Dear Diary,

It has been wayyyyyyyy too long since my last entry. Life is crazy. Love, Rosemary

Gosh, how do weeks go by without me sharing with you all the excitement of my life? Easily I tell you! A) because like I said, life is crazy. B) because said life is not that exciting. This past weekend we went on our annual camping trip to FDR State Park near Callaway Gardens, over yonder in Georgia. The first year we went, there were 3 families and we only took Browder. Mallory may not have been alive at the time? Anyway, our group has grown over the years and this past weekend we had 10, yes 10 families, camp out for the weekend. You may count 11 here, but that’s only because an extra family met us at Callaway Gardens for the day Sunday. 10 families = 22 KIDS! The Gulledge camping motto is “We only bring some of our kids” (seriously, we have a plaque). Mallory did not go, but maybe next year. We had a BLAST!! We’re talking tents, campfires, smores, tromping through the woods to the bath house, and every meal with 42 people. This is something that hopefully these kids will never forget!

This was our “Church in the woods” service Sunday morning. How could you NOT spend 3 days in the woods and not PRAISE GOD!! It was really beautiful! I am a city girl all the way, but it’s almost a necessity to escape to the woods for a few days at least ONCE a year.

 

Remember the “I will flush” saga of October 2012. Fast forward to November, and you will find the “I will hang my towel up” saga of 2012. I thought it was working, until this morning I found a wet towel on the window seat that had been there all night long….. This is my exciting life!

I have been doing quite a bit of work the past few weeks and here are some of the tees I’ve done. I’m about to wrap things up for a while (no more work). This is the Embroidery-Boutique Chunky Alphabet that I use and post about a lot. I used Monogram Wizard Plus Library font for the E & J beside it. I use this font a lot as well!

Here is the Applique Cafe Dinosaur 3 design and I can’t really capture in a photo how cute this is on a red shirt! These are Old Navy tees btw. They are super soft!

Our new Zig Zag Reindeer design which is super cute and zig zag is a lot faster than satin. This was a tricky shirt to do ~ I chose to center the reindeer with the initials off to the right side. It’s easier said than done b/c my machine automatically centers the entire design. More on that later if I ever figure out how I did it!

Our Dog Truck design. I love red and brown on gray!

 Lastly, here are some burp cloths I did recently for a friend who was giving them as a gift to twins. This is our Flower 5 design and it looks great w/ initials inside (Monogram Wizard Plus “Master Circle”). I use Master Circle ALL THE TIME as well! This fabric is Robert Kaufman Bright Spot On.

 Thanksgiving is next week! Applique Cafe is having a “Give Thanks Sale”. Thanksgiving designs are 1/2 off (Halloween too ~ they are categorized together). The rest of our designs are 35% off through Thursday, November 29th ~ www.appliquecafe.com

Above is our Frame Patch 2 design with MWP Camp font. I just got the Camp font not too long ago and I like it! Here are some of our new designs we’ve listed recently, and we hope to have several more ready this week!

You can find all of our new designs by clicking ALL DESIGNS on our website.

Monogram Wizard Plus

I discovered last night that you can now purchase Monogram Wizard Plus fonts ONLINE now. The font selection is limited at this time (and there are only a few I may “have to have”), but I just tried it out (here is the link to the store) and purchased the RASCAL font, aka Love font. It was very easy! You have to:

1) Create an ACCOUNT

2) Install a MWP Update

3) Have your Serial Number from the CD case your MW or MWP came in

4) Have a credit card ready to pay

It was all very easy and now I have the Rascal font selection from my drop down menu and I can make it any size I want, just like the $40 purchased font CD Alpha Paks!! I already had this font from another website and merged it together in Sew What Pro, but I prefer to use MWP so I’m excited to have this option!! This particular font was $9.99 and others ranged from $7.99 up.

I also like DAISY and LIBRARY. Daisy is sort of like a Disney font and Library is a good Serif type font! It looks like they may be adding motifs and more fonts. Anyway, I’m excited about this option for MWP users!!

Even though we just had a 55% off sale last week, we decided to have a 30% off Memorial Day Sale which ends Tuesday, May 31st. For those of you who missed the Facebook fan sale, here is another chance to save (not as much but save nonetheless!).

My next post will be on monogrammed towels ~ stay tuned for that maybe tomorrow! Have a great day off (hopefully) tomorrow!

Work-a-thon 2011!

Since we signed the contract on our house yesterday I instituted an immediate work-a-thon to get my customer work out of the way (so that I could then move on to the next stress)!! I think I did 8 shirts today and 6 – 8 yesterday. I’m down to 12 or 13 I think and hope to get them all done in the next day or two. We will then focus on WHERE IN THE HAY ARE WE MOVING? So, next week we will either have a house we will hopefully move in to when we close on April 22 (out of here by April 25), or we may do the apartment scene (for as few months as possible) until we can find something. We really don’t want to do that, but don’t want to just buy something out of panic! We have a house in mind we want to buy, but the owners are house shopping this weekend one last time and we will find out Sunday if they are going to sell to us. My house was cleaned today so I got kinda sad and wondered if we were doing the right thing! I know we are, but still get a little seller’s remorse!! My kids are running around like crazy right now (at 8:42 pm) so I KNOW we’re doing the right thing. Sometimes my house gets very very very small!!

Here is a shirt I did today, and THE HOOP GOT ME!! It happens once in a blue moon where the hoop is just too tight, and when it snapped in place I was questioning whether or not I made a hole. I went ahead with the shirt and sure enough, when I unhooped… HOLE! Luckily my customer just happened to be going to Target today and she was able to bring me another one to do while she waited. It happens! 🙁 On the new one I also put the name underneath and it showed up better, so it all worked out! These are the Cherokee girl toddler tees from Target and they are really cute! BTW I tried to fabric glue the hole to give to my customer so her daughter could at least wear it in the back yard, but somehow got HNBL on the back of the shirt, so it ended up in the trash!

Just a closeup of the AC Butterfly I did to match a bubblegum pink skort. My customer brought me all kinds of cute cotton plain (probably inexpensive) skorts to match. I need to go get some for Mallory because the “outfits” all turned out so cute with the applique tees! I believe they came from Walmart, Target and Kohls.

Here is the AC Tiara Frog which is going with a hot pink skort.

Here are all the tees (with matching skorts) I did for Madeline! AC Flower in the middle!

And here are all the tees I did for Lucy! AC Tiara, Simple Bunny and Mermaid! My customer mentioned hot pink hair for the mermaid and I wasn’t so sure about it, but I love how it turned out with the dot fabric! Who says mermaids are blond or brunette!

Lastly I did these tanks to match the Kohl’s skorts. The left one is light pink and I used the zig zag double circle; petal patch on the right. I get asked a lot what the petal patch font is and it is from Embroidery Arts ~ Empire. It’s a little more expensive than some websites, but it is one of my go-to fonts. It stitches perfectly every time! The sun was shining a little too bright!

Check out Whimsical Fabrics on Facebook ~ they have an Etsy store and have some really cute Riley Blake fabrics. You can convo them for smaller amounts (less than 1 yard)! I love the Riley Blake Quite Contrary fabrics, and there is also a CUTE Sugar & Spice green & pink striped fabric that I’ve never seen. They are trying to reach 1,000 fans so if you “like” them, tell them AC sent you! It’s a tight race between me and Applique Alley as to who can send the most fans! 🙂

I’m working on my Linens & Boxwoods post. I got the pictures we took Monday and they are fabulous! Here is a sneak peak of one…

You may be wondering why we had a photo shoot of us drinking coffee? I will explain when I post! L&B is also doing a post on me and Applique Cafe, so I will link that one in too! It’ll all make more sense! 😉 Until then you can wonder!! The fabulous pictures were taken by Grace. She is a miracle worker! She is honestly fabulous and so artistic!!

Tomorrow is a new day! Amie & I are meeting for coffee in the morning and we are also looking at 2 houses (me & Jeff, that is) after school. Have a great weekend and be on the lookout for my next post!