Two Florida Girls Etsy-versary!

Today, we celebrate the two year anniversary of Two Florida Girls. What fun it continues to be!

During Two Florida Girls‘ second year, we…

…introduced our divided heart & football onesies;
…added Florida Gators and FSU Seminoles inspired hair clips;
…organized the Etsy for Ava fundraiser to support a sweet family in our community;
…did our first onesie order for triplets. Super cute idea!
…offered custom initial onesies and shirts for the first time;
…designed a super cute “Surf’s Up” onesie;
…participated in the First Homespun Chic Marketplace in August. Looking forward to April for round 2;
…participated in the 2nd Annual Holiday Handmade Open House in November.

It’s been a great two years! We’ve had so much fun and “met” so many wonderful people via the Etsy community. We’ve had such a great time creating.

Amy and I are so excited that we want to let you in on the celebration.

SALE–All ready to ship items have been marked down at least 35%! Prices have already been changed in our shop to reflect the sale. No coupon code needed! Some items are as low as $1.95 (plus shipping)! Custom orders (like bean bags, pacifiers, onesies, etc) and items not marked as “SALE” are subject to normal prices. Sale runs from now through Saturday, February 5.

GIVEAWAY–We are hosting a giveaway for our Facebook fans. Not a fan yet? No worries. Click here and “like” our page. Then you’ll be able to enter to win any “ready to ship” item from our shop.

NEW PRODUCTS–We do anticipate introducing some new items soon. But don’t want to give anything away just yet. Stay tuned.

Thanks for a wonderful two years on Etsy! Looking forward to many more!

Gators Twirl!

This week I decided to test out the serger on the twirl skirts. The pattern from Lil Blue Boo was originally made with a serger in mind. I cut out pieces from some t-shirts that Holly gave me to make Sophia a Gator twirl skirt. Making this skirt with the serger was a breeze!!!! When I made the skirts with the sewing machine, it was already pretty quick, taking more time to cut it out than it did to sew it. Sewing it with the serger…SUPER FAST! I am in love! Now if I could just find a way to cut the t-shirts faster, I’d really be in business!

Gators Twirl!

The two grey sections came from two different Florida Gator shirts. The orange came from a plain orange shirt that was in my “shirts to skirts” pile. I also used the orange shirt to make the waistband. It was a bit more stretchy than normal t-shirts, so it ended up working out great.

Close up of writing panel

Since I was trying out the serger, I also ran the serger around the bottom of the skirt (I usually just left it raw, which is fine with t-shirt material since it doesn’t fray.). I love the look of the bottom edge being serged. It looks nicely finished and more professional. Now to make more skirts and get other colored threads for fun combos on the serger.

 

Florida Gator Girl!

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Little Monkey Update

We have some new information on Little Monkey, so I thought I would share it with everyone.

First up, our very first parent teacher conference. During a teacher work day this week, the kids and I headed up to the school to meet with Little Monkey’s teacher. This was a standard conference and we went over his progress report and test grade. Yes, a test! It is actually the first time they gave this test to the pre-k kids, so they didn’t know what to really expect. His teacher said that there were many things on the test that she thought we asking a bit too much of four year olds! Little Monkey got 50% or less in all four categories. We are hoping that after a year of pre-k, he will have at least improved scores! His teacher said that he does a good job in class and all we really need to work on is some of his letters and the sounds letters make. She asked if I had any questions, but I didn’t. I wondered if I should! Whoops! We discussed more about Little Monkey’s PKU and the upcoming food related holidays and activities.

We got Little Monkey’s most recent blood draw results back on Monday. They were not good. A phe level of 11.7, my heart sank a little and then wanted to blame his recent craziness to the elevated phe level. His dietitian decided that we should have another blood draw done yesterday to see if the 11.7 was a fluke. We then reduced his phe intake by 10 mg per day. We will wait to see the results of this blood draw. If it is still elevated, we will take him off the Kuvan and go back to his original level before Kuvan (230 mg of phe per day). I am a bit grateful that we will be done with the medication most likely. We haven’t been able to raise his daily intake to anything that would be worth staying on the medication. At least we have tried it and will know if it does or doesn’t work. Who knows, maybe when he decides to eat more food, there will be a new therapy or drug or something that will allow him to eat more foods. We will find out soon if we are really done with the Kuvan or not.

That is what’s new with Little Monkey. Other than that, he just loves going to school and playing outside.

Book Review: Choosing To See

Choosing To See

I asked for this book for Christmas and received it. (Funny I asked for two books…before this I don’t even know the last non-children’s book I read cover to cover!) I was able to pick up this book when we went camping over new year’s and got about half of it read.

Choosing to See was a book that I honestly didn’t want to put down. I wanted to just sit and read it straight through, but even camping, that wasn’t possible. I did try and get some reading in at night and nap time once we got back. It didn’t take much longer before I had finished the book.

It was a great read. Lots of ups and downs, happy and sad, you’ll laugh and cry. I learned a lot about the Chapman family that I didn’t know before (For instance, Mary Beth’s last name was Chapman even before she got married to Steven! How handy was that!). The book shows their amazing faith and strong belief in God and how he will provide in all situations. No one wants to bury their child and they certainly don’t want to have to do so because of the actions of another child.

Mary Beth tells about life before Steven, life with Steven, life with their kids, adopting their three girls and all that comes with it. I was amazed by their belief and faith in God. Not sure why, because of course they have great faith in God, but in the unbelievably hard times they still did and while they may have questioned God and his decisions, they never questioned that he was in control.

I would recommend this book, especially to moms, but really anyone could get something great out of it. I have already loaned out my copy but once it comes back, I would consider reading it again as well as loaning it out more.

Thank you Mary Beth Chapman (who by the way has no clue who I am or that I’m writing this) for your willingness to share your experiences with the world. It was a blessing to read how God has changed your family through every circumstance. From being a SCC fan, it was cool to read about how things came together for you guys back in the day. I remember The Great Adventure-we sang that music with our church youth group for choir tour!

Little Monkette’s Kitchen

For Christmas this year, I asked Pops to make Little Monkette a kitchen. I found a few ideas I liked online that were upcycled from nightstands and old tv cabinets. Since we weren’t finding any cabinets that we thought would very well. In the end, Pops decided to craft the kitchen himself from scratch. I went over to the house to help him out with it some but he did most of the work. We painted the kitchen in the same pink color from her room.

When Christmas Eve came, the kitchen was by the tree but all covered up with a sheet. Little Monkette got some pots and pans from her great grandparents. It surprised them that she knew exactly what to do with them.. She was very cute ‘mixing’ things up in her pots and playing with them on the floor.

Cooking in her new pots and pans

Little Monkey was very excited when Little Monkette opened up her new kitchen. I think he thought it was more for him than her, but he let her play with it that night pretty well. Since then though he likes to help her cook in there a lot! They have a lot of fun in the new kitchen.

The new kitchen!

The kitchen gets played with almost everyday. Little Monkette’s newest favorite thing to do is take the sink out and throw things into the “fridge/pantry” through the hole. She got some plates, napkins, cups, silverware and other assorted kitchen items for Christmas from our family. We got her some felt foods. I have been checking out the felt foods online and considering making some for her.

One day while playing with her, I noticed that she was having a hard time reaching up on the top surface some so I grabbed the stool from the bathroom. I tried to show her to stand up on it but she wouldn’t have it. Apparently cooking is hard work for her!

Silly girl!

Thanks Pops for making the kitchen! I’m certain it will get lots of use for years to come!

Scrap Lilly Onesie

You may remember when I made the upcycled Lilly baby gift set recently. I had planned to make Baby A at least one more onesie (which is good since her mom wants one is every size!). I came up with this idea while searching for some other fabrics the other day. Including the dress I used for the last gift set, we had some other Lilly scraps laying around. I was thinking it would be fun to piece them together for a new scrappy initial. I picked out the scraps I wanted to use then checked where I wanted the “A” to fall on the fabrics. Then I ironed really well and sewed the scraps together.

Scraps sewn together...

I cut out the “A” initial that I wanted to use from heat and bond and ironed it onto the back of the scraps. I cut out the “A” and then ironed it onto the onesie that I picked out.

"A" applique

The last step was to stitch near the edges of the “A.” I LOVE LOVE LOVE how this onesie turned out. Upcycling with Lilly fabrics, it doesn’t get much cuter than this! (Although, once it is on Baby A, I’m sure it will be cuter!)

Scrappy Lilly Initial Onesie!

(Sorry for the crappy lighting! I hope Baby A and her momma love this new onesie as much as I do!)

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I Was Featured!

A big thanks to Sugar Bee for featuring my Initial Shirt today! Head over there and check out the other cool items she featured too!

Initial Shirt…again.

I can’t help myself. I like making these shirts. Initial shirts are pretty quick to make and such a nice and fun personalized gift! Recently I found out that S loves her previous S shirt that I made her. She tries to wear it all the time when she sees that it is clean! When asked about it, she said that she likes to wear it because she likes the shirt and that I made it for her (I think I got that right, or at least close to it, right Holly?) I learned that S was outgrowing her shirt, so I decided to make her a new one in a bigger size! I tried to find where I blogged about the first shirt…but it appears that I didn’t!

S Initial Shirt

I think the fabric was fun but not too kid-like. On her old shirt, I had a tiny heart on the back as a little surprise. This time I put a surprise flower on the back. I had the flower sitting in my pile of ‘to use sometime’ stuff. Amy had cut it out with the Cricut awhile ago and I finally decided to use it.

Surprise flower on the back!

I was able to take S her new shirt last week. She was so excited and told me how much she loved it. That is the best part. I hope when Little Monkette is old enough to have a little bit of an opinion that she will still think it is cool to wear stuff like this that I make her.

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Upcycled Lilly Pillowcase Dress

Earlier this week I showed you the upcycled Lilly baby gift set I made. Mommy D sent us the dress below to make a pillowcase dress for Baby A. The only request Mommy D had was to keep the original hem and lace as the hem of the new dress. I love the detail and love how it all turned out.

Original Lilly Strapless Dress

I started out with the dress, which had two layers. I cut apart the two layers and removed the zipper. After much research online for an easy to follow tutorial, I finally decided to use Prudent Baby’s tutorial. I measured out what I needed and cut one piece from the front of the dress. I used that piece to cut a matching piece from the back of the dress. Since I had figured out how to use the new serger earlier in the day, I used it to sew the dress together. I love how it made the inside seams turn out. It looks very well made and professional! (Disclaimer–the dress is not perfect….but I still LOVE how it turned out!)

Showing the bias tape along the arm hole.

I continued to follow the tutorial and used bias tape for the first time. I was surprised how easy it actually was. (Big thanks to Prudent Baby for explaining it in a simple way for me!) It certainly helped to make the arm seams very nice looking. Now that I know how to use bias tape, I think I would be more likely to use it in the future for other projects. Last but not least, I made the casing for the ribbon ties. Prudent Baby also had a great suggestion for the casing. The tutorial suggested folding the top down a 1/4 inch and ironing and then also another 3/4 inch before sewing. It made that inside seam very nice looking. I put the ribbon ties inside and it was done! I need to make the ribbon ties a bit longer (thankfully I have more ribbon!) but it was hard to know how much to use without having a child to measure it on!

 

All finished!

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Camping at Alafia River

We booked a camping trip over New Years with our friends. It was a great time to get away and relax some after the craziness of the holidays and before school started back up. We took a three night trip down to Alafia River. We headed down on Thursday and got set up before our friends arrived. We helped them get set up once they got to the park. It was nice that there was very little of an agenda…so everyday we all just hung around and did what we wanted. The kids (and some of the adults) did a lot of bike riding. Big Monkey went on some of the trails and took a nice chunk out of his leg. We are over a week past it happening and it is still painful, though healing up nicely.

I got to do quite a bit of reading (I took along the new book I got for Christmas and got about halfway through it! I need another camping trip so I can finish it up!). I also did some geocaching. Once with Little Monkey and Z, once with Big Monkey and another time with D. All told, we found ten caches and two travel bugs! Our friends had already found all the ones at Alafia River when they camped there before, so we are catching up on their numbers! There are many bike, hiking and horse trails at the park. Each day it was quite busy but the campground was still nice and quiet. We got to talk to a few horses, which Little Monkey loved.

It was nice to have a relaxing time. All the girls in our friends’ family were sick most of the weekend, so it was pretty calm and quiet. We plan to go back to Alafia River, just not during summer because there was hardly any shade in the campground.

 

(I was waiting and waiting to post this because I was hoping that our friend would send me some of the pictures she took….but she hasn’t. Oh well.)