Happy November and DIY Costumes!

It’s November already, although it hardly feels like it. My weather app says it’s 85 degrees. I’m still wearing my stinky summer OTBTs and my closet is still in summer mode. This is the worst time of the year to attempt to dress with the season and not sweat to death. Monday was Halloween, and below is my trio in our (mostly) DIY Costumes. My 10 yr old’s costume was a 2:00 day-0f purchase from Target (Santa pjs) and I made the beard from a piece of white felt, jumbo cotton balls and too many glue sticks to count. Oh and a piece of elastic! It was in shambles before we hit the first house and was no where to be found 20 minutes later. He also wore a Santa hat so Skinny Santa had a great night of trick or treating. Bonus: PAJAMAS!! He can wear them to sleep in too! Side note: his friends were a snowman and an elf, so they were a cute trio!

My 8 year old knew a week or two in advance that she wanted to be Larry Culpepper (see Dr. Pepper commercials). Luckily the 10 year old played Larry last year so all we had to do was pour out some DPs and hot glue them to the lid of a shoe box and attach a cooler strap. By the end of the night I think 1 can was left, but she was adorable in a sea of girly costumes and loved every minute of it.

The 13 year old. This was our Sunday afternoon painting-in-the-driveway project. If you live in the Southeast, then you know who Alexander Shunnarah is or have seen a billboard or two (or 380). He wanted to dress normal and be a “bottle flipper”, but one day while driving to work last week I saw a billboard and decided this would be much funnier. His costume was a hit in the neighborhood and on Facebook! Plus it only cost me about $13 in alphabet stickers.

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In other November news… did you see our Girly Turkey aka Digitizer’s Pick? I sewed this on a little t-shirt Monday and it’s one of my all time favorite Turkeys! Plus only 3 fabrics. It’s $1.50 for a ltd time!

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Here are a few of our new designs also! The Holly & Wreath are both raggy, and I used 1) red gingham on bottom, 2) white flannel in the middle, and 3) green polka dot on top. Check them out at Applique Cafe for a better photo! These designs plus all the others are 40% off through Tuesday, November 8th, which happens to be ELECTION DAY!! Won’t we all be glad when that’s over!?!?

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Enjoy the rest of your week!

Happy Summer 2016

Happy Summer everyone! Since my last post, school got out and we’re just enjoying our {very short} summer! It’s already July 7, and my kiddos go back to school on August 9th. That is a month + a day or 2 away!!!! We still have more beach, more camps and more fun to squeeze in! I’m not ready to think about school supplies yet. We are nowhere near done with summer reading or math packets. I did, however, check new school uniforms off my list. Not. ready. nope. no. summer rules. As Mallory would say “summer is my life!”.

I thought I’d share with you a few of our summer pics. Here are my 3 this week on the 4th of July obviously! “G” is 10, Browder is 13 {gasp} and Sissy is 8. Don’t you love our store bought shirts? Pay no attention to Browder’s 2015 version.

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This keeper is from our beach trip we went on as soon as school let out. #chacos

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Another one from our May/early June beach trip. We were in Perdido Key, FL and are headed back there soon for another family vacay.

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This may be my favorite picture from the summer!

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I am also working part time this summer (3 days a week) and squeezing in a little monogramming/applique work too. Here are some shirts I did for some sweet sisters up in Birmingham. These are all Blanks Boutique t-shirts that my customer purchased and had shipped directly to me. We are also adding new designs here & there and you can check them out at Applique Cafe!

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Enjoy the rest of your summer! Thanks for stopping by! 😉

Photo Editing Update

Good afternoon! If you read my recent blog post {about my computer crash of 2016}, I have an update for you! I’ve blogged before about photo editing and which programs I use – search PHOTO EDITING on my blog.

Photoscape – I use this for adjusting photos, cropping, lightening, combining pics, adding watermark, resizing, etc. = pretty much everything. It’s FREE!

Before the *CRASH*, I also used Photoshop Elements 10 to remove the background of my design photos for the website. I was unable to get PE10 back after the crash because a) I couldn’t figure out how to download it again for the life of me because I have zero record of my serial number and b) I now have Windows 10 and PE10 is an older version and unfortunately not compatible with Windows 10. I DID download a trial version of PE14, and I played around quite a bit with removing the background. I watched lots of YouTube videos. I am just not that photo savvy folks! By the way, PE10 had a handy dandy Magic Extractor tool that made it super easy to remove your background (I did a blog post on this too). Around the time they came out with PE12 I think, they decided to leave that handy dandy tool off, so PE12 and after (or maybe 11 or somewhere around then) you have to remove your background using some other very difficult {to me at least} methods.

SO………………. I finally had sense enough to google “removing backgrounds from photos” and discovered Clipping Magic! It’s essentially the Magic Extractor from PE10 but has a lot more features and is MUCH easier to use. The only downside is that you pay a monthly fee, but it is totally worth it to me! $3.99/mo gets you 15 projects/month and credits carry over. $7.99/mo gets you 100 projects, and $14.99/mo gets you 500 projects/mo. I went with the cheapest version since I only really need this for new designs and we MIGHT do 15 in a good month!

It is SO EASY! You just click on the parts you want to keep with GREEN, and parts you want left off (the background) in RED. As you do this, it forms a border around the parts you want to keep – see the yellow line. You can also adjust this easily! Here are a couple of examples…

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Here is my before and after! Check out their website too to see other features and neat things Clipping Magic will do! I use it for design photos, but you might see some other use!

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The Gulledges are in SURVIVAL MODE around here. It’s May, which means we have 28 events on our calendar and school is wrapping up. Sunday was Jeff’s birthday AND Mother’s Day (plus we had our last soccer tournament all weekend in Decatur, AL). My triplet nieces and nephew turned 16 yesterday (and all 3 passed their driving test!). My middle child “G” turned 10 today. Jeff and I celebrate 15 years of marriage Thursday (Whoop!) and Browder will turn 13 (GASP) on the 25th. And school gets out May 20th for my oldest and May 27 for my youngest 2. Then it’s SUMMER!

Applique Cafe NEWS: All of our DESIGNS are on sale through May 17th, and you can see what’s new below! Lots of cute stuff for SUMMER!

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Until next time…..