I'm still here!

It's been quite a long time since I've blogged! Funny how time just seems to get away from you! Over the past 11 months, another craft show season has come and gone, my Etsy sites have been very busy, and we've grown as a family!

Our daughter was married on August 6th, adding a new son-in-law to our family.  We had so much fun preparing for her Victorian-style wedding, and it was absolutely beautiful.  Things never go quite as planned, though, and her wedding was no exception.  Three days prior to her wedding, my husband was rushed to the hospital and ended up fighting for his life in the ICU for almost two weeks before he was well enough to come home.  He was diagnosed with severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress, and septic shock.  Before being sedated and put on life support, he asked for us to continue with her wedding, and to make it a beautiful day for her. He also asked our son to walk our daughter down the aisle. She carried his photo in her bouquet.  I left him for a few hours to attend the wedding. His survival was a miracle and against the odds, and we count our blessings every day that he is still with us.  It was a very difficult time, and one we are glad is behind us.  His recovery is ongoing, and most of the fall and winter has been spent caring for him to help restore him back to health.

It was a fun and successful craft show season, and I loved adding my daughter, Emily, to my shows! I am so proud of her and all of her craftiness!  Glad some of that rubbed off on her!  We are having a blast with our Etsy site, Lottie Elizabeth. Check it out here and our website here.

I have recently revamped my website.  All of my patterns are still available, but my website now directs to my Etsy site for ordering.  This has allowed me to have epatterns - how 85% of my patterns are sold, able to be downloaded immediately.  I still can send any of my patterns as paper patterns...just use the order form on my website.  See my website here.

It has been a long, hard winter here in Southwest Washington! We've had multiple damaging ice storms, and have had snow since December 8th! There isn't much left now, but there were snowflakes falling this morning.  I just wanted to crawl back into bed and stay there until it's 70 degrees!  Our lambs will begin arriving in about 4 weeks.  That always means spring is here, right!?!

Wishing you a blessed spring!

~Laurie

Springtime at Prindle Mountain!

It's been way too long since I've posted on my blog! A month ago we had the lovely wedding of our daughter and new son-in-law, and now we've moved on to lambing here on our farm.

Emily was our first child to marry, and throwing a wedding was time-consuming, but something that I thoroughly enjoyed!  In the next few posts, I will focus on some of the DIY projects we did for her wedding.

First, here are the invitations we designed.  Invitations have changed considerably since my husband and I were married 30 years ago.  No longer are they necessarily ordered from a company with 2 envelopes, the paper liner, and as formal as they used to be.  Many brides just use postcards or even wedding websites to correspond with their guests.  We designed these on my computer using various graphics and fonts, and ordered them from Overnight Prints.  I am crazy about this company and all of the products and great prices that they offer!  I used textured navy cardstock and made folders with a flap to hold the RSVP postcard, an info card, and an engagement photo of the couple. It was tied up with ribbon.

With shipping included, 125 5x7 invitations, 125 4 x 6 RSVP cards, 125 business card size details card, and half-size business card name plates for the front of the invitations was less than $75!

Other postcards we made and ordered from Overnight Prints include Emily's December Bridal Shower invitations.....

.....Wedding programs......

.....and thank you cards......

There is one other thing we ordered from Overnight Prints, which was a super good deal!  Emily and I loved the chalkboard look, and before I realized that it was possible and really fun to make chalkboards, I ordered a poster sized print of a chalkboard that I designed on PicMonkey.  It was super fun to make! 

PicMonkey is a great website for altering photos. To make this, I looked online for a chalkboard background and found one in a large resolution.  I trimmed it on PicMonkey to be the start size that Overnight Prints suggests for their posters.  (These posters were only $2.99 at the time I ordered - and that's a big 18" x 24" size!)  Next I downloaded fonts that I liked free on the internet.  Below are some great free fonts, and you can find out how to download them here.

Anyway, from PicMonkey, you can use their fonts or your own.  Arrange your chalkboard how you like using the fonts and graphics of your choosing.  Change them to white.  Once the poster arrived, I mounted it on some stained wood and rubbed over it with some chalk to make it look more like it was hand-lettered.

Like I said, "before I realized that it was possible and really fun to make chalkboards.....", in my next post I will show you and tell you how I learned how fun it is, (and how easy too!) to make some cool looking chalkboard art.

Oh yes....I mentioned it is lambing time here on the farm.  We have currently 9 little lambs (5 born in the last 2 hours!)  Here is a photo of Emily with a lamb this evening. (While she is married now, and lives in an apartment in town, you can't take the farmgirl out of the farm, and she's back for her farm fix lots....much to our great happiness!)

Primitive blessings,

Laurie

Come on Spring!!!

Didn't I just say I was ready for spring?  Guess I jinxed it, because we woke up to snow on Saturday morning, and then it turned to freezing rain.  Ice built up all day Saturday and Sunday; an inch and a half thick!

We have trees down everywhere, and branches litter the yard.  It's going to be such a big clean up!  Worst of all, my 1965 Mustang, which had been planned to be a project car, lost it's back window and received a big dent in the top!  Boo hoo! :(

During all this, the power was out all day Sunday, and we had 5 lambs born during this time; a set of twins, and triplets at 3:30 a.m.!  Going up to the barn to check on the sheep overnight felt like I was risking my life (literally!) as chunks of ice as big as a basketball fell out of the trees!

I am SO ready for spring now!  We need a nice weekend to begin the huge job of clean up!  At least I'll get a bonfire out of the deal, and maybe a s'more or two?!  Gotta look on the bright side!

Prim (warm, sun-shiny!) blessings to you!

~Laurie

Bunnies and Bears Everywhere!

Spring fever must've hit me, because I've been busy sewing away on bunnies and bears!  My whole table was covered with them!  I just listed them on Etsy, and plan to work on patterns for three of them over the weekend.  Here they are:

Here are Benny Bear and Gracie.  These two were so much fun to sew!  I first discovered plush felt for my snowmen.  Who knew making these guys would be so much fun with this versatile fabric?!  These guys will be patterns.

This sweet girl is Betsy Bunny.  She's also made from plush felt, and I just love how her dress turned out!  The collar is made from the corner of a vintage cloth tea napkin.  I don't know if I will be able to part with Betsy!  She'll also be a new pattern.

Meet Barnaby!  Half the fun of creating these critters is coming up with names for them!  He just looked like a Barnaby to me!  He is also made from plush felt that has been aged and antiqued. He's the final pattern I plan to make this weekend.

Now, these are the kind of chocolate bunnies you can never have too many of!  Guaranteed to be calorie-free! :)  These little cuties are stitched from my Mister Bun E. Rabbit pattern that is now 10 years old!  I used a different fabric (the original, shown below, was stitched from terry cloth).  

....and last, I made a cream colored rabbit (white chocolate bunny?!) also using my Mr. Bun E. Rabbit pattern.  

Easter will be here before you know it!  I guess it's time to take my snowmen and winter stuff down!  It's March!

Primitive blessings,

Laurie

Happy Spring!

Spring on Prindle Mountain!

After a long, wet winter/spring, we've finally had some good weather in our neck of the woods!  Last weekend was actually 80 degrees!  I've been taking advantage of our taste of summer, and doing lots and lots of yard work and landscaping, and now that it's rainy and April again, I'm back in the crafting room!

Yesterday I found some great upholstery remnants for super cheap at my favorite fabric store:  Fabric Depot in Portland, Oregon.  It's advertised as the largest fabric store in the nation (over 1.5 acres!) You could literally spend days in this store, and still not see everything!  My mind started thinking of what I could make with these great pieces, and I think I'm going to try my hand at some bags.  I've found some great blogs with free tutorials (I love tutorials! Not just a pattern, but PICTURES!)  Take a look here and here and here.  I'm excited to get started and see what I come up with!  I'll post pictures when I've got a bag done! 

I was happy to get an e-mail from one of my best, long-time customers, Lori King!  She has her own Etsy shop now, and wanted me to see the lamb she made with some of the sheep's wool I sell on my website.  She used my "MaryAnn and Hope" pattern.  Isn't this little lamb adorable!?

 

Here's a link to her Etsy Shop.

Prim blessings,

~Laurie