Shabby Apple dress giveaway!

While I’m plugging away at a few projects I thought now would be the perfect time for a giveaway! With Valentines day right around the corner who doesn’t need a great new dress?

Shabby Apple has a great site filled with amazing women’s dresses, little girls dresses, even maternity dresses and swimwear.  I love the vintage inspired styles, especially this navy blue Champs Elysees dress and the super cute scalloped Red Fox dress. I would go into the woods more often if I had a dress like that.


The one thing I’m always on the look out for though is a really cute little black dress. I found this black Boogie Woogie dress and loved it.

Today I get to give away this dress to one of you lucky ducks! Here's what you have to do to get your hands on your very own Shabby Apple Boogie Woogie dress.
To Enter- Go now to Shabby Apple on Facebook and "like" them, then come back and leave a comment on this post letting me know you did.  If you don’t want to do the Facebook thing, no prob. Just head over to Shabby Apple and tell me what dress is your favorite. That's it!  One entry comment per person please.
The Nitty Gritty- The giveaway will go until Thursday Feb. 2nd and the winner will be announced on Friday the 3rd.  You must have a US shipping address and there will be no exchanges for the winning dress.

Shabby Apple is also graciously giving my readers a 10% off coupon code! Just use code everydaychaos10off at checkout. Just in time to find a new dress for your hot valentines date ;o). I’m a sucker for a sale, but hurry this code is good for 30 days only.

Have a fantastic weekend and good luck!

Must.Keep.Folding

Like so many people I started out the new year with a couple of goals. Not really resolutions because I looked it up and it’s a firm decision to do or not to do something. I don’t like deciding anything, especially firmly. I want to focus my efforts on a few things. Slowly. I want each day to be better than the day before. I won’t accomplish anything if I bite off an entire year at a time firmly. One little thing at a time one day at a time. I can do that!

There’s just one hang up. I’m     s   l   o   w    .  It takes me forever to do anything.

I thought to start I should clean up my sewing space and organize my fabrics. Fabrics are happy and it’s something I like to do so I thought it would be a great place to start. Get a little organized so it doesn’t look like an chimp sews in my room you know. 

I love the way fabric shelves look when they are stacked like mini bolts and you can see everything. I thought I would give it a go.

NO ONE told me how painful it is. It’s brutal. They look nice, especially when they are tipped the right way in my shelves but holy guacamole. This took me a week of folding while Jakey was napping. This is one tote of fabric- I have more taking over my living room.

I won’t fold it all. I can’t fold it all. I will die. If I wasn’t such a control freak I would pay my kids to fold it for me. The only thing that makes this somewhat bearable is that it beats the heck out of folding laundry. I think I need to make some dresses this weekend before I pull out another tote just so I won’t have to fold any more than I have to. If you see a rash of dresses cropping up around here you’ll know why ;o).

I’m going to wrap up in a blanket tonight, sip some hot chocolate, and fold until I hate me some fabric designers and super duper sales and vow to never buy a single yard again. Have a great Thursday!

Merry Belated Christmas!

I hope your Christmas was as awesome as mine turned out to be. There were plagues running rampant through my relatives house so we had to change plans very last minute, which just about killed me. I thought I was going to lose it when I didn’t know where we were going and it was the 23rd. Then 2 of my kiddos started throwing up the 24th. By Christmas all the kids were down and out with the flu.

As sick as everyone was I barely noticed. We had fun, Santa still brings toys to kids who are out of town and sick, and I had a ton of helping hands to make it that much easier for me. Not how I planned it to go but considering all that was going on it couldn’t have gone any better. I love it when things just work out anyway! Sorry to everyone that got sick or will. Not the gift I meant to leave!

I did manage to have a little fun before we left. Ashlyn and I made these for her school party earlier in the week-

North Pole cupcakes found here.

I eeked out a little sewing time to make a gift for my little sister. She’s a chocoholic cupcake baking maniac. She told me she liked purple and lime green, which I don’t have a ton of but found a cute stripe that worked. I cut the cupcake out with my super fantastic cutter and sewed it on. Fast, cute, and easy.

Denim apron tutorial found here.

 

Then I heard that my sister wasn’t going to do Christmas jammies for her kids- blasphemy!- and I’m a freak and wanted them to have a pair to open like everyone else so I spent 2 hours whipping these up the day before we left. I know, not the warm fuzzy winter jammies I would have liked to make them but my mom reminded me they wear shorts and flip flops in the snow so I wasn’t worried. Time wise these were the fastest to make. I’m making a bunch more for my girls for summer!

So by now my house was a total disaster so I thought, what the heck- why not really have some fun so I made all my sisters kids some pillowcases to go with their jammies.

The pictures are cruddy, trying to pack and wait for the right lighting conditions don’t really go together but they really did turn out just as I hoped. They definitely look better in person though.

And then… yes, I had more projects, but this is the sad ending to my super long post. The projects I wanted to love the most, the ones I devoted the most time to, the two I was sure were going to be a hit and my sister in law and mom were going to love- didn’t turn out! I spent weeks spray painting and sanding but they just got uglier and uglier until I ran out of time and had to cop out with a gift certificate and a promise to get it done before next year.  It’s the thought that counts though right? Not to mention I’m going to have an entire year to gussy them up. I didn’t even start 3 projects. So much for a project free Christmas ;o).

The flu has left the building and so will all the old toys, outgrown clothes, the tree, and anything else I can get my hands on today. It felt great to sew stuff again so now all I want to do is clean clean clean to have room to make more sewing messes! Spring dresses are calling my name.

Have a great Wednesday!

Present.

I don’t know about you guys but I am loving the end of this year. I’ve been cozied up in our little house, rearranging things and getting ready for the holidays. I love happy endings and I am 100% optimistic that this year is going to end just like that.

I’m making it my goal not to stress out and freak out about much. I still do no matter how hard I try but I’ve cut the freak show to a minimum. I’ve finished my Christmas shopping except a few small things and have a little list of things I need to (because I want to) make and the rest of the time I get to enjoy my family. I decided early on this fall that I wanted to be there this year. I wanted to be a part of our family, not the crazy sleep deprived woman slaving away in the kitchen with threads hanging all over her freaking out that she forgot to buy marshmallows for the hot chocolate on Christmas Eve and all is lost.

Not this year. I’ve made nothing crafty so far and I have gone to bed before 10:30 most nights but I feel good about it. We have marshmallows and my kids have a mom. A mostly well rested one. It’s taking all I have not to cut into Christmas dress fabric and make 4 dresses right now though. Do you ever feel guilty for not making a homemade-ish Christmas? Then guilty if you do for staying up until the wee hours and not being much of a human for the holiday? I know there are those wonder women out there that can do both and are really awesome but that’s not where I’m at.  I feel really guilty… must. stay. strong! I just have to keep telling myself it’s better for me to be present than to make all the presents this year.

 

This helps. My little buddy had his first birthday last month. Jake went from this tiny perfect 7 pound lump to this chubby frosting eating one man demolition crew, still perfect. I don’t want to miss a minute of it.

He’s grown so much. They do that. I hate that part. He’s so fun and such a boy.

A little about Jake at 1 year old- He loves balls and cars. He gives the best around the neck squeezes and open mouth kisses (on the cheek) and makes me melt. He growls and has the Musgrove baby scream. He has the cutest laugh and pudgiest hands. He won’t eat breakfast foods or bread but loves casseroles. He loves to see what’s inside things and takes things apart, usually our remotes and the computer speakers. His biggest obsession right now is our Christmas tree. Taking the ornaments off (don’t worry, they’re plastic on the bottom half), shaking it, crawling under it and up inside it, and basically making me thankful to have a reason to set one up in the first place :). Our tree is really pretty from about 3 feet from the bottom and up.

Here’s to a stress free mom filled holiday season!  I’ll let you know if I make it or fall off the wagon.

Out with bananas and in with the fat man.

A little Halloween recap, since I conveniently (for me) skipped over all of October :). My boys. Santa is going to give them a stick for Christmas. A girl fighting off stick because they are too darn cute.

My little Guppy. She corrected everyone that called her a goldfish. She was a fantail goldfish.

I was gluing and cutting up until the hour before she needed it for school and forgot how small she is. She’s petite and I cut the tail too long so she had to hold it up during her school parade. The tail was trimmed before trick or treating so it worked out alright in the end. 

I’m pretty proud of this one.  I used one of my hooded sweatshirts as a guide and sewed a base to glue 375 cupcake liners to. It took me 2 days from start to finish so it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I was planning on covering the arms but she wouldn’t have been able to bend them. The tail actually did fan out as she walked, that’s all I hoped for.

I really didn’t want to mess with fake fur this time so I compromised with Mary and she went from Santa to being her favorite cartoon super hero Word Girl. I made this one first so it’s not as fancy as I would have liked it to be. I had a week to do 3 costumes so I rushed through Mary’s first and found myself with more time than I thought I needed for the others.  Next year I’ll make hers last so she can get the fancy one.

Kaci was our little mermaid. I’ve always loved Heather Bailey’s mermaid costume so it was easy to figure out how to make it when Kaci told me what she wanted to be. She picked the colors and I went to town.  I made hers last so any time I had left over got spent embellishing and playing around with this. There’s glitter glue everywhere! I was going to make her a fancy belt to cover up the waist and a cape because it was flipping freezing but didn’t quite make time for that. Glitter is warm enough right??

A new record for me- 3 costumes in 7 days!  I went to bed before 1 a.m. every night. I wish I would have started earlier so they would have turned out like I really wanted them to but so is the life of a procrastinator.

Kennedy went as Rapunzel with a plastic frying pan. I don’t have a picture of her alone for some reason? I always manage to forget one of them. At least it’s not the same kid every year or they would start getting a complex. I have a group shot of her so maybe I’ll crop her out for her scrapbook.

So now that Halloween is over all I’ve been thinking about is Christmas stuff. I’m getting excited to make some stuff this year. Woo hoo for gift giving and making stuff!

Have a fantastic November!  Just kidding, I’ll come back before December. I have some stuff to show off.