Exciting News & Special Announcements!

I have some exciting news to share:  we're moving!  After 18+ months of searching for a new home, we finally found one, and are very close to sealing the deal.  Hooray!!  We will be closing on (and moving into) our new home in approximately 30 days, which puts us right smack in the middle of holiday season.  Yikes!  Since this will be such a crazy time of year to move, I've decided to do a couple of things.  First off, I'm going to be having a sale:

Now through November 29th, everything in both of my shops, The Clever Kitty and The Curly Kitty, will be 30% off!

It's a win-win...you get a great deal, and I have less stuff to pack for our move.  Plus, prices will automatically be marked down via Etsy on Sale, so there's no need for a coupon code to receive the discount.  Super easy!

Secondly, I've decided that after the sale is over, I am going to be closing both of my Etsy shops for the remainder of the year.  It was a tough decision, being that it's one of the busiest times of year for me, but I think it's for the best.  I need to spend the month of December focusing on my family and moving into our new home.  Once we get settled in, I will be back, and with a new and improved studio space to boot!  In the meantime, if you want to read more about house stuff, I started a little blog this summer to document our journey which can be found here.

The Mermaid and Starfish

with my little starfish & mermaid on halloween

I know that Halloween is long gone by now, but I just realized I never followed up on my post about making costumes for my daughters.  Despite my early start, I was still finishing up last minute details the day before Halloween.  Always happens, doesn't it?

Anyhow, I was pretty happy with how the mermaid costume turned out, and Little G loved it!  And with her being a mermaid, I thought a starfish would be an adorable costume for Baby B.  I didn't have a pattern for that one, but thought it would be pretty simple, so I just winged it.  So I picked up some bubble velour, which has this nice bumpy texture...perfect for a starfish costume!  Then I basically just traced one of her sleepers to get the size and overall shape right, made it look more like a star, added a pointy hood, and voila - starfish!  I was going to make an opening for her hands to come out, but she didn't seem to mind them being stuck inside, so I left the sleeves closed at the ends.  Which ended up working out great as they kept her hands warm, and she happily chewed on her points all night.

Team Spirit

red and blue KU baby shoes in the works

Though I'm not much of a sports fan, I know that many, many people are.  And those that are most likely have a team that they consider to be their team.  Sports fans will watch every game, rooting for their team, dressing in their team's colors.  And when they have babies, well, they dress their babies in their team's colors too.

I've had several custom orders for felted baby shoes for sports fans lately.  Above is a pair for a KU fan that I'm currently working on.  I've also had orders for a couple of other teams:

black and gold for Mizzou

crimson and cream for the Oklahoma Sooners

I also have an order for the Iowa Hawkeyes in the works, which should look very similar to the Mizzou ones above, as their colors are also black and gold.  I've been having fun making these little felted shoes for babies of sports fans.  It's kind of like a little challenge for me to get just the right colors.  And they make such a nice baby shower gift for those families that are really into team sports.  Go Team!

New websites!

For several months now, I have been contemplating redoing my website for The Clever Kitty.  I have also been contemplating trying a new host through which I could more easily create and maintain my site.  So I've been playing around with Weebly, and I must say, I'm really liking it.  They have lots of simple templates to choose from, and I love that you can pretty easily customize them to fit your needs and your design sense.  You just need to know a little bit of CSS and/or HTML, which I have kind of picked up over the years just by fiddling around with it.  Obviously I don't know enough to actually code my own site from scratch (otherwise I would!), but I can usually figure out how to tweak little things here and there.

Since Weebly looked like it was going to better fit my needs, I decided to just go for it.  So my website is officially moved!  Of course, it's still kind of  a work in progress, but I'm excited about the change, so I wanted to go ahead and share.  And I was having so much fun redoing my Clever Kitty website, I decided to make one for The Curly Kitty too.  Yay!

Click on the icons below to check out my new sites, then be sure to come back and let me know what you think! 

Theme Thursday: Chocolate + Plum

Plum Truffle Vintage Button Brooch by Callooh Callay

Labor Day has come and gone, so I guess Fall is officially here.  Well, technically not for a couple more weeks, but it always feels like Autumn after Labor Day to me.  One of my favorite color combinations for Fall this year is chocolate brown and plum.  So rich and decadent, and simply gorgeous together!  So this week's Thursday Theme is "Chocolate Covered Plum".  Enjoy!

Witch, Fairy, Cat, or Mermaid?

So Little G and I have been talking about what she wants to be for Halloween this year.  She has been having trouble deciding, so I suggested we go to Jo-Ann's to look at costume patterns.  I was feeling brave this morning, so I decided to take both kids along.  As we were scanning the aisles of pumpkins, ghosts, and all things Halloween, and "Let it Snow" was playing in the background...wait, what??  Can't we at least get through Halloween before we are bombarded with Christmas?  Yeesh!  Way too soon for that, but I digress...

Anyhow, so fortunately Baby B napped nearly the whole time, which made it much easier for Little G and me to look through the costume pattern books.  And of course, on every other page she exclaimed, "I want to be that one!"  After flipping through the books, we narrowed it down to a few options:  witch, fairy, cat, or mermaid.  In the end, she decided on the mermaid.  So we picked up this pattern:

 
I think she's hoping that I will also be a mermaid along with her, but I'm not so sure...after all, I wouldn't make nearly as cute of a mermaid as she will!

Since Baby B was still napping, I thought it would be wise to go ahead and pick up the fabrics for the costume too.  I like to involve Little G in the process as much as possible, so I let her help pick out fabrics.  However, if I left it completely up to her, it would likely end up every color of the rainbow and looking more like a clown than a mermaid, so I tried to guide her a little bit, and gave her a limit of three colors.  So we're going with green for the skirt/tail and fins, a sparkly cream/gold for the bodice, and a shimmery pink for the overlay and ruffles around the arms.

I'm not sure when I'll actually get started, but I'm glad to have the shopping part out of the way early. I know it's just now September, but Halloween is not really all that far off, and I don't want to be scrambling to get something together at the last minute.  Hopefully since I already have the supplies, I will actually get a head start this year.  We'll see how well that works out.  :)

Theme Thursday: Stormy Weather

Seems like we've been getting a lot of thunderstorms here in Maine lately.  Depending on the severity of the storm, they can either be soothing (a gentle rain with low, rumbling thunder) or intense (pouring rain with loud crashes of thunder and splashes of lightning).  Looks like the latter is in our forecast for the weekend as we have a hurricane on the way.  Yikes!

So I made this treasury, inspired by our Stormy Weather:



Stay safe this weekend, everyone!