Feeling Productive

As I mentioned earlier this week, my son is currently spending the week with his grandparents.  He's having a complete blast.  He's been sailing, swimming, and to museums.  And that's just since Monday!  Today he starts his drive to meet us at the beach on Saturday with a stop to visit some family friends on the way.  God bless my parents for the time they are able to spend with him. 

This is literally the first time that I've been away from my son for this long of time.  Last summer I was still nursing, albeit occasionally, so it was hard to be away for long periods of time.  My husband and I are trying to take advantage of all the extra time on our hands.  I've been getting into work earlier so I can leave earlier, reading, relaxing, and trying to spend some quality time with my husband.

Farm Animal Burp Cloths

Yesterday I took advantage of the free time to spend some extra time sewing while my husband went to the gym.  While he was there I was able to do the first step of sewing five burp cloths.  These burp cloths are very similar to these that I currently have for sale in my shop.  Instead of farm animals they are zoo animals, and are light yellow with a pale yellow terry cloth backing to soak up those spills.  Super cute in my humble opinion.  Tonight I plan to finish the top stitching.  I might even go a little crazy and post them for sale soon, who knows!

I know this extra productive time is going to be short lived, but I'm going to try to enjoy it while it lasts.  Up next maybe some extra progress on the knitting I was referring to this week as well. 

Have you Seen It?

I'm happy to report and show off my latest product!  Late last week I was able to post my newest boppy cover.  I'm super happy with it.  I think it one of my favorite patterns.  Fingers crossed it will keep me moving on posting new products more regularly. 

In that regard, I'm happy to report that I was able to make significant progress on my next product this past weekend.  I was in a training session for my "real job" that I knew was going to be a death by power point, so I took my knitting along for the ride.  Wahoo for 6 hours of knitting!  Not to mention I was able to get another few solid hours in after spending the weekend visiting my parents and leaving my son to visit with them for the week.  If I play my cards right I will have it done on my vacation drive this coming weekend. 

What new products have you seen or created recently?   I want to see links.  Help me feed my Pinterest addiction!

Wonderful Wednesday

I have some exciting news today.  While it took me longer than I expected, I finished my latest product just this morning.  I have it all set up and ready to be photographed this evening.  It is a new boppy cover, which I am currently lacking in the store front.  I am super excited about this pattern.  It is super cute, unfortunately, it will be the only product with this pattern as the fabric is completely sold out from my supplier.  In that case it will make this boppy super special for the person who buys it.  They'll be the only one with the design! 

Hopefully while I have my camera out tonight I will be able to snap some shots of other works in progress.  The blanket that I am knitting for my son is making great progress.  I'm trying to focus my time on that right now since I have just over 3 more months until it needs to be complete.  I'm trying to stick to my schedule of knitting at least 1.5 rows per day to get it done in time, but unfortunately the time gobblins and the exhaustion fairies have been visiting our house recently.  They are tricky little fellows I tell you! 

Once this sewing project is complete and posted on my Etsy store front, I am going to have to look into what other projects are in my fabric drawer for the creating.  I think I have some burp cloths that are in the works, but I'm not sure.  I love shopping in my own house, it's like Christmas!

Vacation Planning

Mini Crochet Baskets

By celebrating the 4th this week, I finally kicked myself into high gear towards preparing for our annual family vacation in a few weeks.  I'm the family planner so I have started the grocery list (divided out by department - for the most part), our packing list, our eating list, toy list, well any kind of list you can imagine, I've probably thought it through.  There are going to be 16 of us this year, which is fewer than last, but still should be a blast. 

As a result of my list making, I have been spending far to much time on Pinterest of late.  But in my research I came across some really good items I thought I would share.  Who knows some of them may even be product inspiration one of these days!

These Mini Crochet Baskets from Design Sponge are so adorable.  They are perfect for keeping your little things organized.  I could almost see using a larger crochet needle and maybe some plarn to make larger ones. 

New Sew Doggie Bed

Don't forget about Fido with this McCall's pattern for a no sew doggie bed.  I've used this concept on so many other projects, I had never thought to use it to make a dog bed.  Our dog has a bed that's about 4 or 5 years old.  She might be ready for a DIY upgrade soon! 

Car Seat Pillows

Finally, these caught my eye especially with the impending 7 - 9 hour car ride we are about to endure.  SuperJen talks about these wonderful car seat pillows for your kids so they don't look as painful when the finally fall fast asleep on the car ride.  Maybe with these it won't look like my son's head is disconnected from his body.  I suppose I should sew one up to see!

Those are some of my great craft related Pinterest finds recently.  I have found so many more interesting things to try.  Such as recipes for countless cleaning products, which I intend to try soon.  I'll give you a bit of secret, most homemade cleaning products use some combination of borax, vinegar, baking soda, or water.  Depending one what you are cleaning, other ingredients are required, but if you have a supply of these in your house, you are a step in the right direction.  Especially if you plan to make some home made Gak!

What a weekend!

We had quite the weekend here.  Friday night started out with a bang, literally.  Many parts of the country, including the DC area were rocked with severe thunder storms and high winds.  There were gusts in Dayton, OH that measured 82 mph.  By the time the storm reached us, it had calmed down to a mere 76mph!  Our entire house shook during one wind gust.

This is a photo taken on Massachusetts Ave near the Vice Presidents home.

With the terrible weather, it put a huge damper on most weekend activities.  Even today, three days later, some people are still without power.  There are some predictions that people won't have power until this coming weekend.  We were lucky, out lights flickered long enough to cycle power on the cable boxes, but not our clocks.  We did loose cell phone service for most of the morning on Saturday, but that was it.

There were several deaths due to the storm.  Due to trees falling on homes. 

Were any of you effected by the weekend storms or are you shocked to hear my weekend festivities?

Photo credits

Ask the Readers

Wow!  I don't know what I've been doing lately, but all of a sudden my daily pages views have been significantly higher.  Thanks to everyone who's been stopping by!  While the readership seems to be up, I'm not getting to many comments.  As a result, I wanted to take this opportunity to really focus on you the readers. 

What are you looking for when you come to visit?  Are you interested in my tips, the shout outs to other great blogs, my latest creations?  What draws you in?  What do you miss?  Bring on the good, the bad, and the ugly today!  I want to hear from you!

Works in Progress

I feel like I'm really getting back into a consistent sewing routine and it's been far too long since I've had that.  Who would have thought that chasing after a 2 year old and working full time would take up so much of time time! Truth be told, I wouldn't change it for the world.  It just makes me respect stay at home moms all the more.  How do they get any thing other than playing/entertaining their little ones done?

I have several projects that I am actively working on these days.  Surprisingly I feel like I'm making progress on all of them.  Of course because I'm splitting my time between many of them, none of them are done yet.  I probably should rethink that multitasking idea, but I claim that my multitasking is for a different purpose.  I can't very well sit and sew while my son runs around in the living room, but I can sit and knit!  Then I do have to choose which knitting project I want to work on. 

I'm the first to admit, I tend to sit and work on my son's blanket more than I will on the one I intend to sell.  There are many reasons I claim this, first and for most, it's for my baby!  Second, I'm on a timeline for this one, it must be completed by October!  Third, it's not a very portable pattern.  I am currently using 5 skeins of yarn at a time.  Then tend to get all twisted together and if I traveled with them I feel like it would only be worse, so alas the project sits on my couch to be worked on in each spare minute my son gives me.  He's pretty excited for his brother's blanket to be finished so encourages me to work on it.  For those of you who may forget or are new, this is the blanket I'm referring to.

When I am out and about from the house and know I will have some down time, I always have my pink blanket with me to work on.  It's easy to take with me and doesn't take much thought in remembering where I am in the pattern.  I thought I was further a long on it than I thought, but then I remembered for this one I decided to use smaller needles to stitch count is different than what I'm used to.  So now I have to decide how many additional rows I want to do to make it the size I want.  Figuring this out will take some thought and a bit of a wait and see attitude, but I'm OK with that.  I'm enjoying it all the same!

I see many people showing off their works in progress on Wednesdays, so share your links!