not so fast...

for the first time in eons, or as those hilarious brits sometimes spell it , aeons, i sat down last night for a bit of pleasure sewing. having finished all my sewing "work," i decided to clean and reorganize my sewing area (formerly known as the dining room table) and do a project for fun!

sick! no wonder i was stressed!

and after:

it's not everything...but it's something. and load better for clean brain space.

so i sat down to make a dress for layla. i luxuriated in all the tabletop space and no-deadline time i now had as i cut all my pattern pieces. i pinned them in place and went to sew the first stitches. then my phone pinged that i had email. i went to my inbox and saw that i had just been hit with 3 etsy orders. hahahaha sweet irony.

sometimes i go months without getting an order, so the fact that we are celebrating being all clear and just as i have a night off running to do my own sewy thing, blammo. i dont begrudge it one bit though, because we need some extra cash flow bigtime right now. i actually got 1.75 of the 3 orders finished in 2 hours thanks to clean space motivation.

but i cant really do an all clear giveaway (at the end of which i will have 2 more projects in the queue!) without being "all clear." so i am going to extend the giveaway until tomorrow night. and just for being a big procrastinating tease (sorry!), you can get more entries if you already entered once. just tweet or FB or blog linking back to the giveaway post and leave a comment there (not here) saying you did. simp.

and since i had to make a few bibs last night for a gift my mom needed, i made a few more to go with it and then turned them into a set. so there is an all new (and affordable) item in the shop today that you will be able to win.

namaste.

sampling the goods

i just love-love all of the things that friends and customers order for gifts and for their babies. and since the giveaway in the previous post (enter now!) will be helping 2 winners get something like these, here is a little blast of some of the orders that helped to bury me recently (i love being buried by cuteness and business, BTW. that is NOT a complaint).

first, a friend from highschool wanted 4 fobs, 8 burpcloths and a boppy cover for their newly expected bundle. they dont know the gender yet, and the only restrictions i got were not to go crazy pink and that greens and blues are favorites.

ok so these probably arent for the baby. but if their babe is anything like mine, the fob WILL get chewed on mercilessly.

LOVED these. makes me want to increase our family's stash! but we already have about 30 of them since they are judahs comfort objects (binkies).

and her boppy cover. this fabric combo was meant to be. they arent even from the same collection or store eve, but they just rocked it out together. chocolate brown, turquoise, buttercup and grass! love this for a boy or girl. and the zipper is even chocolate! secret bonus.

this next boppy is the first--and hopefully last--one that i have ever botched so bad that i had to start over from scratch. i even had to order more fabric. AGH. and i had alreadying painstakingly appliqued the name on and was on the final step when the devastation occurred. it fit in the end and the name was just a little off center, but i just couldnt send it out less than fabulous. so this is take #2:

love her little name! and i really dig the fabrics that my friend/customer picked out.

next up is another personalized boppy from one of jesse's old church friends who i met a few times back when he and i were dating. i have gotten to know her better through facebook recently and it turns out she is like a millionty times cooler than i ever realized before (my fault, probably). i LOVE when that happens. oh, man she makes me laugh and makes me wonder if i am funny at all, because she is so damn hilarious. anyway, she was ordering this as a gift for her sister who is expecting a little boy.

green with leaves and charcoal circles. mod boy.

next up was another baby bundle for a little boy who will be making his grand entrance (exit?) any minute now. in fact, the package is racing to get to illinois and his mama before he escapes the womb! this is for our sweet friend alicia who turned me loose on the fabrics for everything besides wanting an argyle bowtie and reminding me that she is a fairskinned redhead who turns red in the heat (you and me both, babe!) and to not subject her to reds/pinks on the nursing apron. hahaha.

boppy, bib, burpie, suspenders onesie and nursing apron (with chenille inside pocket shown). i picked an emerald-green based fabric for the nursing apron because alicia looks BANGING in jewel tones and i ADORE this chocolate lollipop fabric. and the little brown argyle set could not be cuter for a lil man.

the adorable whales with navy blue circles combo for this boppy might be my new favorite of all time. FLINK! it's so cute and contemporary and clean. i reeeeeeally hope alicia and her little fella love it and get tons of use out of all of these.

so there you have it. this is what i was churning out in between runs these past few weeks and what i have to offer yall in the giveaway. onward!

an ALL CLEAR giveaway

my etsy order inbox is finally CLEAR! i just shipped out my last 3 orders. it feels AMAZING.

to not have anything hanging over my head, worried that i am disappointing customers with my long turnaround time is wonderful. i actually had to put my shop on vacation mode because i literally could not do my half marathon training (especially during the "most miles in 31 days" contest...which i won, with 92.3!), and take any new orders without quitting my day job.

the problem was that i got SIX orders during the week i was on vacation, and getting them all done when i got back as new orders also kept rolling in from etsy and friends, was overwhelming. now that i am on the slow and steady official training program (aka NOT running every night) and have no backlog of old orders, i feel good about opening her up again.

so in honor of being all caught up, and in anticipation having an open shop again, i am doing a giveaway.

to enter you must:

1. be a follower of this here blog. (click the blue button under my miles graph in the right sidebar)

2. come up with a caption for this photo and leave it in the comments of this post (or you can leave just a plain comment...see below)

so what do you win?

i am going to pick 2 winners. i will use random.org to select a commenter at random and then i will also pick the writer of my favorite caption as the second winner. so you don't have to be clever, you just have to show up. but being extra wit-tay helps your chances!

each winner will get $15 to spend on anything in the putapuredukes etsy shop. you can use it toward something for yourself, a friend or even your future babies! you could even use it towards something i dont have in my shop right now but you know i can make (nursing apron, one of layla's dresses, ruffle bloomers, etc). or you can give the $15 credit to someone else.

ONLY ONE ENTRY PER PERSON.

i will cut the comments off tuesday night and then announce the winner on wednesday.

my dad typically dominates the caption contests (see here and here), but i feel like he doesnt need any onesies or boppy covers, so dont let him win this one, guys!

if you've been here for awhile, you'll remember i was doing a giveaway for every 5 new followers up until we got to 100. well, this is technically the giveaway for 100 followers (whoops, a little behind), so i am caught up on these now too!