Dino Princess on the Prowl

I've got lots of news to report. First of all, we survived the birthday party madness and all had a good time. I had decided to take on a cake that I had seen in a magazine and you can see the results below. Needless to say, I have a whole new appreciation for cake decorating--it was hard! Fortunately when you're working with chocolate cake and pink buttercream frosting, you cannot really go wrong.

Love those retro ballerina caketoppers? I got them from Sweet Poppy on Etsy. They were quite the hit with my daughter.

My garment labels are in from the weavers and I love them! Thanks to my fabulous friend Chihana for designing them for me.

And now with the birthday party complete, I've been having loads of fun in the last few days working on some new Dino Princess dresses. I've refined my appliques and have some fabulous new fabrics, so I'm really excited about what is coming up. Here's a peak...

A stegosaurus princess...

A new a-PINK-osaurus!

Another apatosaurus...

And last but not least, a triceratops princess...

Blanketed with Blankets

Whew, I have been out of it because I have been crazed whipping up blankets all weekend. I got some delicious new fabrics in and this shipment happened to coincide with a bunch of blanket orders from people who wanted me to do whatever I wanted. Yay--love that type of order!

So, after a fevered blanket stitching party (ummm, is it a party if you're by yourself?), Denise was generous enough to do some pics with me on Sunday night. Caroline was not that into it as evidenced by these shots.

Eventually she had enough.

So, I moved on to Kate who was totally feeling the photography love. Finally.

Monday is tomorrow already

It has been a very productive weekend here but I'm not quite ready to start another week yet. I've embarked on photographing a lot of my creations but I cannot say it is smooth going. I understand now all of the comments that I have seen about how challenging it is to photograph products. I feel like I put all of this work into things and the pictures never quite capture that.

Just as I was starting to feel overwhelmed, it was time to take Kate to a princess birthday party at my friend Wendy's lovely house. Her house and garden is truly to die for. She is an amazing gardener and really has a fantastic eye for design. I always just throw flowers together and hope for the best, but she goes for a sculptural approach and uses texture and simplicity to guide her vision. I should have taken a bunch of pictures of her backyard rather than spending my time trying to describe it.

I loved that bird she had on her wall. Perhaps because I am really into princess animals right now.

Wendy's party favors were terribly clever. She bought pink bath salts, put them into empty baby food jars, tied them up with soap lollipops, and taped princess ducks to the top. She is so creative!

Blogosphere...here I come!

I confess that as I've been working on getting organized for the launch of my Etsy shop, I've been reluctant (gulp, scared?) to dip my toe into the sea of blogs that have flooded the cybersphere recently. After all, where was I supposed to start? Well, today I had a little bump with reality that I thought deserved mentioning.

My friend Denise was here helping me take some pictures of products that I have been whipping up for my shop. I was feeling confident with our girls in good moods (yes, I had bribed them into being models with a promise of cupcakes), some fun products to photographs, and a break in the sun and heat that we've been experiencing for the last week. All was going swimmingly until...THUNK...Caroline took a dive into the wall and came up screaming with a nasty knot on her head.

She was actually fine after a few minutes and had a grand time tearing apart a box of Kleenex, but I now have a reminder every time I look at her cute little noggin not to forget about my what I'm really trying to accomplish here. I know that accidents happen all of the time with little ones, but this one was just what I needed to put down the camera, turn off the sewing machine, close the laptop and play with my girls. It's just so darn hard to do everything...at the same time.

On a similar note, I just got a good laugh out of this Storque article about being an Etsy widower and read parts aloud to my husband. Note to self: slow down and admire my best creations (my kids!).