Archives for June 2012

Summertime 2012

Posted by on June 29, 2012

I’m sad to report that summer is almost halfway over. Well, I guess we have a little over a month until we’ll be back to the grind. Homework, schedules, carpool, etc begin again for us on August 15th. In the past I’ve had at least 1 if not 2 of my kids in summer school and this time last year we were about to move. This year, no summer school (which has been a lot of fun). A year later in our house, I have so so so so much to do! So much to do that I wake up every day overwhelmed and don’t do anything. That’s the story of my life and I’m sure there is a named condition for it. Anyway… we are enjoying our summer and have spent a lot of time this week at the pool (because it is too hot to do anything else).

Here is a cute beach towel and tote combo I picked up at Target yesterday for one of Mallory’s friend’s birthday party tomorrow. I love the colors! The font I used is “Kim Single” (as opposed to Kim Multi) in Monogram Wizard Plus.

 We spent last week down at the beach with my family (12 of us total). This was our 7th year (Browder was 2 when we started) and this year we ventured down 30-A closer to Alys Beach, Seacrest Beach and Rosemary Beach. Our first 6 years we stayed in Seagrove. It was FABULOUS! Seagrove is fabulous too, but we loved our new house so much my mom rented it already for next year! We took our bikes and rode down to those “beaches” for a concert, ice cream and treats in the afternoon and to go eat. We hit La Cocina TWICE (I highly recommend the crab nachos which were recommended to us)! I absolutely love 30A!! Here are several pics of the kiddos…

I think this was the first day or two on the beach. These 2 are 21 months apart.

My handsome 9 year old! Browder was 2 when we started this family beach trip tradition!! Yes, his eyes are that dark.

Here are all 3 kids working hard on a sand castle.

 

That’s Browder and his cousin Lucas in the background. They rode tubes down the beach 128 times a day.

Our house had a great pool.

You all remember how much fun you can have with 5 tubes!

 I threw some clothes on the kids one afternoon and ordered them down on the beach for a very fast impromptu photo session as the sun was literally going down. That usually works best versus a planned out we-are-going-to-take-pictures-on-this-night kind of thing. Today I ordered 16×20 canvases from Cafepress (use promo code FBCANVAS for a great deal through June 30). These are the photos I used and hopefully they will all “go” together!

This cute little crooked smile is sooooo “G”!!!!

I had a couple of other great closeup pics of Mallory but ordered this one since it matched the others. Here cute outfit is from Stitched & Smocked!

 Lastly, this was the most fabulous porch swing I have ever seen! It had about 6 pillows across the back (which were probably inside due to rain) and I spent several early mornings laying on it reading before the kids got up! If I had the same beach breeze with the ocean sound in the background at my house, this would be there too!

 I hope you all are having a great summer too! I have to say I have really enjoyed not working so much and am rather enjoying my kids instead! Sissy is learning to swim and the boys are doing tennis clinics and yesterday we had a “watermelon party” with several of the neighborhood kids. That’s what summer is all about!

We are working on FALL designs at Applique Cafe and our patriotic designs are currently on sale. We added 3 new ones today as well, so if you like football, golf or trains carrying apples, check them out! Have a great weekend and Happy 4th of JULY!

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Happy Summer!

Posted by on June 15, 2012

Happy Summer! I hope you are all having a splendid laid back summer. When was the last time you used the word splendid? 1964? We survived VBS, have been enjoying some great pool time and are not about to strangle each other yet. I normally send at least 2 of my kids to summer school (2 days/week) but this year with bible school and beach trips and other goings-ons, I decided to keep them all at home. So far so good! I adore my kids, but we all know being with them 24/7 can be trying at times. Overall they are getting along great which helps my sanity! G just almost took Mallory’s eye out with a diving stick but other than that we are good.

Moving on…. here is an example of what fabric can do to an applique. This is an OOLLLLDDD sample of our Fat Fish design. It’s cute (and probably matched something), but…

not as cute as this!! I left the fin off and this Michael Miller fabric matches some shorts I got at an overstock sale for around 8 bucks. I need to replace my website photo BADLY! I really need to go through and redo LOTS of old designs.

My precious model. She just loves for me to take pics (not).

Here is a new Swirly Cupcake design we listed recently, and I did it on this Kas-Wear dress. The orange and hot pink fabric is Fabric Finders tri-check. I got it recently at Beth’s Heirloom Sewing. I love orange and hot pink or orange and any color. Anyway, you can find the Kas-Wear at Berlins Online! Mal’s head is cut off in this photo because I was trying to take her picture and she did not want me to (and was crying). She wore this as a swim coverup. We were probably headed to the pool and I stopped her for a photo shoot. Is there anything cuter than little 4 yr old knees??

Better! This dress makes a great swim coverup or it would even make a nice lightweight summer gown! Kas-Wear has some GREAT dresses, tees and other blanks in great colors! I’m monogramming a couple more for Mallory right now in lavender (w/ lime mono) and hot pink (also w/ lime mono).

I also appliqued this towel recently and the cute towel came from Costco! Who doesn’t love polka dots? The fabric I used is Michael Miller. I THINK it came from TJs Fabric.

Today is the last day for our 50% off sale ~ www.appliquecafe.com. I’ve seen a lot of fall designs come through the carts. As hot as it is, I know it’ll be football season before we know it! The font I used for SALE is Cheri from Jolsonsdesigns.com. I hope Jolsons has sold several of these alphabets because I have had a ton of people ask me what it was! We do not sell any fonts at this time, so most of the ones I use are like this one from Jolsons and I also have several from Embroidery Boutique!

 Have a great weekend! The sale will be “taken down” first thing in the morning!

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Tea anyone?

Posted by on June 7, 2012

My BIL (Jeff’s bro) got married this past weekend up in Birmingham, so my mom and I headed up Friday morning to hit a few stores sans kids. Jeff brought the kids up Friday after lunch. We had a fabulous weekend with all the wedding festivities, spending time w/ family and in Birmingham in general. It really is a neat place (with SO MUCH SHOPPING) and I left feeling that I really need to visit the Ham more often. It’s only about an hour 15 minute drive from my house. I waste more time than that in carpool on any given school day. We are so happy to have a new addition to the family and hope to visit them in B’ham a lot! 🙂

My favorite place that I have found lately is Harmony Landing in Homewood (also on Facebook). I have always loved At Home in Homewood, and HL is right next door. I LOVE At Home, but sometimes when I go in there I feel like I would have to bulldozer my house and start over to get “that look”. It’s very cool and chic and restoration hardware-ish (if you’ve ever seen their book,imeancatalog.  Harmony Landing is more realistic for me (and my budget) and a lot of their pieces are original and different but still fit in to my home. Anywho… I went in looking for a piece to go on a blank wall in our kitchen and left with said piece + this bench to go in front of the windows in our kitchen. I’m now in the market for some pillows for the bench!

This was our kitchen BEFORE. On our now blank wall we had cabinets on top and bottom (on the left). I sure don’t miss all that oak…

Here is after, and for the past 10+ months I’ve been searching (patiently) for something to go here.

Here is my Harmony Landing find. It’s sort of hard to tell what it looks like at night. Our kitchen is a lot of taupe + the dark stained island and dark kitchen table/chairs. The new pieces are a good mixture of both taupe and a little dark plus some other colors thrown in there too. Luckily we had 2 cars in B’ham. We made it home with both pieces and all 3 kids.

 I am also now in the market for something to go on top of and ON the “cabinet” we will call it. I have a little credit with a couple of artist friends so I’m hoping to cash in here soon. (p.s. replacing these knobs with something darker too). Maybe  lamp too?

 Moral of the story… if you are in Birmingham check out Harmony Landing in Homewood. I saw a couple of coffee tables that looked neat so I’m hoping to go back with my July house budget! If you are in Homewood also eat at Urban Cookhouse ~ yummy! There is also one at the Summit near PB (Pottery Barn).

This week we have been recovering from our weekend in Birmingham and I have also been finishing up a big order of the Sweet Tea/Unsweet Tea ribbons (see this post). I was able to knock out 4 at a time using my fast frames and sticky stabilizer (from Sewingmachine.com ~ commercial backing). After each ribbon I would center on the next ribbon and start sewing again. This is Bobo font from Monogram Wizard Plus and I cut my ribbon about 20″ long. When finished I “singed” the ends w/ a lighter (or “fire” as my little ones would say). As you can see I wrap my fast frames w/ the sticky stabilizer (see bottom of frame) and pin the ribbon in place so it won’t move. The sticky peels right off, leaving no residue on my frames (several people on FB commented as to how clean my frames were).

Here is a shot of doing it the WRONG way! A) my sticky and ribbons are on the wrong side of the fast frame and B) the fast frame is upside down. I had to redo the whole thing.

Fast Frames have a “dip” on them, so when you attach the frame to the “arm”, the dip slants downward so the frame is actually even with your arm.

I use fast frames mostly for bags and things I can’t hoop!

 Here are my completed 24 total sweet and unsweet tea ribbons. They are really easy to do, but are also time consuming in that you have to cut all your ribbon, pin it all in place on the sticky, sew each ribbon, remove the ribbon and remove the excess sticky in between all those letters (on the back), singe the ends of each ribbon, etc. I’m glad to finally have them all done!

 This particular order is for my husband’s god mother who saw them at the wedding shower we went to and immediately put in an order for 8 sets. This weekend she upped it to 12 so I spent most of yesterday finishing up! The ribbon is 1.5″ black grosgrain ribbon from Hobby Lobby (1/2 off, of course).

Have a great rest of the week! I’ll be sampling new designs tomorrow!

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