Monogramming and Personalization

 A friend owns a very nice baby boutique called Barefoot Baby Boutique.  She saw my Facebook page for Nan's Nappies and asked if I'd be available to monogram/personalize items that are purchased from her store.  I recently made a sample of some monograms and took to her store for display. http://www.barefootbabyboutique.com/      Below are just a few of the many monograms I can do.  I have around 35 fonts and 16 different styles available.  And that doesn't include the different borders that can be added.

My daughter is getting ready to have a baby boy.  His initials will be LRS so I have to put a traditional monogram on a blanket for him.  I chose a round border and made the stitching little trucks.

I bought an inexpensive little Onesie and made it special  when I added some personalization to the front.

 

  I couldn't leave his big sister out of the fun so I personalized a shirt for her.



I put an advertisement for a book entitled So Your About to be a teenager.  No, I didn't forget to capitalize any of the words.  That's the way it is on the cover.  I just purchased this book to give to my step-granddaughter.  I heard about the book on Family Life Today and highly recommend it to anyone who has a child getting ready to turn 13. 

Berry Coffee Cake Recipe

Blueberries, peaches, plums, cantaloupe, cherries, corn on the cob, fresh picked tomatoes.....OH MY!  I love summer time fruits and veggies.  So far I've picked around 27+ lbs of blueberries.  We love to eat them in steel cut oats all year long.  They freeze so well!  There are tons of great recipes for all of the fruits and berries.  Below I've listed just one.  I made it the other day and it was delicious.  Especially when it was still warm from the oven.  I gave some away to my parents.  We had company for dinner the next day and I topped each piece with some whipped cream and sliced fresh peaches.  Yum! Berry Coffee Cake

From Especially Berries Cookbook, pg. 63

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened 1 cup sugar 2 egg ( Egglands Best) 2 cups flour, all purpose 1 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 8 oz sour cream, low fat 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries 1 Tbsp sugar 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 cup chopped pecans( optional)

1 Cream butter until and fluffy. Gradually add 1 cup sugar, beating well at medium speed. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. 2 Combine flour, baking powder and soda; gradually add to creamed mixture, mixing until blended. Stir in sour cream and vanilla. 3 Spoon half of batter into a greased and floured 10" Bundt pan; sprinkle with berries, sugar and cinnamon ( and pecans if desired). 4 Top with remaining batter. Bake at 350degrees for 45 to 50 min. Cool in pan for 10 min. ; remove from pan and let cool completely on wire rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

Servings: 12

Nutrition Facts Serving size: 1/12 of a recipe (3.4 ounces). Percent daily values based on the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) for a 2000 calorie diet. Nutrition information calculated from recipe ingredients. Amount Per Serving Calories 267.14 Calories From Fat (39%) 103.89 % Daily Value Total Fat 11.72g 18% Saturated Fat 6.35g 32% Cholesterol 44.06mg 15% Sodium 112.22mg 5% Potassium 26.47mg <1% Total Carbohydrates 37.16g 12% Fiber 1.15g 5% Sugar 19.24g Protein 3.69g 7%

Personalized Embroidered BaaBaa Sheep Burp Cloth

I received an order for two BaaBaa Sheep Burp Cloths this week.  The customer requested that the trim be in pink.  She then shared with me that the crib bedding was from Pottery Barn Kids Sweet Lambie collection. http://www.potterybarnkids.com/products/sweet-lambie-nursery-bedding/?pkey=bunisex-nursery-bedding

The Sweet Lambie bedding is all browns, tan and off white.  The original BaaBaa Lamb pattern is black and white with the BaaBaa in blue.  She also ordered names on each burp cloth.  I sat down with my Bernina Editor Plus software and looked at the thread I have in stock ( around 75 colors) and designed some burp cloths with which I am really pleased.  I hope the customer likes them too.  They were just shipped yesterday so I hope she gives me some feedback.

  Here are pictures of them.  What do you think?

Sports Themes

I recently stitched this burp cloth to give as a gift. Our church gives baby showers for EVERY baby born to our congregation. I try to give at least two burp cloths to everyone and sometimes 3 if I have time and money. I was told that this family loves the Cowboys so I thought a football theme would be good for their little boy who is due in June. 

*Jan 2012 update. I wasn't crazy over the way "Will " looked when I chose to put it in a curve.  Live and Learn.  I have since started using a vasrsity style font.  A football or a helmet can be used.


This one was ordered by a dear friend who is soon going to be a grandmother for the very first time. I am so excited for her. She didn't think her only child would ever have a baby with his wife but God had other plans! We are all thrilled. They are expecting a little boy.  The star glows in the dark!  One mom told me that was very helpful in the middle of the night.

Happy Birthday Dear Daughter!

My "baby" daughter turns 27 today! I still have the burp cloths I hand painted for her! I have so many people who purchase my burp cloths that tell me the same thing! I have people who have kept them for 25 years and will continue to keep them!

Here are some more that I recently stitched for customers.

The customer who ordered the two above, wanted them to color coordinate. I like the way they turned out.

This is the cute little giraffe with a name added. He's gotten a lot of looks on my Etsy site!

My mother watched as I stitched this pattern one time. She was fascinated by how nicely my machine runs and also at how many times I had to change thread colors! I could cheat and not use so many colors, but I'm picky and love the details in the designs. You can't get those without the many subtle shades of thread.

New Designs

I've been busy this week. Here are some new burp cloths and a new swaddler that I made.

I loved the jungle print on this fabric and the cute little elephant embroidered on the front added a special touch.

New Swaddler!

I used a nice soft flannel to make this cute little swaddler. It has a nice simple tri-fold design with a little pocket on the inside to keep the babies little feet wrapped.

Just lift up one side of the pocket, place the bay inside and tuck it around the baby. Then wrap the right side of the blanket over the baby and tuck in , and then wrap the left side over and secure with the Velcro fasteners.

I embroidered a cute little frog on here but after I saw it I thought a dragonfly would have been cute also. I didn't have a particular baby in mind when I made this so it doesn't have a name or monogram but those will be placed on swaddlers that are custom ordered. There are so many choices for colors and embroidery.

This one is sized for 0-3 month olds. I wash all of my baby items in Dreft before shipping them and all are made in my smoke free home.

Our New Vacuum Has Arrived!

One month ago our 25 year old Rainbow vacuum finally died. It was a great vacuum and I will miss it. I will especially miss it's ability to vacuum water. That was a really nice feature when I defrosted my big upright freezer. I've been shopping for a new vacuum ever since and thought I wanted the Dyson Animal Ball but I just couldn't bring myself to pay over $400 for a vacuum. If any of you have ever owned a Rainbow, you may find it funny for me to say that since I paid around $1000 for that vacuum! But I've gotten older and wiser and maybe tighter! My husband and I buy tons of stuff from Amazon. Their prices are great and most of the things we buy qualify for the Amazon Prime shipping. The product reviews are extremely helpful.

As I read about different vacuums, I noticed that a lot of people compared their vacuums to the Dyson Ball. The Shark Navigator NV22L appealed to us for a number of different reasons. The price was good ( less than half of the cost of the Dyson Ball) , the filters were lifetime, it is compact, fairly lightweight, baggless and has great attachments. The turbo hand held brush is important to us since we own two little dogs who love to shed!
Yesterday our vacuum arrived and we assembled it right away. I've been using a small little upright that we have for small jobs but it just wasn't doing a thorough job so our house was in desperate need of a good vacuuming.

We opened the top flap on the box...

The instructions!

The accessories.

And there is it!

The short crevice tool and dusting brush have storage places right on the body of the vacuum but the turbo brush and 24" long crevice tool have their own storage bag.

Here it is all laid out on our living room floor before we began the three step assembly which was as easy as they claimed!

These are the accessory tools which I explained above.

I started vacuuming right away and was impressed with how quiet it was! I could talk to my husband while vacuuming and he could hear me. You can see that in the video below. It was amazing how much suction this machine has. In fact, my only complaint is that it has so much suction that I had to turn off the beater brush to do the runner in our hallway. It sucked the rug up enough to cause the beater brush to stop turning and thus turn on the over heat light. Little scatter rubs will suck right up into the machine. It got a ton of pet hair and dirt out of our carpets. I had to empty the dust bin 4 times and we have a small house! I'm hoping we won't always have that much dirt but our other vacuum was old and we haven't had a decent vacuum for a month.

Today I used the turbo brush attachment and the crevice tool to vacuum our van and it did a great job. So as of right now, I'd highly recommend this vacuum!

Newest Burp Cloths

I've just completed some diapers for a new baby on our block.  I've also found an adorable pattern for a swaddler so be looking for that soon!

  In the mean time, here are the new diapers.  I also made the diaper with the dragonfly and name again.  I stitched the first one before my Isocord thread order arrived.  Boy was that a mistake!  I had blue Isocord for the name but the red on the dragonfly wings was just regular thread in my sewing box.  The red ran with laundering so I now understand why I shouldn't use anything else beside the high quality Isocord and I will never make that mistake again.  I already own 65 Isocord colors and ordered another 15 today so I'm well on my way to a very good selection of colors.

I have a happy story to tell also.  I mailed a package of 12 burp cloths to Atlanta , GA on March 3. After two weeks I was surprised when I hadn't heard anything about them arriving since the people I mailed them to are usually prompt in letting me know they received something.  I wrote to them on Facebook and discovered that I had mailed them to their old address!  Oh no!  In addition to that, I had given that same address to a friend and she sent her package there also.  I was so sure that I had the latest address!  The intended recipient drove over to the old address, which was an apartment, and found that my friends package was in their office but mine was no where to be found.  I began stitching new burp cloths to send to them.  Then, beyond all hope, yesterday afternoon the diapers came back!! Just two days short of 4 weeks.  I was SO relieved.  Now I have some extra burp cloths to give as baby gifts and that's a plus also!  Since I had re-done the dragonfly burp cloth, I opened the box and replaced that and will mail it off to Atlanta...the correct address...tomorrow.

As a side note, I gave my husband a Kindle DX for Christmas.  He uses it primarily for transferring Word documents that he needs to read for his job and has found it to be very convenient.   Just the other day he  took it to the dentist with him.  He was able to read for his work while he waited for me to get my teeth cleaned.  Since he works from home and is self employed, every minute he isn't working is a loss of income. He was able to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak . He also owns his own computer consulting business and loves new technology.  He has been very pleased with the Kindle DX and is very glad he decided to ask for one.

Burp Cloths

I began hand painting burp cloths 30 years ago when my son was an infant. Over the years my designs got more detailed. Every time I gave them as gifts they were well received. I have some mothers who have told me that they still have their babies burp cloths from years ago.

Recently, my husband gave me a Bernina Artista 630 and I have discovered the world of Machine Embroidery. (ME) I love it. I love all of the colors of threads and all of the many designs from which to choose. I also love the software that enables me to customize my burp cloths.

The moon and stars burp cloth , above, has some yellow glow-in-the-dark thread. Once the lights go off, it glows!

Below, you can see a sample of other burp cloths I've made. All are embroidered on Gerber pre-fold diapers for excellent absorption.  I also use high quality Isocord thread which will not bleed or fade.  These burp cloths can be tossed into the washing machine without any worries.

Please check these and others out at my new Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/nansnappies