introducing...

I did it!  I opened an Etsy store!  For those of you who don't know, Etsy is a website that sells handmade, vintage and craft supplies.  I now have my own little online shop filled with  fabrics and my handmade goodies.

My shop currently has a quilt, crinkle blankies, fabrics and flower headbands for sale, but I will have pacifier clips, strawberry purses and another quilt soon.  I have ideas for other products that I can't wait to get started on too!

I have two of these bright, girly crinkle blankets.

It's going to be really hard to part with this sweet owl quilt!  It's so cheery and fun!

 

 To visit my shop, just click on the link below.  Happy shopping!

The Patchwork Lollipop

back to the farm for our flock

 Yesterday went to the Taylor farm to drop off the five birds we hatched.  The boys were a little sad, but they knew it was best for chicks and keats to live at the farm and not in our pantry.

Ethan absolutely loves the farm and wants to be have his own farm when he grows up.  If you ask him about it, he will tell you ALL about his plans!

The kids always love visiting the farm and seeing all the animals.  They each picked out an egg for Erica to hatch in her incubator.  

So long Mr. Pigeon, MP2, Sunny, Petri and Little Foot!  We will never forget you!

Yogi Bear Lonestar 2010

Last Thursday we loaded up the camper and headed to Yogi Bear Park in Waller.  Last time we went to Jellystone Park at Canyon Lake, so we were excited to try this campground out.  We met Eric's parents there that afternoon and they had Emmy, Abby and Jake with them for the weekend.  The kids always have so much fun together and we are so glad we got to spend time with them!  Our friends the Millers, Longs and Simmons joined us Friday afternoon for a grand total of 9 adults and 12 kids.

Happy cousins ready for fun!

Lauren loved pulling Abby around by her bathing suit strings.

The water playground was amazing!  It had four slides and the giant picnic basket on the top dumped out water when it filled up.  The kids LOVED the slides and so did we!

The kids loved the curly tube slide too.

Can you believe Ethan and Austin went on this slide?  They went down it at least 20 times.  It was so much fun!

 

We ended up renting a limo golf cart to cruise around in all weekend.  The kids had a blast playing in it when we weren't using it and loved taking night time adventure rides through the forest with Eric and Rhys.

 

 

 

At night we ate yummy food, celebrated Matt's 5th birthday and roasted marshmallows.  Good times!

 

We loved the campground and are already planning next year's trip back!

chicks and guineas!

We have had lots of fun with our little chickens.  The kids love holding them and hearing Lauren say "chick-en" is just too cute!  Mr. Pigeon, MP2 and Sunny are now visiting another family while we are busy with our guinea hatching. 

When I went to bed Monday night, the first egg had a big crack.  I set my alarm for every two to three hours since I knew the hatch would happen soon.  When I woke up at 5am, this is what I found...

The little guinea chick was hatched and snuggling next to the unhatched egg.  It was so cute! 

The next night, our last egg hatched.  We now have two wild guinea keets named Petri and Little Foot.

While they are really cute right now with their stripes and huge orange feet, they will grow up to look like this...

Yikes!

 

Erica's once jammed packed incubator now sits empty.  We started with 13 eggs and 5 of them hatched.  It was a lot of fun and I'm so thankful Erica let us have this experience!

painting with a twist

Last night Erica, Mindy, Ellen and I went to Painting with a Twist for the time.  It is such a fun place!  They provided the canvas, paint and brushes and a local artist guided us through painting our one of a kind creation.  Our tribal elder Erica insisted we paint a very special painting together from one of her favorite movies, Breakfast at Tiffany's.

The artist did a great job of guiding us through each step.  The perfectionist in me was a little stressed out, but I still loved every minute of it. 

 

My finished masterpiece

 

It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to go back and paint again!

a crazy week

This week I took care of Taylor and Rylynn.  The kids had a great time playing together. I pulled out every momma tool I could think of to keep the kids happy and busy!



They had a great time playing dress up.

The kids were complaining that it was too hot outside, so I blew up the bounce house in our living room.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We also put up the waterslide so the kids could actually be outside without melting.

Popscicles are always a hit too!  I survived a week full of swim lessons and taking care of five children and four baby chicks.   It was a busy, crazy week!

Doesn't everyone have baby chickens in their pantry?

swim lessons

 

Today was the boys last day of swim lessons.  They have been going five days a week for the last two weeks at our community pool.

 They learned to swim with a kick board, float on their backs, make big ice cream scoops with their hands and can almost swim now.  They are so close! 

Austin gave me his famous wink while he was swimming.

 

They should be swimming by the end of the summer!

MP2 and Sunny

On day 18, of the 21 day hatch, our last little banty egg pipped a hole in his egg.

When I went to bed last night, the egg had a decent size hole in the bottom.  Usually when you see a pip, you have 12 hours until the chicken hatches.  This poor little guy took 36 hours to break free of his shell.

I set my alarm to go off every two hours to check on the egg.  When I woke up at 6 in the morning, he had hatched!  Since he looks exactly like Mr. Pigeon and hatched early, we decided to name him MP2.

The giant, brown chicken egg pipped around 10 pm last night, so I had my eye on it too.

Today the hole got bigger and bigger, so we waited and waited.  Taylor and Rylynn came over to play today and they got to experience the hatch with us. 

If you have never seen a chicken hatch, you HAVE to watch this!  It's amazing!  We named cute little yellow chicken Sunny.  It may have something to do with Austin's favorite drink, Sunny D. 

3 down, 3 more to go!

the Selvage Sisters weekend getaway

I was lucky enough to spend all weekend with these lovely ladies.  We are all in a crafty Bible study every week and planned a quilting getaway together months ago. 

Even though the retreat house was only an hour and a half away, it took us about 7 hours to get there!  We had the best time stopping at fabric stores and eating along the way.  I was deliriously happy all day!

We found a new favorite fabric store in Lakeway called The Cotton Cupboard.  We must have spent hours in there and enjoyed every minute of it.

The drive to Stonewall was gorgeous and we just had to pull over to take pictures.

Emilie's Quilt Haus was absolutely gorgeous!  It's located in the hill country and the views are breathtaking.  Even more exciting than the scenery though, was the inside of the house...

The huge room had ironing stations, cutting tables and flannel design walls to piece together your quilts. The house is new and everything was well thought out and organized. 

We helped Jennie cook dinner Wednesday night and it was so delicious!

We had pork loin with mustard cream sauce, wild rice and veggies.  Jennie is so thoughtful and surprised each of us with our own fat quarter.

The property was gorgeous!

Saturday we sewed in the morning and headed to Fredericksburg for some fabric shopping and dinner.  By that evening, we were worn out!

Tired mommas!

We got a lot done this weekend!  Melissa cut, pieced and sewed together an entire quilt, Jennie made a reversible dress, a doll dress and started a raincoat, Carrey cut and pieced together 2 eye spy quilts, Lauren made two dresses and Erica finished Carter's quilt. Whew!

I cut out Austin's quilt and can't wait to get started on it!

I finally finished Lauren's quilt! I originally made it a twin size over a year ago and thankfully never had it sent off to be quilted.  Eric's grandparent's gave us a beautiful full size bed for Lauren and I was able to make the quilt bigger so it will fit on her bed.  I'm anxious to have it quilted so she can use it on her big girl bed someday!

 

We discovered this weekend that we can make some really cool things with the leftover selvage edges of fabric, so we started collecting them.  The Quilt Haus had us decorate a button with our group name, so we came up with the name Selvage Sisters.  Pretty cute, huh?

I had a wonderful weekend and I can't wait to spend some more time with these wonderful ladies!  I foresee many more weekends away for the Selvage Sisters!