Runaway October

Some­times it’s so nice to just wipe a slate clean and start over again.

Last years res­o­lu­tions were hit or miss.

1…) Stop cussing, com­pletely. Neg­a­tive

2…) Smile more. Kinda sorta, I guess.

3…) Spend more indi­vid­ual time with Declan and treat him like an adult. Yes and no.

4…) Cre­ate and add some items to my Etsy shop. Nope.

5…) Do more craft projects — for myself and with the kids. Yes!

So, once again I’m going to set some res­o­lu­tions and think about them ran­domly throughtout the year and feel bad when I don’t hit them 100%. Yep. Sounds about right.

1.) Stop cussing, com­pletely — How did I end up wih such a potty mouth? While I admit that Declan telling me my ass is too big makes me gig­gle, it’s also quite embarass­ing in public.

2.) Detox­ify the house — This one is dif­fi­cult because my mom buys her own clean­ing prod­ucts and calls me, jok­ingly, a tree­hug­ger for my choices. It’s just so easy to have things build up under the sinks. Thank­fully I clean so infre­quently that it’s not a real issue to toss every­thing. I’m also going to start “No ‘Poo“ing my hair again. I tried before while work­ing but couldn’t han­dle going out in pub­lic dur­ing the really wonky phase. Here’s a great Live­Jour­nal com­mu­nity for it. We have an on again, off again rela­tion­ship with the health­ier beauty prod­ucts, mainly because of finances. I think it might be time to just suck it up and buy what I know is best for the fam­ily — not best for my bank account.

3.) ETSY — Seri­ously, why can’t I get this going? I’ve decided not to do any­more swaps, so maybe that will make it eas­ier? Wih the purc­ahse of a new sewing machine (50% off clear­ance sale) I’m definitly going to com­plete more projects, but I’d like to make a lit­tle extra cash too.

4.) Try to cut back on HFCS and MSG — With that com­bi­na­tion it leaves next to zilch to buy. Thank­fully Matt is on board with me and we’ve both done some research into the issue. Frankly it scares us.

Alright, I think that’s enough bab­bling. And the boys are wait­ing on me to watch a movie.

Thanks for reading!

Finally.

I have a ten­dency to get in trou­ble with swaps. The fear of my part­ner not lik­ing what I make liter­rally freezes me up until the last minute. Then it’s a mad rush.

This time it was dif­fer­ent. I knew what I wanted to do, but my pay­check was late, so I com­pletely missed the dead­line. But it’s been wrapped, boxed and shipped as of last night! Go me! Only what… 8 days late?

Back Tack 4 was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the ope­ness of the cen­tral theme: Gold Frank­in­cense and Myrrh

This time there are no colour, size, or mate­r­ial restric­tions, all we ask is that you take the theme and run with it, and make 3 items accord­ing to the indi­vid­ual out­lines below.

The first item is some­thing that sparkles [the Gold part]- cards, dec­o­ra­tions, calenders.….see where your imag­i­na­tion will take you. [It doesn’t need to be gold]

The sec­ond item is some­thing which has some sort of sen­sory aspect to it [the Frank­in­cense part] — either smell or taste. Baked goods? Short­bread? Choco­late, soaps, the mind can run free here, but be mind­ful of cus­toms reg­u­la­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Sealed food stuffs are gen­er­ally ok, but check with your part­ner before send­ing anything.

The third item is a small gift for your part­ner for Christ­mas [the Myrrh part] Per­haps a small item for the tree, or mantle­piece. Quiz your part­ner to see what their them­ing is for this Christ­mas, and tie in your gift! or make them some­thing they might like to use through the year — a cal­en­der, a purse, a scarf.

Here’s a sneak peak. When my part­ner gets her pack­age I’ll post more photos.

 In the  mean­time, check out the Back Tack Flickr pool. Lots of gor­geous good­ies! And my part­ner, Kristin’s, beau­ti­ful blog: Kleas.

“Phew!” with a dra­matic swipe across his forehead.

I’ve actu­ally been pretty busy of late. Remem­ber those 17 loads of laun­dry stuffed on the couch that I men­tioned? ALL folded, hung, sorted, orga­nized and put away!! After 3 weeks it was hard to come up with excuses for why it was still there. But I’ve also com­pleted 2 more aprons — one for Grandma Betty’s birth­day, along with match­ing place­mats and one for Nicky’s birth­day. I finally got a new iron­ing board cover made. It’s super sim­ple but took a day because of the nooblets… I mean the kidlets. (Does any­one remem­ber Sixlets? Those were awe­some!) I started a third apron for Ann today. Next up is my bag for the Mar­ket Tote Swap. I have the idea all worked out in my head, I just hope I can trans­fer it to real­ity easily.

So after all that’s done I’m going to start work­ing on some smock­ing and shirring and post­ing items to my Etsy shop. I promise. No more swaps or birth­days and what­not. I’ve found some gor­geous designer prints mixed in with the cheapy cot­tons at JoAnns and have totally scored bolts of them with 50% off coupons. I’m afraid to cut some of them up.

I’ve also been comtem­plat­ing get­ting a cot­tage license to sell the aprons that I’ve been mak­ing. The thing is it’s $100 for a year but I’m not sure if I could cover the cost with any profit I make, ya know? The license gives me the right to make and sell any­thing by Sew Lib­er­ated, for­mally Montes­sori by Hand, where as now I can only make and give such as all that I’ve made so far. It takes me about a week of fid­dling to make an apron because of… interup­tions. The hard­est part is choos­ing the fab­rics — I always worry that some­one will get their apron and go “WTH was she think­ing? This isn’t me at all!” I’m debat­ing on just going it alone, or using some­one else’s pat­terns. Any thoughts?

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Here’s Grandma’s Apron. The reverse is a very pretty white Poppy print.

So I went ahead and bit the bul­let. I joined the Mar­ket Tote Swap hosted by InANut­shell. The last cou­ple swaps I’ve par­tic­i­pated in have been a com­plete flop. I’d put so much love and time into them and received, well… I’d rather not say. On top of that my last apron I mailed is still miss­ing in tran­sit. I’m hop­ing that this one will pull me up out of the dumps and it sounds like so much fun. 

There’s still a cou­ple hours left to sign up, head on over and join me. It looks like a great bunch of crafters so far! (Nudge nudge Nicky)