Hooded bath towels for Kids

Well, It seems like I have been off doing a lot of things and not blogging. I have lost 40 lbs since Jan of this year and that has been my high priority. I have done some sewing and here are some pictures of the Hooded towels I am making right now. I have just finished up all the special orders from the craft show I showed them at. It all started when my daughter in law told me that the hooded towels they sell at stores are not very good. I made my granddaughter the first butterfly towel, needless to say I have improved upon the first one. I think these are cute and useful. I remember how we used to go to the beach and lug all our beach stuff. These towels are made so your child can wear it when they go to the beach. I have put small loops of elastic inside so they can slip their hands thru it and fly like a butterfly or bat, or just carry it. I have made a frog, aligator, butterflies, bat, full size towel w/ hooded, or a square with a hood in the corner these have I have embroidered the designs of a duck, whale, monkey girl, monkey boy, mermaid, frog, princess and a microscope. I also embroider the child's name on the back of the towel. Very useful when your child leaves his or her towel when swimming at a friend's house, these always make it back to you. Well Happy sewing! and if you get a chance check out my Etsy store to see some of my work.  Just search Etsy and search by sellers-I am psully6 (click the dropdown arrow where it says handmade to find sellers)

Machine Embroidery and Sewing Group starting up in Poway California!

I am starting up a small group of Women who want to get together once a month or so to do projects together. You must have a sewing and embroidery machine that you can transport. It does not matter if you are experianced or brand new to this. No 6 thread machines at this group. I thought it would be fun to pick each other's brains. I would like to limit it to about 5 of us total. (That's a lot of plugs!) Email me if you are interested in coming. I plan on having our first meeting on March 20th. I will host it at my house 10:00am.
Email me if you are interested in coming. Pass this along to friends might have that might like to join us.
Happy Sewing & Embroidery! Pauline

Baby Safari Burp Cloths, Bibs and Fleece Blanket, Oh So Cute!

Hear that Roar! See That Long Neck! Listen to the chatter of the Monkey! Here is a cute baby gift set I have just finished. 3 Burp cloths-personalized, 2 bibs and 1 infant receiving fleece blanket. $40.00.

I had a lot of fun making these, and they were received well. I love machine appliques. It is just another fun thing for me to do.

How I learned to be organized.

Christmas is over and a New Year is here! This is the time I like to think about goals. I really don't want to make any resolutions as those seem to come and go. This year I have been thinking about how to plan my long term goals and then make shorter ones so I can see my accomplishments or how well or bad I am doing thru out the year. When I was a young mother I felt really disorganized and so I read many books on organization. I also read how to motivate your kids type books. I made up several different motivation games to help my kids and myself to keep on tasks and try to make cleaning, and maintaining my house fun. Then I realized that some jobs are really not fun. The fun part sometimes can be that the job is finally done. I did figure out though that how fast or trying to make a job fun was not the secret to getting my kids to clean. The secret I learned was in a book that I think is out of print, but it was called the Side Track Home Executives. This was written by 2 sisters that had a hard time keeping organized. You used a card file with 3 X 5 cards to list all the jobs in your house and filed them by daily, weekly, bi-weekly, Monthly, Bi-Monthly, 6 months, yearly. It seemed overwhelming at first but It really helped me. The big think that I learned with this system was to time a job and to see how long it really takes to do it. For example-the bathroom. I made a card for, Clean the toilet- 3 minutes, Clean the mirror-3 minutes, Clean off the counter top 3 minutes, Clean the tub 7 minutes, Sweep and Mop the floor-10 minutes. Now I put down how long I thought it would take, and then I took all the cards into the bathroom and timed myself. I can tell you these times are pretty accurate. So then I would take one of my Kids into the bathroom with all the cards and say you are incharge of cleaning the bathroom. I explained the cards and each chore ( if they can't read then put pictures next to what you want them to clean.) Have them take a card and explain exactly how to clean it. Then take a stop watch and time them doing it. You both with find that maybe it takes less time than you put on the card. I explained to my children that if we split up the jobs and all did a different part of the house then we could get every thing done in about 20 min. I found that after 20 minutes they were no good to me anyway. Then I made sure I did not make them do any more large type chores that day. My husband says that I still can clean really quick. It is a good thing since I am really good at making a mess! My Mother was not the best at keeping the house really neat but we were really good at quick speedy clean ups. As a kid I really did not watch commercials. When there was a commercial on during a show our family was watching, my Mom would say, "Everyone get up and pick up 5 things and go put them away. With 8 kids and 5 items each. the room would be clean in no time. I also use to play the same music when we were cleaning. Whistle while you work, and Supercalifragilistic. Years later I played that music when my kids were home and one of them said, why do I know this song? So let's have a Happy New Year and Make some New Changes for good in our lives. With God Nothing is Impossible! Pray for help, I came to realize that Heavenly Father knows us and our loved ones very well and he will help us improve if we want to.