New Clothes!

So, I'm super excited about the new shirts I inherited from my friend Katie and some new shirts I found at the mall. Summer is getting into gear in Sunny Central FL and it is time to make a decision: To wear shorts, or to not wear shorts...

Now, I'm a firm believer in the evils of denim in summertime, but I'm also against seeing my legs in shorts. So, what to do? I have settled this dilemma by hidden option number 3, wear neither. That's right. I'm going to dress like 50's housewife. It's all dresses and skirts this summer. Well, except in my house, where athletic shorts reign. To meet the missing need in my life for cute skirts, I am working on sewing up a couple styles.

The first I made was a simple double-layered, cranberry, knit, knee-length skirt with an elastic waistband. The second is resting on my sewing table waiting for the addition of elastic to the waist. I found the second skirt in the clearance section at Ross and it was much to big with a broken zipper, but it was baby pink with dark brown and black floral pattern and a few white flowers around the bottom. It is a lightweight cotton with a thin lining and it is a twirly skirt! That was the selling point for me. It has triangle panels sewn in to give it the twirlyness and an A-line cut. It came down to my ankles so I shortened it from the waist to just below my knees and zig-zag sewed the invisible zipper closed after removing the zipper part. I'm not sure if I want to fold the waist band twice and run the elastic through the casing or if I want to sew the elastic directly to the inside of the skirt. There's pro's and con's with each, so I'm still up in the air. I'll decide tomorrow when I go to sew it.

Tomorrow will be full of Biscotti making for the mothers in my life and giving the house a final go over before my in-laws come in to town for supper. It will be very nice to see them and for them to get to spend time with Redding.

Alan starts his new job on Monday after being at home in the transition phase for two weeks. Redding has so enjoyed spending time with him during the day and Alan has been wonderful to have at home to keep me company and have around the house. He is truly my best friend. We are looking forward to this change and are excited about the changes and the challenges and interest a new job will present.

I have been very busy with Etsy lately as I have sold 8 Fuzzy Wuzzy Bear Hats and One pom pom hat in the last three wks which has been very fun. I'm so thankful that God is providing me with business and that I can offer a product that buyers like.

Gonna get back to watching Justified with my friends now and catch up on the last two weeks episodes.

Nite!

News from my Etsy Store

CrosStitching Moving Sale!!!
40% OFF

In an effort to expand my shops and make shopping easier for the customer, I will be discontinuing all my sewing and miscellaneous items out of the inventory from my CrosStitching Etsy Shop or moving it over to CrossRowDesigns Etsy Shop. To make this transition hopefully easier on myself, I will be offering ALL THE SEWING ITEMS in the CrosStitching Shop at 40% off their current price (not including shipping). This will help me to Clearance out old inventory and allow me to not have to remake listings for every item in my shop.

The only section not to be included in this Clearance is the Crochet and Photography Props.

Once you make your purchases, I will send you a Paypal invoice for the final discounted total.

Thanks for Shopping!!!!!

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Please check out the other shops I work with:
http://www.CrossRowDesigns.etsy.com/
http://www.DesignsbyKandL.etsy.com/

Chore Time!

So my favorite new way of cleaning is blaring good tempo music with catchy lyrics. Dishes are so much less of a chore when you are singing and dancing while holding a sponge. Day 1 of this involved a collection of favorite Country songs and some hardcore pots and pans scrubbing. I found something buried in the pile that can only be described as an evil science experiment gone wrong. Day 2's soundtrack was Kings of Leon's "Only by the Night." There is no foreseeable end in sight for this record currently. I attacked my kitchen again and it is a thing of beauty. Me and my spray bottle of bleach went to town on every surface in the kitchen. Now it's pretty again :)
I also got outside today and moved some plants around and have planted two more antique rose bushes from cuttings off my grandma's rose bush and mine. Hopefully they survive and fill up the front of my house with sweet roses.
This evening was spent with friends and some shopping! After 6 sales on etsy (thank you Lord) in the last 3 weeks I was able to pick up a couple new shirts that are super cute and will be the basis for reviving my flagging summer wardrobe. I'm working on losing the extra weight that I have. I'm a little too fluffy right now. 20-30lbs lighter and I will be very happy. That would put me in my 'healthy weight range' and at the thinnest I've been since junior high. I really want to get thin to feel great this summer and to be healthy before possibly having another baby in the next 2yrs or so.
How is it that sleep can be so elusive? I would really like to go to bed and sleep, but I can't capture sleep. I had the same problem last night. I only got about 4hrs last night and I am a 10hrs of sleep needed kinda gal. Hmmm... thundering outside again. We got rain and a light thunderstorm last night. It's really good for my gardens which are doing pretty well. My little tomatoes are starting to flower which is very exciting because Alan has really been craving tomatoes.
Other random stuff:
I like the shows Justified and Legend of the Seeker. I like Legend for it's medieval type setting and storyline. I like Justified because of the main character, plots, snarky scripting and the main character.
I want to learn to play electric guitar. I play acoustic, or rather once played regularly. Now, It is more a fading knowledge. I think I'm going to really pick it up again and work on learning theory and notes, not just chords.
My oh so pretty, takedown style greattree archery bow should be arriving in a few short weeks. I'm super excited about that and can't wait to begin practicing and learning the sport. My very awesome hubby bought the bow for me almost a month ago and it was out of stock so we were put on a waiting list. It is going to be such a fun sport and one that will also build my arm muscles. I hate weight lifting so that is a large bonus.
Projects this week:
Cleaning out the office/craft room... again.
It seems like everytime we get one of the rooms clean the crap gets moved into another one. So the solution is quite simple--get rid of the crap. Alan and I attacked our bedroom a couple days ago so it is now very pretty and decorated in a minimalist fashion. We just need to paint. And fix out ceiling fan; 2 of the 3 have gotten the pull cords messed up and we may have to replace the entire fan(s) because of it.
We will be having a garage sale this weekend with our good friends. It will be work, but fun.

I think I'm going to try to read some Jane Austen and chill the heck out so I can sleep.

Monday!

Good Day to You!

I've done a little writing over here today and hope to have regular "Seller of the Week" posts for FAM members.

Today will be spent cleaning house. My bedroom is the point of incursion today. If I can take that room and secure several loads of clean laundry, my day's campaign will be complete. :)
I'm also just getting into Jane Austen's Emma and will post a review once I finish it. I'm also going to try to get in a little sewing today. I have dreams of a twirly skirt in my fun vintage material that is inspiring my current Rosette Collection that is debuting this month on Etsy. I'm also being inspired by my antique Rosebush that is beginning to bloom. I have vases of fresh roses in my house every day :) Such a sweet fragrance.

Good news also is that thursday and friday were spent painting my bathroom walls and vanity. My wonderful hubby is going to tile the vanity top for me as the paint didn't want to stick very well. He is off tomorrow so I have hopes of window shopping at Lowes for tile ideas.

My parting thoughts for the day are this: What does your home say about you?
Is it clean and comfy? Is it well managed? Is it a place of refuge for your family? Is is a great place to be, but also a work in progress?
I am in the work in progress category. By no means perfect, but still pleasant and a place we can enjoy.
Embrace your apron!

And off to the Battle of Clean Bedroom (it'll show up in the history books soon. An epic battle between the Apron and the evil Dust Bunnies holed up under IKEA bed Mountain.)

Car Washing with Papa

Yesterday Alan got off a little early from work and needed to wash his Chevy Corvair. So Redding and I helped.

But Redding liked dropping the sponge in the bucket more than helping :)

Embrace the Apron

My thoughts for the day are this:
Be a Help Meet.

To all the women out there and growing girls and especially the blessed women who get to stay at home, it is time to embrace who Yahweh God has created you to be. God designed women for a specific purpose: to be a Help Meet.

Gen. 2:¹⁸ "And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him."

The Hebrew for this is Ezer kenegdo. It means "life saver." Other than here, it is only used to refer to God's relationship with His people. He is our lifesaver. The One who will come through for us.

^{Deaut 33:26} "There is no one like the God of Jeshurun,
who rides on the heavens to help you
and on the clouds in his majesty."

In the same way, God has created us to be a "lifesaver" or "meeter of our husband's needs." We are to be there for him when no one else can help. It is an extremely important position. It is one we need to take very seriously. Afterall, it was ordered by God.

God made man and then He made woman. We were made for man.

1Cor 11:^{8 "}For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; ⁹neither was man created for woman, but woman for man."

This is not a disgrace for women, and it does not mean that we are less important than men. We are different. We were created for different purposes. It also mean that we are subordinate to our husbands. Our husbands in turn are subordinate to Christ. Christ is Subordinate to God the Father.

1Cor11:^{3 "}Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God."

It is the order God has created. It is for our benefit and good.

^{Gen 1:27} "So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."... ³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day."

As subordinates, it is our job to support our husbands. Our job is to come under their authority and bolster them. We do this in a variety of ways that may surprise you. It is something that should be handed down from one generation of women (the older) to the next (the younger).

Titus 2:³ "The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; ⁴That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, ⁵To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed."

God has told us exactly what we need to do. It is high time that we embrace our commission, obey the Word of God so that we may fulfill our roles and do what is good. What we have been created to do. Only in doing so can we find contentment and happiness where we are at right now.

This comes in a variety of ways that may seem strange to you. We can do this by first taking our position as help meet seriously. By Loving and serving our husbands. This means respecting him, speaking only good of him, attending to his needs physically, sexually, and mentally (dinner ready, listening to him and responding in love, embracing his dreams and helping him achieve them, giving him the good lovin', not nagging, not making unfair demands, not criticizing, etc.; By raising our children in the fear of God, correcting and disciplining them, giving them our time and attention, teaching them to be godly men and women, taking care of them; By being discreet (1 : having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech : prudent; especially : capable of preserving prudent silence
2 : unpretentious, modest 3 : unobtrusive); By being Chaste (controlling ones actions and impulses so that they remain pure, undefiled, modest, and free from any taint of sexual impurity in thought, deed, and dress); By keeping a clean and pleasant home. It doesn't have to be expensive or lavishly furnished, only comfortable and clean. Tending first to your home and family before going to help the church or others or to socialize. By being Good. Praiseworthy in Character, Phil 4:⁸"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."; By being obedient to their husbands. YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE. You are commanded by God to submit to your husband. Your home can only function well if you do this and do it without whining, grumbling, complaining or manipulating him or guilting him into doing things your way. As long as you are not breaking God's law or man's law by obeying your husband, just do it and obey. After all, you can't both be in charge. And as we already learned, man is the God given authority of women.


If you want a full study of all of this, read "Created to be His Help Meet" by Debi Pearl. The above has been extrapolated from the outline of her book and the meat of what I learned about being a help meet from an older woman to a younger woman about God's Word.

Bathroom Makeover

Here is what I'm working with for inspiration right now. My bathroom is currently white with little pink tile borders and accents in the cabinet, shower and around the floor. I'm hoping to update it to something more inviting that matches the theme of my living room. I can't redo the tub and shower right now or replace the vanity, so I'm hoping to hide the obnoxious pink tub and tiles and paint the vanity. The floor is in decent shape (neutral grey and cream linoleum tiles) and that will be easy to match.
I want the bathroom to be a peaceful green with a deep brown vanity. I'll attempt to remove the tiles around the floor. If that doesn't work they just might get painted. I'm going to paint the vanity and put new hardware on it. I have a large white-framed wall mirror that I will paint brown like the vanity. The sink in it is new and white without any chips or cracks. I may put in a new faucet to match the hardware. The current one is the cheap standard kind and is pretty icky.
To hide the tub, I will keep the current cloth shower curtain and hang two draped cream taffeta curtains with tie backs on either side of the tub (the same way you would adorn a window). I'll buy a thick medium beige rug and get a matching toilet lid cozy maybe.
Changing or replacing the fluorescent strip like will probably be more work than I want to get into, but maybe I could build a casing for the light out of brown wood and frosted plastic. We'll see!

Spring Cleaning!

I'm taking a little break from cleaning to eat lunch and play with Redding. This week has started my spring cleaning. We have been slowly moving things into the garage to get rid of, but we had to move the contents of one of our closets into the living room and since every available storage space has been filled I have to make room. I started with the laundry yesterday and finished that today. I have finally decided that I want to have more space than I want to keep all the stuff I never use. I also hope that we can make enough money at the yard sale to start some house remodeling. Alan is having commute to Orlando three days this week so I'm hoping to get most everything done while he is working the long days.

I'm a serious pack rat and I haven't ever done a serious purging of stuff I don't need. The hard part is going through my stuff from high school and getting rid of things that don't really fit my style now or that have sentimental value. But I reeeeeeeally want a clean and not cluttered house.

I was in a get things done kinda mood today so I hung up a shelf and my new IKEA spice rack. Not a big deal, but it involved measuring, drilling and using screw expanders and then hanging the stuff. I felt a bit accomplished :)

Back to work now, but first playtime with Redding!

Up and About

Today has been a very fun day that started early. I woke up with Alan this morning to help him get ready for work and he left the house at 7am. Much earlier than I'm used to getting up. The time change made it hard because it was so dark outside. But, It's kinda nice it being lighter out later in the day because Alan has another hour of daylight once he gets off work to get things done. Anyway, I am working on organizing my closet and getting rid of, or temporarily storing, the clothes that we don't wear. It's a big task lemme tell you, and one I have to work on in pieces while the little guy is asleep. Once Redding woke up this morning we had breakfast and I did devotions with a book I'm working through called "Created to Be his Help Meet" by Debi Pearl. It is very good and challenging. I'll do an in-depth review of it eventually, but for now if you want to know how to make your marriage amazing, buy this book.
After that Redding and I played and cleaned house, made lunch and had lunch with Alan which was very nice :)
We spent two hours shopping at Wal-Mart and stopped at the pet store on the way home so I could restock my fish tank which has been very lonely since my last set of fish passed.
I bought a jungle val plant, some sort of grass, and three little zebra danios which I have always wanted, but haven't owned until now.

I'm off now to make my first Rock Star Ambitions Outfit set for an Etsy Order! Yay!
And joy of joy's, I'll be making it on my very own Singer sewing machine which has been out of commission for the last year until three days ago when I fixed it! That's right. Alan didn't even have to help. I was very proud of myself :) Be looking for a tutorial on that soon.
Off to sewing!

Lots of Baby Hats!

I've recently been in touch with Tiffany Yates Photography on trading pics for some photo props. Her work is absolutely beautiful so I was very pleased to accept her offer. She requested a Brown Bear Hat, a Snuggly Sack and a few new (to me) types of hats. Thrilled with the challenge and the prospect of having professional photos for Etsy, I got to work right away. As I dislike buying patterns for things I should be able to figure out on my own, anything crochet really, I went with the good ole trial and error method. Severaly hours later, I had a pretty basic idea of how the pattern should go; I began working on different styles and colors. As it turned out, the hats were fairly simple to make and then I just couldn't stop. Six Stocking hats and three Pom-Pom hats later, I was so excited by my success that I tried out a pattern for a monkey hat that I found on a blog and was very pleased with the results. I was pleasantly surprised when the hat turned out quite a bit bigger than I initially expected and wound up with a hat that would fit 10-30mo.
I will post up the instructions for the pom-pom and stocking hats in a basic form soon. For now enjoy the few pics!

My First Clothing Line!

I am very excited to debut the first of my outfit lines and would like to introduce you to the Rock Star Ambitions Outfit Set!

The Red, White, and Grey Plaid fabric is a soft Cotton flannel that is so cozy for baby wear. The Tie is appliqued and stitched to the Super Soft Organic Gerber Onesie. The pants are stitched and have serged edges to prevent fraying. The Perfect-fit Robeez style Star Shoes are made with Sturdy Quality Felt and thin elastic to keep baby's feet warm. Each Star is unique as it is hand cut and sewn to each shoe.

The whole outfit is washable on gentle cycles.
The shoes should be lain flat to dry.
Dry Pants and Organic Onesie on a low setting.

The inspiration for this set came while I was making my son a pair of Robeez style shoes. I started layering several colors and fabrics and loved the Wool Grey and Rich Red of the felts I had. The fabric for the Onesie Tie and Pants found me while I was searching through a remnants bin. Everything just came together after that!

Because Boy's Need Rockin' Clothes Too!!!

Handmade Valentines

So my wonderful hubby had the really good idea of giving handmade instead of bought gifts for valentines day. His gift to me was a Beautiful green living room which we enjoyed painting together and putting up new trim in :) It's soooo pretty and very relaxing! Who knew paint could make such a difference in a room? We sent the little guy to spend some time with the grandparents and his aunts and Alan and I enjoyed picking out paint and shared our first lunch at a tasty burger joint that's relatively new to our area called Five Guys where we discovered our new favorite burgers second only to, IN and Out which is a west coast chain.
I'll post pics soon of the work in progress and the sage green that adorns my walls. My wonderful hubby has the very best ideas :)

My One Year old Baby

I can't believe that my little man is already a year old! It has flown by so fast. He is almost walking now and chatters at me all day. He is such a wonderful little guy :)

For his birthday we gave him a little toy set and he just toted the tools all over the house. He is practicing hitting the pretend hammer on the plastic nails. It's so cute. Here are some pictures of him in his construction gear.

Psalm 62

"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken." Psalm 62:1-2

We have just finished filling out a police report for another attempted burglary. Alan set up measures to ensure it would be very difficult for someone to break into the house and set specific obstacles that they would need to move before attempting to break in. The obstacles have been moved and there is a crack in the wood of the door from the garage to the back yard where it has been pulled on very hard. Alan made the decision to call the police and file a report in light of our having been robbed around the first of December. The officer agreed with us that there had definitely been an attempted break-in. We are beyond thankful to God again for His protection over our family and household. Please join with us in praying for the cessation of these events and attempts to steal from my family.

Busy Bee

I'm working on building my Etsy shop and trying hard to be dedicated to listing frequently, networking with other Etsy buyers/sellers and really finding the products and styles that sell. Any ideas would be fabulous.

Well, Ideas per se are not the biggest hurdle for me. I have lots of ideas for new designs and styles and projects... My difficulty is in following through with all my fabulous ideas and making them feasible options for my store.

I want to do quite a bit with infant/toddler clothing and accessories as well as crochet delights and ladies fashion. It's hard to hone my ideas into one mold. I have also done a bit of business with a friend in her shop specializing in fur hand muffs and fur wraps for weddings or special occasions.

As I meander through my thoughts via media I feel like I'm coming to the conclusion of keeping the crochet and random sewing projects as fun bonus items for the shop and specializing in infant/toddler clothing and accesories. I have also been handed the reins of the girls hair bows shop just for fun. I'm gonna list what I've got made already for that and slowly build up my inventory.