Finding Winter's Beauty #2

As previously stated, winter is not my favorite season.  Over my 20+ years of living in Minnesota I have made several attempts to get over that.  There was the"Operation Make Friends With Winter" campaign of 1999.  It had it's fantastic moments, but was deemed unsuccessful.  There have also been winter's that I have made no effort to make peace with piles of snow and frigid temps.  This year I plan to focus on the beauty instead of trying to force myself to actually enjoy winter activities.

Yesterday were were treated to a big dose of winter's beauty!

Over a foot of winter's beauty fell all day long.

And nothing is more beautiful to me than a couple of thrilled and satisfied girls.  They even talked me into a trip down the hill.  I'm not sure who was more entertained, me or the passerby who stopped to see the crazy lady shrieking all the way down the hill.

A few weeks before the snow fell I was able to finish this custom quilt with a variety of Monaluna fabric including a bit of busy city.  I'm so glad that I got it done before winter descended.  As we all snuggled up under our quilts after sledding yesterday, I stopped to think about the quilts that I have made that were hopefully being put to good use around town on a beautiful snowy day.

If life gives you lemons...

 ...make a skirt.  I have had a "helper" in the studio for the last couple of days.  My Birthday Girl was feeling a little under the weather and didn't make the trip to Grandma's house with her sister.  The trip was a gesture from my Mom in order to help me get caught up on some work.  So... we have been getting some quality time together.  She has been a very good sport and was even really helpful in packing up orders!   But, none the less, I wasn't getting caught up on anything.  Then the walking foot on my machine broke in the middle of trying to finish up a custom quilt that needs to be done for a soon departing college freshman!  After a few curse words, I decided to throw in the towel and have some fun.  After discovering her love of a beautiful corduroy fabric we worked together to make a VERY simple skirt.

I never knew how happy a simple elastic skirt could make a-now-eight-year-old.

 We used some Amy Butler corduroy with a little ribbon accent from Ana Maria Horner.

Then the UPS guy dropped off a box with some pretty Orla Kiely soaps.  Things are looking up and maybe I will get some work done tomorrow.  In the meantime, I have a happy girl and clean hands!  

Time is a jet plane...

 Summer is flying by like it ALWAYS does!  I'm not sure why every August I am suddenly surprised that summer is more than half over and I haven't gotten to nearly half of the things on my to-do-this-summer list.  

One thing that I didn't plan to do this summer was become addicted to Instagram! It is so fun to look back at the summer so far and realize that although there aren't a lot of checks on my to-do list, I have been spending my time wisely so far!

 

I've been hanging out with these two lovelies...

Spending some time here...

Spending more time than I wanted to here...

Selling my wares at the farmer's markets...

Packing up these lovelies for the move... 

...and doing not quite enough sewing.

Moving into my new space has given me some much needed new perspective and I have lots of thoughts and ideas about the direction(s) that I should go with my business, my craft and my career.  I am looking forward to whittling all of those ideas down into some manageable goals and having a PixieSpit "reboot" this fall.  In the meantime, I will suck every last bit of fun and sunshine out of the next few weeks as I can. You can follow along with me on Instagram or better yet...get on there yourself if you aren't already!

Settling in... FINALLY!

 My move into the new studio has been a lot longer than I expected.  After starting to move in and then realizing that there were some minor (but messy) fixes to be done, I halted my move in and headed out on a fantastic road trip to visit family in Ohio.  

 We had a great time and even picked up a stow-away cousin.

 Then there was another delay while waiting for the A/C to be installed during the sweltering heat.

I was all ready (and excited!) but then came another road bump.  Jury Duty... and of course I was chosen to be on a trial.  Not quite the short detour that I thought it would be.

But today is my birthday and I got a wonderful gift.  The judge had some personal matters to attend to, so we got the day off!  The first thing that I did after I ate my birthday donut was to sew something.  I whipped up some simple curtains for my daughters bedroom.  It felt so good to SEW for the first time in my new space!!  More of that to come once this trial wraps up...

A very pleasant surprise!

Many weeks ago, I decided that I needed a little solo-getaway to get a little clarity on the direction I want to go with this business of mine , to get a few projects done and to just have some quiet time to myself. I blocked off March 16-18 on the calender to head off alone to our cabin, picturing a slushy, gloomy weekend spent indoors by a nice fire. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. We, here in Minnesota, have been basking in an early burst of springtime weather and it was more than a little distracting...
I did manage to check a few things off the list. The most important being some time for reflection. My friend Sarina, has an incredible free guide for creating and achieving everything from the simplest to the loftiest of goals, personal or profesional, on her website. I truly believe in the power of writing it down and now have some clarity around what direction I want to head and how to get there.
On a more tangible level, I did some of my best multi-tasking to date. A little hand work patching up my favorite pants (that will soon be more patch than pants) while listening to ice melt. It was so loud! I had never managed to make it to the cabin while the ice was actually melting before. I was also entertained by a bald eagle family out for a flying lesson and my big dopey dog looking diligently for what ever was making that sound coming from the lake. He hasn't heard the ice melting before either... Hilarious!
And.. on a much more practical level, I finished up and hung some much needed curtains on our porch. The cabin faces due east and any visitor lucky enough to score a spot to sleep on the futon learns early in the morning that facing due east is a BRIGHT way to wake up. I used an old favorite from Denyse Schmidt for a nice retro-modern feel. Just right for our cabin built in the 40's.

All in all a very good weekend. A perfect re-boot for the brain and spirit.

One Man's Trash...

..is someone else's treasure. A while back, I was walking my kids to school and it was garbage day! There was a pile of stuff at the curb of a house that had just sold, so of course we started digging through it. The kids scored a fabulous rock collection, very fancy labeled rocks. And I scored this treasure packed box of goodies. I have always wanted a gromet tool and there were two different sizes in there, along with lots of gromets. I also found a classic metal seam gauge, just like the one Grandma Tag had back in the day. I couldn't have been more excited, and my girls learned to dumpster dive. A lifelong skill!

All signs point to yes...

So, the spreadsheet looked good. But I needed a few more nudges from the universe. After a consultation with a fortune cookie...
...and a roll of the indecision dice...

I am thrilled to share the news, that I will continue my leave of absence from my teaching job for another year...at least! This is just way too much fun to stop. Many thanks to everyone that has supported me in so many ways so far.

Happy 2012!

Well 2011 was a pretty exciting year for me. I decided to take a year long leave of absence from my teaching job in order to focus on a few important things. The "thing" at the top of that list was my family. For a while I had been juggling too many things and felt like I was short-changing them. My absolute most favorite thing about my leave has been walking my kids to school every morning. There is not a better way to start a day as far as I am concerned. After they are off to school, most days I have a chance to spend a brief amount of quality time with my husband in an empty house. Another thing I have been doing with my time is really focusing on this little hobby-business of mine. PixieSpit has been so much fun over the last few years and I wanted to make a real go of it. There are some pros and cons involved with trying to make a business of doing what you love, but for the most part things have been going incredibly well. So, here I sit ready to make a spreadsheet with fancy number and formulas to see how it all looks on paper. I need to decide if I am going back to my teaching job next fall by the end of this month... Fingers crossed that the spreadsheet supports the feeling in my gut!