our Easter

We had a great visit with Steve's family over Easter weekend.  We also got to see some of my family, some old friends, and a very full chipmunk. 

 

The chipmunk was cracking everyone up.  It's how serious he manages to look that really gets me. 

 

 

Steve's mom cooked a big Easter dinner, complete with asparagus.  Easter always signals the beginning of asparagus season to me and I was so excited that she'd gotten some. 

This was one of the coldest Easters in my recent memory.  Remember how we used to play croquet on Easter?   This year found me wearing two long sleeve shirts, double socks, and a down vest.  Now I understand why Steve giggled at me when I asked if I should pack short sleeves. 

We took the scenic route again and, after a missed connection, it ended up being a bit more scenic than we'd bargained for.  By the time we got home, I was ready to give up on car trips for good and just fly everywhere.  And I don't even really like flying. 

Needless to say, I'm thrilled to be at home all day today.  I've got the crock pot and the oven going and am about to divide the laundry into manageable piles.  Here's to a productive day of housework!

popcorn on the porch

How to describe a weekend with my best friend?  It was fun and crazy and messy.  It felt too short, as usual.  It was loud (every time she comes, she seems to bring more children with her...).  It was just what I needed. 

There was lots of eating, lots of laughing, lots of reminiscing.  There were made up games and hot chocolate chip cookies.  There was, thanks to our wonderful husbands, a little bit of time to talk about important things, like raising kids and being brave and big life decisions. 

Our house narrowly survived the visit.  By the time they left, the front porch was strewn with popcorn and crumpled up paper.  There were finger and nose prints on every glass surface and not a clean dish towel or napkin to be found. 

But within a few hours after they left, the house looked fairly normal, the washer was cranking out clean linens, and I found myself secretly wishing that someone would call me from the potty for help. 

 

"It's so quiet in here," Steve commented as we prepared dinner. 

In other words, we miss them terribly already. 

 

Thankfully, I have plenty to work on to keep me busy this week.  The big tote bag sale is still on and I have sold out of a couple of styles already.  We're participating in a wedding show in April, which means I'm making lots more bow ties!  And I have a fun new product that I'm photographing today that should be listed in the shop by the end of the week.  Whew- I love a long to-do list!

happy monday

Happy Monday, friends!  I hope your weekend felt like spring!

 

Ours was great.  We had sunny weather and a house full of friends.  Everyone headed home this morning and I've been working hard to restore some order to the house- it definitely looks like seven people have been living here. 

 

I'll be back tomorrow to share more about the weekend!

the best parts of the weekend

Our weekend was kind of rainy, kind of sniffle-y (it's cold season!), but also several kinds of good.  We had a rare chance to meet up with a whole slew of my extended family and we took it.  I hadn't seen some of them in a year, four years, eight years, nineteen years.  This was a visit long overdue. 

One of my favorite parts was seeing so many of my cousins, who I spent lots of time with as a child, but not so much time with since then.  I love getting to know them now, as adults.  They're even cooler than they were when we were kids. 

The other highlight of the weekend?  Our new slippers arrived in the mail.  If you recall, we're kind of serious about slippers around here. 

 

I chose these sweater bootie slippers from Land's End for optimal warmth.  My current slippers are clogs and the back of my foot and ankle get way too cold.  Land's End has their slippers on sale right now, plus I found a coupon online, but I'm telling you these things would have totally been worth full price.  I'm trying not to brag about them too much right now, because Steve's new slippers didn't fit and we have to exchange them.  It seems cruel to gloat over how toasty my feet are when he's still scuffing along in his six year old slippers. 

So today (while my feet are nice and warm) I am working on bow ties again.  We've got a lot of fun new things planned for the shop this spring and, with some luck, the first items will be rolling out early next week!  Stay tuned for more details!

we belong

After Steve and I woke up to "We Belong" by Pat Benatar one morning this week and couldn't stop singing it while we made breakfast, I commented to him that there are lots of song about belonging together.  And Steve said, "Because that's what everyone wants- to belong."
I thought about it all day.  I thought about how lucky I am to belong to Steve.  I thought about all the people that make me feel like I truly belong. 

Today is Natalie's birthday.  We're getting to the age where there are very few people we've known longer than each other. 

I know that some people think back on elementary school and remember being left out.  I remember waving to Natalie from the lunch line.  We were in different grades and couldn't sit together, but it was enough for me to know that we both wished we could sit together. 

I think some people remember middle school as feeling awkward and avoiding bullies.  I remember picking outfits together before sock hops and never feeling more confident in what I was wearing than when she gave me her stamp of approval.

High school can be a blur of breakups and not feeling popular enough.  I remember always having someone to stand with at football games and going to a dance once with just she and her date (which seemed regular at the time, but in hindsight appears slightly unorthodox). 

When you start college, everything is new and scary.  But as long as I could still stretch the cord on the phone in my dorm out into the hallway and lean against the wall to talk to her, nothing seemed that bad. 

And now we are grown.  Right now, our lives look pretty different.  She spends her days wrangling three small children, while I spend mine stitching.  And the amazing thing is, that even though I don't have a single kid and she can barely sew a stitch, we still belong with each other. 
Always have, always will.   

good sports

Saturday was Full.  We had an ambitious to-do list and somehow managed to make it through every last item and have a little fun as well. 

 

We started the day before the sun came up with a yard sale.  I consider it a total success for the following reasons:

 

We did almost no prep work.

 

We invited our neighbors to sell stuff too, and they did, and we got to hang out with them into the bargain.

 

When it was over, we did not have a single thing left.  You heard me.  No final trip to Goodwill, even.  A family who had stopped by previously came back at the end and we sent them with everything.  What a deal. 

As if hosting a successful yard sale wasn't enough, we spent the afternoon running errands, taking shop photos, and digging through huge bins of fabric scraps. 

I just need to stop for a minute and say that Steve and Cameron are such good sports.  Steve spent the better part of the afternoon wearing a blazer and wool scarf and sweating it out while I took pictures of him.  Cameron flew all the way down here to help with our yard sale and at one point during the fabric dig, there may have been more of her in the bin than out of it.  I sure am lucky to have those two.

Thankfully, Sunday was way less eventful.  Our lounge chairs got some heavy use, which always makes for a good day.  I think that a busy day followed by a day of rest is the perfect weekend formula. 

Today, I am so excited to get full-steam-ahead started on my new fall/winter product line!  I showed a sneak preview of it here and the new men's scarves are also a part of it, but I have several new patterns that I'm trying out with lots of leather accents on everything!  My goal is to have everything finished by November 3rd (for the first Plumfield Party of the season!) and posted in the shop the following week. 

 

ps- It's not too late to schedule your very own Plumfield Party!  Let me know if you're interested in having a ton of fun and getting some free products!

a chill in the air

We had such a full weekend.  In the best way.  Don't you just love weekends that are the perfect mix of relaxation and accomplishment? 

 

 

My mom came in for a night- something we'd been looking forward to all week.  We had an action packed day while she was here, but she is a champ and is usually up for anything.  Then, Sunday afternoon, my brother flew in and we got to spend a few hours with him before he headed off to his next destination. 

 

On Sunday, we also had an amazing business lunch with some new friends- Sabrina and Dana.  They both live here in Charlotte and run super successful Esty shops.  I was so happy to meet them and pick their brains and we came away with a task list and lots of great ideas! 

 

It's amazing to me how a season can sneak up on you literally overnight.  We spent most of Saturday wearing shorts and photographing butterflies, but by the time we finished dinner on Sunday, it was cold and blustery outside!

 

 

As a result of the change in weather, Steve and I kicked it into high-gear fall mode and stocked up on pumpkins over the weekend.  We also started burning pumpkin and cranberry candles AND pulled out our slippers. 

 

I've got lots to share this week, but at the moment find myself needing to move around the house to warm up.  The joys of fall! 

they just keep growing

She was just as precious as I knew she'd be.  I love to study the face of a new baby and dream about what they will become.  So much promise in such a little package. 

It really does seem like just last week that this one was born, and now she's running around and yelling out "Uncle Steve!", just like her big sister. 

And her big sister, looking more and more like her mom every day, is now old enough to tell me things like "don't put too much brown sugar in Rose's oatmeal" and "do NOT use the overnight diapers".  If it came down to it, she could totally run that household. 

I love fall visits because the weather can't be beat.  The only thing better than a Saturday walk in the fall is a Saturday walk with friends in the fall. 

Leaving is the hardest part.  But every time I started to feel sad on the ride home, I reminded myself that I'd rather have wonderful friends to visit and miss than not to have them at all. 

My to-do list for the week is a mile long, but there is something about the crisp air that makes me feel like I can tackle anything!  

family time

In the midst of all the trunk show excitement, I didn't even get to tell you about our visitors last week.  They were only here for one night but, as usual, made a big impression. 

 

After dinner, we had a group business meeting and Corbin taught me how to use things like an "iPod", while I felt about 70 years old for not knowing how to use an iPod.  If you're wondering what business purpose an iPod serves, we were taking payments at the show through Square, which is a handy little card-swiping device that plugs into an iPod or smart phone. 

 

The guys continued their portion of the business meeting in the dining room.  They sounded like such adults. 

But then the wrestling broke out, as it usually does.  It was around this time that I said to Steve, "I hope we have lots of boys one day" and he looked shocked and said, "Really?!?"

 

What is super fun is that Corbin and his friends have been coming to visit for so long now that we have a whole stock of great memories from their time with us.  Like the time John and Sophie defined their relationship in our driveway, or the time Adam googled "Smokey the Bear- how real is he?", or the time I got hit with a disc while we were out playing Frisbee golf and almost passed out in the woods.  Okay, that last one wasn't so great at the time, but it sure made for a memorable trip. 

 

And they are all getting older and moving around and getting married, but I hope they keep coming back.  I told Steve the other night that it's such a blessing to get to spend this time with my brother, who was so young when I moved out of the house.  It's like we're making up for lost time. 

We managed to get my whole family in one place for about an hour over the weekend and it was terrific.  The fact that it has become increasingly difficult to get us all in the same room just makes it all the better when we do.  I can't wait to do it again. 

 

mini vacation

We had so much fun, but oh is coming home again sweet.  I almost cried with joy when I climbed into my bed last night. 

Sadly, the weather was not as cool as I'd hoped, but we did get to go swimming.  And walk downtown to the post office.  And see lots of people. 

And dogs.  Lots of dogs. 

We also ate amazing food, like grilled chicken with homemade barbecue sauce (recipe forthcoming), plenty of salad, many ounces of frozen yogurt, steak, sweet potatoes, and loads of fruit.  I love sharing meals with people. 

Our one meal out was at Gillie's, an old favorite.  I used to eat here in high school and everything is still exactly the same.  I love that.  There was an older man playing guitar and singing in the corner behind us while we ate.  Talk about atmosphere. 

Want to know how many adults it takes to entertain three toddlers?  Only one, if it's Uncle Steve.  I know how they feel- I find him pretty enthralling too. 

I got to rub two bellies simultaneously and talk about names and nursery fabric, all while feeling pretty darn petite.  As the oldest, I used to be the biggest out of this group.  Not anymore, hehe...

My mom is a great hostess and we totally took over her house and she didn't even mind.  It was fun to see my sisters and our friends and I felt a bit of disbelief this morning when I realized it would just be me at home all day. 

But- I have several orders to finish up, as well as a mountain of laundry, so there's that to keep me company.  PLUS sewing class to look forward to tomorrow night- I can't believe we're on week three already!