Happy BIRTHday baby Jacob

My newest grandson, Jacob Benjamin Royer
Born 12/31/09
2:10pm
7lb9oz
19.5 inches long

Mom and baby are doing well.

Come and gone

Christmas has come and gone. My tree was up for less than a week, decorated for less than three days. I don't think I had any Christmas Spirit this year. I have learned my lesson though. I will not take any orders after Dec 1st. I think I just over-extended myself and I didn't have time to enjoy the whole meaning of the Holiday. Being in business for yourself, by yourself has it rewards and I certainly didn't expect to have such success but I have to say, it just didn't feel like Christmas to me. In fact, I have not sewn a stitch since Tuesday night and I feel like something is missing. I walk around the house and know that I need to clean but I feel like I should be sewing. Sewing for 6 hours a day and working my real paying job for 8 hours a day for the last few months has gotten me into a mindset that I am having a hard time breaking free from. At this very moment, I feel so unproductive, except that I may now have time to keep up with blogging. My plan for the upcoming year is to have some sort of inventory on hand. The items that sell real well will of course, be my primary inventory and then I think I may be looking for opinions from all of you to help me know what other items I should have on hand. I am thinking of offering new items at a special introductory price then after a month or so, increasing the price. My plan is also to make a line of clothes for each of the historical dolls. If any of you think of outfits that you think I should make, I am open to all suggestions. You may click on the link at the right to go to my website so see what I have already and what I can/should expand on.

Merry Christmas

It's Christmas eve and the house is now quiet. We had our annual family Christmas Eve get together, just Me, Brent and the girls and their families. We missed Jeff this year. We will fly him home shortly after Kim has her baby so he can meet his new nephew. Although we miss him tremendously, we know this year that he is with someone he really cares about and that makes it a little easier.

We had our traditional dinner, Mom's meatball soup, ollibollen, rolls and ham and this year, I made boterkoek. We also had the chocolate fountain with all the yummy stuff to dip into that.

Tomorrow, we will go to Brent's parent's house. Jenny wants us to go with her and her family to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squequel.

It's been a very unexpectedly busy past couple of months. I feel bad for not sending out my Christmas cards this year but I want everyone to know that you are in my thoughts all the time and Brent and I do wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prospersous 2010. We love you all!

It's not my idea of "clean it up"

Brent was supposed to finish the floor in the hallway over the weekend. It didn't happen. Sunday evening, he decided he'd better do something so he "cleaned up" the living room so that we had somewhere to put our Christmas tree. Nice big empty space for just the tree.


Then, I went to put a toy away in the grandkids toy room and this is what I found


I have no further comments :)

More special orders

Here are the final special orders of the season. A cheerleading outfit, made to match that of her daughter's and the purple dress I mentioned in an earlier post.


Now that I have those out of the way, I can concentrate on the final 5 orders I have left to make. I took a day off from work yesterday to try to catch up. I need the rest of the week off too.

Ewe

No, that's not a picture of a medical glove blown up, those are my feet. This is how they have been for about three weeks now. Looking at my feet now, a week after I took this picture, they are even worse. I can barely get shoes on.I try to get up and walk around but I don't have time. Maybe after Christmas they will deflate.

I'm still here

Don't forget about me. I'm still here. I barely have time to read anyone's blogs all the way through, let alone write in my own blog but in about two weeks, I will be done with my sewing for the holidays and will be back into blogging. It's 10:35pm and I am just now unwinding. (I used to go to bed at 9). Business is good, at least better than I ever imagined. I made over $400 just last week alone. I never in my wildest dreams would have expected anything close to that. If I didn't have a full time job, I would take on more orders. My husband saw my version of the Eloise outfit and asked how much I charge for it. I said $13 and he shook his head and said, "You should charge $20. I bet people would still buy it". I have been looking at other seamstresses online stores and I probably could raise my prices. I will have to re-evaluate this all after the holidays. My house still isn't decorated (course, my living room is still not finished and I have no furniture so why put up a tree?)

OK,, my legs are falling asleep as I sit here on my bed typing so Good night for now. I will try to catch up again soon.

Special orders

I am someone's new best friend. One of my customers has requested that I make her daughter's doll, holiday dresses to match hers. Now, you have to know, This little girl is 4 years old. This woman buys dresses extra big so that they come to the floor since they don't really make formals in little girl sizes. It started with one dress, then she brought another and another. These people celebrate in a big way and dress to the 'nines'. Here are two that I have completed so far.

This is her Thanksgiving Dress. The woman tried to embroider the waistband but when I told her I found the embroidered ribbon, she was thrilled, even though it wasn't exact.
The dolls dress that I made.

Then there is the Family Portrait and what she will be wearing on New Years Eve dress

The dress was about 6 inches longer but because the woman couldn't find the same fabric in the store and couldn't find another dress like it for me to cut up (more on that later)then she had to settle for a dress that comes mid calf in order to use what was needed for the dolls dress. The original also had a thin black velvet ribon across the front of the bodice seam and she didn't like that so she asked me to make a pink sash:


Next will be the Christmas dress. I will post that when I am done.

I currently have 8 orders that I am working on. All have multiple outfits in them. I think it may be slowing down though because my ad on the local tv website expired and I don't think I will be posting it again before Christmas...just so I can finish what I am doing and enjoy my holiday.