My Life With Husqvarna

Husqvarna Viking Serger!

Can you imagine getting that amazing machine for free? Boy would I love to! Sew Mama Sew is having a giveaway of that very machine! Can you even imagine what this kind of machine could do for someone? I’d like to imagine what it could do for me.

Today In My World

I have an old sewing machine (it is probably older than I am) that I got from Freecycle. I have invested in it one $50 tune up and plenty of time sewing projects for gifts, a few for myself and lots for our little shop. I also have a combo sewing/embroidery machine that I use only for embroidery and really need to play around with more. I only use it so far for putting names on things like ribbon tag blankets for baby gifts. It has more capabilities but I have not gotten them all figured out. I really need to spend the time to play with it more and truly use it to its full potential.

My “studio,” as some folks might call it, is a small section of our master bedroom. Not ideal but it is the space I have. I try to keep it organized so that my husband (and I) don’t feel like the crafting is taking over our space. I have a small desk that I rescued from trash and a nine cubbie hole shelving unit that I bought at Target. I also have an old cedar chest that belonged to my Great Great Aunt where I store all my fabrics. I wish I could tell you that they were so nicely folded and organized by color, print, size, etc, but let’s get real, they are just in there, folded in some fashion to fit! I have three other small drawer units that are stored in the closet and by my dresser to hold various crafting items as well (scraps, ribbons, paint, crayons, etc). I can already hear the oohhs and aahhs; you are all wishing that this was your studio too!

I am a VERY simple sewer. I learned to sew in elementary school (I think), middle school for sure, through 4-H. (We had a ‘city’ 4-H group, none of that cow and chicken raising!) Sewing is like riding a bike, once you learn, it just takes a little practice to remember it and start creating again. I got my current sewing machine when my husband asked me to sew him a blanket for his bed at work. He wanted me to use his old fire department shirts to make a creative and unique blanket. I hadn’t done this before and hadn’t sewn in awhile but I told him that I would do it! (Isn’t it amazing what you will do for love! )

I really want to learn to make clothes for my daughter. She is just now starting to walk (only a few steps) so I know she would love adorable in some great dresses. Lil Blue Boo has some fun patterns that I want to get to make her some outfits by upcycling our old t-shirts. The way Lil Blue Boo makes them uses a serger and since I don’t have one, I haven’t bought any of the patterns yet. (She does have directions to use a regular sewing machine too. I’m just not convinced yet that I like that look as much as the serged look!)

A New Day In My World, Now with Husqvarna

Every day my children awake so sweetly and don’t bug me to get their breakfasts but rather allow me to sleep in. They help themselves to breakfast and get dressed for the day. When I do wake up, they bring me my breakfast and suggest that I take a long relaxing shower. They tell me that they will be fine playing with each other in the mean time. I eat my breakfast and take a leisurely shower. Once we are all dressed and ready for the day, we all pick out some crafting projects to work on in our studio.

Our studio is amazing. Walls of shelving with neatly folded fabrics sorted by type and color. Neat jars line another shelf, filled with buttons, zippers, pins and other notions. There is a crafting area for the kids to explore and create anything they can think of while I work on all the projects I have floating around in my mind. I have a large center island that allows me to plan out projects, cut patterns and fabrics and piece together all my ideas into real tangible items. Along one wall I have my sewing machine, embroidery machine and my new Husqvarna Viking s21 Serger. All the machines are lined up like toy soldiers, ready to create amazing new gifts, clothes, shop items and anything else we might be able to come up with.

Today I am creating a new fall/winter wardrobe for the kids. I have some great fabrics picked out and everything has already been cut. Time to get to sewing! I love it when it all starts to come together and items that used to be flat pieces of fabric suddenly become amazing and fun new wearable art. The kids are having fun trying on their new items. My son even asked what store did I get them from. It must be that my clothes are looking amazing and just like store bought items that he was not able to recognize that it would be something that his mother could manage to make. Of course, just the other day I wouldn’t have been able to make these amazing clothes. It really is all thanks to the my new Husqvarna Viking s21 Serger!

Our little shop is booming with business and we are now able to make amazing creations with the serger. I invested in a few of Lil Blue Boo’s patterns (and also the limited license) so that we could create some of her cute dresses to sell in our shop. I love how fun her items are and I am enjoying the look of the serged edges. Everything is much cleaner and more professional looking.

It is pretty amazing how my life has changed with the addition of the Husqvarna Viking s21 Serger. There is no other way to explain it! (All imagining and joking aside, it would be amazing and awesome to win this serger. Of course it will not make my kids behave better or give me an amazing studio with which to do work in, but it will help me make some cute clothes for my kids and help our shop have more professional looking items.)

This post was written as an entry into Sew Mama Sew’s Back To School Husqvarna Viking Serger Giveaway.

Celebration Sale!

Starting today, you can head over to Two Florida Girls Etsy shop and pick up some great items ON SALE! In celebration of over 300 sales, we are having a sale for you. Stock up on more items for gifts, for the upcoming holidays or even for yourself!

All cozies and little guy ties are buy one, get one half off. This includes coffee, gadget, checkbook and business card cozies & ties (even stuff that is already marked down). Feel free to mix and match. (Sale is only good on these items and only on ready to ship stuff. No custom orders.) We’ll credit your Paypal account for 1/2 of the lowest priced item(s). Sale runs through Saturday, September 4.

Thanks again for your continued support of our little shop!

Working Out Again-

Since I know Bob will appreciate this at least, I will post it!

I have decided that I need to try and do more working out (okay, I need to actually work out). I have at least 20lbs that I need to lose from having Little Monkette. Since Little Monkey is now in school and Little Monkette naps during that time, I am trying to use that time to do at least 30 minutes of working out.

Wednesday I did 30 minutes on the WiiFit. I realize that some people think WiiFit isn’t that much of a work out but I did two sets of advanced step (10 minutes total) and then 10 minutes of straight stepping. I did 10 more minutes of push ups and other strength training exercises.

Today I did 30 minutes on the treadmill. The goal is try to and do it as many times as I can Monday through Friday. I am contemplating another 5k with Amy, but she of course will smoke my time (not that I really care about that part). I am currently in NO shape to run a 5k so time to also work on that too.

You can keep me on track and make sure that I am doing something each day.

First Day of School

Yesterday was the first day of school for Little Monkey. He seemed excited about it and was already with his Buzz backpack (Thanks P!). He got up and had breakfast and we made sure he had everything in his bag. We took a few pictures before we headed to the school.

Little Monkette had to be in the picture too!

I also made a little sign for him to hold, hopefully we can remember to do this every year!

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First Day of School--VPK

I walked him to his class and he was very excited. He walked right into the class, leaving me in the hall! I had to go in to help show him where to put his stuff but he would have rather just gone on and played.

He had a great first day. I picked him up and he said it was fun. I asked if he was ready to come back the next day. Little Monkey said, “WHAT?!?!” So I explained that when you go to school, you go everyday. He said, “huh, ok.” Once he got to school today, he seemed more excited about it. I think it will be a good school year.

Desk Makeover

Remember these??

Redeemed from the trash!

I finally got to work on one of them….it took a long time..but I eventually got all the way through the process!

First, I cleaned it up some and let Little Monkey pick out what color he wanted. Of course he said green, because, “Green is my favorite color.” I got the spray paint, taped up the desk and went to town. All the metal became green. And then it sat in our garage for probably over a month. After hearing Big Monkey complain about it long enough, I made sure to finish up the project this past week. (Well for one desk that is!)

I pulled it out of the garage and taped up all the metal parts. I roughed up the wooden parts with some sandpaper.  Then I took the black spray paint and sprayed all the wooden parts. I lightly sprayed over the top of the desk too. I planned to spray over it with chalkboard paint but I wanted it to have something else to hold onto.

Black paint drying.

Once it was settled and dry, I pulled the tape and paper off everything and sprayed the chalkboard paint on top of the desktop. We let that cure overnight before trying it out.

Ready to be chalk primed.

Now that it was done, we just took a piece of chalk and rubbed it all over the top and then wiped it off. Then Little Monkey (and Little Monkette) was ready to check it out. He is enjoying writing his name and drawing on the desk.

Cool new chalkboard desk!

I have another desk (as you see in the picture) to spray paint and finish up for my friend too! I will share it when it is ready!

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Hillsborough River State Park Day 3

The boys all got up early for a planned trip of fishing down at the dock. The rest of us slept in. Oh wait, that’s not quite what happened. Little Monkette woke up when Big Monkey’s alarm went off and wouldn’t go back to sleep. Little Monkey ended up sleeping in. Little Monkette and I went out to get her some milk and we sat outside with Roland. Eventually Little Monkey woke up and wondered where everyone was. He finished up his breakfast and then we took a walk down to where the boys were fishing. He stayed with them and Little Monkette and I headed back to the campsite to see if the rest of our friends were up yet. Surprisingly, they were so we packed up our stuff and headed back down to the boys. Little Monkette got left with all the boys and the rest of us and the dogs headed off for another geocaching trip.

We were after the last two caches in the park that were located on a 3.1 mile trail. It was quite hot and a long walk but half way in we found the first one. Nothing too exciting in the cache, so we just signed the log and moved on. We tried to find the next one and got as close as 500 feet but that was across a marshy swamp land. We continued around the trail and realized that we were getting farther away. A bit more reading about where it was located and it appears that it was no really along the trail but somewhere inside the middle of the circle that the trail makes. It was too hot and too much ‘off-roading’ for us to go after this time. Maybe if we go back there another time when it is cooler, we will see if we can get to it!

Once we got back to camp, the boys had also made it back from fishing. Unfortunately, they had only caught one baby turtle. I suppose they had fun though. We decided that it was time to start packing up so the older kids went to help out at their camper while the younger ones helped keep Little Monkey busy. Big Monkey and I worked on getting everything in the camper put away so we could break it all down and head out. Little Monkette wanted to help too but she is not exactly helpful. We did put up the door so that she would be able to look outside and see what was going on while she played. She really liked this.

Little Monkette checking things out!

We got everything put away and closed up the camper. Everyone got into their car seats and we headed out of town. We had planned on sandwiches for lunch but Big Monkey didn’t want to have dirty dishes since things were going to be all put away. We ended up stopping at a McDonalds on the way out of town to grab some lunch. Both kids and Roland fell asleep on the way home. It was a fun weekend and a good short getaway before school starts up. Hillsborough River State Park will be on our list to camp at again. It was a nice park, clean and had a nice pool to cool off in. The camping loop we were on seemed to be the least busy and that was also nice.

Little Monkey Medical Update

Little Monkey with a postcard from his VPK teachers.

I told you over here that Little Monkey was getting ready to start a drug trial hopefully. Well, he had the next blood draw done and his phe level actually went down to 2.5. Not much of a change from 2.6 but not the direction we wanted his levels to go in order to start the drug trial.

After much discussion with the drug company and our insurance, the doctors have decided that we are not going to do things their way but that we will do the drug trial as they want. The insurance doesn’t want to cover the dosage, so they want us to do a trial at a lower dose to see if he responds. There is a chance the he will not respond on the lower dose but may respond to the higher dose. The current plan is to just try the higher normal dose and see what happens. If he doesn’t respond, we are done. If he does respond, they will back him down on the dose to see the difference in his response to appease the insurance company.

Since his level went down, we are raising his daily phe allowance by 15mg of phe a day and in two weeks we will do another blood draw. Based on everything we have done already, this should show an increase in his phe, allowing us to start the drug trial. It should not raise his level to an unsafe range but just to a point that we will be able to see if he does respond to the drug. Hopefully we will get to start this soon and see if we even respond. I am ready to just know and then we can handle moving on from there!

Hillsborough River State Park Day 2

Little Monkey woke us up bright and early at 6:58am saying he had to go potty. Off we went to the bathrooms and Little Monkette was wide awake by the time we got back. Quiet hours only go until 7am but most campsites don’t start moving around and making noise until after 8am. Little Monkette was excited to climb around on our bed and make noise while the rest of us got ourselves moving for the day.

Fun in the camper!

Once we were all dressed, we headed outside and Big Monkey made us some pancakes. Little Monkette tried some too and ate almost half of a pancake. (This was a big real food weekend for her!) After checking in with our friends, it was determined that we should all go down to the pool. Before we all got changed, I snapped this picture to show you the evidence we had of a visitor last night!

Looks like we had a raccoon!

The kids and our friend M rode their bikes down to the pool, Little Monkey included! The pool was very large (capacity 216!) and not too deep. The depths varied between two feet and five feet, although right along the edges it was only about one foot deep. Little Monkey LOVED that he could touch the bottom for much of his swimming. He also had a great time with the other kids swimming around and pushing them over into the water. Little Monkette loved it too. In her ring float, there were parts of the pool that she could actually touch and ‘walk’ along the pool. She also liked it when we pushed her between the different people in the pool. All the playing in the pool seriously wore her out. We had to make the trek back to the campsites for lunch and before we were even half way there she was asleep! She stayed asleep in the umbrella stroller for about 45 minutes!

One tired girl!

After some lunch, all the adults decided to go geocaching. None of the kids wanted to go so they all got left to play around the campsite and watch a movie in our friends’ camper. (Not to worry, our friends’ daughter is a responsible party and of babysitting age.) Four adults and two dogs headed off for some trail hiking and geocaching. It was hot out but we continued on our way. We managed to find the three caches we were after for the day. Well really M and D found the caches. Big Monkey and I were not the first to find any of them. That is a little frustrating but we still had fun.

D with one of the caches we found.

Once the hiking was over, we headed back to camp for a little rest before getting dinner ready. The kids were all fine and had hung out playing and watching a movie. They didn’t seem to miss us at all. The boys had planned to go to a fishing class after dinner, so we were trying to have everything ready to be eating by 7pm so they could get there on time. We were having pork chops, corn and baked potatoes while our friends were having chicken and baked potatoes. The potatoes and the corn went into the coals of the fire. Big Monkey manned the grill and cooked up everybody’s meats. We ended up cutting it close and the boys were shoveling food in their mouths but all went well. After they were gone, Little Monkette got to try some corn on the cob. (She also had some potato at dinnertime.) She LOVED the corn on the cob. She has two teeth on the top and two on the bottom, helping her chop down on the corn. She did not want me to take it away!

Little Monkette loving some corn!

We cleaned up dinner while the boys were gone and then everyone hung out around the fire. We finished the night with some smores. Little Monkette went to bed much easier than last night and even stayed asleep if someone went into the camper. She woke up once around 2am and I put her in bed with us. She went right back to sleep!

Hillsborough River State Park Day 1

After getting things packed up and Little Monkette having her nap, we packed up and headed out to Hillsborough River State Park. It took us a little bit over an hour to get there. Roland did great this time and even laid down for a good portion of the trip!

Park Entrance

Just as we got checked in, our friends messaged us letting us know that they had blown a tire! (They have history with this. Sadly they are quite experience but have good coverage so someone was on the way out to help them.) A bit of a delay but they go to us. By the time they had arrived, we had our site all set up and Big Monkey was working on a fire. We stopped to help them get their site set up too and then Big Monkey cooked burgers for everybody. Our friends came in two shifts because the boys had football practice, so we didn’t end up seeing them until after 10pm! Little Monkette got to try some baked beans for dinner. She liked them, but man they did a number on her the next morning!

Our site. Nice size and everything set up!

We borrowed our friends’ old pack and play for Little Monkette to hang out in and sleep in. Last time she was camping with us, she didn’t even move in her sleep, so she could share a bed with Little Monkey. Now she would probably try to crawl out of the bed! We set her up in it outside for a bit while we worked on getting things set up at our friends’ campsite. She did okay playing but you could tell she would rather be out with everybody. (Kinda hard to do when she isn’t walking yet and I forgot my wrap!)

Little Monkette playing with her toys.

Little Monkette had a tough first night at camp with getting to sleep and staying asleep but she eventually got it figured out. After hanging out for a bit longer around the campfire with our friends, we all headed in to bed.

Special Orders

After posting some of my work on Facebook, I had a friend from church request a special order! I am glad I posted things to my Facebook page and not just here or in the shop. You never know where you will find business.

She wanted a letter onesie (lowercase l in cursive) and a letter pacifier. I found a cute font on my computer to trace the letter from for the onesie, but used the Cricut for the pacifier. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any good lower case cursive l fonts to use, so we picked this one instead. (Those lines in the picture are not actually on the onesie…it is from the photograph.)

Onesie and Pacifier

While we were at the Homespun Chic Marketplace show the other day, we also got a special order for an Auburn Heart onesie. I was able to get that made yesterday too. I hope the recipient will love it just as much as they love Auburn!

Auburn Heart

If you are interested in a special order, please visit our shop and let us know! We’d love to help you out!

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