The Arabelle Faerie Tutu and a Visit from Mimi and Papa

Sorry I haven't posted in a week! I really do have quite a few posts planned: some valentine's projects, a ottoman slipcover tutorial, Lillie's bedroom (long story but we changed it around again), plans for the nursery, the next round of script pillows, some new designs, etc... I just haven't had any time these past few weeks. I can't believe I once thought being in college was stressful and time-consuming! Haha - little did I know how crazy grown-up life would be.

However, I feel like starting this week I am a back on track (or at least I hope so). My parents were here for the past four days and it was such an enormous help! I don't know if ever in all my life I have been so glad to see them (except for when I was in labor with Lillie) or so sad to see them leave! I hate that we live so far away from our families especially now that our own family is growing. It had been particularly long ten days with Jon being out of town quite a bit and I had been staying up until 3 or 4 every single night and was beyond exhausted! To be honest, I don't know if ever in all my life I had been quite so stressed or worn out. Jon arrived back home Tuesday and my parents got here Wednesday and it was wonderful to have them here! It was especially nice having them cook, clean, run errands and play with Lillie and my mom even helped me out with a bunch of sewing, and my dad completely cleaned out and vacuumed my car and organized my garage (I HATE for anything to be out of place in my house but my poor car and garage always end up a disaster)! We also started preparing to turn our guest room into a nursery and ended up switching a bunch of stuff around between Lillie's bedroom and the guest bedroom/nursery. I will show you pictures of Lillie's newly arranged room later this week. It wasn't design-wise what I had in mind but it gives her soooo much more room to play so I am happy with it. And I am hoping to officially start on a few projects this coming week for the nursery and have it done by the end of February. I will probably post pictures of that along the way once I officially get started.

My mom also has designed a few new things for our shop including this tutu (I also can't wait to show you a new white dress she did but I haven't had time to photograph it yet. Lillie wasn't feeling well all week so we just took pictures of her in this one and figured we would save the other new tutu and the dress for when she was feeling better). This one here is one of my new favorites! It is a double layer pixie cut and the top layer is a pale almost grayish blue called Williamsburg blue. It has such a light, airy feel to it and Lillie looked so adorable running around in it! It will be available in our shop either next week or the week after.

The Arabelle Faerie Tutu

This is my favorite picture of the bunch.

In the photos above I played around with the coloring a bit but this photo on the dress form probably shows the color the best (although on all computer screens it will probably look a little different).

And here are a few black and white shots:

 

Moosie or "Mimi", Lillie and Papa down in Colonial Williamsburg

It was a lot colder out than we thought and so we didn't last too long playing soccer down on the lawn in front of the Governor's Palace. I cannot wait for another month and a half or so when the weather starts to get warm again and we can go back to heading down there every day to play. I really miss our daily trips there!

I plan on doing posts on Lillie's room, an ottoman slipcover tutorial, some nursery ideas and a new script pillow all in the next week and a half and then hopefully a Valentine's one after that but we shall see if I can actually keep to that schedule! =)

I hope you all have had a lovely weekend.

 

P.S. I am still horribly behind on e-mails but hope to start digging into them tonight once Lillie is in bed and also to catch up on some blog reading - I am sooo behind!

And the Winner Is...

Sorry it is so late but it has been another long day here. This time of year is always a bit overwhelming. To those of you who have sent e-mails - I am not ignoring you it just takes a really long time to go through them all - I am working on it though, I promise! Anyway, this will be a super short post but I just wanted to let you all know we have all of our new Valentine's shirts and onesies listed in our shop now as well as some more of the pillows and a tote. Although we have a lot of options I have very limited quanitities in each size in the Je T'aime shirts. Here is the tote:

 And now for the winner of their choice of Valentine's Shirt:

Congratulations to Rachel M!

Please send us an e-mail at dearlillie@hotmail.com with your choice, size and address 

within the next 48 hours to collect your shirt!

I hope you all had a most wonderful weekend!

A Weekend Giveaway

It has been a particularly LONG week so as usual, I am horribly behind on blogging and even more so on e-mails - ahhh! Although it has been a LONG week and I am beyond exhausted it has been a pretty good week. The Tribe won both of their last two games which has made for a happy household =), I turned 29 - yikes, and we had a pretty busy week for this time of year in our shop. For those of you that have asked, yes, I will be making one more small batch of the pillows and hopefully will have them ready to sell on Monday morning although I am not sure. If not I hope to at least have them ready by Tuesday. I have several blog posts I want to do but haven't had time. Hopefully I will get to them this coming week. In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to have another little giveaway! Our Valentine's shirts are ready to go and will be for sale in our  shop when we reopen Monday morning (actually I normally reopen it late Sunday night that way I won't forget when I get up on Monday morning). 

I thought over the weekend, though, we could give  one away! 

The winner can choose between the Je T'aime shirt (which is available in onesies size 3/6 months all the way up to women's XXL and can come with or without the bow) or the pink Elizabeth Barrett Browning Silhouette one (which is available in onesies size 3/6 months up to girls size 6). The rules are the same as always for our giveaways:

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post!

You don't have to have a blog to enter, either. If you aren't a blogger, just enter a comment and then where it says "comment as" scroll down near the bottom and click on anonymous. However, if you do that, make sure to leave your e-mail address so we can confirm that you are the winner. If we draw the name of someone who doesn't leave any identifying information we will simply draw a new name. Make sure to check back here on the blog to collect your prize!

You can comment each day if you would like to up your chances!

For an extra entry become a follower of our blog!

Just write "follower" as a second comment so it counts as an entry.

You can enter until 9PM Sunday evening (tomorrow) and then I will post the winner either late Sunday or early Monday! 

Here is Lillie wearing one of the Je T'aime thermals. I ended up printing them in black instead of red so they could be more versatile. You can choose to have yours plain or with the chiffon bow. I cannot wait for spring to start taking photos outside again. I am getting really bored using her window seat over and over! Fortunately, Miss Lillie was in a great mood when I was taking pictures today but she was singing and dancing which made it lots of fun because she was in such a silly mood, but really hard to get a good shot of the actual shirt.   

 With the bow

Top Left: Kid's Thermal sizes 2 -12, 

Top Right: Long sleeve Onesie sizes 3/6 months - 18/24 months, 

Bottom Left: Women's Thermal sizes S- XXL, 

Bottom Right: Women's Racerback Longer Length Tank Sizes S-XXL

Without the bow

Top Left: Kid's Thermal sizes 2 -12, 

Top Right: Long sleeve Onesie sizes 3/6 months - 18/24 months, 

Bottom Left: Women's Thermal sizes S- XXL, 

Bottom Right: Women's Racerback Longer Length Tank Sizes S-XXL

I don't have any good shots yet of the pink shirt but here is a closeup of one of the onesies.

And here is my growing belly! Jon and I went out to dinner at the beginning of the week and seeing how I finally had makeup on and had brushed my hair I thought I would have him take a shot of my baby bump. Well, this is NOT a cropped photo - this is what happens when poor Jon is in charge of taking the picture - haha! I think he thought I was just being bossy as usual when I told him he was too close!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Je T'aime Pillows for Sale and a Weekend Visit from Grammy and Coach

This is going to be a super short post because I have to get  Lillie in bed but I just wanted to let everyone know we finally have some pillows finished and ready to list in our Etsy shop. We will be selling them just as pillow covers (no insert) but if you want to order one with the insert just send us a convo through Etsy and we can set up a listing for that as well as long as I still have some left.  The pillows are made from 100% cotton in  natural linen color (linen is what the color is called - the fabric doesn't have any linen in it) and je t'aime is printed in three different colors options. We have one printed in red, one printed in a dark olive green  and several printed in black. We also have one red one that will be offered at a discount because the red smudged in one spot. 

Here is one of the red ones:

 Here is the dark olive green one:

And here is one of the black ones:

We had quite the busy weekend! Jon's parent's flew in Saturday and stayed through this morning. Lillie had a ball with "Coach" and "Grammy" and of course they spoiled her rotten. We had a wonderful time with them and they got to see the Tribe win on Saturday! It was a great weekend and it flew by. I can't believe it is already Monday night! I had my shutter speed set pretty slow because of the lighting and Lillie kept moving so she's a bit blurry but you can see how much fun she had:

Grammy, Coach and Lillie

 I hope you all had a most wonderful weekend!

The Life of an Ottoman, Textures, and The Winner of the Je T'aime Pillow

Earlier this week Lillie and I made a slipcover for our ottoman which we stole back from my sister Dana. (Lillie mostly just enjoyed poking pins into the ottoman). We play musical furniture quite a bit in our family. You can look in my home and either Dana or Jamie's places and find pieces that we have traded back and forth or stolen from our parents basement or barn (and occasionally straight out of one of their rooms, although that is generally frowned upon and I am not the worst offender when it comes to that - haha!) It's even worse with clothes. My mom, Dana, Jamie and I all can wear the same shirt size even though we have different builds so often one of us will be wearing something that has passed through at least two of us and we always get a laugh. Anyway, back when we bought our first home in South Carolina we had a den that Jon used as his kind of "man's room". We had big flat screen TV in there and some couches and a leather chair and the walls had framed movie posters ("Hoosiers" and "Rudy") as well as some black and white framed photographs of Pistol Pete Maravich, Jon's favorite basketball player. We had the players over quite a bit and they all lived in that room. It was not exactly my favorite room, but seeing how I got to decorate the rest of the house however I liked I didn't mind it too much. We got this leather ottoman at Target and it worked nicely in that room. When we moved here to Virginia we really didn't have a space like that so a lot of those items went out on the garage. We used the ottoman temporarily in our family room after Lillie arrived because it made for a GREAT spot to change her. Once she got a little bigger though we moved it out to the garage and put our coffee table back in it's spot. I had planned on recovering the ottoman and moving it to our front living room to replace the trunk I had there but never got around to it. When my sister, Dana moved to Williamsburg last summer she ended up taking it and recovering it so it has been at her place for the last year and a half. Well, now that I am in major nesting mode I decided to steal it back and finally recover it. Dana didn't mind, and found something gorgeous to replace it which I will show in a post hopefully in the next week or two. At first I planned on just recovering it but then decided it would be smarter to make a slipcover that could easily be removed for washing since I plan on changing our new baby on it like it did with Lillie. I had three different fabrics I was trying to decide between and finally picked one. Well when I went to get two yards of it of course they only had a yard and a half left - arghhh! And the same went for my number two and three options as well. It was NOT my lucky day. I ended up quickly just grabbing something else even though it was lighter than I really wanted and a completely different texture, but oh well. I ended up changing the design as I went too because this fabric wouldn't work for my original idea. I am hoping they will get more of the first fabric I wanted and I will make a second back up slipcover option for when this one in is in the wash. Anyway, it is so nice finally having it done!  This poor ottoman has now had three different looks in the last three years and probably has many more slipcovers in it's future!

Here it is BEFORE:

 And here it is AFTER:

I got the basket with a gift card I had gotten for my birthday last year. I am so excited about it because it has a cover (which is shown in a photo below) which will be great for storing things when the new baby arrives. In the meantime though Lillie and I went to Trader Joe's and got some fresh eucalyptus and ranunculus and then stopped by the thrift store and got three different vases. The white one shown below for $1.98, a cool milk bottle looking one for 98 cents which I will show you in another post, and a silver plated one for $6.98 (shown  a few photos below). I love those kinds of finds! I started playing around with the top of the ottoman and this was what I first did.

Well, then I went to move the pitcher a bit and the handle fell off! Haha! No, it wasn't why it was $1.98. It was in perfect condition when we bought it but I carried the other two to the car and Lillie carried this one. She's so short that the bag kept clunking on the ground and when we got to the car I saw it had a tiny little crack on the handle but figured it was still good to use. Which it was - until it was full of water and I went to move it and the whole handle came off! 

So then I switched the flowers to this silver vase we got and moved the eucalyptus because it seemed a bit too much with the larger vase. I can't wait to have the basket filled with teeny tiny diapers and to be able to just pop the cover on and hide them.

Well after watching Lillie run through the room several times I realized it wasn't the safest place for a vase. She knows enough not to touch the flowers or vase but the because it is an ottoman and not a coffee table it isn't a completely flat surface and I was afraid it might tip over if the ottoman even got the tiniest bump, and with a two year old that could definitely happen. So, we changed it out a THIRD time and this is what is there for now (well, at least until I change my mind again!)

On another note, I used to play with textures in Photoshop all of the time but hadn't in quite a while. I saw this post by Kat over at Low Tide High Style and got inspired to play around a little. I haven't had time to finish them. I want to bring them into Illustrator now and do a few more things to them but who knows if that will ever happen at the rate I am going. However, if I do I am thinking about selling some prints in our Etsy shop (not necessarily any of these but of some other projects). I am torn whether or not to sell the actual prints and mail them or just sell the files (which I would sell really cheap - probably anywhere from $.99 - $4.99 depending on the work) so people can print them on their own. Do you find it easier to just have it arrive in the mail all ready to go or do you like having the option of being able to print it anywhere in any size on any type of medium that you would like? We sold some Christmas PDF files and I liked how nice and easy that was so I am leaning towards that.

Also, thank you all for your wonderful opinions on the Valentine's shirts! I went ahead and am printing the first design on long sleeve onesies size 3/6 months - 18/24 months and long sleeve baby ribbed tees in sizes 2 - 6. Then I am printing the first Je T'aime (the one I wrote) on white long sleeve onesies size 3/6 months - 18/24 months,  girls white thermals sizes 2 - 12, and women's white thermals sizes  S - XXL. Even though I will be printing a ton of shirts, I will only have a couple in each size (and in a few sizes only one). I am hoping to have them listed in our shop early next week (hopefully by either the 24th or 25th!) Also I am working on the Je T'aime pillow covers now and hope to have them available by Tuesday.  I am going to have them four or five in black but think I may offer one or two in a deep red print and one or two in a dark olive print as well. 

Okay, and now onto the winner of the pillow:

Jillian!

Congratulations! Please contact us within 48 hours to give us your info!

Thanks again to everyone that entered. We will be hosting another giveaway soon so check back! Also, I want to thank Kim at Seven Thirty Three for numbering our comments for us (that made it sooooo much easier for this giveaway than having to count out each one!)

I hope you all have a most wonderful weekend!

PS - I am linked up to Miss Mustard Seed's Copy Me Challenge!