Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Another one!




Here is my next addition to our Handbag collection. It's still without it's formal name as of right now. It's the Tie Front Tote!

Dimensions are:

8" tall
11" wide at base
16" wide at top
5" deep

Shown in Wallflower Slate.

Available in 4 different fabric combinations or create your own!

Price: $32.50




Fabric Combinations are shown HERE

Friday, March 26, 2010

A Bag is Born.....

Thanks for those who gave me suggestions for bag names. After much consideration and rolling it off my tounge I've given the newest addition to GRITS Embroidery a name.

THE JESSICA BAG!!!!

This bag is named after my friend Jessica (B), you know who you are, and most of you know her. She has been very kind to me and my business over the years. Very supportive and always giving constructive criticism and rave reviews. Thus I dedicate this bag to Jessica. She helped pick the design and influenced me in my fabric choices over the years. Thanks Jess!

I'm working on the next one and hope to have it done tomorrow. I'm posting a picture here of the design and fabrics it will be made from. Let me know if you like it or not and maybe I'll name it after you!




The top fabric is the lining and tie fabric. The bottom fabric is the straps and the main body of the bag.

Still looking for color combination suggestions for the 5th fabric option on these bags.

Have a wonderful evening!

~Stacie~

Thursday, March 25, 2010

A busy week....

Well this week started out pretty nice I must say. Despite the fact that I sound horrible, cough a lot and use plenty of tissues it's been a good week. Thankfully I'm slowing down with the tissue count. We had two great services Sunday. I spent the afternoon clipping coupons and working on my Bible lesson. Derek spent it finishing up his studying, he is teaching the Adult class this quarter. All three kids took a good nap. Whew! We did eat lunch at a new Mexican restaurant call Las Agave's. It was just as good as our favorite here in town, Las Maracas. I'm sure we will go back.

Monday I went to the doctor. I told her of my list of ailments, migraines, digestion issues and a head cold that I thought had turned into a sinus infection. Thankfully I was wrong. She prescribed Zyrtec for my head, Nexium for my digestive issues and some Mat-a-somethin' for my migraines. I'm to take it when one starts. I can't say for sure the Nexium is working. I'm supposed to take it once a day before my largest meal. However my mother has done lots of research and says I really shouldn't take it if I don't have too. So instead I am chewing Papaya. It's a dietary enzyme I purchased at the local Health Food Store. It tastes like mint and I chew 3 around each meal time. (I'm not sure what the bottle says, but this is what I do) Anyway. I did take the Nexium Tuesday night when I starting having all the gas in my chest again. I also took the Papaya. So far so good. Let's hope the Papaya does the trick and I don't have to be on Nexium.

As you all know, if you read the previous posts, I've been very busy picking patterns, fabrics and sewing that adorable new bag. I'm very, very excited about it!!!! Now if only the ordering process actually WORKED on the website. If any of you know a website designer that is good and won't go poof hook me up! Girl is havin' issues, if you know what I mean.

I've been asked about making diaper bags and I have found a cute pattern. Here it is: Diaper Bag Pattern All you mommas out there share your thoughts. We still have got to come up with a new line of names to go with all the new bags I plan on adding. I need your help, my creative juices are dry in the name picking area. I also would like to offer one more fabric combination. I will be happy to post maybe 5 more and let you vote on your favorite? Let me know what you think. Even color combinations are fine and I can find some fabric combinations to include with those color combinations. Did that sentence even make sense? Oh well, maybe you got it.

I'm finishing up a cute burp cloth order from Stephanie H. Most of you know her and her adorable little girl. I'll post pictures of the adorable burp cloths when they are done. I'm also finishing up the big order for my friend Kelly.

Last night I managed teach the baby class without too many coughing fits. Let me say though, definitely NOT the best singing I've ever done. At least the babies aren't tellin'. Today was a busy day of sorts. My friend and neighbor, Leigh, had her gal bladder removed today, OUCH! I kept her two year old from 8-4:45 ish. He's sweet and bigger than Levi and not talking too much yet. Then again he doesn't have two older siblings talking his ear off! I managed to keep them from making each other black and blue over things like balls, toy computers and wooden puzzles. The real accomplishment came however when I got both of them down for a nap at the same time! And they both slept for over three hours! Yipee!!!! When Derek got home all four kids were playing, chicken fingers and okra were frying and apple dumplings were in the oven. BTW if you haven't tried these you must!!! You cannot, I mean, CANNOT live your life without having tried them. They are phenomenal. And easy to boot! I can't wait to eat more, I'm holding back till tomorrow....... tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow, you're only a day away...... Sorry I broke out in song there for a minute, Little Orphan Annie, right?

So on top of all this business this week I have to tell you about the biggest deal I got this week. Walgreens has Oscar Meyer Bacon on sale, 2 for $6. I had a coupon for 1.50 off of one package and another .75 cents off coupon. You also earned $1 RR (register rewards, walgreens money) when you made this purchase. So $6 - $ 3.25 = $2.75 for TWO Packages of bacon!!!! Whoo, Hoo! Sorry but I LOVE bacon, most especially good and cheap bacon!

So that's my week. How's yours been? Don't forget the ideas for bag names and color combinations!

Love
~Stac~

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

New Item at GRITS Embroidery!

I'm very excited to be offering this new addition to my shop. I've always wanted to do more with these beautiful cotton fabrics. Honestly I just didn't have the time to try the patterns out. I was very absorbed in the patterns and choosing the right one as well as which fabric combinations to offer. It was very fun but very hard to choose. There are tons of great patterns and fabrics out there. I hope you like what I've picked. I would love to hear all your comments and suggestions. I do plan to add more bags as time allows. We're starting with this beautiful Shoulder Pleated Tote. (It needs a new name, be creative and give me your suggestions!)

I've done this one in Espresso Iron Works and Pink Dumb Dot by Micheal Miller. It has one interior pocket and pen slip as well as a magnetic closure. The bag is fully lined and interfaced for durability. I've got some great color combinations available and I'm looking for one more. Please give me your picks! Finished Bag shown is available!
Starting Price is $30.00

Here are the dimensions of the bag:
11.5" (top) - 15" (bottom) wide
15" tall




















Color Combinations:

Fabric Combination 1: Cherry Linen
(top fabric is interior/lining, bottom fabric is exterior)



Fabric Combination 2: Kelly Swirls
(fabric shown is exterior, interior in white or black)




















Fabric Combination 3: Camel Pink
Top fabric is interior lining, bottom fabric is exterior)
















Fabric Combination 4: Sky Blue
(top fabric shown is interior lining, bottom fabric is exterior)

Saturday, March 20, 2010

What I've done.....

Please keep the ideas coming and feel free to scroll down to the last post to see the items I had found.

Here is what I've purchased so far.

Pleated Shoulder Bag
Tie Front Tote
Olivia Clutch

Here's the fabric I'm going to use for the first one I make. The Pleated Shoulder Bag.

I'm excited!!! Share your thoughts!

~Stacie~

Friday, March 19, 2010

Poll:

I need your help. I've found all these beautiful fabrics and I need some new items to make out of them. Here are some patterns I've found. Let me know which ones you like. Feel free to suggest others as well!

Okay I better stop now :) I'm having too much fun!! Let me know if you like any of them and which ones. Feel free to make a favorites list.

Thanks!
~Stacie~

Thursday, March 18, 2010

A new, not advised way to lose weight.

Well as some of you know I returned home sick from the Ladies Getaway in Lafayette, IN a couple of weekends ago. At the time I thought it was food poisoning. I still feel it could have been. However over the past months I have had bouts of the same symptoms. My mom feels it could be reflux but until I see a doctor we can't be sure. Well over that weekend I lost 4 lbs. as sick as I was. I had a very similar bout yesterday and today. I'm now down another 4 lbs. Putting me at a weight I haven't seen since before Thanksgiving. I don't mind the weight loss, it's just the way I lost it that I don't prefer.

With the way I was feeling yesterday I was unable to run all the errand I had scheduled. We did get a call though to show the house. They came at 6. I haven't heard feedback yet but I did finally get feedback from last weeks showing. Turns out they didn't care for having another living space off of the family room. They did buy one of the houses in the neighborhood, the most expensive I believe. I feel like this will be good for us.

I finished a couple of orders Tuesday. One was for some clearanced aprons with names only. Thanks Bekah! The other was for minky travel pillowcases. This was a new customer. Yeah! I will be posting pictures.













I did get to finish my errands this morning. They included dropping off our house plans at White House Building Supply. They are giving us a quote on our lumber package. I also made a trip to Rite Aid. I scored Right Guard Men's Deodorant and Glade Sense and Spray (Starter Kit) for just $6.10!!! (including tax!) I had two coupons, totaling $3.50 for the deodorant, a $3.00 coupon for the Glade and a $3 off of $15 Rite Aid coupon. I am quite happy with my deal.

Walgreens was my next stop. I purchased two boxes of Children's Chewable Zyrtec. Caleb goes through this like crazy during spring time. It was on sale for $9.99 a box, I had two $2.00 off coupons as well as my 15% Caterpillar Discount Card. My total was $14.64 and I received a $5 off my next Walgreens Purchase Coupon! Sweet!

On to Al's Foodland where I scored Pepperidge Farm Sourdough and White Bread for .99!!! What a deal! I also love there pick 5 for $19.99 (I picked 2 packages lean ground beef, a boston butt, boneless pork chops and chicken tenderloins!) I didn't buy any Blanco's this trip though. :( Next time for sure!

After that I swung by Sonic and Levi and I some lunch. My neighbor was very sweet and offered to watch him while I ran my errands. She has an adorable 2 year old son as well and they get along great.

Now I've spent naptime watching a recording of CSI:NY, painting my toenails and just relaxing. I hope all of you are having a wonderful day.

Be sure to let me know if you are interested in participating in the coming GRITS sweepstakes and such. Read my previous post for more information.

~Stacie~

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Not what we hoped

Well we got the appraisal back. To say the least it was not what we were hoping for. I won't go into the boring details but we will be talking with our builders tonight trying to come up with a solution for our problem.

I enjoyed my first day of true Coupon shopping.

Here are the deals I scored:

TARGET:
2 pks Huggies Jumbo pack diapers on Sale $8.50 2 - $2 off coupons & 1 $1.50 MFR coupon. Total $11.50 for both packs.
Softsoap on Sale $1 used .50 off coupon. Total spent. .50
Pop Tarts buy 4 for $10 receive $5 Gift Card used $2.00 off coupon. Paid $8 received $5 gift card.

I'm pretty happy with my finds. I'll be sure to let you know how the other deals pan out.

So for now I'm blogging while my little man sleeps. Then it's on to fixing dinner and finishing up that minky pillowcase order.

I'm hoping to use this avenue for some GRITS Embroidery sweepstakes, polls and such. Let me know if you would be interested in participating. Also if you have a GRITS Embroidery product send me your pictures and I'll post them on the customer photo page!

Have a great day!
~Stacie~


I purchased a couple of other things as well but they weren't excellent deals.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Hopefully...

Today will be the day. The day we hear from the bank. The day they say, " You are good to Go, come sign the papers." I pray today is the day. The past week we have been waiting to find out if our new house will appraise for enough so that we can get our construction loan. I won't go into too much detail but basically they will only loan us 80% of the appraisal cost of the house since we still owe on the land. They said it would take a week for the appraisers to get the job done and we were hoping to find out Friday but the man handling our construction loan was out of the office until today. So hopefully today will be the day! I know it will ease my mind considerably but most especially Derek's. He is teaching the adult Bible class right now, Sunday nights only, and for him it is like he has two full time jobs. He puts so much time and thought into it and it adds to his stress level. So..... knowing the house is a go will definitely make him feel better.

I feel like I am slowly getting over my cold. Being able to sleep at night has come down to taking two of my nightime Sudafed instead of just the recommended dosage of one. Caleb is still coughing but he is definitely better. Lily seems to be pretty much over it. Levi has never gotten to bad and Derek is on the upside as well.

Business has been good lately. At least I consider it good. I doubt many other business owners would :) Thanks to my sweet friend Steph I seem to be getting an order about every two to three weeks. She sent me another order on Saturday for four cute burp cloths. My friend Kelly, from back home, place a big order for a blanket, two minky pillow covers and two birthday bibs. Her sweet children all have birthday in the beginning of April. They will be 4, 2 and 1. Lord willing the kids and I will be at their birthday party. I am excited to go and be there but sad at the same time as their family is moving near St. Louis. I'll miss seeing her whenever I go back home to visit. We've been great friends now for over 16 years!!! Wow, I never thought I would see the day when I could say that about anyone! I'm feeling my age this morning.

I've spent a lot of time researching my "grocery" deals for the week. Although most of the items aren't groceries. I'll be sure to post my deals after I snag them! I really hope it works out the way it's supposed to!

Today will be spent picking up the house, cleaning the tub and vacumming the remaining grout particles left from the tile installation. In other words making sure the house is in showing condition. I've got another order for two minky travel pillowcases I need to knock out today. I will hopefully post pictures of the finished products.

I'm also making a few new recipes this week from PW or her Tasty Kitchen so I will plan to blog about them as well. I hope you are all having a wonderful week! Give God the glory!

~Stacie~

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Health, Tile and Groceries

Well this will be my first attempt at a real blog. If you choose to begin reading it I won't be offended if you don't finish.

I started off this week with food poisoning and after a very brief "well" spell my children have gifted me the cold bug. Although I took a nighttime decongestant I still found myself sleeping with my mouth open. Boy am I glad Derek doesn't sleep with one eye open. I can't imagine how horrible I looked.

Other than my health and that of my family it has been a very busy week. I spent Tuesday watching the plumbers destroy my bathroom again. After all the water damage we had due to our burst pipe they had "fixed" our jacuzzi tub. Only Derek discovered a couple of days after the fix that it wasn't working properly and it was leaking. Not a good sign. So three weeks later they get the part in they needed to fix the leak and hopefully get the motor working correctly again. They came Tuesday to install this new part. Well of course due to the size of our tub and it's exceedingly tight fit in our bathroom they had to remove the tub once again to install the replacement part. One problem, this time they couldn't get the tub out. After hearing quite a lot of loud banging I enter the bathroom to discover two of the back splash tiles around my tub have been smashed to smithereens! I was not a happy camper. We already knew we couldn't get the tile anymore after searching high and low for replacement tiles to go near our back door.

So here I am, supposed to list our house that night and I now have a big hole in my tub back splash. Again, I am not a happy camper. Thankfully the tile man that our Real Estate agent had told us about was supposed to come by later that day. After looking at our new hole he came up with a solution. I was about ready to hug the man I was so happy! He suggested we put in an entirely new back splash and of the old tiles he would clean up three to place in front of our back door.

Of course this takes a few days to complete. He was unable to come back Wednesday to work but did bring the tiles by to show me what the back splash would look like. In the meantime we did sign the papers to list the house. Come Wednesday afternoon around 4:15 I received a phone call from the appointment schedulers for showing the house calls. They want to know if the house can be shown between 5 and 6 that night! Ah! No! I've got biscuit dough on my hands and the kitchen isn't a complete mess but it definitely needed work. I had boxes I was filling on my bed and don't forget the whole in the tub back splash. So of course I tell them Friday would be better since I knew the tile was being laid on Thursday.

A few minutes later our realtor calls and says he has received an e-mail saying we refused a showing. Come to find out the couple was from out of state and leaving the next morning. To make this long story a little shorter I'll leave out all the phone calls and just say that while eating our dinner and getting ready for Bible class, Derek and I ran around picking up the house. They showed up as we were leaving around 6:10. We still haven't gotten feedback but I hope we will.

The tile man laid the tile on Thursday and since he was coming back on Friday to grout it and lay the tile at the back door Lily and I went grocery shopping Thursday night. That day I had truly delved into the grocery game or couponing, whichever term you choose to use. I planned my trips to Target and Publix. My lists included all my coupons, including details, coupons attached to the list with binder clips. Of course my reusable grocery bags were in hand. I wound up saving $15 at Target and came home with a $5 gift card to use next time. At Publix I saved $33 dollars. I was quite happy with my first time out. I hadn't fully grasped all there was to truly playing the "Grocery" Game or couponing at it's best. Friday I did even more research. Thanks to my mom I delved into Southern Savers and My Frugal Adventures. I ordered this: Coupon Organizer . Isn't it so pretty?! I can't wait for it to get here.

Today we went out as a family and at KMart I purchased a zippered three ring binder, 10 plastic pocket dividers and one pack of baseball card holders. It's mostly full of printed coupons right now. I did my research this afternoon and already have one good deal planned for RiteAid. I can't wait to get the paper tomorrow and dig in! I'll let you know how it goes. For now I guess I've rambled on and bored you long enough. If you lasted till the end congratulations!
Let me know you were here.

I love all of you my friends!

~Stacie~