Ho, Ho, Ho It's a Holiday Trunk Show!

Meeting Suzie

Suzie is J's elf who is visiting us until Christmas. If you don't already know what the new Elf on the Self tradition, you can can read all about it here. And to be honest, J might still be a little young for it, but I just can't resist getting in on the fun. So I will be sharing our adventures with you. I will try to remember to post our little lady every night on Facebook. And I will do a weekly wrap up her on the blog. I hope you enjoy our shenanigans. Here is the story of how Suzie arrived at our home. (As a side note, please excuse the messy hair... J was having a bad hair day).

J heard a knock on the door, and we all went to see who it might be. J was very excited to see a package on the front step. She quickly retrieved the package and brought it in to un-wrap it.

Oh What a Trip!

Oh what a trip indeed! For those of you that do not know, we made a surprise trip to Arkansas to visit our nephews, my SIL, and her husband. The recently moved out there and were unable to take all their furniture with them at the time. So me and the hubbs, along with J and my father-in-law, packed up a truck and our car and hit the road.

Of course I had the Bradley's Fun Day that Saturday (which was so amazing btw!) so we got a late start on Saturday. We stopped for the about halfway for the night and finished the rest of our trip in the morning. And of course we got lost (a regular occurrence for us it seems). So the surprise was spoiled, but we were all so happy to see each other.

Halloween 2012

What a fun day we had! We started the day with story time at The Bookshelf where we heard many Halloween inspired stories. And since Lucy and Leo's is in the same space, we couldn't leave without a cupcake. We ate them so fast, I forgot to take a picture. Next it was on to the pumpkin patch. We went to the same patch as last year and J even wore the same dress! She had a great time sitting on all the big pumpkins and picking out her small pumpkin to take home.

We're moving... AGAIN!

Yeap, you read that right. This will be our 3rd move in 27 months. What the hay! We have a running joke that every time I start decorating we move! You remember that awesome Photo Gallery Wall I created? We took it down tonight. It was kind of depressing. But I guess the fun news is I get to do it all over again (did I do a good job sounding excited?).

Every move has been very unexpected and very quick and this one is no exception. But we are always excited about each new chapter, including this one. And since we are pros at this by now and we have all month to make the move, I am hoping that it won't be too crazy. Don't worry, we are not leaving Tallahassee. We are just moving further north. As many of you know, the hubby works in Georgia so we are very excited to be a tad closer to shorten his drive. I can not tell you how wonderful it is going to be to have him home a little earlier every day!

Our Trip to NC

We just visited Statesville, North Carolina for a wedding this past weekend. Two of our very dear friends finally tied the knot! It was a long time in the making (they were engaged for 9 years!), but everything was absolutely beautiful. From the weather and gorgeous fall country side backdrop to the wedding decorations and the exquisite hand made wedding dress, everything was perfect. We are so excited for the two of them and wish them many, many more years of love and happiness.

And what better time of year for a visit. If you don't know already, I absolutely positively LOVE LOVE LOVE fall. It is by far my favorite season. I love the cool temperature (which allows me to wear my favorite piece of clothing... scarfs!). And I love the changing leaves... which we do not get here in Florida :(. So this weekend was a real treat for me. 

On Friday we took J to a beautiful park complete with a pond full of ducks! She just loved it.

This Week at HCD

As I sit here typing, I am enjoying the wonderfully cool breeze from my open window. Oh how I love fall. I wish there was a place on earth were the temperature was 65 every day of the year. I would so move there. But since there is not, I am enjoying every minute of this perfect weather while it lasts. I foresee many trips to the park in our near future.

I send out the monthly newsletter last week. Did you get yours? If not, you can check it out here. If you would like to receive them, fill out this form. In it, I shared that we will be traveling out of state for a wedding the weekend of Oct 20th. That means that my turn around time will increase to 2-3 weeks most likely starting next week. I also put a deadline of Oct 16th on all Halloween orders. So if you have been eyeing the Daphne or reversible Halloween/Thanksgiving dresses, get your booty in gear and order those babies!

This week I have been hard at work filling all the recent orders from the One Week Boutique and the tons and tons of Daphne dresses. (Who know they would be so popular?!)  But I am also working on  getting some new things together for the Mom's Time Out Fall Market this coming Sunday (Oct 14th). If you have not been to one of these events in the past, they are excellent. Bring the whole family or come alone for some stress free shopping. Either way you will have a great time. To find a list of all the vendors that will be there, check out the Facebook Event page here. It is being hosted by Earth Fare again this year, so you can get your fun on and then head straight on in to get your grocery shopping done. I hope you will come out and see me and and the many other wonderful moms at the event. 

Mom's Time Out Fall Market

Sunday October 14th

12 pm - 4 pm

Earth Fare - 2425 Apalachee Pkwy

Well I'm off to put J down for her nap and then it is back to the sewing table! See you this weekend. 

Burnin' the Midnight Oil

Click here to view Etsy Listing

My oh my have things been crazy around here! You ladies are keeping me busy in the sewing room and I love it. With the hubby out of town all of last week, I have been staying up much later than usual to work on orders. I'm beginning to feel like a college student staying up all night and sleeping in every morning. Ironically  I actually had mostly 8am classes and did not really do a whole lot of staying up late and sleeping in back then.

I've had tons of orders for Daphne dresses these past few weeks. You might remember quite a bit back when I shared this little number for a little girls birthday party. Well little did I know it would be such a hit. I had no idea there was that many little Scooby Doo fans out there! If you are interested in one of these dresses for your little one, please order ASAP. I am only going to do one more batch of these before Halloween. We have a wedding that we are going to in North Carolina the weekend of the 20th, so I will be taking some time off around then and will not be able to get another batch out before Halloween. I'm thinking the cut off date for orders will be the 16th.

Click here to view Etsy Listing

The Honey Pie Collection

Fall 2012 Photo Shoot

Debuting the HootyCutie Designs Fall 2012 clothing line! The Honey Pie Collection. 

That's right it finally (almost) here. I am so excited to share this photo shoot with you all. The amazingly wonderful Mesa Cole captured some unbelievable shots! It was a crazy 2 hours, but boy did it pay off.

The Happs

Things have been crazy around here! Since the week before J's party until now I fell like we have been going non-stop. And I have been sewing like a mad woman! Between orders from the big the sale, the fall line (only one item left!), preparing for upcoming craft shows, and football season my machines have been smokin' almost literally... I had to replace a bulb and the new one was bad and blew the fuse to the whole room. Craziness!!

In other news, thanks to my new (to me) sewing machine from my wonderful grandmother, I officially own a Bernina! It has actually been a wonderful addition for me. I am now able to have two different machines set up for different purpose (like a double needle) and I am saving tons for time not having to switch things out constantly. Although I may need a larger table now...

Monster Bash!

I am so excited to share J's second birthday party with you. We had a excellent time at the party, but I really actually enjoyed prepping for this party as well. This year we went with a monster theme. My initial though was to do an under the sea party due to J's obsession with Nemo, but I am Nemoed out these days! I wanted to choose something really different anyways. I'm not really into all the tiaras and tea parties kind of stuff, and lets face it... these early parties are really more about what mommy likes anyways. Besides, I like giving my self (and the very talented Marcy with Magic by Marcy) a challenge (hehe). And after I found these adorable monsters from Kelly Medina Studios on Etsy I was set on monsters. (I changed the colors of these monsters)

Yarn Chandlers Tutorial

I have been gearing up for J's birthday party this weekend for a few weeks now. But this past weekend we kick it in high gear and started completing some of the projects I had on my to-do list. So I decided I would share some of the craft projects I did as a lead up to the big party post.
First up are these really fun yarn chandlers. You probably made a few of these growing up, but believe it or not this was my first time. It is very similar to paper mache which I actually did do once in school.
I have been planning on make these for quite some time. I crochet a blanket for J's new room a while back and have not made much progress on her room since. But now that I have these complete, I'm hoping it motivates me to get it finished. Anyways... on to the tutorial.
I actually got the idea from Pintrest (aww... don't you love Pintrest!). It came from the Hostess with the Mostest blog (which I love!). She does a good job of outlining the process. But I thought I would share my photos of the process as well.

Happy 2nd Birthday to J!

I can't believe that my little girl is two years old! It is amazing how much she has changed over this year. She went from a little baby to a little kid in the blink of an eye. She wasn't even walking at her first birthday, and now she is running and jumping all over the house! In the past two weeks she has had vocabulary explosion. We are gearing up for her party this weekend, so I have some fun tutorials for you this week. I will be sure to share her party here as well.

I am also working on the fall line. You may have seen some of the sneak peaks over on the Facebook page. I am having so much fun putting it together and I really hope you guys love it as much as I do. And the best part of all, Mesa Cole Photography will be photographing the line. I am so excited because I just love her work! So be on the look out for more information about the new line set to debut in early September.

I have also been working on some holiday dresses to have at the craft shows. I had lots of requests last year to have stuff ready to take home from the show. So wish granted. There will be tons of goodies (holiday and non) ready to go home with you! I will let you know as we get closer about the shows HCD will be at this year.

Well I'm off to work on some more outfits, then it is off to bed early tonight. I'm tuckered from all the celebrating with the birthday girl!

Photo Gallery Wall

I HATE the white walls. Whoever thought that the best color for walls was white had to be on crack! Not only is it boring, I tell you it is actually a magnet for dirt and grimy little fingers. And even though our new house has some really excellent architectural features they are unfortunately all white. Ugh! But I trying to make due with the awful white, and this is what I came up with for our very blank wall leading up the stairs.

Fabric Covered Photo Mat Tutorial

So in my last post you got a little tease of the big photo gallery wall I have been working on. Well for two of the pictures I ended up covering the mat in the frame with fabric. I have the dreaded white walls in my house and the white mat was just way to bland for me. So I thought I would share my method for covering photo mats with fabric. Just 10 simple steps and you can have a one of a kind photo mat.

DIY Art

Beautiful Rug

I found this beautiful run on Pintrest quite a while ago. For the life of me I can not find my original pin, and unfortunately all the pins I find now are mostly spam and do not link to the original post I read. I will continue to search for it.
Anyways, I had the oh so brilliant idea to make this rug for my living room. And as with many of my "brilliant" ideas, it came to a stand still after I had made a whooping 18 flowers. I just do not have the patience to work on large projects like this. I have way to great a need for instant results. And when I started to think about how I was going to connect them all (my plan was to get the anti-slip stuff and sew them onto it) and then how to keep it clean, that was the end of my brilliant plan.

Summer 2012 Collection

So I've recently started to think out my fall line... excititing right?! Well while I was writing out all of my ideas I realized I posted my summer line in the shop, but never shared it here on the blog. (You see where I said writing down my thoughts... I'm hoping this will help prevent things like forgetting to share the line on the blog... duh!) So here it is... HootyCutie Designs Summer 2012 Collection.

Word Art

Well the family and I have been sick once again. Second time in a little over a month. I always get it first. I don't have any idea how this keeps happening considering J and I stay home most days. And not feeling well means that I have not felt like doing much sewing. But I have really be getting into Photoshop lately. I am also finally starting to decorate the house (we've only been here for 6 months). So tonight I worked on some word art for my gallery wall that I am working on.

What do you think? I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's kind of like our family story in words and phrases. I can't wait to see what it looks like printed out. I am going to get it on matboard and hang it un-framed. I will keep you up-to-date on my progress with the gallery wall. I am still working on collecting frames at this time.

I also made this word art for J's room:

They were really fun to create... although a little time consuming. I'm sure there are quicker/easier ways to make them, but I had a good time. I really love crazy fonts, so it rocked being able to use so many different ones.

Recent Custom Orders

So apparently I put the pictures in this post back in early June and then forgot about it... oops :) Well better late than never (that is like my personal mantra these days!). Here are some of the not-so-recent custom orders. 

4th of July 2012

What a great holiday. Time to spend with family and celebrate this wonderful country we live in. We had a great day. We spend most of the morning just hanging out (which for us is an ideal deal... boring I know). Then we all got cleaned up and dressed and headed out to dinner and then to the fireworks show.

Mother's Day Photo Shoot

So when I was writing the Father's Day Photo Shoot post, I realized that I never shared our Mother's Day Photo Shoot with y'all. So better late than never right?

Father's Day Photoshoot

Happy Father's day to my amazing husband, and the best father my little girl could ever ask for. And Happy Father's day to all the other awesome dads out there. This above photo collage is what J gave her daddy for Fathers day for his very, very bare office at work. Can you believe these will be the first pictures he will be putting up on his walls in his office.

Ready to Ship Sale Details

What a Week!

Weddings, Graduations, Fires... OH MY! It has been crazy town around here.

Photo courtesy of m.e. photography

The last weekend in May we attended my cousin's wedding in south Florida. Everything was so beautiful from the reception hall to the touching ceremony. And my cousin, Melissa, has never been more gorgeous. We are so happy to welcome her wonderful new husband, Carl, and his children into our family. Congratulation Melissa and Carl... we love you both!

What's Happening?

A mere 3 days after the clean-up :(

As you know, a few weeks ago we FINALLY cleaned out the sewing room. And I had a ton of fabric that was just lying around. I also had some new patterns that I had been dying to try out. So I decided to go ahead and do some OOAK (one-of-a-kind) items to test out my new patterns while getting rid of all that extra fabric lying around. (Well most of them ended up being 2 or 3 or even 5 of a kind.) Most of that fabric is now either an adorable little outfit, or donated to the "Clean-Out for Quilts" project by Haiti by Hand.

The good news for you... I am going to do a ready to ship sale on Facebook. That means you have a chance to nab one of these little goodies and have it at your house in less than a week (depending on the mail time)! The bad news... we are going out of town on Friday and I will be gone for a week (I guess that is actually good news for me).

We are headed out of town for my cousin's wedding this weekend and then I am staying for my baby sister's high school graduation (I just can't believe it!) the following weekend. I am so excited to get away for a little bit.

So the ready to ship sale will go live the first week in June (I'm shooting for Wednesday, June 6th). I will post more information about the how to's when we get closer to the sale. I will have limited access to internet while I am out of town, but I am able to check e-mail and Etsy convos on my phone, so don't hesitate to ask me questions. I am also going to leave the shop open, but my turn around time will be 2-3 weeks until I get back home and asses the damage.

In the meantime, here are a few sneak peaks at some of the items that will be available in the sale:

In other news... you can now get to the blog by going to www.hootycutie.com. Exciting right!?

Are you excited about the ready to ship sale?

Sewing Room Organized... Check!

Well we had quite a weekend around here. We had planned on attending the Great Cloth Diaper Change, but instead we spend Saturday morning in urgent care :( J has cellulitis (a skin infection) on her eyelid. I am so sad to have missed out on the event yet again (last year the closet one was 2 hours+ away). However, I am glad we went when we did because it can apparently spread very quickly and can be very serious if it gets in the actual eyeball. Luckily it almost completely cleared up as soon as we started antibiotics. That's a whole different story... after calling many stores locally to find the antibiotics they finally had to use a higher strength and recalculate the amount because what she needed no one had.

But the rest of the weekend was great.

Recent Custom Orders

Any one out there love Scooby Doo? How adorable is this Daphne pillowcase dress I created for a special little girls birthday party?! It was so much fun to work with her mama to come up with this fun little number. I'm so use to working with fabrics that have fantastic prints, but this dress proves that even plain fabric can be loads of fun!

Back to Reality

The Wild Side Dress - get yours at:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/97183818/the-wild-side-dress-giraffe-print-and

Today seems like such an odd day. J and I are back into our normal routine and the Hubbs is off at work. So why is it odd? We just returned from a trip to Orlando and celebrated Easter weekend. A whole week spent getting to see the hubby more than a few hours at night!
We went to Orlando because my husband was attending a convince. One of the benefits of being a stay-at-home mom is the ability to travel as a family even on work trips. O-town is only an hour and a half drive from my home town so it was a great opportunity for J to get to see her Mimi. And you can't go to O-town without a trip to Disney! This time my mom got to come along with J and I, and we had a wonderful time.

Wordless Wednesday

Well not exactly... :)

I could not resist sharing some photos of my little one on St. Patty's Day.

2011                                     2012

Birthday Central! - Recent Custom Orders

It has been birthday party central here at HCD. In addition to celebrating HootyCutie's one year anniversary, March is also my husband's (10th), our nephew's (13th), and my birthday (15th) (we also have 3 other extended family member birthdays between the 9th and 17th... what is it about March!). So we have been doing a lot of celebrating around here! It also seems like the requests for dresses for birthday parties are also rolling in. 

HCD First Year in Review

Shop started with owl pillows and crochet hats,
then added pillowcase dresses
Lots of pillowcase dresses,
Next came the reversiable dress, and shortly after boy clothing
My two best sellers have been the
reversible Hallowen/Thanksgiving Dress and the FSU pillowcase
I then started custom orders
Next came reversible vests
And finally my spring line and interchangable flower headband system

On March 22^nd, HootyCutie Designs will have been open on Etsy for one year. And what a year it has been! There have been some really big changes in my life. Some of them were not exactly pleasant, but I can honestly say that I am so happy with how things have turned out.

This time last year, I was teaching high school and preparing for Spring Break. I was so excited about having an entire week to spend at home with my daughter and had plans to start an Etsy shop as a side project. I have always been “crafty”, but it seemed the birth of my daughter unleashed some underlying crafting madwoman. I needed an outlet for all these new craft projects and an Etsy shop seemed like a great way to “unload” my end products as well as create some funds for future projects. Read more in my very first blog post Day 1.

One Year Celebration - Giveaway!

On the 22nd of this month, HootyCutie Designs will have been open for one year on Etsy! Something that was suppose to be a little side thing for fun has turned into so much more. I'm so glad that I did this blog in addition to the shop. It is kind of like a time capsule and I am able to go back and see how HootyCutie has evolved (more on that to come).
To celebrate, I have some fun things planned leading up to the big day. To start with we are going to do a giveaway! And to make it even better, there will be, not one, but two winners! The prize... a $25 credit to HCD. I've created lots of ways to enter including things you can do daily for extra entries. But the only mandatory entry is to simply tell me how you would spend your $25 credit. So enter away!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Recent Custom Orders

Things have have been good here at HCD. My daughter is officially sleeping in her own bed. And with the new bedtime, I have a little more free time. But the real exciting news is that it is March! March is one of my favorite months of the year. It might have something to do with the fact that my birthday (and my husbands) is this month. It is also the month that I opened HootyCutie Designs on Etsy. So I have been planing  some fun things to celebrate including a sale and a giveaway. So stay tuned...

On to the custom orders:

Why We Cloth Diaper

My AMAZING Stash!
(Minus a few dirty and on loan to my SIL)

I have been introduced to so many new worlds since having my daughter, but something that has truly become a passion of mine is cloth diapers. When people find out that we cloth diaper, they look at me like, "Are you NUTS!". But the truth is that today’s cloth diapers are nothing like the cloth diapers with pins and plastic pants that most people think of. So to do my little part in get more info out there, I thought I would share the reasons why we choose cloth and the reasons why we love them.

1st Trip to Disney!

If you "like" HCD on Facebook, then you already know that we went to Disney World on Monday! Let me tell you, I don't think I have ever been so excited to go in my entire life. And I have been very fortunate to have been easily 25 times. I have always loved Disney World, but taking your own child is a whole different experience. It could not have been more perfect.

One Journey Ends...

So I've been hard at work this evening. I feel like a rock star! Three dresses completed, three more cut, and an applique for a shirt cut. I should still be working, but I can't get this blog post out of my head. So I'm taking a break from sewing to write.

I've been thinking and thinking about what to blog about this week (especially since I missed last week), but nothing has really been coming to mind. I've been working really hard to fill all the orders from the Back in Business sale, but I have not really done much creating which is what I normally write about. Then I realized that is really all I write about. This week has been kind of life altering for my personal life, so this week I'm getting personal.

Rockin' Baby Shower

So back in November I told you guys about the shower I was doing for my sister-in-law. Well I have finally had a chance to edit the pictures and write this post. I think you are going to love this unique theme just as much as I did. It was so much fun to come up with something this different for a baby shower. The theme is actually based off of the theme she choose for his baby stuff. Yeah... she's awesome!

Once again I turned to my friend at Magic By Marcy to create the invitations and printables. She always does an amazing job and I knew she would come up with something perfect for the unique them.

Recent Custom Orders

You guys sure are so much fun to create for. Check out some of the awesome custom orders I have been filling. (Some of them are going to be pretty old... I explain why the Back in Business! post)

I have had several people request a reversible dress with holiday on one side, but something that can be worn everyday on the other. These are two dresses that I created for Thanksgiving with the Timeless Treasure Green owls on the other. So fun!

Back in Business!

Jaycelyn - 16 months

Let me start by saying Happy New Year! Hope you and your family had a wonderful 2011 and have an even better 2012.

Things have been INSANE around here! We have had so much going on that HootyCutie had to take a back seat, much to my dismay. Everyone knows how busy the holiday season is, and it was no exception for us. Family visits and parties, it is all so wonderful. But it did not leave much time for packing and unpacking. That's right... I said packing. We moved! It was very unexpected, and happened very quickly. But the unpacking process