that what Jace does to me is exactly what we do to God. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve worried circles around situations and every possible outcome. I’ve analyzed conversations to to the point of not sleeping because I’m worried I did something wrong in a friendship. And you wouldn’t believe what a morbid person I have become since having kids—I have envisioned so many possible ways for them to die, how I would react to it, and then become fearful any time I’m remotely close to those kinds of situations. How often must God help me filter through reality and my imagination? In Matthew 6:25-34 Jesus talks about us worrying about whether or not we will be taken care of. He ends the passage saying, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I’m sure this is one of the first Bible verses I memorized in Sunday school. But it seems so much easier to quote than internalize. As I’m taking today’s troubles and multiplying them and worrying about every possible future, I’m being just like my hyper-imaginative four year old. And I can hear God softly speaking to my heart, “Jill, pause. Trust Me.”

On My Phone

Last week we took the kids to a park by the river in our town and ended our evening skipping rocks. Jace thought it was the BEST THING EVER. Now, every time we cross the bridge over that river, he excitedly shouts, “That’s where we throw rocks!!!” and asks again and again when we can do it again. My heart is so ready for this summer and hoping it’s filled with evenings like that one.

I have been a devoted T-Mobile customer since I got my first cell phone in 2000. But lately the reception in our area has been getting worse, and half the time calls didn’t come through because I didn’t have service at my house. This week we joined my parents’ family plan through AT&T and it was such a beautiful sight when I had 3 bars in my typical “No Service” spot in my living room. It’s the little things.

And an even more beautiful screen shot of my phone… I type in my zip code in the Hobby Lobby store locator on their app and this appears. The first Hobby Lobby in Oregon is opening in my town. This week. Nolan first told me of them coming a couple of years ago when plans were submitted to the city. Now the construction is finished, the shelves are in and employees are being trained (I know these things. I’ve been spying). I think I’ll still be pretty loyal to Joann’s for a lot of my needs, but I am nearly giddy with excitement over this new store.

In the Shop
Things are a little patriotic in the shop these days…

It really is unfair to the other shops that I have such a cute model. We had a rare, happy photo shoot and she was pretty proud to wear the three star headband.

Have you seen Joann’s new vinyl backed burlap? I LOVED using it to make this three star banner/bunting.

And after having success with my fabric Christmas Tree and Hearts garlands, I thought stars would be fun for the 4th. This garland is made up of 9 fabric stars.

Other holiday items can be found HERE or you could check out the whole shop HERE.

Monday: a refocus

2014-05-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Ever feel like you’re in a cycle of spinning and spinning but have no idea how to stop it? That’s where I was last week. My mind was overwhelmed by how many commitments were on my plate. They were all good things—intentionally chosen people, groups and things that I love being a part of and don’t want to cut or put on hold. My house was a disaster (although, let’s face it, that would be true whether or not my schedule was overwhelmed). And my husband, who is in a stressful season at work, was coming home and looking defeated because it didn’t look or feel like he sat at the top of my priority list. But, despite all that, I can’t seem to stop my mind from dreaming. And as I’m going through the book Not a Fan with my church, I’m feeling convicted to actually invest what God has given me and called me to (see the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30).

There is a holy restlessness in me (thank you Restless by Jennie Allen) to want more. I love my role as a stay at home mom, being best friends with my husband, and growing some awesome friendships. But I also want success in my shop, and have dreams of a ministry to women through speaking and writing. I’m a pretty here and now kind of girl and it takes a pretty stern voice of God to get me to wait for a dream to come true. So I’ve been doing a little mental reorganizing in my life. Looking at how I can make my family feel like they really do sit in the number one spot on my priority list while maintaining what’s already on that list and pursuing new dreams.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to share more of my heart on this blog, but haven’t been sure I could. Sure, I’ve had some heart to heart and coffee talk style posts, but I worried that I couldn’t change the focus. After all, the readership here was built off of sewing and crafting tutorials (although, let’s face it, there have been so few of those lately, “readership” is a pretty generous term). So a while back I started a devotional blog called Satisfied with Adquate to exercise my love of writing and share the thoughts that God is leading me to. But I never wrote on it much despite well thought through posts. The reality of maintaining and investing in two blogs caused me to completely neglect both and feel mentally burdened by it.

I’ve been paying attention to what blogs I actually read these days and I rarely read strictly craft blogs anymore. Who I am is not the craft blog obsessed person that I once was. My favorite blogs make that list because of who writes them, not what they create. I read because I like the writer’s voice. With that fact in mind, and after lots of attempts at mental resorting but not really coming up with a plan, I read Little Miss Momma’s post, The Advice that Built This Blog. I had a bit of an epiphany. I need to keep this personal.

Who I am now is not what this blog once was. But who I am now still can blog. And blog with less expectations while having better accountability. Made it on Monday is becoming The Monday Blog (but will keep my same web address for who knows how long because I don’t want to invest the time into figuring out how to change that). I’ll post on Mondays. I’ll write about what’s happening in my shop, the Shop Talk series, and simple tutorials for something I make for myself or my home. And I’ll add in devotional thoughts about faith, and snippets of my family life. It’ll all be in there. It’ll be personal and it’ll be real. So if you’re here for my voice—yay! let’s stay friends. I’ll look forward to our standing Monday dates.

Thanks for stopping by. And if you’re reading this in a reader, hop on over to the actual site because it’s had a bit of a makeover.

Shop Talk: Pricing Your Items

2014-04-15T00:08:00.001-07:00

This post is the third in my ongoing series about being an Etsy shop owner. My previous posts can are: Etsy & The Stay at Home Mom, Developing Your Product and Six Etsy Tips (an older post).

***In this post I’m going to share everything with you about my process—down to how much I value my time at. Not because I want to be told I’m under or over selling myself, but more because I would have loved to see an example of a starting point from other sellers when establishing my own prices.***

Figuring out how to price my items was a big challenge for me initially in my shop. I would look around at similar items on Etsy, factor in how much I spent making the item, and then talk myself out of a price because I knew how much I would actually be willing to pay for something similar. A lot of my prices were landed on because that was where I felt comfortable, but then I ran into the issue of not being able to translate one price point to another with different types of products. I found it very difficult to price consistently.

So then I went looking online and saw lots of equations for how to price an item, but often times they left my item priced much higher than I felt comfortable. I think this was because many of them were time + materials = whole sale price, whole sale price x 2 = retail price. I just couldn’t justify charging $15 for a headband. Or I wondered if my product wasn’t as nicely made as other sellers’. I read all about pricing integrity and undervaluing your product, but felt like everything was pushing me to price higher than I could justify.

So I set an hourly wage for myself ($10/hr), and stuck to the equation of TIME+MATERIALS+FEES=PRICE. And I started tracking exactly how long it would take to make something, tracked my receipts to know exactly the materials costs, and got a good feel for what the Etsy and Paypal fees would be for different price points. I’ll address how I factor in profit later in the post, but for now let’s look at how I maintain a good pricing system now that my equation is in place.

I bought this cute spiral notebook at Target and use it to keep track of pricing, time, materials, crochet patterns, and any other notes I feel like keeping permanent for my shop.

When creating these BOW TIE GARLANDS (or any product for that matter), I made my first one to make sure I had the process/system down for it. I didn’t want to time myself in case there was a lot of trial and error that would happen (I account for the process of developing a product in my hourly wage). When I make the next one I use the stopwatch on my phone to keep track of how long it takes me to make the item.

I timed myself to cut 9 bows and then hit stop so I could keep going with my cutting and cut the remaining bows. Then I simply hit start again when I begin the next stage of the process. Photography and the time to create the listing get added into the time tracking as well.

Then I write in the notebook the cost of the time, materials and fees (any item over $5 I add $2 for fees, less than that is $1, and over $20 depends on the price of the item). This way, if I need to go back and look at how I priced something I won’t have to rely on my memory.

For my SMALL ZIPPER POUCHES I am dealing with a fabric vendor and a zipper vendor, the shipping charges on the materials, and buying for several pouches worth at a time, so there’s a little more math involved.

…but in the end the equation is the same.

It may seem like I’m valuing my time a little low since the rate for minimum wage (at least in Oregon) is pretty close to what I’m charging for my time. But I felt like I needed to establish myself and get the reviews to back up increasing my rate. I wasn’t sure how to go about doing that, though, until I read Gina’s BOOK and realized I should set goals for myself. I could have set a goal for x number of sales to justify a raise, but I preferred to have a goal pattern of business. After all, business certainly spikes over Christmas for me. I wanted a goal for my year round sales. So right now I’m working toward averaging a sale each day. Last month I had 20 sales in 31 days. The month before it was 15 sales in 28 days, so I think I’m on the right track. I’m hoping to reach my goal and raise my rate to $12/hour in August, and then continue on the pattern to get to my goal wage of $15/hour in February.

I like the idea of my prices reflecting my experience, my reputation, and my business approach. But I don’t want to raise my prices too much since one of my priorities for my shop is to be a place people like me can afford to shop. Since I’m not paying anyone to work for me, my profits are seen in what I am paying myself. I can use it to reinvest in my business or to take my family on vacation or to pay for Christmas.

I’m sure there are so many flaws in my equation or system, and other sells might find this crazy—after all, I look at other sellers who have similar products for half the price of mine and wonder how they can feel like it’s worth their time—but this works for me and their system must work for them. How about you? How do you figure out your pricing? What are your hang ups or successes? I do my best to respond to comments within the comments.

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Shop Talk: Developing Your Product

2014-03-22T23:46:00.001-07:00

This post is the second in my ongoing series about being an Etsy shop owner. My previous posts can are: Etsy & The Stay at Home Mom and Six Etsy Tips (an older post).

I don’t know about you, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve made something, shared it on Facebook, and been told, “you could sell that!” The problem is, just because a friend says you could sell it, doesn’t mean people actually will buy it. The art you see in the thousands upon thousands of listings on Etsy isn’t just in the products—it’s also in the creating of something that people will want to buy, and then actually buy.

My shop has definitely changed over time. My earliest products had the focus of being ruffled, fluttered or flowered (my first sale: a rosette clip that my aunt was so sweet to buy). And then I found myself selling a lot of infinity scarves with some of my original style of products mixed in. Eventually I was only really selling the scarves so I stopped worrying about anything else. Finally, I got bored with that, wasn’t keeping up with the current trends, and saw a decrease in customer satisfaction. So I took a break and reopened the shop six months later with a completely different focus.

{Crochet Bunny Headband, Set of 4 Eggs, Hand-Blown Glass Bead Earrings, Set of 3 Pom Pom Bunnies)

You can take different approaches to your product line—have a variety of types and styles of items to attract a wider customer base or find your niche and become a leader in one type of item. It’s all about what you personally want to do. Right now I love having a wide variety in my shop—I want customers to feel like they’ve stepped in a boutique on main street in “downtown Etsy.” I personally love looking through all my different items and hope customers do too.

Regardless of which route you take (or if you go back and forth as you find your way), I feel like there are three major aspects to creating your product line: get inspired, create and grow.

Get Inspired

I love how easily inspiration can be at our fingertips—Pinterest is a never ending treasure trove, blogs, google, what your friends are talking about on Facebook or Instagram, or even what you find yourself wishing for in everyday life. Keep your eyes and ears open for what people are wanting. Share your process with your friends and keep their feedback in mind as you move forward. Watch what people pin and how they caption it. Get an idea and start searching to see what is already out there. But please, whatever you do, don’t look to other Etsy shops as inspiration. Use them to do market research and test out how much competition you might have, but don’t go looking to see who is selling a lot and recreate their items. It just isn’t nice. Plus, if they have an edge on the market already, it’s going to be really hard to take their customer base away from them.

The best inspiration comes from what people ask for. A while back I posted on Instagram and Facebook a picture of a bunch of zipper pouches I had made (which I haven’t had a single sale of). A friend commented that I should make smaller ones to hold coffee punch cards. I had already made a similar concept (that I personally currently use) that was just a fabric envelope with a button/snap closure (seen HERE), so I let the idea roll around in my mind but wasn’t rushing forward with it. Then she sent me the link to a tutorial she found and said, “This is what I want. If you make it, I’ll buy it.” I played around with the tutorial and was able to make something uniquely mine (I’ll share more about it in a bit). Since then I’ve sold 12 of them between Etsy and a craft fair. And that’s almost half of my sales since I started carrying them. My friend inspired me and it paid off!

Create

Once you have a great idea in mind, you need to make it. And before you can sell it, you need to make it well. If you’re following a tutorial that someone else has made, check and see if they’re ok with you profiting off what they’ve shared. A lot of crochet patterns will say that they’re happy to let you sell products you make using them, but please give them credit in product listings. Others are willing to let you buy a commercial license. Whether or not there is a tutorial for things I make, I like to make them uniquely mine. It not only boosts the uniqueness of my shop, but then I don’t feel like I’m copying someone else’s art.

When my friend asked for a small zippered pouch (which I loved the idea of so much more than a button closure!), I first read through the tutorial she sent me. The construction was a little awkward, and it had a few extra details to it that I knew would take too much time. I’ll talk about pricing another time, but part of it is paying for my time. I had an idea in my mind of what price range I wanted these pouches to be in, and if I paid myself fairly for my time, I’d have to up the price. So I came up with a simpler idea, and gave it a try (the green pouch). The zipper was just across the top. Turns out that makes it hard to dig through the cards in the pouch and easily find the one you want. So the idea of the zipper going around the corner (as it was in the original tutorial) was key. My first attempt at a two sided zipper (not shown) was awful. My second attempt was improved but the zipper started at the wrong end and I realized with something this small completely hidden seams is really difficult. The next one was what I had hoped for all along.

{Navy and White Polka Dot Small Zipper Pouch}

My pouches have the zipper going around two sides, the exposed inner seams are serged for a quality finish, and I have had so much fun choosing bright colored fabrics with contrasting zippers. I can now do a bunch of them in one sitting and have the creation process streamlined.

After I shared the finished zipper pouches on Instagram and Facebook, another friend asked if I could do the same idea but bigger so it could hold a cellphone and a few credit cards. I tried making it even simpler with a magnetic closure but in the end really didn’t like what I came up with. So instead I made my pattern a little bigger and added some sewn in pockets like you have in your wallet (as seen in the black and white one with the pink zipper above, in the middle). But then the phone didn’t seem all that secure, so I added another pocket to slip the phone into.

And now I have my phone wallets. None of these have sold, so inspiration from friends isn’t always magical, but you never know when something will sell (after all, I sold two Valentine and one Christmas item last week!). The key I find in whatever product you make is DO IT WELL. When people are shopping handmade they want it for the special touch that provides, or because they don’t have the time/resources to do it themselves. But they are paying money for it, so they want something that’s beyond what they could go pick up at Target or Walmart. Let your quality distinguish you. Make it so they can look at your listing and say, “That’s better than I can make.” Figure out what details will take you beyond what they could do themselves—is it a little extra top stitching? A more intricate technique? Fabric that wouldn’t be available locally? Be better at your craft than your customer and their friends. Be better than even yourself the first few times you made your product.

Grow

Once you’ve found a winner item, don’t just stop there. Keep looking for inspiration to grow your product list. In both THIS and THIS post Gina, the author of How to Start a Home-Based Etsy Business (I’m telling you, BUY THE BOOK! You won’t regret it), talks about the importance of having a lot of listings. She even says 100 is the magic number. In the past I felt like I had a lot of great ideas come to mind, but would forget them when I actually sat down to make something. So with 100 items in mind, an upcoming craft fair, and a desire to earn enough money to buy a new computer (still working toward that goal but getting so much closer!), I decided it was time to get organized.

Since my phone is always within reach, I started a note in the notes app where I can add an item to the list as I think of it. Then, once I’ve made that product I get to add a check mark. I love seeing all the check marks now! I’m constantly adding new items to the list as I think of them and go back to the list regularly. Some things have been deleted once I think them through more. Others just keep getting skipped over, but may make it to completion someday. But at least I have it all in one place.

It takes time to reach 100 listings, but once you get there it is an awesome feeling. And of course, the day after I hit 100 I had a sale and was back to 99. But I figured it was worth it. I’m now up to 104 and hoping to keep adding one or two new items a week. Definitely not the same drive that I had before though. While working to 100 items I spent a lot of time crafting and sewing. During Reese’s nap I’d work while Jace played and watched TV. Then, after putting the kids to bed at night, I’d go straight to my craft closet and Nolan and I would watch shows while I worked. Like I mentioned earlier in this post, I want people to feel like they’re browsing their favorite boutique when they stop in my shop. So I need to have variety and keep adding new products.

Since my life is a pretty open book, my friends are very aware of my shop. And they now send me pins when they see something they think I should make. I value their opinions so highly because I can dearly love an idea, but if no one else agrees I’ll never see profit from it. So if someone sends me an idea, and I like it too, I think it’s pretty worth pursuing. Which takes us right back to inspiration. It’s a cycle, really.

Of course, there’s more to it than just making a product. So I’ll be talking more about how I research the market, create listings, and price my products in future weeks.

How about you? If you have a shop has your process/perspective been similar? What other advice would you have for people developing their product line? If you’re new to the Etsy selling world how are you feeling about developing your products?

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Pizza & Play-Doh 4th Birthday

2014-03-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Somehow this little mask wearing, cape sporting, special stuffed kitty toting little boy of mine turned 4 last month. His past birthday parties have been very theme oriented: Police, Things That Go, and Hungry Caterpillar. We usually have the party at home and just invite family since we don’t have space for more people. But Jace has made some good buddies this past year, so we decided to have his party at a pizza parlor in town. I thought we’d go with a fully pizza themed party and pinned some cute ideas. And then I made the mistake of letting Jace look at Pinterest with me, and he fell in love with a Play-Doh cake. So I guess you could say that this party was brought to you by the letter “P” for pizza and play-doh.

I designed his invitation in Microsoft Publisher and then just had them printed as 4x6 prints at Costco. Seriously, if you’re able to design something yourself, this is the cheapest way to do personalized invitations. The only hesitation I had in the past for a pizza party was how to afford it with all the guests. And then a friend invited Jace to his pizza part and noted on the invitation that pizza and pop would be provided for the kids. There was nothing rude about it, just a subtle way of saying that parents could buy their own food. Nolan and I had no problem with it and knew what to expect when we arrived. So we did the same thing with our invitation. Our pizza parlor had a kids party package where pizza, pop, and icecream were about $3/child. I figured a party at home would have cost more than that with food and decorations, so it was a great deal for us. Plus, I didn’t have to clean my house before or after the party!

Jace was VERY stuck on a play doh cake (there was no convincing him otherwise), so I got to try my hand at fondant for the first time! I used THIS recipe for the cake (which a friend affirmed the choice saying that typical box cakes they used in the past weren’t strong enough to hold up well to the pressure of applying fondant), THIS recipe for the buttercream between the layers and for the crumb coat, and THIS recipe and instructions for the marshmallow fondant. I used the Wilton color gels to get the color that I wanted. And I gotta tell you, the cake was good. People who said they don’t normally care for fondant (or cake for that matter!) liked the cake. You can definitely see that I’m a fondant newbie with the lumpiness of the cake, but it’s more from not getting the buttercream smooth enough underneath. I followed THIS tutorial for putting your fondant on the cake. To do the decorative logo and lettering, I drew the lettering with a sharpie on parchment paper, then flipped it over so the mirror image was up, greased the paper, and then applied white strips of fondant to it to make the letters. I then brushed those with water and applied it all at once (or one word at a time for the top) to the cake. It worked great!

Goodie bags were cellophane bags with three mini cans of Play-Doh and 3 cookie cutters. I bought a set of cookie cutters like THIS ONE at Walmart for possibly $10? $15 at the most. It came with 101 cookie cutters, so there were plenty left over for us to keep. We’ve loved having them for Jace to use with his play dough (which he’s obsessed with), and I’m happy to boost my collection.

The pizza parlor we had the party at has a play set inside as well as a small arcade. We took a roll of quarters so each kid could do/get something from the arcade. It turned out to be one of the best decisions we made! Since there were only 8 kids between the couple of buddies and cousins, each kid got at least 4 quarters. They loved being able to get get prizes from the machines and then playing with those prizes.

I made a double batch of the cake and just a single batch of the fondant, and was able to make a 3 layer cake and 8 cupcake. It was fun adding my own touches of colorful plates, napkins and cutlery even though we were at a restaurant.

The kids had fun sitting all together at a table for their pizza.

Nolan’s dad is excellent at wood working and made Jace a beautiful wooden train. Each car is a little over a foot long, and the attention to detail is amazing. He was so excited about his train!

Me and my four year old. Poor Jace was pretty subdued most of the party, and that night came down with a fever followed by a nasty bug. What a way to spend his birthday!

We loved celebrating Jace and I love that his party reflected him, despite how much I tried to influence it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Shop Talk: Etsy & The Stay at Home Mom

2014-03-15T13:46:00.001-07:00

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been massively promoting my shop through my Instagram and Facebook feeds, or just because I’m friends with a lot of stay at home moms who wouldn’t mind making some extra money, but I’ve found myself having a lot of Etsy-oriented conversations lately. And I find myself repeating the same things over and over again and wishing I had a blog post to refer people to. I’d also like to share some of the stories behind my items, or even walk you through how to make your own. After all—if you’re able and willing to follow one of my tutorials, you probably won’t be shopping from me in the first place. So I’m going to have an on-going series that will happen on Saturdays (when I actually post for it) called Shop Talk. I’ll cover anything from do you have the time to run an Etsy shop, to how I made something, to where I shop, to how I price. Hopefully, if you’re wanting to sell as well, grow your shop, or are just curious, you’ll find this inspirational (or maybe the reality check you were needing???). Check out my previous Etsy post, Six Etsy Tips. And the next post in this series on developing your product can be found HERE.

A Little Back Story…

I first opened my shop in October of 2010. I just hit the 500 sales mark this week (woohoo!) and have been through several different seasons in my shop. Reaching my first 10, 20, 50, 100 sales took a lot of work. I got into a groove of selling jersey knit infinity scarves and did really well through the Christmas season for two years. But as styles changed and I found myself bored with making the same thing over and over again, I closed my shop for 6 months and then reopened it with a new purpose. I’ve essentially had to re-brand myself and find a new customer base as my product options have changed. Over the years I have had different motivations behind selling on Etsy—supporting my crafting habit, paying for a new laptop, paying for Christmas two years in a row, and now paying for a new laptop again. My hope for the shop is to have it be able to fund family vacations.

If you’re thinking of opening an Etsy shop, my first suggestion is to buy this book, How to Start a Home Based Etsy Business. Gina, who blogs at The Shabby Creek Cottage, wrote it and it is the best guide to keep by your side as you begin your business. I read the book a month ago and felt like it gave me the guidance I needed to take my shop to the next level. I even revisited all the goals and notes I wrote in it a few days ago and checked off several met goals, and make plans for the next step.

Small Zipper Pouch Card Holder

Four Keys to Consider…

The thing I felt like was missing in the book, though, is the reality check you might need if you’re wanting to start a business. Which is where this post stems from. Keep in mind, this post is written for the already stay at home mom, or the mom who is hoping to get to that point. I have four things for you to think through as you contemplate taking the step from dreaming to doing: What is my goal? Do I have the time? Do I have the space? Do I have the money?

What is My Goal? Where do you hope your shop will take you? Are you like me, and just want to have some extra income to boost the family budget and pay for extras? Then starting a shop has the potential to be a lot of fun and, in time, financially rewarding. Or are you needing a steady income that will help pay the bills and buy necessities? If you are a stay at home mom and you are in a place where additional income is necessary now, or you need it by a certain date and need it to be steady, then starting an Etsy business is not going to meet that need. At least, not right away. It takes time to build a shop and customer base. While there are wildly successful shops that provide a full time, livable wage (or more!), you aren’t going to get to that place over night. I enjoy looking through the sold orders sections of sellers I know, find, or admire, and one of the things I see over and over again is that there are major cycles in their sales. Some might have 5 sales in one day and then nothing for 2 weeks. Or they might have one sale a day. Or they have a bunch at Christmas time and then it peters out once February hits. I can guarantee you that these sellers are not depending on the income from their shops.

Felt Hair Bows

Do I Have the Time? I think the major factor in distinguishing the shop that has thousands of sales from the one with hundreds (or less) is time. If you are a stay at home mom because you don’t want to work outside the home or have your kids in childcare, and want to have the time in your day to do mom things like play dates, clean the house, go shopping, and then relax and spend time with your spouse in the evenings, then you are not a working mom for a reason. An intentionally at-home mom with the goal of doing mom things does not have the time to be a wildly successful, high selling Etsy shop owner. In order to have the business that makes the steady income, you will have to pour time into it. And the kind of time you need in order to make thousands of items, market them, handle customer service for them, package them and mail them, will require you to be a working mom. And being a working mom means hiring people to watch your kids or having them in school all day, or scheduling your business hours to be after they go to bed. Right now, my available work hours are while Reese naps and after the kids are in bed. But they aren’t set hours, so if Jace needs me during the nap time, I’m not working. Or if we have a social thing planned, I’m not working. Or if my husband is tired of not having much attention from me, I’m not working. I’m able to fit quite a few hours in during the week, but it has been a very slow process to build the inventory I have, and I wouldn’t be able to sustain much more business than a couple of sales a day. Not without making changes to our lives like hiring a babysitter or a housekeeper. And neither of those are going to happen since being an at-home mom really is my first priority.

On the other side of “do I have the time” is “do I have the time to wait for the income?” While I’m sure there are exceptions to the rule, it’s going to take time to build a shop to a sustainable income. Do you need the money right now and if you don’t get it you’ll be in a crisis? Then you need to find another job that provides a steady income from the start. If not, and you have the time to build your business, then go for it!

Fabric Flower Garland

Do I Have the Space? One of my biggest suggestions for moms who want to have an Etsy business is to make your products in advance. I know there are plenty of people who do great in the made to order department, but I have found that the times I list something as made to order, it’s a guarantee that when the order comes in the kids will be sick or in bad moods, I will have too many other things happening in my week (after all, I’m doing this business as a side thing, not an established work thing), or life just makes it really hard and stressful to get the item made in the time I promised. There is risk involved in building inventory—not everything is guaranteed to sell. I’ll do another post on how to build inventory with less risk. And there is space involved. Do you have the space to store finished products? materials? to do the work? to have packaging materials on hand? If you don’t, can you make the space? Is your family going to be ok with craft supplies around the house or do they need to be in a designated spot? I have found that having my set work space in MY CRAFT CLOSET where everything is conveniently accessible and easy to clean up has majorly upped my productivity.

Do I Have the Money? It takes an investment to start a business, no matter how small. You need to buy the materials to make your items (even if you are doing made to order you still need to have an original prototype to photograph for the listings). It costs $0.20 per listing of your items. And just listing them once does not get you sales. I relist at least one item a day to help keep them fresh in the Etsy search engine. It can take a long time to get that first sale (often times buyers want to see previous sales and feedback in order to trust a seller), so that could be a lot of relisting fees. Granted, it’s only $0.20/time, but if you’re renewing one a day, that’s $6 spent just on renewing over the course of a month. And that doesn’t take into account all your initial first time listings (30 items would be $6. So you’ve just spent $12 with the possibility of absolutely no income). Is your partner ok with you putting money into the business? Are they ok with it taking time to see an actual profit?

I did a craft show in December where I had spent $90 on materials. There was a mediocre turn out for the show, and I sold $120 in items. Which meant that after I paid back our family bank account, and the $15 entry fee, I only saw $15 for all that time. I was able to then sell most of the items I had left over on Etsy for a straight profit since I’d already paid back the investment cost, but it took over a month to get them sold, and I do still have quite a few Christmas goodies in storage until next year. Before I even finished the Christmas season I had to be looking ahead to the next season for my shop, so I was reinvesting what I could into materials for Valentine projects. And once that was done I needed to create for spring. And then there was the cost of wanting to get to 100 listings in my shop in order to attract more customers, which meant more supplies. So now I’m at a great point with inventory, and have seen steady sales, and am almost to the point of averaging a sale each day. But what you see according to Etsy—that I have had $220 in sales in the past 30 days—is not reflected in my shop bank account.

Pom Pom Easter Bunnies

Having an Etsy shop can be a lot of fun and very rewarding! It’s a cool community to be a part of and really thrilling to receive that email that says you’ve had an order. I have loved being able to contribute our finances by saving for Christmas and buying my own equipment. I have lot of fun thinking up new product ideas, bringing them to life, and then hearing about how much my customers love their purchase. If people know what they’re getting into, or are at least willing to ride out the bumps along the way without getting discouraged and quitting, I say go for it, jump in and have fun!

Are you an Etsy seller? What tips do you have for stay at home moms who are wanting to open a shop? Has your experience/perspective been different than mine? What topics would you like to see me address in this series?

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

My Craft Closet

2014-03-11T15:34:00.001-07:00

A little bit of crafting space history for you: Our guest room used to be my sewing room. It was a great space but always a disaster thanks to it being the dumping ground whenever we needed to quickly clean the rest of the house. And I never really created enough storage systems within it to keep my creativity neat. When we knew we’d be adding to our family, we began to dream about adding onto our house to create a craft room. It was beautiful. You can read about my craft room dreams and plans HERE. Well, then we had to reside our house and all our savings went there, so PLANS CHANGED. What was my craft room became REESE’S NURSERY, and Nolan and I combined closets so his could become my crafting space. You can see how nice and clean it started out HERE. We had grand plans for utilizing the space, but it just never became a priority—both with our time or finances. So then, over time, this is what it ended up looking like:

Are you feeling better about yourself? It’s like Monica’s secret closet on Friends, only it wasn’t my big secret and the rest of my house wasn’t spotless like her apartment. Everything just kept getting piled in there, and when I needed something I’d have to dig for it. Eventually I got so tired of digging that I’d just buy something new. So I ended up with at least three of several different things. Over time my craft storage spread to the dining room and I kept my sewing machines and basic supplies in there on a shelf.

Finally, almost a year and a half after crafting like this, in the week after Christmas I decided to do something about it and started pulling everything out. It got WAY worse before it got better. And my jump to action motivated Nolan to want to help finish the space as it should be rather than come up with temporary solutions. I’ll do a full post in a few days of how we remodeled the space, and what the cost was like (which we kept it to under $200), but for now, I just want to bask in the beauty of it. While I love it and think it could glow rays of sunshine, it’s definitely not the amazing works of decorator heaven you’ll find all over Pinterest. This is my practical, affordable, suits my 1500 square foot house crafting closet.

This post is very photo-heavy, but I’ll also be explaining how I use the space and how my storage solutions work for me. I always find it inspiring to see how other people organize.

The closet is a little over six feet wide and 3 feet deep. The desk is a u-shape and I sit right in the middle of it. I slip around the chair (someday we’ll get one that swivels) and once I’m in, I’m in. To get things off the high shelves I stand on the chair. And if my kids join me, it gets crowded really fast. But it’s my space and I love it. When I go in, I feel like I’m at the office working. Having this designated space where everything is within an arm’s reach has upped my productivity for my shop so much! You can see that the back wall is very bare. I’m hoping to get a big bulletin board for that space soon.

In the middle of the desk I have my sewing machine. When I’m not using it, it’s pushed back to give me more counter space. Nolan drilled a hole in the desk top so my power and foot pedal cords are able to go down through there and run to where they need to go without cluttering up the space. This is one of my many favorite things about the space. The basket to the right of my machine is a little trash basket since there isn’t room on the floor for a trash can. Big trash goes in a plastic bag I typically have hanging from my chair.

To the left are pins, jars holding sewing tools like my seam ripper and my beloved LOOP TURNER, and my oh so stylish college mug full of pens. The post-it pads are a big element of my business—I am constantly noting how long something took me to make, or how much to charge for it, etc. Eventually I transfer all the notes to a spiral notebook, but these are great for in-process notes.

Another favorite feature that I LOVE is the measuring tape sticker I have along the front of the desk. Before, when I’d sew, I would keep my machine on my cutting mat and found myself utilizing it for the ruler while measuring the lengths of garlands as I made them. After just sewing in here once or twice I found myself missing it. I found my sticker on ebay HERE. It’s no longer available, but you could probably search for it and find it from another seller? I paid just under $4.50, including shipping, for it.

Stepping back you can see the left side of the space. Another favorite feature is my door hanging ironing board. I bought THIS ONE at Walmart for $23. I love that when I want to iron all I have to do is fold it down instead of dealing with pulling out my big board. I also use it as an extra work space. Just pull it down and can turn back and forth between my machine and it. It’s at counter height, so when I’m cutting small items I’m not having to lean over. And it just might be left down for extra storage when I’m in messy-busy mode and can’t clean up at the end of the day.

This is the top shelf on the left side. It was an original shelf in the space. As much as I’d love solid shelves, this is what was there which meant it didn’t cost anything. I have clear shoe box tubs from the dollar store holding various fabric pieces and felt, all sorted by color. The baby wipes box holds paper patterns, and the blue lidded tub has fake flowers in it. The picture boxes (from Joann’s that I typically buy one at a time with 40% off coupons or when they’re on sale) hold inventory for my shop. As you can see, I’m using just about every inch of space there is.

When buying the extra shelves for the closet, I really liked THIS hanging shelf. Simply hanging it from the shelf above meant less screws to properly anchor, and also that I’d still have some free hanging space at the end of the shelf against the wall (not pictured). In that open space I have my hanging button and thread storage that I posted about HERE. Tacked on the wall is a sewing machine foot guide and a color chart from the store where I order zippers.

This shelf is seriously one of my favorite spots for both looks and practicality. On it I have a tub of threads (keeping it classy-this was a dog treats container originally), my serger threads along the back, a wooden crate holding my frequently used ribbons, and jars full of headband elastic, ric-rac and other miscellaneous trimmings. The way the ribbon sits and threads through the shelf makes it easy for me to pull from where I sit and cut off the length I need.

On the desk on the left side you can somewhat see my hanging thread and button storage, a sewing basket that holds the small pieces for projects I’m currently working on, a drawer storage system topped with a basket full of small scraps. The purple box holds various ribbons and trims that didn’t fit above, and on top of it is a small wooden crate full of larger fabric scraps. Next to that is where I store my serger. As you can see I’m using every available square inch and not afraid of stacking.

Below the desk I have more shelving and store my fabric and yarn. We have shelf tracks like THESE ($5/track and there are 4 total in the closet) with brackets supporting white shelves. I love that I can raise and lower the shelves as I change the way I use the space or need to store things differently. In front of the fabric skeins of yarn are in baskets from the dollar store, and a few bolts of fabric are propped up and more projects are piled on top of those. I’m telling you—it’s amazing just how much stuff I can fit in this space!

The right wall is more focused on crafting supplies. The top shelf was originally hanging lower in the closet—you can see the holes from the anchors if you look closely (we figure we’ll patch them someday). If it had been left in its original spot it would have been too close to the desk for the countertop to be useful.

A few bolts of fabric that I don’t use very often are on that shelf since they’re harder to get to. Below that the shelf was left where it was from the original closet configuration. The hanging file box on the left holds all my precut paper dies and stationary items and envelopes. Next to that the black and white polka dot box holds packaging items for my shop, below that is more inventory storage. The coffee cup next to it is a prop for photographing my coffee sleeves (found here and here), and the purple box has supplies for fastening—glue, tape, paper clips, staples, etc. Next to it is another drawer storage that I’ll talk more about in a bit.

Everything on the next shelf down is pretty easy to reach while I’m sitting. This shelf was originally in our hall closet, but had to be removed when we started storing a large tub of pet food in there and couldn’t open the tub while the shelf was there. It was great to be able to reuse it. The white three drawer unit has business papers/cardstocks in the bottom drawer, hole punches, craft scissors and rotary cutters (for fabric) in the middle drawer, and stamp pads, glitters and embellishments in the top. Next to the rubbermaid drawers the container is full of stencils. The old box holds all my paints, sorted by color and type, and is topped with brushes, pallets and bottles too tall to fit on the shelves. I love that there’s also some space in front of it for random things.

Right under the shelf I have a tension rod holding the paper I wrap all my sales in before mailing. I just have to pull the paper to the length I need and cut. It’s another one of my favorite things in here. I do have to use a strip of post it note to keep it from unrolling though. On the desk below you’ll see that I store my Silhouette machine (although when I use it I typically put it on the ironing board), my Sizzix Big Shot, all my die cuts and pen set. Even though the hot glue gun can be stored in a drawer above, it never gets put away and just sits on its mat right there. There is a hole in the counter in the back corner where the cord goes down to the outlet.

Below is the messiest part of my organization. We have more track shelving. Top left is the tub holding all my Silhouette supplies and vinyl. Next to it is a basket full of notepads, and next to that miscellaneous supplies like basket filler, raffia, doilies and large bubble mailers. Below that is a tub of small Mod Podge supplies, all my Mod Podge, boxes full of felt scraps from my BOWS, and the basket full of more shop inventory—all my bows. Below that is a basket full of random projects and old clothes to be upcycled, the green tub is full of craft supplies my kids can use (Jace regularly comes in and pulls out construction paper so he can cut it), and more random craft supplies. Sophie, the cat, is my constant companion when I’m in there. She’s always loved to be a part of my sewing.

Here’s a shot of all the packaged bows in the basket.

And the beautiful outlet Nolan installed for me. There was already a fluorescent light in the closet above the door, so after watching a few Youtube videos he was able to run power from the light switch. This space would not be useful for me if it weren’t for this outlet. My sewing machine is always plugged in to the lower outlet, and whatever else I’m using gets plugged in above it. I’m glad I haven’t needed a power strip because I don’t think there would be the space, and I don’t want to run too much off the amount of power that goes through the light switch. The iron in use can already dim the light.

As for my three sets of drawers—the first on is on the desk on the left side and holds velcro and sewing fasteners in the top drawer, elastic in the middle, and sewing machine tools and needles in the bottom. The second set is on the right side and holds hot glue gun supplies in the top drawer, interfacings in the middle, and notions like zippers and bias tape in the bottom. The third is also on the right side and holds wooden beads in the top, random craft supplies like key rings in the next, metal and elastic headbands next, alligator and French barrettes in the next, and all sorts of other accessory bases in the bottom. On top of that drawer set is my double sided tape for attaching items to metal, and in front of it is frequently used small paper patterns.

And finally, because I do have a little more stuff than will fit in the closet, we have a small shelf I bought at the Restore in our bedroom that holds more boxes. I’m wanting to gradually get more picture boxes to store these items in to help keep things looking nice. The bottom wooden crate holds craft show display items.

And just so you don’t judge me and think that I keep things neat and tidy all the time—this is pretty typical of the floor, even when it’s clean—legos, threads and trash.

And this is what the rest of my room looked like when I was taking the pictures.

Thanks for stopping by! I really enjoyed showing you my space and hope you liked seeing it. And maybe you’ll be inspired by how practical it is? If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer in the comments. I’ll be back soon with the full, technical details of how everything was built.

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

{The Best Ever} Caramel Corn Recipe

2014-02-08T12:20:00.001-08:00

I love caramel corn. Like LOVE caramel corn. So when a friend of mine shared on Facebook back at Christmas time that she was making the best ever caramel corn, I had to try her recipe. She wasn’t lying. This stuff is incredible. We couldn’t stop eating it. It’s a perfect layer of crispy sweetness that perfectly preserves the fluffiness of the popcorn within it. Wow. I’m getting poetic about caramel corn. It’s just that good.

It makes a huge batch, so feel free to half it if you don’t want to over indulge in this yummy treat.

Lindsey Austin’s Carmel Corn

2 C Brown Sugar

1/2 C Dark Karo Syrup (although I’ve made it with light because that’s all I had on hand)

1 C Butter

1 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 C unpopped popcorn

Pop your popcorn (I used an air popper and popped it into my large stainless steel bowls that I use for bread dough. A turkey roaster also works great for this recipe). Set aside.

Preheat oven to 250.

Combine brown sugar, butter, syrup and salt in a pan. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes stirring constantly.

Remove from heat, stir in soda, blending well.

Pour over popcorn and stir. Bake for 1 hour stirring every 15 minutes. Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Valentine Special

2014-02-07T11:12:00.001-08:00

We’re pretty snowed in here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. My town is usually in the hot spot where we hardly get touched when a once a year snow storm comes through. But this year we’ve decided to be special with 6 inches back in December and a good 13 inches between yesterday and today. And the snow is still falling! I seem to have the worst luck with choosing craft fairs to be a part of because both snow storms have hit when I’ve been scheduled for one. The Valentines Bazaar I have been prepping to participate in this weekend has been postponed until after Valentine’s Day, which means I have a whole bunch of red, white and pink cuteness desperately wanting to go to new homes. I can keep all this until next year, of course, but I’d rather see it handed out this year. So if any of it catches your eye, use code VALENTINES to take 20% off in my SHOP.

“I think you are bow-utiful” valentines with a felt bow clip. These come in pink, red or white.

“You make my {heart} happy” valentine with a crochet heart clip. These come in pink, red or white.

Three Crochet Hearts Headband. These are my absolute favorite. They come in sizes newborn-adult.

“You have a hold on my heart” elastic hairband valentines. These come in hot pink, red and and lavender pink.

Multiples are available for every type. And each individual valentine comes wrapped in a cellophane bag so they present beautifully.

I also have sewn fabric hearts strung on twine garlands available. I love these cute decorations! There are a few different fabric combo options available.

And one last item is the crochet heart garlands. These are made of 9 crochet hearts in red and white with pink in the middle.

Hop on over to my shop if you’re interested and don’t forget to take 20% off by using the code VALENTINES.

My Favorite Things: Craft Tools Edition

2014-02-06T14:44:00.001-08:00

I find it somewhat comical that I last posted a month ago and said I was going to get back on top of blogging and then proceeded to be silent on here. But now as I’m in my third round of the flu since the new year, I’m hoping we’re heading into a healthy season. And despite the lack of what you’ve seen here on the blog, there has been a WHOLE LOT of crafting and creating and sewing going on in my house. If you follow me on Instagram (HERE) you’ll see I kind of mini-blog about all the projects I’m working on as well as day to day life around my house.

Orders all packaged up and ready to mail out. Zipper Pouches (will be listed soon!), Polkadot Hair Bows, 3 Heart Crochet Headband, Wire Hearts, Heart Garlands, Heart Clip Valentines, Boot Cuffs.

And as I’ve been working like a madwoman on projects for an upcoming Valentines Bazaar (that is now postponed until after Valentines Day due to snow…) and my shop, I keep thinking about my favorite crafting tools and that maybe you’d like to know about some of them. These are the in-addition-to-the-obvious tools. Clearly, I love my sewing machine, hot glue gun, and a great pair of scissors. But there are other items I find myself reaching for over and over again and utilizing like crazy yet they rarely seem to get talked about.

Back in December I was sent a pair of Skil Ratch-n-Lock Pliers. They’re an impressive all in one tool—you can use them like regular pliers, or as a clamp to hold things together, or as a ratcheting tool for tightening bolts. They’re great for complex projects or even something as simple as opening a stuck tube of E6000 glue (anyone else have huge problems with this?). We were so impressed by them that we had to give a pair to my father in law for Christmas. He’s quite the handy man and gifted wood worker who has a large shop full of tools. They’re like the perfect gift for the guy (or gal) who already has everything. It’s nice because they’re affordable too and you can get them HERE from Home Depot.

My mom gave me a Sizzix Big Shot for Christmas several years ago. I didn’t start actively using it until a few months ago though. With all the excitement of Cricut and Silhouette you wouldn’t think this would be as useful of a tool anymore. But I love using it to cut fabric and felt. It’s great for paper too when you don’t want to deal with your computer and cords and all that hassle. I use it to cut out the hearts for my Heart Garlands and my Polka Dot Bows. While you do have to buy the individual dies for cutting, you can get so much use out of them. Brand new, one of these at Joann’s is on sale for about $90, but you can find the older models (like mine) on Ebay for a lot cheaper.

Shortly after we complete constructing my craft closet (I need to share it with you still!) I realized that I would love to have a measuring guide on the desk in there. When I had my sewing machine set up at the dining room table I’d rest it on my cutting mat and liked having a ruler to do quick measurements on while making my garlands. I thought it would be really cool to find an adhesive measuring tape that could be stuck to my desk. It took a little searching but I found exactly what I wanted on ebay. For under $5 (including shipping) it was perfect and beyond affordable. I LOVE it! You can find it HERE.

My other favorite craft closet feature is an Over the Door Ironing Board. I have it hanging on the inside of the door so while I’m working I can lower and utilize it, but when I’m not in crafting mode and the door is shut you don’t see it. I love not having to pull out a full ironing board. My poor husband has to do it himself if he wants his clothes ironed and has also enjoyed the ease of pulling this out. It also makes a great work surface for me at the perfect height. I bought mine at Walmart for just over $20. You can find it online HERE.

And finally another favorite was a Christmas gift to me from Nolan. It’s just a simple crochet hook case, but after a few years of having crochet hooks in several different places in the house and having to buy new ones because the one I need is missing, I love having them kept in once place. Unfortunately, Reese loves the thing too so I have to keep it out of sight from her or else she yanks the hooks so hard the straps to hold them break. You can find the one I have HERE but there are all sorts available in your local craft store.

How about you? What are your favorite go-to tools that don’t get talked about much?

Thanks for stopping by!

***I was sent a pair of Skil Ratch-n-Lock pliers for review but was not compensated monetarily for my review. The opinions expressed here are all my own. The rest of the businesses/companies listed here have no idea I’m sharing their products.***

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Catching Up and Looking Forward

2014-01-04T13:02:00.001-08:00

Hello there! It’s been a while. I do think of you often though. I can’t tell you how many blog posts I write in my mind and then just don’t get to putting on the computer. How about we catch up a bit?

We had a great fall that included making Peter Pan and Tinkerbell costumes for my kids. They were seriously too cute. I ran in the Color Vibe 5K with some friends. I started the Couch to 5K program at the beginning of the summer and was hooked. We traveled to Fort Collins, CO for Thanksgiving with my family since my parents moved there and my brother and his family to Denver over the summer.

I participated in a couple of Christmas Bazaars. I’m so thankful that I can sell the things I make—it helped pay for Christmas for our family.

I added some new items to my shop including Christmas Tree Garlands (I’ll be making heart ones soon for Valentines Day!), Boot Cuffs (more colors being added today!), Head Wraps and various Christmas banners. For the past few years I’ve primarily sold jersey knit infinity scarves in my shop. While they were pretty successful I realized last year that I was bored with it and no longer enjoying that project. While they took very little labor to make, the material costs was relatively high, so if something I didn’t sell well it took a little longer to make my costs back. I’m enjoying the creative challenge of coming up with new ideas and rethinking the focus of my shop. The new slogan is Ruffles ‘n Such: Life Accessorized. So as long as something fits into the accessory category—whether for your home or yourself—it fits. It’s a bit like starting over, though, since I had the shop in vacation mode for so long and now don’t have many reviews for the kinds of products I have listed now. I’m enjoying myself though.

I also spoke at my first women’s retreat. The theme of my three sessions was “Chosen and Dearly Loved” all about how great God’s love for us is and how it can be reflected in our lives. I loved the experience and hope to have more speaking opportunities in the future. You can check out my devotional blog HERE. Once I had all the message all set it was pretty fun to go through my closet with the Pinterest app in hand and come up with some outfits. I just may have sent several friends 6 outfit options to help me choose from.

I enjoyed decorating my home for Christmas and meant to take good picture to share here, but all I ever got was with my phone. I love how pretty everything looks at Christmas time!

We had a lot of fun and a lot of tears throughout the season.

And our Christmas was nice and sweet. It was just the four of us for Christmas Eve service at our church and a quiet Christmas morning at home followed by my parents flying in that afternoon.

At the beginning of November my poor sewing machine decided I had used it more than it was ever built for and died on me. Nolan got it working again, but it only took a few more minutes of sewing on it before it gave up once more. I was able to borrow my brother’s machine to get me though the season and knew I could use Christmas money for a new one. Two days after Christmas I was so excited to find an amazing deal on a Bernina on Craigslist thanks to an older lady who had upgraded to a new one and just wanted to see this go to a home where it would be loved. This Activa 140 is my newest baby and I am in love. She’s a hefty beast, though, so we knew she needed a permanent home rather than going back and forth between a shelf and the dining room table.

Back when my craft room became Reese’s nursery, we had plans to turn the half walk in closet in our room into a craft closet for me (we also have a full walk in that Nolan and I now share). I cleaned out all my supplies, sorted them out and put them into the closet with hopes to transform it soon after finishing the nursery. Well, it’s been over a year and a half and the closet has just become more and more of a disaster. As you can see in the picture above it was a MESS. I kept my machines and regularly used supplies in our dining room and the table was regularly a mess of craftiness. I think a lack of permanent space for creating was a major factor in my lack of blogable projects this past year or so. It’s a lot harder to pick up a project when it means setting up, doing the project, and then cleaning up to continue normal life.

I spent two days leading up to New Years Eve pulling everything out of the closet, sorting, throwing away and formulating a plan. We rang in the New Year with Nolan installing a power outlet in the closet (so exciting!), and then Nolan spent all of New Years Day transforming my space. I’ll share more details later, but he created a built in desk/counter and installed shelves both above and below it.

It’s beautiful! I got 3/4 of my things put away that night (I have SO.MUCH.STUFF), but woke up sick the next morning and haven’t been able to finish since. Hopefully this afternoon I’ll be able to get a little more done and then take pictures tomorrow.

So now that we’re all caught up, let’s look forward. I’ve seen so many people sharing their word for the new year. I think I’m going to adopt 2 words. Follow through. I feel like I’m a great dreamer who can majorly lack follow through. Whether it’s responding to comments and emails for the blog, finishing a sewing project, writing up the devotional posts I have notes upon notes for or even cleaning my house—I just don’t seem to finish what I start. So I’m hoping to get better at that. Hopefully that means you’ll see a lot more of me on here.

Soon after my sewing machine died my laptop did too. My power cord was tripped on by the kids (and me too) a few too many times and finally where the power jack attaches to the motherboard cracked and the repair would cost almost the same as a new laptop. So now that I have the sewing machine replaced I’m trying to fund a new computer. I have some sponsor money coming in through the blog, will hopefully sell more in my shop (feel free to stop by!) and will hopefully be doing more sponsored posts on here soon. I usually only agree to posts that fit very tight criteria, but right now I need a new computer to keep things running (although I am very thankful for the use of my husband’s in the mean time. But sharing can be difficult when there are only so many kid free hours in the day). As soon as I have a new laptop funded, I’ll go back to being picky.

Thanks for stopping by and catching up with me! I hope you had a wonderful past few months! Now I’ve gotta go mail an order for little girl valentine leggings and get back to my craft closet!

Merry Christmas from our LEGO Loving Family!

2013-12-15T16:00:00.001-08:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of LEGO. All opinions are 100% mine.

We've been snowed and iced in for the past week and going just a little stir crazy. I was feeling a little desperate for new ways to entertain Jace when I found the site where you can create your own LEGO Minifigure Family.

We had so much fun with it. You can customize up to 13 characters--people or pets--with different skin tones, facial expressions, hair styles or hats and clothes. Jace loved being able to try out all the different looks on the minifigure faces. We decided to go with a Christmas family with Nolan and me as Mr. and Mrs. Claus and the kids as elves. We also added in Jace's special stuffed kitty, our two cats and one dog.

Once you've created all your family members you can select the scene. There were quite a few options to choose from but we chose the classic family home. After you have it all set how you like it it's easy to either download your card or share it through major social networks. I was impressed by how easy it was to create--while my 3 year old obviously needed my help, elementary aged kids could have a lot of fun trying out all sorts of combinations of looks for the people.

LEGO Minifigure Family was a fun activity for us to do. If you have LEGO loving kids, I think they would love it as well!

Thanks for stopping by!

A Very Simple Top

2013-11-20T09:30:00.000-08:00

When I made the Back to School Top for Momma I also made an even simpler top. I photographed it too. And then the pictures just sat on my computer waiting for me to share them with you. So here we are, two months later! The fabric was originally used for a ruched maternity maxi dress but I thought it was too cute to not use again. So I cut up the dress.

I used my FAVORITE shell pattern—I seriously go to this one any time I need to make a top easily without wanting to deal with self-drafting. I also used it for THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS, and THIS top.

My goal this time was to actually follow the pattern. And I did, for option F, for the most part. I cut exactly as directed and gathered at the neckline. But instead of making a bias tape/trim for the neckline and arm holes, I just folded it over and used a double needle. It was a very simple top and makes for a great shell to wear under a cardigan.

I had fun pairing it with a tan cardigan, white mini bubble necklace and red flats. This reminds me how much I like it and that I should wear it again…

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Entry Way, Chalk Paint Buffet & Front Door Privacy

2013-11-18T17:35:00.001-08:00

After our busy summer of lots of upgrades/refinishes to our downstairs (see all the posts HERE), it feels good to finally be putting the finishing touches on our space. While I painted our buffet at the end of June, and then we installed the floors at the beginning of July (and have yet to install new baseboards), the window coverings weren’t figured out and hung until a few weeks ago.

I love having the windows around our front door for the great lighting and ability to see the neighborhood, but good privacy was pretty lacking. The previous owners of our house installed mini blinds, but unless we had them raised our dog and cats worked really hard to destroy them. When I saw that Emily of Jones Design Co. hung curtains over her front window (seen HERE) I knew it was the perfect solution for ours. The rod and clip rings are from Target and the curtains are from Ikea. Someday I’d like to get higher quality curtains (they’re pretty paper like), but for now I can’t complain since they were the right length and only $10 total for both panels.

We bought this buffet back in January of 2011 (original post HERE). We found it on Craigslist and have used it for toy storage. Even though I didn’t like the original look of it at all, I wasn’t all that motivated to paint it because of the hassle of moving it out of the house or putting it on a drop cloth. So painting it on the old floor right before tearing it out was the perfect opportunity! I used the same method as with our RED BUFFET and made homemade chalk paint. The color I used was Behr’s Black Suede. I love this black because it's soft.

The hardware is a huge improvement as well. Before, the left door was really difficult to open, but repositioning where the handle is made all the difference. I also put a coat of wax on the rails the drawers slide on when I was waxing the whole thing and now the drawers slide beautifully! The cupboards and lower 2 drawers hold toys and the top drawer holds random junk. I used to think our entry way was disproportionately large for our house, but with the toys right there, it gets used as a play room most of the time, so I guess it isn’t so bad.

I also picked up THIS coat rack from Target and hung it between our downstairs bath and entry closet on the wall opposite the buffet. I originally planned to build one myself, but then this one was cheaper and easier. This has been great for our family (as you can see, we have a lot of coats). Before, we just piled them all up on the chair by the buffet and they always looked like a crazy mess.

I’m loving how my entry way was transformed with minimal effort—painting the buffet, hanging the curtains, and adding the coat rack. Of course, the new floor makes a big difference too. I’m so in love with it. I’ll have to show you the downstairs as a whole soon so you can see just how pretty it is. It’s a laminate with hand scraped texture to it.

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Tickled Pink First Birthday Party

2013-11-16T05:50:00.000-08:00

Somehow, my baby girl went and grew up into a one year old. How is it that I introduced her to you HERE over 13 months ago?

While very rough and tumble, Miss Reese is all girl, so we knew a pink birthday party would be perfect.

I designed her invitations in Publisher, then saved them as a JPG and had them printed at Costco as photo prints. Makes for a really cheap but customized invite!

For her dress I found this adorable bright pink with white polka dot sheer fabric and lined it with the same bright pink satin lining. I used the bodice pattern from my CIRCLE DRESS. But this time I wanted more of a full skirt so instead of cutting it as a circle I just made a rectangle twice the width of the bodice. I kept it simple by just doing one long tube with only a seam at the center back. If the width of the bodice is 10”, I doubled it for front and back and then doubled that. I know that isn’t the exact width, just an example. I love the way it turned out!

Reese was very happy to wear her party dress but wasn’t interested in holding still for pictures. Her headband came from a pack from Target and was perfect because it’s almost the same color as her dress with little white polka dots.

Her cake was probably the easiest thing to prepare yet had the biggest wow factor. I used my favorite box mix-dressed up recipe (found HERE) and made three layers. I then colored my favorite buttercream frosting pink and followed THIS tutorial for the rosettes. This is seriously the easiest cake I’ve ever decorated. And it looks so impressive. The pink candy beads that I scattered throughout it are from Walmart.

A few things to note if you want to make one as well: I think doing the triple layer is a huge key to the wow factor. Height is a big distinguishing difference between most homemade and bakery made round cakes. Plus, from what I was noticing in pictures on Pinterest, a double layer just doesn’t have enough room to showcase the rosettes on the sides. Also, this takes a lot of frosting.

For Reese’s smash cake I just made a single layer small round cake. I ran out of homemade frosting on the big cake, so my parents ran to the store to pick up a can of the new Funfetti Frosting that comes in this SUPER bright pink.

Since the party theme was just pink, the decorations were pretty easy to figure out. Anything pink would work! For Reese’s chair, my mom made a cute “ONE” banner that we hung across the tray. Then a “Reese” banner, homemade tissue paper pompoms and some fun pompoms from Walmart’s party section and a few balloons completed the area.

Part of my motivation to get the door hung when we did was I knew the scrappy garland I had planned would look much better on it than the wall. I just tore up several different pink fabrics that I had on hand and tied them to a ribbon. The giant 1 was made by a good friend of mine for her daughter’s birthday and then it worked perfectly for this party.

We kept the food simple but pink. Ham, cheese and crackers, chips and a pink died salsa/sour cream mix (this one was a little odd—it seriously looked like a strawberry dip so it messed with your senses), strawberries and THIS amazing fruit dip that tasted like cheesecake (I did add about 1/2 cup of sugar to it, as well as pink food coloring), frosted circus cookies and oreo cookie pops made with pink candy melts and dipped in pink sprinkles.

We didn’t plan on having a large crowd, so it was nice to keep the food simple. And since it was in the middle of the afternoon, I didn’t feel the need to provide a full meal.

The strawberry dip was seriously amazing.

Since half of our cousins moved to Colorado this past summer, and the other cousins were out of town the weekend of Reese’s birthday, we only had one little friend join us. Which meant I got to have some fun with her party favor—a pink tutu and bracelets. The tutu was simple to make and I found the bracelets for really cheap in the party section of Walmart. Seriously—go walk around that section. They have some really cool stuff.

Poor Reese got an ear infection a few days before her birthday and was SUPER tired during her party. So her thumb was in her mouth and she looked pretty spacey most of the time, but she still had a good time.

She was a BIG fan of the birthday cake!

This girl loved the frosting and making a mess, which was especially fun for us since Jace was not interested in the cake at his Hungry Caterpillar First Birthday.

All in all, it was a great day of celebrating our little princess!

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Old Door Wall Art & Fall Decor

2013-11-14T23:12:00.001-08:00

Well hello there! I guess it’s been a little while. The crazy thing about this month and a half blog absence of mine is I have been making so many things. And many of them are photographed. So you can expect to see a new shirt, tickled pink birthday party, new décor in my home, furniture re-dos and plenty of fun little Christmas things showing up on here soon. I hope. I will follow through. Maybe…

We have a nice big wall space in our dining room that I’ve struggled to decorate well. It always seemed like the décor I put up there wasn’t to scale for the large buffet it shared the wall with. For a few years now I’ve envisioned an old door hanging on its side on the wall. But I never could bring myself to pay for one. Then, one day last summer, my mother-in-law and I were in a cute antique store in my town when someone went walking by, carrying an old door. I mentioned how much I’d love to have one some day but couldn’t bring myself to pay for one. She said that she had one just leaning against the shed in their back yard if I wanted it.

My husband grew up in a house that was built in the 1890’s, and while all the rooms still have their original doors on them (I think), there were a few they took off to open up space in the living areas. And those doors have just been sitting outside for years. They brought me a door back at Reese’s baby shower last summer. And then it sat in my garage for a year. I painted it green at one point (wanting to try to find a way to bring more color into my house), but wasn’t in love with the shade of it. So it sat for a while longer.

But then, after painting our downstairs and redoing the kitchen, as well as painting my buffet red, I was motivated to get it finished and hung. I painted over the green with a creamy white, did a little distressing and then waxed the whole thing. Then I glued on knobs from target in each of the sections of the door.

Hanging it took some major work on my husband's part. This thing is HEAVY and we do not want it falling off the wall. He had me first tape out the general area of where the door would be hung.

Then he screwed a 2x2 to the length of the back of what would be the new top of the back of the door. He also attached a few shorter pieces to the bottom so the door would lay flat on the wall.

A 2x4 was then hung on the wall. He used some BIG bolts for this and screwed them into studs. We then hung the door so the boards attached to the door sat on top of the 2x4 and used long screws to screw them together. Then we stepped back and were in awe of how beautiful it looked. Or, at least I did, and he commented on how it actually looked good.

I’m excited to change out what hangs on the knobs with the seasons. Right now I have little grape vine wreaths that I wrapped a section of with twine and artificial leaves.

I love the way it completes my dining room and makes a great focal wall for our downstairs.

Décor Notes: Wall color is Versatile Gray from Sherwin Williams, tutorial for the pumpkins on the buffet can be found HERE.

Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully I’ll be back soon!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday

Simple Fabric Pumpkins {tutorial}

2013-09-27T17:20:00.001-07:00

I was wanting to add some new items to my fall décor this year and really liked the idea of some fabric pumpkins. Most of the ideas I found through Pinterest involved a lot of cutting and sewing, but then I found THIS tutorial from Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom. Hers was by far the easiest way to make some adorable pumpkins. I used my sewing machine instead of hand stitching, and decided to switch up how I finished mine off, so I thought I’d do a tutorial as well in case you, like me, would rather not go out in some crazy rain to find sticks to use as stems.

I pretty much made a pumpkin patch’s worth because I planned on using three to decorate the registration table at a mom’s group I’m a part of. But then I liked the way this looked across my buffet that I made a few more.

I love the combo of jute, raffia, fabric and burlap. My materials for a patch’s worth were: 1/2 yard burlap, 1/3 yard each of two coordinating fabrics, 1 roll of jute, 1 package of green raffia, 1 roll of green florist’s wire, batting and plastic grocery bags.

I cut sevearl different sizes of fabric—the ratio of width to height determines the shape of your pumpkin (a more square piece makes a taller pumpkin, a wider rectangle makes a shorter/squatier pumpkin). As you can see, I didn’t bother ironing my material first and it didn’t matter at all.

(don’t you love my chipped polish?)

1. Folding fabric in half with short ends and right sides together, sew the side opposite the folded side.
2. Still wrong side out, sew a gathering stitch around one open edge of the tube (see picture below if you aren’t familiar with a gathering stitch).
3. Pull your thread tight until your opening is closed and tie off the threads.
4. Turn your material right side out and the gathered closing will be the base of your pumpkin.

For a gathering stitch, set your tension to the highest and stitch length to the longest setting and sew. Be sure and leave lots of extra thread when you clip it so you have enough to hold onto.

The gathering stitch doesn’t work well on the burlap because it’s a much thicker material. Instead, I clipped one of the burlap strings close to the seam and pulled it tight.

5. Sew a gathering stitch around the remaining opening but don’t pull your threads tight yet.
6. Fill your pumpkin with batting. For my larger pumpkins, I followed Jamie’s advice and used plastic grocery bags as filler, wrapping them in batting.
7. Pull the treads tight. On some of the pumpkins the thread broke or it didn’t completely close the opening, so on those I wrapped the remaining thread around the gathered material and tied it off.
8. On the ones that it did close perfectly I just tied the threads off and it looked really nice.

9. Use the jute to wrap around the pumpkin as though you’re tying ribbon around a gift. Section it in half, quarters and then eighths, pulling tight so the sections are well defined.
10. Tie off the jute.
11. To make a raffia stem take a handful of it and then fold it in half.
12. Slide the fold under the jute knot and the slip the ends through it for a knot.

13. Tying it this way means the raffia will stick up, more stem like.
14. Trim the stem to your desired length.
15. Wrap some florist’s wire around a stick or something round to make curly vines.
16. Tie the jute ends around the middle of the wire. You can just tie it in a knot or do a bow.

And then you have some super cute pumpkins! This was a great, simple project that adds a lot of fall pop to my home.

Go HERE for past fall-related projects and decorations.

Thanks for stopping by!

Parties I like to link up with:
Made with Love, The Sunday Showcase Party, Weekend Wrap Up, Make it-Wear It, Show and Tell Saturday, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Take a Look Tuesday