A Baby Guessing Game, Thank You, and The Two Winners of our Last Giveaway

 No, I didn't have our baby yet, although I do think she will be arriving soon. 

This is a photo of Lillie when she was about two weeks old. This is a wordy post and I wanted to have at least one photo and I have been having a lot of fun looking through Lillie's baby pictures so I thought I would include one of her. I didn't have a good camera then (well actually I did, it just wasn't digital so I never used it) so most of my baby photos of Lillie aren't very good quality. 

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to have a little guessing game on here. We did this with our immediate family a few weeks before Lillie was born and as we are all terribly competitive it was a lot of fun. I actually can't remember who won, though. Jamie, maybe? I am sure whoever it was will be sure to remind me as soon as this post goes up.

If you want to enter just make a guess as to when you think she will arrive and how much she will weigh and leave it in the comments section at the bottom of this post.  

Whoever is closest will get their choice of screenprinted item. If a male wins I will come up with another prize. I know Jason doesn't exactly want to win a Fairyland Tank or a Je T'aime Pillow. And yes, family can enter this contest seeing how noone, including myself has any idea when she actually will arrive and how much she will weigh.

To level the playing field I will give you all of the basic information:

1).  My actual due date is May 2nd.

2).  Lillie was born two weeks early but that isn't really something we can necessarily base our guesses on because she arrived thanks to a car accident where we hit a deer going about 70 miles an hour on the highway.  My dad promptly nicknamed her Deer Lillie and when we opened our shop a few months after she was born we decided to change the spelling to Dear Lillie so people wouldn't think we couldn't spell. (Although if you read most of my blog posts you probably already think that - haha! I am always writing them as fast as possible either during naptime or in the wee hours of the morning and when I reread them the next day am often appalled at all of my typos).

3) Lillie weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces.

Also, we are still struggling with a name! We thought we had it figured out for a few days but are starting to change our minds again so if anyone has any great name ideas please feel free to add them in your comment. We would prefer something old-fashioned, like Lillian do not want it to be as common as Lillian.  I am also open to whimsical names as well (although Jon is not as big a fan) =). Basically the main criteria for what we are looking for is that it is not a popular name and that it goes nicely with Lillian. We do have a top three we are considering right now but aren't sure if we will go with one of them or not.

On another note, I really want to thank you all for making Monday such an exciting day for us! 

I had hoped to sell somewhere between 20 and 40 items but wasn't really sure that we would hit that number. Well, by the middle of the afternoon we had already sold over 100 items and had gotten over 400 new e-mails! It was terribly exciting but also really stressful, especially with Lillie being sick. Thank goodness my mom was here or I think I may have had a meltdown.  Needless to say I ended up closing up our shop earlier than planned because I wasn't sure if we would be able to handle processing any more orders than that. I wanted to thank you all so much and to say sorry to those of you that came on to purchase something Monday evening only to find our shop already closed. Also, if you sent us an e-mail or convo I will try to get back to you, but to be honest I am not sure I will be able to get back to everyone. I am going to do my best but it may take quite a while.

If you did order something here is the update: all of the screenprinted items have been packaged (thanks to two really late nights and my mom helping me sew in the labels and my wonderful helper, Alex, helping package up orders). A bunch of them have already shipped out and my goal is to have all of the screenprinted items shipped by tomorrow. If you ordered a screenprinted item and have not received an e-mail with a tracking number by tomorrow please feel free to contact us. Seeing how my mom was down here helping me and my sister, Dana, will be out of town this weekend the tutus and knit hats have a different timeline.

Also, as we knew we were closing up until August I didn't bother to order more hang tags (the printed tags that are pinned onto the sewn-in labels on each item). I had about 50-60 and figured that would more than cover Monday's sales. Obviously it didn't, so the first 50 or 60 orders have them but the remaining orders do not. Just thought I would let you all know in case you are wondering where your hang tag is. I figured you all would probably rather have your order shipped out as soon as possible instead of waiting another week to two weeks for me to get more hang tags in. They will still be packaged the same as always with the Dear Lillie sewn-in label, tissue paper, Dear Lillie sticker, ribbon and card, they will just be missing the hang tag on some of them.

Also, if you noticed a change in handwriting on the cards that is because Alex has been helping me the past few weeks with some them and with this batch of orders I wrote some, my mom wrote some and Alex wrote some.

So again, I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you! 

You all are the most wonderful customers and we truly appreciate it!

And now for the two winners of our last giveaway. 

 Congratulations to Martina for winning the two silhouette pillows!

And congratulations to Kim of Savvy Southern Style for winning the photo editing prize!

And don't forget if you want to enter this next contest 

just leave a comment with the your guess for 

THE BABY'S BIRTHDAY AND WEIGHT!

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 or if you are family some identifying information 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.

If there are multiple winners as long as there aren't too many of them I will give a prize to each person. If there are quite a few winners then I will just give it to the first three.

As soon as I get all of these packages out I plan on starting on e-mails, finishing up some Easter projects, and doing a tutorial on the hanging branch that I am going to add to the nursery so hopefully I will have some of those posts ready to go in the next few days!

I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday and thanks again for being such amazing customers!

GIVEAWAY Time and a Big Sale!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! It has been so nice having my mom here, although poor Lillie has been sick so we haven't really been able to do much. Hopefully she will be feeling better today.  

We wanted to remind everyone that today will be our last day our shop will be open until August! I am not sure yet what time we will close. It will probably just depend on how busy we are. Also, please note,  for both the tutus and hats we will only be able to sell a limited quantity as they are made upon order unlike the screenprinted items which are ready to go (although we are low in sizes in most of our screenprinted items).

Also, Don't forget to enter the code BLOG30 

if you purchase something to get the 30% discount  

we are offering to all of our blog readers! 

(For details on that you can read our last post. Either scroll down to the post below this one or click here).

Now onto the giveaway! For this one we are going to do something a little different. We will be choosing two winners. The first winner will receive TWO silhouette pillow covers (one of each). They are sized to fit an 18 by 18 insert. I had planned on making a bunch of these to sell but even though I got the fabric cut I never had time to print them. I did print a few in the original test batch, though. Two which I kept for myself and two that we are giving away here. They are NOT perfect (which is why we are giving them away instead of selling them). They are sewn beautifully, thanks to our new seamstress, Renete,  but although the silhouette is crisp the ink isn't as uniform as I would want it to be to sell. We will be printing these to sell in the fall but for now thought we would offer them as a giveaway! (I do have one Jane Austen one available in our shop, but that is it.)

Here is what the first winner will receive:

You can see the ones I kept in our living room:

I took a couple of photos from the other side of this room too when I photographed the pillows. That was a couple of weeks ago. Now it is decorated for Easter which I will post photos of soon. I still need to finish my last few little project first, though.

The second winner will receive a

FREE edited photo 

For the edited photo the winner can send us a photo and we will edit it and then send it back with two variations!  Below I will show two examples of what photoshop can do.

Semi-edited 

(I had brightened her eyes and face here - I can't find the completely unedited version)

And here is it turned into a landscape with a few different actions applied:

 

Unedited:

Edited:

To see a few other examples click here.

The rules for this giveaway are a tiny bit different than normal.  

We have added a way to get two extra entries.

1). Just 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.

2). Become a follower of our blog!

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

3) Mention our SALE and the discount code with a link to either our shop or blog on either your facebook page or blog and include a photo of something from our site. 

You can get TWO EXTRA ENTRIES for this. Just leave the link from your facebook page or blog in the comment section. Make sure to do it two times so you get both extra entries.

This giveaway will just be running for the day today and will close at 8PM tonight.

I am not sure if I will have time to do a blog post tomorrow to announce the winners so most likely I won't announce them until Wednesday. 

Make sure to check back here on the blog to collect your prize!

 I also want to say congratulations to my father-in-law for winning his second state championship in three years! 

Have a wonderful week!

A $7 Easter Egg Makover Project and our BIG SALE

Last Easter we got four egg topiaries and two egg wreaths as a gift from someone. This year  I thought I would make them over to match our decor a little better. I think both Lillie and Jon were a bit disappointed in my decision as Lillie thought the colored eggs were "sooooo pretty", but they were a little bright for me.  As they had been boxed away since last Easter I had forgotten exactly what they looked like. In my mind the eggs were smooth so I had planned on spray painting them either a pale blue or an ivory color and then speckling them. Well, when I pulled them out of their boxes I remembered they had raised dots and swirls on them so that sent my natural speckled look out the window. Instead I just decided to spray paint them an ivory color and fill in all of the spaces with extra spanish moss and some other moss I had. (Although I did buy new moss for the letter project in my last post, I am quite cheap and generally reuse the same moss over and over for different projects, which is what I did for this project. And for that same reason, I didn't glue the moss in any spots, I just tucked it in so that when Easter is over I can pull all of it out and put it back in the two big bags I keep it in and save it for the next project. It would probably sound better to call myself thrifty but in this instance cheap is probably more appropriate seeing how moss isn't very expensive to begin with =) !) 

Here is what we had to start with:

(I only photographed 1 of the topiaries but there are actually 4 of them)

And here it is after a coat of spray paint and some moss tucked in:

And here is one of the wreaths:

 

We did three of the topiaries with the more brownish colored moss and the spanish moss and then did the fourth one with the leftover brighter green moss from the letter project because it is in a different room and thought the brighter green would look nice next to the bright limes.

So, for just $7 (two $3.50 cans of spray paint) we were able to makeover 4 topiaries and two wreaths!

I have a few more finished Easter projects to show you all and am also still working on a couple so once everything is done will show how the whole rooms look versus just the close-up shots in this post.

 I also wanted to say a big thank you so Traci, from Beneath My Heart for featuring us! She is so sweet and has a wonderful blog that you should definitely head on over and check out if you haven't before!

Also I want to wish my father-in-law luck! He is a high school basketball coach in Indiana and his team is playing in the state championship game tonight. We all were able to go two years ago when they won it, but as I am not allowed to travel only Jon will be able to go this time. Lillie and I will be cheering from home, though! Go Panthers!

Alrighty, that is it for now! 

I hope you all have a blessed weekend 

 and be sure to check back Monday for our BIG GIVEAWAY!

Moss Letters Tutorial and Some Fun with Textures

******************

Our shop will only be open for two more days. 

We will be open today, the 24th and then will be closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then will reopen Monday the 28th which will be our last day until August! 

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A few weeks ago I got the most recent Pottery Barn in the mail. The past few months I have been so busy that for the most part I haven't even sat down to look through any magazines or catalogs. This time however we had gotten the mail as we were headed out in the car and Jon was driving so I opened it up and started looking through. Immediately I fell in love with two or three of the pages filled with Easter and spring decor!  There was a table setting that had eggs that spelled out Happy Easter and then there were some moss letters that quickly became projects I knew I wanted to do. The next day Lillie and I made a trip to the craft store to get supplies and over the past few weeks have made a whole bunch of Easter and spring projects. Well, I soon realized I was not the only person inspired by this latest Pottery Barn as I have seen these ideas all over blogland lately so they are not going to be new to probably any of you. I will still show you what we did anyway, though. 

For today I will show you how we made a knock-off version of these moss letters by Pottery Barn:

Pottery Barn's letters sell for $79 EACH! (plus shipping and handling - yikes!) They are twice the size of the ones we did as they are between 18 and 20" and the ones we did are only 10" but

we were able to do ours for about $4.50 each!

I went to the craft store planning on either getting just the letter H (for our last name) if I could find a huge letter and if not then getting smaller letters to either  spell out Easter or Spring. Well, when I got there they didn't have any huge letters and the smaller 10" letters they did have were completely picked through. I couldn't spell out Easter or Spring and my next 3 or 4 backup words were missing letters too. I felt like I was playing scrabble trying to figure out what in the world I could spell with the handful of letters they had left. Finally I realized I could spell HOME and even though it wouldn't have been my first choice I figured it would still work nicely. I also would have preferred the darker moss color to this brighter color but they were cleaned out of the darker moss so I just went with what they had, which was the bright green.

So here's how to make them. 

It is SUPER easy but it does take a decent amount of time and is REALLY messy!

What you need:

Letter(s)

Hot Glue 

Moss

1). Start with the first letter and get your glue gun ready.

2) Now just put some hot glue on the letter and start sticking the moss on. 

Work in small sections so that the glue won't dry on you.

3) Once you have the top done turn it over and go around the sides.

4) Continue working your way around the side until you are back 

where you started and that is it!  You are done!

 

I have several more Easter/Spring projects to show you over the next week or two.

I just need to get them photographed.

A few weeks ago I got some of Florabella's new textures and for the first time actually opened them up last night and started playing with a few. Memoir II quickly became my favorite and I had fun playing around with it. I didn't have any new pictures of Lillie to play with last night so I just used it on some of my favorite pictures of her from the past few months.

 

And lastly I have two of these pillows that are now for sale in our shop.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and be sure to check back this weekend 

for another GIVEAWAY!