01.31.08
Twins on Public Parade
People ask me… “How do you manage it?” They comment… “You must be very busy.” Or “You have your hands full.” Yes. I do. 
It’s a great handful though – most days. I average about 10-15 of those comments with every trip to the store. My pet peeve about going out with all the kids is the attention the twins get but not Lucy. She is 4.5 years old now and understands when adults ignore her in favor of the twins. I usually have to intervene and point out “Yes, they are twins… And this is their big sister.” It is so helpful when someone pays attention to Lucy first. I understand the curiosity and admittedly, they are pretty cute but it does get “old” pretty fast to not be able to make it through an aisle without someone stopping me. Then there are the people that not only look at the babies but reach out and TOUCH them. I have had to ask people not to touch. I have had people reach out and play with their hands. The babies put their hands in their mouths. It is not OK to give the germs you got on the shopping cart handle to my babies. I hadn’t meant this as a rant originally but it turned out like that, didn’t it? One of my favorite videos that describes the celebrity is by a couple that takes a trip to the zoo with their son and newborn triplets. Though we don’t get quite that much attention, it’s not that far off. Normally, I don’t mind. I just had a hard time with the people touching the babies yesterday! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GE6zQ8FWok
11.12.06
Chalkboard Vinyl Possibilities
At the Craft Bazaar at my alma-mater Saint Bernard High School yesterday, many of the customers were excited about the possibilities in my chalkboard vinyl placemats and name sign message centers and had lots of questions. Chalkboard vinyl is a material that has been out for a few years and quilters have jumped on the possibilities. I have seen several different quilt patterns using chalkboard vinyl to make placemats. After playing around with it for a little while, I came up with a smaller placemat with simple borders and built-in chalk pocket for sale at my fairs. I decided last year to incorporate these vinyl panels into my name signs. An option I offer to customers ordering a name sign is to have their sign turned into a message center. The chalkboard panel hangs under the name and a pocket runs along the bottom to hold chalk and other messages. Though I have hung this sign at different shows this year, yesterday was the first major interest it’s gotten this craft fair season. I have a bunch of samples posted on my website in the name signs section. I was thrilled yesterday to have people so excited about the possibilities! Some lucky children are going to be receiving personalized message centers at the upcoming holidays!
11.01.06
Halloween Fun
Lucy had a blast with Halloween this year. She was too cute. She told me she wanted to be a duck so my in-laws pulled out her old duck costume for us. It still fit. My sister-in-law gave me a pumpkin costume and a dog costume. Both of them fit too. Lucy had until the last minute to decide which one she wanted to wear. The decision? The pumpkin! A couple people asked me if I made it. HA! I quilt – not sew. Everything I do stays flat… I was VERY happy not to have to buy a costume this year.
Our little pumpkin went house to house with us and tried to run into most of the houses so we had to hold the back of her costume to prevent her taking off. I think the dog costume would have been a more appropriate choice. We only went to about 10-12 houses total since they are pretty spread apart. We live on a country road at the foot of a big development. We are not part of the development but have a sidewalk that connects us to it. I was so sad for my neighbors that so few trick-or-treaters came around. For many of the houses we stopped at, we were the only ones who came by. I was thrilled that we could bring our little pumpkin around to brighten the Halloween nights of some people. It makes it more special.
The first year we were in our house I was sure we’d get lots of people. After all, we were in a house! I think I bought 6-8 bags of candy. Well, nobody came. I was so disappointed. Brett went out the back door without me noticing, ran around the front and rang the doorbell in 40 degree weather with short sleeves and a plastic bag. The doorbell rang and I was SO excited. Finally I had a trick-or-treater! I was not so amused to find my husband out there shivering. It really was very sweet – in hindsight!
10.10.06
Lucy’s Birthday Party – Preschool Party Ideas
Woohoo! The birthday party is over! We had a wonderful time and Lucy had a blast running from spot to spot playing with her friends and doing the different activities. It was a LOT of work to put everything together. Most of the work to be honest came with trying to get my house “company ready” and though I tried, it wasn’t completely ready. Oh well – a few closed doors and we were all set.
Some of the activities we did were:
My friends were joking that they could tell I used to be a First Grade Teacher! The kids all had a blast and Lucy enjoyed it more than anyone.
10.05.06
T-Shirt Quilt Summary
I am often asked by people exactly what a T-shirt quilt is. They think I had to scan and reproduce the shirt logos in order to get them into a quilt. I’ll try to clarify here a little bit about the process. More can be found in the T-shirt quilt section at Beth Sullivan Designs. When I make a T-shirt quilt for a customer they usually come to my home or send me their shirts. We decide upon a plan for the quilt including how big it will be, how big each block must be and where we need to modify the design to include more shirts or s-t-r-e-t-c-h existing shirts to make a bigger quilt. The fabric choices are also made. I then wash all the shirts and fuse them to an interfacing to make them have less stretch. From there, the blocks are cut and modified as needed. Once the blocks are “quilt ready” with any extra patches, borders, etc., the quilt top is assembled. I no longer quilt these large quilts on my home machine. Instead, I bring them to a friend’s house and rent her Gammill long-arm quilting machine. Once quilted, the blocks are machine tacked with my Bernina domestic sewing machine over the surface of each of the blocks about every 2 inches. Finally, the binding is added first by machine and then sewn by hand. An average T-shirt quilt takes me about 15-20 hours to complete from start to finish.
Novelty Party Items
I know lots of people order items from Oriental Trading and similar catalogs when they need little “stuff” for parties and things. I used to order from them all the time when I was a teacher. In the last few years I have found a company that I like sooooo much better – Rhode Island Novelty. I just ordered a whole bunch of “trinkets” for Lucy’s party. Plastic maracas, harmonicas, sunglasses, little stuffed teddy bears, etc. The prices were very reasonable and the products were much nicer than those I’ve found other places. Certainly they were much cheaper than buying things at the party store. Last year I placed a huge order and sent all the little things to Iraq for the soldiers to distribute to the children. My husband’s cousin Ryan was stationed there and he said the soldiers always needed items they could keep in their vehicles for the kids. They loved them. And the plastic blow-up arm leopard-print arm chair I sent the soldiers for them was a huge hit.
10.03.06
Balancing Act
How do other people do it? Balancing home, family, business and personal activities is making me nuts. I missed an appointment that I had on the calendar today. Completely blanked. Luckily they were understanding. My head is just so full of craft fairs, potty training, preschool, planning a birthday party for Lucy, all the things that need to get done, etc. that I missed it completely. I’ve tried FlyLady to help with my organization but it doesn’t appear to be motivating for me. I get the emails and delete them. If anyone reading this has any suggestions on how to balance areas of life, I’d very much appreciate them! I’m thinking lottery tickets right now. Maybe I can win enough to hire a cleaning lady, secretary and bookkeeper!
Dream Dinners
Just over a year and a half ago, my local MOMS Club had a “Moms Night Out” at Dream Dinners in Milford, MA. It was such a wonderful concept. You go, assemble a variety of different meals for your family, bring them home, put them in the freezer and you have meals for a month. Great food – great convenience and waaaaay cheaper than take-out. So I signed on as a customer and was instantly hooked. A couple months after starting, we hit a “rough patch” financially. My business was just starting – but slowly and a few huge bills hit at once. My friend suggested I go to work at Dream Dinners one night a week. I’ve never regretted it. The owners of my franchise are so nice and the food discount is a wonderful thing. I’ll refer to Dream Dinners a lot in my Blog. We eat Dream Dinners meals at least twice a week if not more. This month is the “Best of the Best” where people voted on their favorite meals and the menu is compiled of “tried and true” favorites. It’s a great menu with some of my all-time favorites including the Pesto Ravioli with Chicken, Arroz Con Pollo and Steak Gorgonzola. OMG – Amazingly good!!!
10.01.06
Online Support Groups
I am a member of 22 different online groups. 22!!! Not all of them are very active though some have 100+ messages a day sometimes. At various points in the past 5 years, many of these groups have literally saved me. The advice the wonderful people on these lists have given to each other and to me have been valuable in ways they may never realize. This blog is as a result of one of those groups. My groups cover a variety of topics: quilting businesses, designing, infertility, children, weight loss, moms groups, quilt guilds, etc. 22 different online support groups for most areas of my life! I highly recommend to anyone who feels they need any sort of support to join a group. My site of choice for groups is Yahoogroups.
09.29.06
Potty Training
There is something going on in our house that takes far higher importance than my quilting business – far higher than almost anything! Lucy is finally opening up to the idea of potty training. She’ll be 3 years old in a week and a half and up to this point has been very sporatic in what she’ll actually try. FINALLY, after being spurred on by a visit to my in-laws in Connecticut last weekend, Lucy has decided that it might be OK. Well, she’s picking and choosing her timing and I’m spending LOTS more time on this task. What my life has become… Hopefully she’ll catch on pretty quickly and we’ll be able to move on to other tasks. In the meantime, I have stationed adult chairs in each of the bathrooms and am spending waaaaay too much time thinking, talking about and trying to prompt bodily functions.
