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I have never been good at keeping things alive. Plants, I mean. I've done a pretty decent job keeping my kiddo alive. That's got to be harder than growing some little vegetables, right?

A few weeks ago a friend gave me two yellow squash plants and two green squash plants. After an entire week without killing them, I figured I had the hang of it and should expand my little garden.

I picked up some seeds at Lowe's and got to work. I had my husband tear out the decorative (but half-dead) plants along the border of our back patio and fill it with a mix of topsoil and Miracle-Gro. I planted 3 rows of bush beans and 4 sugar baby watermelons. I added cilantro and oregano to my herb garden which already included chives and a pathetic shrub of basil. I also started some artichoke seeds in a pot indoors.

I got so excited when my little beans started sprouting tiny green shoots that I went back to Lowe's and bought tomatoes, jalapeño, cucumber, corn and sweet potatoes. This is when I realized that some of these plants get very large and there is no way they are going to fit in my tiny 3x8 garden. Maybe I jumped into this too fast. Ok, not "maybe." Definitely.

I'm no down-home, farmer's daughter. Growing up, the only time I spent in the garden was when my dad forced my sister and I to help weed the flower beds (I hated it because of all the bees). I've only ever mowed the grass twice. Once, when I was a teenager and my father made me. I cried the whole time. The second time was for a friend who had just had surgery. Her front yard is maybe 100 square feet and she has an electric mower. I was afraid the entire time that I would run over the extension cord, electrocute myself and instead of coming home to a beautiful lawn, my friend would find me sprawled out all black and crispy.

Obviously I survived. I can't promise the same for the garden though.

Out of Nowhere

Not often am I surprised by something. I almost always know when my husband has something up his sleeves and I can usually guess what he's bought me for gifts. Maybe he is just bad at keeping secrets but he did pull off a pretty good surprise when he proposed. I'm still in shock that he and my friends were able to pull that off. But other than that, I can't think of the last time I was really surprised by something. Until yesterday.

You already heard how I threw a little fit because I had missed the deadline for the CKC Matchy Matchy Easter contest. We won't rehash that. So you can imagine how surprised I was to get a message from Robin Hill of Create Kids Couture telling me that I had won the contest. I was a little confused and thought that maybe my lack of sleep was causing me to hallucinate. Did I really win? Did I deserve to win? Had I been wrong about the deadline the whole time? Where had I seen that anyway?

I was truly surprised and knock-my-socks-off, pee-in-my-pants happy. It's not about the prize, although I'm looking forward to 12 new patterns from the Pattern of the Month Club. And while, at first, I thought it was about recognition and validation for this crazy, unexpected path my life has taken, it's not even about that. It's that when I was giving up and at a very low point I heard God whisper, "Don't you remember that I have a plan and a purpose for you? Don't you remember that I long to bless you and give your the desires of your heart?" Yes, yes. I know these things. Time after time God reaffirms his promises to me - I just need to get them through my thick head.

(UPDATE: I had, in fact, been correct in my original thinking that I had missed the deadline but Robin and the others at Create Kids Couture realized it the next day and announced an additional winner to make it fair).

Sew-Along Fail and Other Mishaps

I need to admit something to you - my first sew-along was pretty much a disaster. Three days in we received the sad news that my husband's grandfather had passed away. We were looking at spending about a week traveling to Ohio for the funeral and to spend time with family. In the midst of packing and making travel arrangements I remembered my poor little sew-along skirt and how sad and lonely it would be if it was left out of the sew-along. I may have cheated a bit and sewn the rest of it up all at once but can you blame me? Look at how sweet it turned out.

But even though my first sew-along was a fail, it doesn't compare to my next disaster - the CKC Matchy Matchy Easter Contest. I had been planning to enter the contest since the beginning of the month when it was announced. I ordered the perfect fabric, found the right pattern and starting cutting out the 50 or so pieces to put the dress together. I thought I'd have plenty of time to finish it when we got back from Ohio but I completely underestimated how much our lives would be thrown off track. I stayed up late Saturday night finishing the dress and let me tell you, you know you have a good husband when he is willing to roll hem and gather 10 yards of ruffle at 11 PM the night before Easter. We finished the dress around midnight and planned to take pictures for the contest the next morning - that's where things fell apart. 

Serena's Stripwork Double Layer Dress. Dress by Dandelion & Daffodil.
Pattern by Create Kids Couture. 

My 1 year old is teething you see. At 3 months the pediatrician told us that he had never seen a baby teething as aggressively as our little chica. Here we are at 13 months and my daughter has 12 teeth and 4 more just taking their time. To further complicate matters, she got her canine teeth before her molars! All this means my baby girl is fussy, defiant, cranky and refusing sleep. We are a tired bunch. I'm pretty sure it's been almost 2 years since I've had a full night's sleep. Even in utero my girl kept me from sleeping. At first it was nausea. Whomever named it "morning sickness" must've been a man because it was "all-the-stinking-time sickness." After that subsided, I had middle of the night hunger pangs. Then it was the kicking and tumbling and elbow jabbing and for the last three months of my pregnancy my gal had almost constant hiccups. 

So Easter morning came and went and so did my sanity. Pictures took a back burner to church, lunch with family and naptime. I pouted a bit when my daughter wouldn't cooperate for pictures - okay I pouted a lot - and ruined a perfectly good afternoon. By the time I was able to find a good picture, edit it and post it to the contest album I realized I was a full 12 hours past the deadline. I will spare you the details of the pity party I threw myself for the next 2 hours but it wasn't pretty. In fact, it was ugly, soul baring, and even a little scary. As a mom, I question every decision I make - is it the right one for my daughter, my family, my marriage. Am I giving my family everything they need from me and am I loving them like they deserve? I realized that my own selfish desires for something as small as a sewing contest had impacted my family's day because it had put me in a bad mood. 

This is convicting y'all (I'm from the South. We say "y'all.") The whole reason I gave up my profession to stay home with my daughter was so that I can be there for her. I need to focus on that right now and take a step back from the less important things. 

If you are a parent who works (inside or outside the home), how do you find balance?

CKC Sew-Along Days 3-4

I have not been a very good member of this Sew-Along. I was excited and ready to go last week - you know, before I actually had to do anything but pick out my fabric. But now reality has set in, or more specifically the realization that I have to ruffle my ruffle fabric.

Saturday's steps were super easy and I knocked them out in about 5 minutes. I was happy to stop there, step back and look at my progress. Ok, not so much progress but I like to enjoy the little things.

The fabulous thing about working with knits is that they don't fray. For this reason, I didn't have to hem my ruffle fabric. Yay! Got to sit that step out on Sunday. But that meant those darn ruffles were just waiting for me Monday morning.

I was not even going to attempt to hand gather these ruffles (all 5 yards of them) and I was scared to death of machine gathering so I pulled out my handy dandy ruffle foot. Do you have one of these? It's insanely intimidating to look at but I love the results I get when I actually use it. I discovered that there is in fact a secret to using this foot if you don't want to rely on trial and error. You see, the Scientific Seamstress has put together a wonderful, thorough guide on the ruffle foot called "The Ruffler...Unruffled." But what I discovered when I read through it was that there are numbers and math involved and my head started to hurt. I'll save that for another day. Today I'm ruffling knits and I knew that with the stretchiness of this fabric, I didn't need to be exact.

I set my stitch length at the default 5.5 and the foot on the 6 which means it will gather the fabric every 6 stitches. I ran my fabric through and while it did ruffle, it just didn't wow me. I knocked my stitch length down to about 4 and look at these lovelies! I can't get enough of them. I want to ruffle all my ruffle fabric!

The last step was hemming by top skirt and I'm all caught up. Until tomorrow.

CKC Sew-Along Day 1

So it's day one of the Create Kids Couture Sew-Along and I'm already dying to work ahead. I hadn't planned on using this ruffle fabric for the bottom ruffle, especially since I've never worked with it, but I think it will be so fun. And they are offering prizes so I wanted mine to stand out.

Create Kids Couture Sew-Along

Are you a member of the CKC Sew-Along Facebook Group? This is the first sew-along hosted by Create Kids Couture and the first time I've been involved in one.

What is a sew-along? Glad you asked. I like the way Sewaholic compares a sew-along to a long distance meet up. When my husband and I were courting (yes, I said "courting," but that's a story for another day), we were separated by 1500 miles. We would do things like watch movies at the same time and come together via Skype to talk about it afterwards. That's sorta what a sew-along is. We all work from the same pattern and schedule, documenting our progress along the way. In the end, we each have a completed garment, in this case the beautiful Antoinette's Double Layer Twirly Skirt.

Just look at how adorable this is!

Antoinette's Double Layer Twirly Skirt
by Create Kids Couture

While it officially kicked off last week, the first step is purchasing your fabric (or raiding your fabric stash), washing, ironing and buying the pattern. We won't actually make the first cut until tomorrow. From there, we will complete one or two steps a day for a week and by the next Friday we will have a complete skirt. Not too shabby.

The hardest part for me will be not jumping ahead. And isn't this corset top adorable too? It's a little too grown up for my 1year old but I would love to make one of these.

I will be posting each day of the sew-along and would love to see pictures of your skirts if you will be joining us.

A New Chapter...

Hello everyone. We are finally starting out our blog for Dandelion & Daffodil. If you don't already know about us, we make boutique children's clothing and accessories with your growing child in mind. That's right - most of our items are made to grow with your child or be worn during any season. It is our belief that if a customer should spend their money on boutique clothes, they should be able to get their money's worth of wear. We hope that you enjoy our blog and share us with your friends.

Check back often for sneak peaks of things we are working on as well as links to fun tutorials from our favorite blogs.

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GIVEAWAY: Leave a comment below letting us know what you like to see on blogs you follow (tutorials, new designs and inspiration, etc.). One lucky person will be chosen at random to receive a $10 store credit to Dandelion & Daffodil on Etsy. Contest ends Wednesday, March 13 at 12 PM (CST).