It looks like so much fun! How could it not be with this advertising photo?! It would be fun to load up that pink Cadillac, grab your poodle skirt, and go, right?!
The retreat will be held in Las Vegas in early September. Sounds like so much fun. It's bad timing for me, with the new school year starting then, but a girl can dream, right?
They are also going to have classes, make and takes, and a fashion show.
Amanda Herring (The Quilted Fish) will be there, too. I love Amanda. She is just so fun, supportive, and wonderful. Worth the price just to hang out with her, if you ask me!
It sounds like a ton of fun.
So little time, so much fun to be had.
I had a little bit of a stressful day yesterday. But I had a nice time dreaming about being able to go on a retreat like this...some day!
I do have a little retreat coming up....it will be nice...but it's more like a sew in. I would love to go to a larger, national retreat like this some day....one where there are classes, etc. Woudn't you? Have you been on one, yourself? I have but it's been a long time, and it was quite a bit different than the one described above.
The past couple of weeks have been really busy for me between work and personal commitments. Not much time for anything else! The next few weeks will be just as crazy. This is always a really busy time for me, between a couple of major conferences that my students and I do presentations at, the university's spring break, and this year some consulting I'm doing over break. Coming up, we have intervew weekend (which I'm in charge of) on campus, where we interview and select our next crop of graduate students. We are also searching for a new faculty member. It's nuts! I really wanted to share stuff about Sweet Pea's Valentine's Day party, but I just haven't had time. It was a success, I will say.
I am getting a little sewing done here and there. I just have limited time to photograph and blog! I guess if I have to choose between blogging and sewing, these days it's sewing. Hope you can understand! Time permitting, I'll just snap a photo with my phone (like I did here) and give you a glimpse of what's going on. Here's a peek at a project Sweet Pea and I are working on together. She picked out all the fabric (very proud of her for making excellent choices), and she's helping me put it together. It's a machine embroidery project, as you may have guessed form the hoops in the photo.
Any guesses on what it will be? Kind of an odd shape, huh?
I'll show you the finished product soon and give you a review of the design.
I've been amazed at Sweet Pea's tolerance for my sewing time when I'm working on a project for her--a project she's insanely excited about. She wants it done. She even asked me to go downstairs and sew for her this morning! LOL.
I hope to stop by all your blogs soon. Maybe spring break (next week already!) will give me a chance to do some personal reading again! Oh, and I'm behind on my personal emails again. Sorry! Thanks for hanging in there with me! I miss my interactions with all of you at times like this!
Happy Valentine's Day! I'm linking up with Cindy at Live A Colorful Life blog for her Really Random Thursday. Today, I'm doing an "I {Heart}..." edition.....stuff I love. I mean, it is Valentine's Day, after all! :-)
I {heart} this video. Funny and informative. If you're a woman, you should watch it. I laughed so hard, because this feels like my life (minus the heart attack--I hope). But it really will help me remember the signs of heart attack in women (far better than reading about them!).
I {heart} vintage toys. We were in Goodwill the other day dropping something off, and I saw this. Do you remember the Barbie Friend Ship?! I showed it to Sweet Pea and told her I used to have one. She thought it was about the most awesome thing ever and wanted to buy it with her allowance money. You see the $25 price tag? Well, it was on sale for 50% off. She got it for $13 and couldn't be happier. I told her it was in good shape and if she played gently with it, she could probably sell it on Ebay when she is done for even more money. That made her happy!
Right now, she's just enjoying playing with it. They don't make toys like this any more!
And, of course, I {heart} my precious Sweet Pea.
I {heart} our cats. I am not a cat person. But these cats have weaseled their way into my heart. Spidey is getting so big. He is much bigger than his mama!
I {heart} a new bathroom! We've torn out the one downstairs and are getting ready for new tile, a new shower, and a new vanity. We already replaced the toilet.
I also {heart} my handy hubby, who works so hard at this stuff.
I {heart} all the new colored baker's twine out there these days. Great for lots of things. We are having fun with these colors right now. But I love all the colors. Thimbleanna has this for sale, if you want some. You can get it here. I {heart} Thimbleanna for being so kind and generous to me! :-)
I {heart} a new bundle of zippers. I just like to look at them...so pretty all together. I had to get more. I cleaned out my stash of them when I made all the earbud pouches for Christmas!
I {heart} zipit. I love that they send you a color card of their zippers with every order. Oh, and a Miracle Fish Fortune Teller. Sweet Pea has a lot of fun with that!
And let us not forget....I {heart} chocolate. Especially when it comes in pink and white. (Even better when it has peanuts with it!)
I'm having a crazy busy week! (What else is new, right?)
I wanted to show you a really cute and quick project, just in case you're in the need for something quick for tomorrow! (Valentine's Day! Don't forget!)
This will be my little thank you gift for the students and parents who have helped organize Sweet Pea's Valentine's Day party at school. I'm so pleased with how it turned out. On top, you see a little sewn envelope. More on that in a minute. Below the envelope, you see a candy bar I wrapped in a special wrapper. I'll tell you more about that on Friday. I put it on top of the candy bar so you can see the size of the finished envelope (and because that's how I'll package it all together). It's fairly diminuitive, but really cute!
Here is the little envelope. It's so cute, I think! I'm stuffing it with a kazoo, some bubbles, and a thank you note (which was printed from the same set as the wrapper for the candy bar--again, more on that on Friday). I think I'll look for a little sweet treat to stick in there, too, when I stop at the store tonight.
But I wanted to show you this envelope in case you need a quick little sewing project for a valentine. I stumbled on it because My Girlfriend's Quilt Shop (love that shop and their Wow Me Wednesday deals and projects) was selling little kits to make them. I thought they were so cute, I ordered a couple. The kit came with all the fabric, ribbons, ric rac, and buttons. That made it so easy for me to whip these up. The kit also came with a link to the free on-line pattern, which you can download if you are interested.
The envelopes are pretty fun and easy to sew up. I made 15 of these in about 2 hours! All it takes for one envelope is two charm (5") squares, a little ribbon, a little ric rac, and a button!
I confess I cheated a little. The pattern says to thread the ribbon on an embroidery needle and string it through the button to adhere it to the envelope. Yeah, right! As if that ribbon was going to go through a needle, the fabric, and ribbon! haha! So, I used Fabri-Tac glue and glued the ribbon and bow on. Worked like a charm. (No pun intended.)
These were so cute, I decided to give one to each of my secretaries for Valentine's Day, too. And I made one for Sweet Pea to give her teacher. Easy peasy!
Well, I have to run. Much to do. But I wanted to make this quick post today in case you were in a bind and needed a quick, easy idea for tomorrow!
Last night, Sweet Pea finished making her valentines for her friends. I thought I would show them to you now, in case you're looking for a cute idea for valentines.
Aren't they cute? I loved how they looked all put togehter like this. Such pretty colors.
Here is a close up. When we went to look for valentines, Sweet Pea didn't really see anything that "tripped her trigger." But she loved these bubbles. And they were not expensive. We found them at Target...a package of 24 for a few bucks. So, I bought them for her. We then came home and searched on Pinterest and Google to see what we could find. And we found a great tutorial and printable download for this project over at Simply Modern Mom. Click here to go to the post and read the tutorial.
You might notice ours looks a little different than the sample. That's mostly because I downloaded the printable a couple of weeks ago and never referred to the tutorial again when I sat down to make this. So, I remembered it wrong and forgot some of the details. haha.
I took the printable to Kinkos and had it copied on white cardstock. (There are four to a page, so I needed about 6 copies. I think the color copies on carstock were about $1.50 each. Not too much cost.) I brought the copies home, and Sweet Pea got out the little Fiskar's trimmer I have and went to town on cutting things out. She was so independent at it, I was a little blown away. I had some red cardstock, and she got out the tape runner and started mounting it on red, then trimmed the red around it. Again, so independent! (The original sample is not mounted on red cardstock.)
We didn't make a To/From tag, as is shown in the original. I really like the sample with a tag. But Sweet Pea wasn't into that. Instead, she just wrote on the card directly. It worked out fine. I also forgot to put the little foam dot on here to adhere the bubbles to the card. The bubbles seem to be staying on just fine without it. (But I do think it would be more secure. I might add a little tape dot on there. We'll see.
I punched holes in one as a template and then gave that to Sweet Pea to use for the rest of the cards.. Then, Sweet Pea marked the rest of them using that one as a template. I punched for her. She cut the ribbons, and I tied the bubbles on for her. She said to Papa Pea tonight, "Look, Dad. Mom and I are doing teamwork!" It was really cute. She loved making her own valentines and thought it was much more fun than buying them.
Many thanks to Simply Modern Mom for a really cute idea and a nice little download that was a real life saver for me. This was pretty quick and easy to execute and was a ton of fun for both me and Sweet Pea.
I know Sweet Pea will need to make a valentine box at school. When I was at Joann's this weekend, I picked up this little metal mailbox for her to decorate. I think it was 60% off or something like that. I also got her some stickers, letter stickers, and self-adhesive ribbon. I gave it all to her and told her to have at it. Here is what she came up with. She just loves it.
Somehow in the midst of all this, I got roped in to coordinating her Valentine's Day party for her classroom. I'm in the throes of planning that now. I'll show you photos later. I am planning a post on the full plan for the party, with links for downloads, etc. Unfortunately, I won't have it together early enough to help you plan something for this year. But maybe it will be helpful to someone for next year. I'm really lucky that several of our university students have pitched in to help me, and a number of other parents have pitched in to help as well. So, I've been able to come up with some ideas and have delegated a large part of the preparations to others. Many hands sure make light work. More on the party later.
Valentine's Day has never been one of my favorite holidays. It's sort of like, "Meh," to me. But I know the kids get into it, so I'm trying to get into the spirit. :-)
Do you have any special Valentine's Day traditions or plans?
