A Little Christmas Project

First, I just want to say thank you to everyone for all of the fabulous ideas for Lillie's birthday party. There are so many good ones it is making it hard for me to decide. I still haven't narrowed it down yet (although I REALLY need to hurry up!) so if anyone else has any please feel free to add them!

Okay, now I know that most people think it is WAY too early to be worrying about Christmas decorating yet, but I can't help myself. I know I am very much in the minority here but I just get so excited about it! I have been a good girl and refrained from doing any decorating yet, but I have started working on some projects because with Lillie and Dear Lillie it is hard to find time for "just for fun" projects. During Lillie's nap yesterday I decided to make some pillows for our living room. I have been really wanting to get these ones from this great little Etsy shop. I think they are really well priced, knowing how much work goes into them, but with Christmas, Lillie's birthday, and a new baby on the way I couldn't really spend that on pillows that were just for one month of the year. Plus, even though I have a million pillows and pillow forms lying around, I didn't have any extra that size so I would have had to go out and buy those too.

I rummaged through my fabric box looking for some burlap (which I KNOW I have but can't seem to find anywhere) and instead found this - I think it is a linen blend. I was going to just draw lightly on it with a pencil and then pick up some black paint later to go over it but figured Lillie was asleep and if I didn't do it now, I might never end up doing it so instead I just freehanded with a sharpie (yes,  I know - that is rather horrifying that I used a sharpie but that was all I had!). I decided to write "Silent Night" on one Pillow and "Holy Night" on the other. (Silent Night is my favorite Christmas Hymn!) Then I sewed them up and stuffed some extra pillows I had in the garage in them and for FREE I had two new Christmas pillows! YAY! I do need to paint over the sharpie to give it a crisper look, but that is a project for another day. I put them on the couch to take a few quick pictures of but will take more in a few weeks when I actually put them out for Christmas. I picked up some burlap this morning (because the burlap I own seems to be hiding on me) for $3.99 a yard and my next project is going to be some Christmas stockings and a few more pillows - although they will be a different style than these ones. I would love to get to work on them during Lillie's nap today but I am afraid I have too much Dear Lillie sewing that I need to be working on! In fact I had better get moving on it before the wee one awakens!

Anyway here are my FREE pillows (don't look too closely because I was doing it quickly and didn't trace it out in pencil first so there are a lot of little mistakes - yikes):

Jon has even been quite complimentary of them, but I am pretty sure that is just because they didn't cost anything! Haha! Even though I often try to use stuff that we already have, even so, most of my projects normally require at least one trip to either the fabric or craft store.

UPDATE: A SCREENPRINTED VERSION OF THESE  PILLOW COVERS IS NOW AVAILABLE IN OUR SHOP:

And you can see our full 2011 Christmas Tour here:

http://dearlillieblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/our-christmas-tour.html

I hope you all have are having a fabulous Monday!

Any Birthday Party Ideas?

Sorry! I have been a major blog slacker this week! It was a long busy week and the morning sickness that I thought I was finally near the end of came back strong these past few days - yuck! I think the end is in sight though - now I am just dying for that big boost of energy that should come at some point in the next few weeks! So anyway, I wanted to give you all some Dear Lillie updates, show you some gray we've added to Miss Lillabel's room, and see if anyone had any birthday party ideas.

First - we have a bunch of our new designs available now in our shop including our Anne of Green Gables Thermal (which I had to print on a white thermal because despite looking EVERYWHERE for a nice green one I couldn't find any that had a complete range of sizes left in stock), the Little Women one and some Fairyland ones in new colors for both women and children. (Pictures of everything are at the bottom of this post). We will have the 'Twas the Night Before Christmas shirt available for kids later this week. The ribbon on it will be optional that way it can be for either boys or girls.

I also wanted to tell you I we have some really fun new embellished shirts that we are working on that will be available in the spring. Originally my plan was for all of our screenprinted shirts to have some embellishments (chiffon, lace, buttons, rosettes, etc). I was really inspired by all of the J.Crew ones this summer and wanted to be able to make similar ones with a Dear Lillie twist on them but offer them at a lower prices. Unfortunately, the morning sickness hit hard right when we started printing so that all went out the window for fall. However, as soon as Christmas is over I am dying to get to work on what has been in my  head for the past six months!

On another note Lillie and I are starting to get into Christmas mode a little early here =)....we haven't quite won Jon over to it yet, though. Haha! This afternoon we went and got some little fir trees to put in our urns on the front porch and had fun planting them. I wanted to take down all of our fall stuff this afternoon to get ready for our Christmas stuff and almost did seeing how Jon was gone at a scrimmage all day, but figured he might die when he got back so decided against it. I used to always wait until after Thanksgiving to start, but the last two years with Lillie and Dear Lillie, I have discovered it takes so much longer to get everything done especially when I have lots of new Christmas projects I want to do, so I have started a little earlier. I suppose I should wait at least another week or two though.

Some decorating we have done, though, has been to add some more gray into Lillie's room. I am trying to slowly make it a little less pink and my sister Jamie made her a matching pillow and blanket for her bed and that has really helped. Now I just need to hang something above her bed...if only I could decide!

For more pictures of Lillie's new big girl room click here.

And here are some of the new shirts now available in our shop. Also just to let you all know we won't be printing any more thermals before Christmas (except the kids Christmas which we will have later this week) so what we have now is it!

Okay and last but not least, Lillie's birthday is in just a few weeks and I am trying to decide what to do for her birthday party. Last year we had a fun pink theme, but I am torn about what to do this year. We are going to do a small little tea party up in New Hampshire and I was thinking about doing either a chocolate theme (she might love chocolate even more than me!) and do lots of little mini chocolate desserts, or maybe a sugarplum/winter wonderland theme and do lots of fluffy white decorating, or maybe a Fancy Nancy themed tea party, but I really am not sure and I need to decide in the next day or two so that I can get to work making stuff.

 Do any of you have any opinions or ideas?

If so I would LOVE to hear them and if someone comes up with an idea that I end up using I will send you a free shirt of your choice (and yes, Jamie, I will let family members enter this contest - haha!)

I hope you all are having a lovely weekend!

Briar Hat GIVEAWAY and Some Pictures of Our Little Pocahontas

Guess what?

We are hosting another giveaway and this time it is for one of our Briar Children's Hats!!!!

At the end of this post we will tell you how you can win it!

On another note, it is NOVEMBER!!!! I am so excited. I love November and the official start of the holiday season. Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away and then Lillie's birthday and then Christmas! Ahhhh! I can barely contain myself. I wish I could hit a slow-motion button right now so these next two months could slooooooowly go by!!!!!

Here is a quote from one of my favorite childhood books: (Oh and by the way, I am hoping to have the Anne of Green Gables thermal along with a few other new thermals for sale by this evening!)

 

If today is officially November, then that, of course means last night was Halloween. We dressed Lillie up as Pocahontas and took her over to Coach and Mrs. Shaver's neighborhood to go trick-or-treating. It took her a little while to warm up to the idea but once we got going she seemed to like adding all the candy to her little bucket! Here she is right before we plopped her in the car to head over to the Shaver's.

Here she is with Coach Shaver helping hand out the candy and eating some herself (she's got a blue M&M tongue in the second photo).

Oh - and Lillie put the face paint on herself (I had to clean up the smudges a bit) so that is why the lines are REALLY far apart =)

Dana, Jon and I all passed on the costumes but Jamie (who was by far the most excited about going trick-or-treating) and Josh got dressed up as a hunter and a deer.

Okay, so enough on Halloween and on to the Giveaway!

Here are some pictures of Lillie wearing the Briar Hat:

 And here are some photos that some of our customers have sent us of the Briar Hat:

 Click here to visit J Lyn's website.

 Click here to visit Andrea Hallett's website.

Click here to visit Monique Porter's website.

So, how can you win one of these hats?

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 in the comment so that we can contact you if you win! If you have a blog or a profile where we can get your e-mail address then you don't need to worry about that part. If we draw the name of someone who we have no way of contacting we will simply draw a new name. 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 your comment so it counts as an entry.

We will choose a winner and will announce it next Wednesday, November10th!

Happy November!!!!!