Must-Have Christmas Story Book for Your Children

Nothing reminds me more of my childhood Christmases than this delightful book The Sweet Smell of Christmas by Patricia M. Scarry.

It's a scratch 'n sniff book.

It's all about this sweet little bear family and how the little bear anticipates Christmas by all the wonderful fragrances.

There is a piney Christmas tree, gingerbread cookies, a peppermint candy cane,  and a hot apple pie. 

Not sure if the orange in the stocking is still in there but it was in mine!

If your child is under 3 they might tear the pages if left alone with it.  But nice to enjoy with children of all ages just about.

You can find it at Amazon or probably any local bookstore.

Customer order - cute Turkey shirts!

A customer ordered two "emergency" turkey applique shirts.

She lives in South Florida and luckily I had two short sleeve shirts in stock.  She needed matching boy/girl shirts.  Since it's a week before Thanksgiving I told her I would get them put together for her and ship it out the same day.  And I did!

Here's  a close-up:

 

The charge is $16 for the applique and then whatever the cost of the shirt you choose is:  from $5 to $9.50.

Hope all of my customers, friends and family have a great Thanksgiving!

Monogrammed Cafe Curtain Tie Backs

You know, if you own an embroidery machine you MUST monogram every single thing that is not nailed down!

I use these Pottery Barn cafe curtains in my kitchen and decided they needed tie backs.

I had some khaki fabric and love chocolate brown, so used that color thread for the embroidery.

I made 2 long rectangles, finished the edges and then sewed a plastic ring to the end.  Then I chose my favorite monogram font and VOILA! 

This is a post to link up to:

Tween Fall Top

Turn this

into this

Love this pattern - it's a jumper top with bubble hem.  Hard to see in pictures.

We only had a yard of fabric to had to make view "F".  This one is more practical for Alabama anyway because we can pair this top with short sleeves underneath or long sleeves.

Today it's supposed to be 68 degrees so we went with the short sleeves.

Otherwise we have a brown l/s top.

This one doesn't even have buttons to fool with.  It just goes over her head.

 

 

You can see that she's thrilled to be modeling this at 7:15 a.m.!

Handmade peasant dress

LOVE this new top I whipped together for Katie yesterday!

Okay, it took me a long part of the day.  Got sidetracked looking at everyone's Halloween blogs.

(A girls' sewing machine should NOT be situated next to the PC.)

Anyway, it's made from this cute black 21 wale cord fabric with green and red apples.

It's a peasant dress with ruffle hem.

It's a modified Simplicity's Sewing Pattern for Dummies #4206. Pattern was on sale last week for $1.99 at Hobby Lobby.

 

I added lots of length to it because it was a pattern for a top only.

Then I did a 3 inch ruffle at the bottom.  So for a size 6 the total length from shoulder to before ruffle is 19 in.

I only had 1 yd. of fabric so had to do the ruffle with the straight of grain going vertical.

It still looks cute though.  She has on short red leggings underneath and a shirt from Old Navy.

It was kind of chilly this morning so had to go with an undershirt.

Click for larger view:

 

Trick-or-Treating

Here's my plush pink kitty cat (homemade from a few yrs. ago)

and my Hannah Montana trick or treaters!

Daddy did great with the face painting.

Hannah Montana's wig presented problems out on the road - it kept sliding off even with fifty million bobby pins!

When we got home Katie couldn't wait to get in her PJ's, eat some chili, and count up her loot!