Little Red Riding Hood

I posted about this over on my sewing site, but this deserves another post. Charlotte is going as Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween and we tried her costume on her and took her to the woods to show it off over the weekend:

She's verrrry excited about trick-or-treating and so far it looks like she'll be able to wear her costume without any extra coats, hats or gloves--yay! 

Happy Halloween!

~Stacy

Octsnowber

For the first time that I can remember, we celebrated Chad's birthday with a little bit of snow on the ground. That seems like a sign that it's going to be a snowy winter, since we're only a month into fall...

Chad's birthday weekend (yep, birthdays are celebrated over the course of several days here) was nice and relaxing. He had an extra day off that we used to go to the botanical gardens and have lunch. We went out for a special birthday dinner on Thursday and he opened his gifts from me and Charlotte, which included a board game about camping (which turned out to be really fun, check it out on Amazon here) and a telescope.

The botanical gardens still had some snow left from the early morning flurries. It was a ghost town there except for us and the workers who were busy setting up Halloween decorations for an event the next day. Inside was tropical, outside was snowy. In October.

I hope you had a good weekend--enjoy this last week of October!

~Stacy

Little Red Riding Hood Costume

My girl is still young enough that she doesn't have much of an opinion about what she wants to be for Halloween. This is not because she isn't opinionated (she is) but because she's not quite familiar with this whole Halloween concept. Last year she was too little to have any idea what we were doing but this year she's very excited about the idea. It's blowing her mind that we get to walk around to our neighbor's houses, ring their doorbells, and get candy :)

Since this is most definitely the last year of her life where I'll get to pick her costume without any input from her, I decided to make her a Little Red Riding Hood costume. I had a pattern from the Oliver + S book for a cape that I wanted to make, so I found a costume that would work with it. Also, I went as Little Red when I was about 4 or 5 so there's a bit of nostalgia wrapped up in it.

For the dress, I just made an Ice Cream Social Dress out of red gingham. I went this route instead of using a detailed pattern specifically for Little Red Riding Hood since I wanted her to be able to wear the dress again in the summer on its own.

The cape is made out of a solid deep red for the exterior and a white/gray print by Swirly Girls for the lining.

Little Red loves her costume. She went into the woods to show it off:

Happy Halloween!

More Fall

There's not much to say here, except we took a long walk in the park this past weekend and it was beautiful (and rainy). Charlotte put her ladybug umbrella to good use. That's all.

~Stacy

Show Offs

Every April the first sign of green grass and new leaves is just about the greatest sight in the whole world. I say just about because October leaves are the greatest sight. Especially mid-October, peak leaf season, where they all strut their stuff and show off before it's time to go.

Come on October, stick around for another five months please?

~Stacy

Less Pictures Means More Busy

Anytime I have a particularly busy week I notice it in the number of pictures I take--or rather, the lack of pictures. This week was a little crazy (in a good way--busy without being totally overwhelming, which is a hard combo to come by). I have zero pictures on my memory card from my camera and just a handful on my phone.

I'm determined to get some pretty outdoor pictures this week. It didn't end up happening last week, but I also noticed that there's still a lot of green leaves out there. And it seems like the ones that have changed are kind of washed out or even starting to fall off already. Lame. Hopefully this week they'll perk up before it's time to rake them all.

When we did have free time, we went to the library (this week we sampled two different ones. The children's sections in our library system are fantastic--our libraries rock).

This girl loves her books. She has her favorites and has started memorizing parts of the ones she likes the most and will pull up a chair and "read" for awhile. It's the sweetest.

There was a fair amount of dress up involved:

Remember Howard? Well, we keep in touch with his new family and he's doing awesome. He loves them and the feeling is definitely mutual. He celebrated his 4th birthday last week by going to a pumpkin patch and this is what they sent me:

This pose didn't last long--he jumped out of the cart after but it's still a cute picture. I miss those ears but I'm so happy he's found such a wonderful family. He's four year old pup with the personality of a crabby old man...gotta love him :)

I hope you're enjoying October so far!

~Stacy

Lately (This is a Long One)

I've been neglecting my little blog lately. I don't want to neglect it; I love this blog. Even if only my mom and grandma read it I still love it because it holds a lot of stories and photos from the past two years that I want to hold onto. It's my space to share the things that make me happy. I make a point not to blog about negative things--not because they don't happen, but because they aren't really the things I want to reflect on at the end of the day. This is a place I can come when I'm feeling unmotivated, stressed, overwhelmed or down and after looking at a few posts I almost always feel energized again, at least a little bit.

I've overextended myself in the past few months, admittedly, and totally by my own doing. I created my crafting website, which was fun and a new creative venture for me. The purpose of that was to keep the sewing/business related posts separate so I could draw an audience to that alone without having my personal life and photos shared with it. I started offering sewing and quilting classes and before I directed potential customers to my business site I wanted to make sure it was just that: a business site.

It's been going well--readers are showing up and I've been getting a positive response. And it gives me an outlet to still share all of my sewing related projects to a group of readers who are truly interested. But after awhile I noticed that I felt less and less motivated to make and share projects. It started feeling the way I never hoped it would: like an obligation. I don't do well with obligations. As soon as I feel like something is obligated I immediately don't want to do it. I lose interest and motivation very, very quickly. I found myself halfheartedly making projects, or worse--starting them and leaving them unfinished on the table, lacking the drive to finish them.

I never want to feel obligated to be creative, or feel like I have to make something if my heart isn't in it. I've discovered that I really enjoy teaching sewing lessons and thankfully, so far at least, I've gotten a very positive response. My class offerings are growing and I'm getting contacted about private lessons more and more. It's a good feeling, but in order to keep going with it I need to want to do it. If I lose the motivation to make things then how can I successfully motivate others to want to learn? I want to want to be creative, otherwise it loses its purpose entirely.

There are enough obligations in life. There are obligations we all have: laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, blah blah blah. In mine in particular, I have a two year old who is my primary daily employer (I can't call her an obligation; she's way better than that). After that comes my HR consulting work--I have a contract that requires certain duties and a set amount of hours every month. They deserve this, but they also deserve quality. Quality doesn't come when you're overtired and stressed out. After that comes my hobby job--teaching sewing lessons. I say "hobby job" because while it is a job and a real business I also feel like it's a hobby since I have fun with it and get to talk about my favorite hobby to people who pay me money to do so. Not a bad gig.

In between all of that comes the things that I enjoy just for the sake of them: photography, blogging, and yes, sewing. But I came to an important conclusion this week when I found myself with free time and zero desire to sew: something has to give. And that something is going to be my crafting blog, for the time being. I made this decision five days ago. I've been in a sewing slump for five weeks. Since making the decision, I've finished two abandoned projects and started on another. I've decided I want to learn embroidery and I've practiced learning new quilting techniques. My motivation is coming back and in feeling less obligated to make and share new things all the time for the sake of my crafting site I've unlocked my mojo. I feel like I'll be a better teacher to those who want to sew. I feel interested in it again in a way I haven't for awhile now. Feeling so unmotivated made me question if this teaching venture was the right decision; now I'm not questioning that anymore. I was my own problem all along :)

This is a long and meandering post, so if you're actually still reading it and haven't fallen asleep--thank you. And if you are interested in learning how to sew or quilt (or know someone who is), I'd love to hear from you. Email bluebaycottage@gmail.com. And thanks for listening.

So without further ado, here is a sampling of what's been going on over the past week or so.

First, we got flu shots. I told her what we were doing and she waited patiently at the CVS Minute Clinic while reading her "magazine"--aka a Fisher Price catalog featuring The Little People. She took it like a champ and only cried for a minute and solidly earned herself a treat, shown on the right.

Last weekend she went on her second camping trip. This time she slept in a tent (!) and went with Chad, my dad and my brother. And Izzy, my parents' dog. She was pretty much in heaven and loved everything about her trip. It didn't hurt that they had the best camping weather ever.

I stayed behind and enjoyed a bit of solitude (and a nasty cold). I had a wild evening alone watching The Big Bang Theory reruns and making a play mat/village for Charlotte's random Little People stuff. Who knows what I might have done if left alone for a second evening. There might have been something really crazy going on, like baking a dozen cupcakes or reorganizing a closet. Here's said play mat:

I used a yard of fabric then cut green felt for the road and sewed it on, then stitched yellow lines onto the felt to make lanes. The pond is a piece of blue felt that I fused to the fabric with fusible web. When she's done playing we can toss all the toy pieces into a basket and fold up the mat--easy clean up!

When the campers got home we had ice cream. Superman ice cream, to be specific.

The rest of last week the girl and I spent it trying to get rid of our colds (mostly successfully, though we shared it with Chad so now he's enjoying our generosity).

It's strange how quickly summer has disappeared. Now when we take our post-dinner bike rides to the beach we can only stay for a little while before it's dark. The ice cream stand there is closed for the season which makes the end of summer very real (I feel my seasons in terms of ice cream accessibility). 

The leaves are starting to explode with color. I think this upcoming week or next will be prime time to catch them in all of their colorful glory and I have my camera ready and waiting. 

Happy October.

~Stacy