Tomorrow is giveaway day!

Don't forget - the winner of my little giveaway will be announced tomorrow night!  Make sure you get your entries in before the deadline (9 p.m. EST).

And because this is a buyer's market, I figured I'd put this out there ... Anyone looking for a gorgeous house?

It's GIVEAWAY time!

I have been frantically cleaning up my studio, and I'll explain why in another post at another time, but I have been putting together this awesome little pile of goodies for you guys. 

How would you like to have these bad boys in your hands?

What you're looking at is:

"Pretty Little Cozies" which is chock full of little doodads and cutsie little things you can make for yourself or loved ones.  (Whoever wins this giveaway:  I hope you make me a sewing machine cover because I never made one for myself, and that was why I bought this book ... just sayin').

"The New Handmade, Simple Sewing for Contemporary Style" ... I bought this one for no particular reason, but it's also filled with goodies that you can sew up for gifts.

"Lots of Dots, Quilts & More" by Cotton Way.  Need I say more?  Bonnie is a genius and this book has several easy patterns to prove it - all with, you guessed it, dots!

There are 4 random quilt patterns, 1 of which is an adorable paper piecing project by Paper Panache!

And of course a beautiful charm pack of Fresh Cottons designed by Joanna Figueroa (Fig Tree & Co.)

So ... there's quite a bit of inspiration packed into this giveaway, and it's all going to go to ONE lucky person.  Want to nab it for yourself?  Here's what you do ...

For ONE entry:  Leave a comment for this post.  Tell me how awesome I am, or how awesome you are ... or anything really.  Just leave a comment.

For ANOTHER entry:  Become a follower of my blog.  It's easy - just click the button right over there (yeah, the one on the right, under the other followers).  Leave a second comment letting me know that you're a follower (or already were a follower).

For a THIRD entry:  Blog about this giveaway.  Come back here, and leave a third comment with a link to your blog - hey, I want to see it, and become one of YOUR followers (if I'm not already).  It's only fair, right?

So, you have 3 possible chances to win.  I can assure you that I will probably ADD to the stash of goodies before it goes out, so I'm going to let the giveaway run a FULL WEEK to give me a chance to go through my stash of stuff in the back.  I'm not going to post about the extras that were included for the winner, you're just going to be surprised if you win.   ;o)

That being said, the winner will be chosen via Random Number Generator on Friday, September 10th at 9 p.m. EST ... give or take an hour or so.

GRADUATED!!

This evening, I graduated from The Salon Professional Academy in Tampa as a full specialist.  It was a bittersweet event.  Good, because now it's finally over ... and sad, because now it's over.

As a graduation gift, my husband told me that he bought me one of these:

This little phrase is popping up all over our house.  I have it hanging in my studio, there's a postcard hanging on the fridge ... you get the idea.  I say it a lot too.  Whenever someone is having a bad day, life is throwing lemons our way, or just as an everyday little "pick me up" ... there's usually not a day that goes by without one of us saying this catchy little phrase.  It's only fitting that I should be wearing it around my neck too.

If you find you need one of these too, you can find the Etsy seller here.  She makes them in all kinds of colors.

And on another note, stay tuned and make sure you visit me on Friday.  I'll be updating with the giveaway information!     :o) 

A productive day

I finally managed to lock myself in the studio long enough to get caught up with my bee blocks. 

Ahhhh ...

That's me breathing a sigh of relief.  One commitment down, only a gazillion to go.

I was thinking that I might rip apart Big T's closet to make it more of an office.  Here's my inspiration picture:

Here's what I'm working with:

Yep, it's going to be quite a feat!  First order of business is buying primer & paint and finishing his God-forsaken walls.  Those have been khaki and yellow for longer than I care to admit.  The hubster managed to prime the trim forever ago (think about how long ago he was laid off and you're somewhere in the ballpark of that time).  We haven't done anything else to them since ... yikes!

His closet is actually roomy, so I don't for-see having a problem getting this sort of design to work.  Now, if I could just get him to keep it organized, we'd be in business!

So, first order of business is painting the walls, taking down the closet doors, uninstalling the closet system, and THEN building his new computer area.  Little does he know he's getting a laptop for Christmas (I can say that here because he's NEVER visited my blog - it's too girly for him).  And by laptop, I mean one that we've had and don't use anymore.  His grandpa is going to fix it up for him (clean out the hard drive & make it faster).  But, it's new to Big T, so that's what really matters.

I'll be sure to chronicle the progress, so stay tuned!

And I haven't forgotten that I mentioned having a giveaway ... I'm still looking around for goodies to include!

It's the final countdown!

As of today (8/18) I have 7 days left of school before I can proudly call myself a full specialist!  Of course, 4 of those days are me busting my hump to get my services in before I can sit for finals on the other 3 days ... ouch.  I still need about 20 services (mostly acrylic nails and fills). 

So, for the last 3 months, my house has suffered, my kids have sacrificed, my husband has become slightly disgruntled over my lack of house cleaning ... BUT it will soon be over.

I've had 2 interviews, dropped off my resume at a few places, and talked to a few salon owners.  The prospects for finding work right out of school are amazing!  And I am so excited!

I hope that you'll continue to bear with me through these final 2 weeks.  I promise to get back to my more crafty side then and I'll celebrate with a small giveaway! 

Until then ....

Here's the deal ...

Okay, so I started working.  That's why I've been pretty MIA in blogland lately.  I'm still trying to figure out this whole "juggling-of-the-schedule" thing, but I think I'm finally starting to grasp it a little bit. 

If you've been wondering where I am, that's it in a nutshell.

We also sent the oldest (Big T) to camp this week.  He left on Saturday and doesn't get back until Aug. 7th.  The house is peaceful, and quiet, but in an eerie sort of way.  There's definitely much less chaos in the house whenever you are able to get rid of your kids for a little bit ... or at least that's the way it is around here.

And in other news, Little M started preschool when I started working.  He's adjusted well, which surprised the heck out of me, but I'm glad just the same.

What's nice is that I'm working part-time hours, and my boss is the hubster.  Doesn't get much easier than that!  What's not so nice is that I feel like a mad-woman Monday through Wednesday because I work AND go to school those days, and by the time Thursday rolls around all I can do is catch up on housework and laundry.  Ugh ... however, I think that Friday I'm blocking out my afternoon for sewing ... I'll let you know how it goes.  

Toodles.

Life ...

I'm still here ... I'm still alive.  I'll update later, when life takes a bit of a breather ... maybe sometime next week perhaps.

Better luck next time ...

Today hasn't been one of those "hit it out of the ball park" days as far as sewing goes ...

First, I was trying to follow a tutorial for one of the requested bee blocks for Mary, and let's just say I was losing my mind trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing.  After a lot of cursing (thank the man upstairs that the kids weren't in the room), I decided that it would be best to send Mary her stuff back, as is, and let her finish the blocks.  I'm sad to say that she's getting a bunch of fabric scraps randomly sewn together and nothing looks remotely close to a log cabin block.

Then, I was trying to finish up the circles block for Lori - and as I was cutting the circles out, the rotary cutter got away from me and made three tiny slits into her background fabric, making it useless to me.  Ugh.  So, she's also getting her block back, unfinished ... sheesh.

Finally, I thought I would try to redeem myself by tackling a Henrietta turtle pin cushion, compliments of the Heather Bailey pattern I bought forever ago.  My Henrietta looks incredibly bloated.  In fact, her feet don't touch the ground.  I won't be posting a picture, don't ask.

It's been one of those days, full of sewing, but little accomplished.

I did manage to get this finished though:

And I hope that my partner for the Scrappy Pincushion Swap on Flickr enjoys it.  It was the only good thing to come out of my studio this morning.

Happy Father's Day!

Make sure you hug Dad and tell him that he's still cool.

Movie night quilts ...

Between school, and the projects I've got going on here at home, there's not much time for quilting, but I am slowly (ever so slowly) working on sewing projects too.

I'm still participating in a couple of bees.  One of them is soon to be finished, and then I'll just be in 2 bees.  Whew ...

I'm also participating in a couple of swaps.  One of which (the Pillow Talk Swap), I've already completed the work for that one ... my partner got her pillow and loved it!  Here's what I sent:

I'm also participating in the Scrappy Pincushion Swap, but I'm still brainstorming as to what I'll make for my partner there.  Unfortunately, there's no Flickr mosaic for inspiration, so I'm sort of winging it here. 

And, on top of those things, I'm working on 3 quilts.  We're trying to start a tradition of movie night at our house.  At first, I thought this might be a once a week thing, but with the pressure of school, summer camp (for big T), work for the hubster ... anyway, movie night has turned into a "when there's a spare moment" thing.  It's harder in the summer to get us all in one place to watch a movie.  Not to mention that as soon as the lights go down, so do my husband's eyelids.  I think he's probably seen 1 or 2 movies in his life, the rest were just opportunities for him to take a nap. 

Because of that, I thought it might be nice for each of us to have our own movie night quilt.  Something that reflected our personalities or what not, or just pretty.  So, I'm working on 3 quilts at random.  Luckily, 2 of those quilts have had a lot of help from the 2 bees that I'm in.  But the third quilt (for Big T), I think I'm going to do all on my own, sampler style.

I love sampler quilts, and when I saw that Amy was doing a quilt-along, I couldn't pass it up.  Here's a button to her blog with all the info you'll need if you decide to join along!  I think I'm going to use scraps for this ...