The Reals

  Believe it or not, these two are high school teachers.  They look famous to me.  Famous rock stars! They are expecting a baby, gender unknown.  They refer to it as "Sprout" (adorable).  This wall hanging marked a couple of firsts for me.  This is my first time making studded boots, my first time making eye shadow (I like it), and my first time making a little sprout hat on a baby.

ps  This is going to be a new weekly/bi-weekly post on the blog called "The Reals" where I will show you the real people behind their personalized wall hanging or mobile.

Cheeky at Home -- My Weekly Post About Working From Home

     I finished this animal friends mobile this afternoon.  It goes to a baby who was born in December.  I always feel a little frantic when I make the mobiles after the babies are born.  They are supposed to be awaiting their arrival above the crib and getting settled for a week or so.  My fear of rejection is strong if I am transferring that onto my little mobile dopplegangers.  I imagine the baby thinking, "Get out of here, you!", and "I preferred the ceiling tiles, thank you!".   But, that's ridiculous, of course the baby will be glad when they arrive.  Err.  This weekly post is getting off to sort of a weird start.  This is going to be where I document what it's like to work from home.  I want that to heavily involve the "Mom Factor" (is that a reality TV show, it sounds like it could be).  But, I am going to let it evolve and change if it needs to, as well.  We'll see where it goes.  Come along with me.

   My son keeps his chalkboard easel in my studio.  Believe it or not, that is my chicken scratch penmanship up there, not his.  We are in the middle of planning his birthday party.   It's a new thing for me:  Throwing birthday parties.  I've been to a few with him, taking notes.  He's mostly invited to ones at museums and other established places that offer party packages.  It's nice, yes, to have equipment on the ready to play with, and a staff there to add comfort to the chaos.  But, man, they cost a pretty penny.  And, we need all our pennies, even the ugly ones.  Plus, I love the home party and the cake that gets presented in the pan it's baked in.  So, we are going for it.  Walter loves Star Wars.  I am not sure how.  He's never seen the movies, though Joseph thinks (deep breath) it's time.   We talked about the theme at dinner last night, and he was a flurry of activity afterwards.  He had a million ideas, and before bed, he had me jot some things down on the chalkboard.  The first two are pretty obvious, and quite general, but the third is pretty specific:  "Dress sister like Yoda".  I've visited Pinterest for ideas, but I think I will ban it for the rest of our party planning adventure, so that we can make it our own.

   Also, a few days ago, I mentioned one of my goals was making all my photos the same size on the blog.  I actually researched how to do that, and implemented what I learned, which had to do with copying and pasting a few words in some very mysterious location on my blog.  Nothing happened yet.  I think what I did was enter in "code".  Very odd, that code.  If it's not making all my pictures the same size, I wonder if it's doing something else?  Mysterious.

Happy New Year!!

 A new year, 2015.  2014, was something special, mainly because of that blue-eyed beauty pictured above.  She is a smiley, easy-going gal, already attracted to the idea of sewing (see the spool?).  She's not crawling yet, which, for me, is when everything changes, but she sure rolls like a champ.  I worried about getting things done with her around, but things have been going pretty well, if not a little frantic.  There aren't as many naps (for me), as I'd like (especially since winter showed up down here on the bayou----tall ceilings are beautiful, but the heat hides from us up there). 

I designed a few new things in this new year so far.  These mainly are for friends having babies.  I am particularly proud of that sweet little hedgehog girl up there on the right.

Oh yes, and the Beatles.  We all live in a Yellow Submarine.  This one goes to baby Jackson, son of my friend, Tracey, who has the best taste.  She lives all the way in California.  Why is our country so big?  Why does everyone live so far away from Louisiana?  Though, honestly, Louisiana, I love your winters.  Deeply.  Your summers, though?  Meh.

Then there are these monsters ^^^  I've been wanting to make a monster mobile since I started making mobiles, and finally, Carolyn's baby girl gave me a chance.  This is one my husband loves.

I have a lot of business goals for the New Year.  I thought it would be a good idea to write them down here.  You know what they say about accountability being effective for commitment to change?  Keep me accountable, internets!

Goals:

1.  I want to change my blog format so that the pictures are really large and all the same size.  I see it on other blogs and it looks so nice and organized.  How do you do that?  

2.  I want to blog more often, with special day-of-the-week categories, maybe?  I think it's fun to show people side-by-side with their personalized dolls, so that could be one category.  I also want to do some sort of photographic documentation of being a work-at-home mom (though I must give cred to my next door nanny, who does watch little girl a few days a week).  

3.  This is a big one.  This year, I have a goal to make and sell 5 patterns.  I am going to call them my Simple Sillies.  They will be baby mobile patterns.  I know for sure I am going to make a ninja one, a sumo one, a ballerina sheep one, and ???  Any ideas for the other two?  I actually think for this one I will finally utilize my connection to art students (my husband is a professor of painting and knows all sorts of eager graphic design students).  I will need help on the computery side of things.

4.  I desperately want to design fabrics.  I want to start small by designing a bib.  Again, the computer comes into play here.  Computers intimidate me.  Throw in a scanner and I am cowering in the corner doing deep breathing exercises.  Maybe I'll utilize those clever art students again.  The younger generation just knows how to do these things.

5.  I want to have ready-made items in my shop.  My made-to-order items are at a looong turnaround. 11 weeks?  That's crazy.  I am lucky I make mobiles and babies take so long to "cook".  I feel like I am always, always, always working on my made-to-order mobiles, and I need to carve some time into my schedule for new designs that I can make a few of at once and then have on the go, for people who don't order things months in advance.

So, that's that!  My real life/non-businessy goals are pretty standard.  Read more, eat less cookies, you know.  I'm excited for this year, though.  I can't think of a snappy sentence to end on.  I'll just end with a, "Hurray!".   

Ally Bean

Here she is!

Two days ago Little Miss Alice, my daughter, came into the world. Here is the mobile I made for her the day before she was born. A majestic cloud king to watch over her and sprinkle down shimmery gold stars full of sweet dreams into her wee little head. If you look closely, you can see my little Ally Bean asleep in the crib.

Today my heart feels two sizes too big.

Team Forever in Shanghai!

Look at these two beautiful stylish folk.  And, their little french bulldog and baby fox?!?  I love them.  The second attachment is what the lovely lady sent me.  It's by far the most organized description document I have ever received.  Truthfully, I love the various degrees of information my customers send me.  Some give very little information with just a few pictures and basically say "go for it" and others are quite specific.  It's very nice to have variety like that------it keeps things interesting.  

I do have about a million questions for this woman though.  The majority of those involving the baby fox which has melted my heart to goo.  

Two more orders left until maternity leave!  It literally feels like there is a watermelon in my belly.  Also, I eat roughly 2 whole watermelons a week.  Through experience, I think I can now tell which watermelons are good and which are a bit mushy---not through any specific way that I can tell you about, just through a sort of 6th sense.

For Sweet Baby Simran

This one goes to baby Simran, that beauty above with all that hair.  The gifter wanted the mobile to also have some animals in there too: a giraffe, whale, and lion.  This was one of those personalized mobiles where it was so easy for me to capture their likeness, sometimes it can be such a struggle.

I have just 4 more orders until my maternity leave that I scheduled for myself (I am still and will still be taking orders during that time, just not making any for 4 weeks) kicks in.  I hope that I can finish everything before Alice gets here, but she seems really anxious to enter the world.  She's welcome anytime of course-----but Alice, if you come early, please be a good little sleeper at first so I can wrap things up and then spend proper time with you. 

This is the most bizarre stage of pregnancy for me.  The baby inside my belly is fully developed, just hanging out.  She's just right there, and she could come anytime.  I can feel her stretching her legs out, and in about a week, that will be something I see her do.  I'm excited to look into her eyes.  In the meantime though, I need to sew for other little ones.  You should see me, I look like Frankenstein, mainly because I have to sew with my arms stretched way out to compensate for my belly, but also because I've really been frumping it up with the stretchy pants this past month.  I think Frankenstein wore stretchy pants, right?  Anyway, cheerio, have a lovely day.

Two Married Couple Wall Hangings

Two Beautiful Couples.  Looking at the first pair fills my heart with regret that I didn't ask Joseph to wear a bow tie when we tied the knot. 

These two pairs melt my heart, you can really see some magic in their eyes.

Waiting for this baby to be born over here.  She feels ready to come out.  I'd like her to hang on for a little while so Nonnie, the babysitter for big bro, has time to take the road trip to Cajun Country in time.  We are getting Walter a gift to help him still feel special when a lot of the attention, usually doted on him, will sway a little to the newest member of our family.  We found him 30 (!) little lego characters on Ebay for super cheap.  He loves those little guys.  I can really see the allure, too.  I love tiny little things with personality too.