This and That……Plus Winners!!

I just wanted to check in here on the blog and say that I haven’t forgotten about blogging……..I promise. I just haven’t had much to blog about lately and rather than forcing a creative post, I’m just trying to go with the flow. The kids are keeping me quite busy these days with school and spring break,  then I was traveling and so on…….you know how life goes, right? I think I’ll have some projects to share with you in a couple weeks, but for now I’m taking some time to spruce up my house for Spring and Easter (see left picture above). I’ve got a laundry list of home projects that have been piling up and I’m finally tackling my to-do list. It feels good. Really good.

I’m also starting to plan our summer activities for when the kids are out of school the end of May…….can you believe that is right around the corner? We are heading to the beach in FL again for a week (remember this post), the kids are signed up for VBS, we will visit a water park in the Wisconsin Dells to celebrate Matilda’s 5th birthday and I’ve got the kids signed up for a couple other various camps. And we will also make sure to leave some time to play with friends and do some relaxing summer fun outside. My kids thrive on a plan so I like to make sure we have a fun one ready to roll. This summer my husband, Brett,  and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, so we’ve decided to take a trip (just the two of us) to Charleston, SC. Charleston is a place my husband and I really think we will enjoy. Since we’ve been wanting to check it out, we thought what better time than now! If you are from there or have visited before, I’d love to hear what are you ‘not to miss’ spots in that area of the country. We booked our hotel at Zero George Street and can’t wait for July to get here!

Last weekend I headed to Nashua, NH to teach a ‘Pairing Patterned Fabrics and Embellishing’ class at the Nancy Zieman / Baby Lock’s ‘For the Love of Sewing Retreat’. It was a really quick trip. I was the last class of the event, so I flew in on a Friday, taught on Saturday and flew back to Chicago on Sunday. I had a really great time. New Hampshire is a beautiful place. My favorite part of this business is getting to meet other women with a passion for sewing, so teaching at these events just thrills me. In my class I lectured for about 45 minutes – 1 hour about how I go about pairing patterned fabrics, talked about using trims to help fabrics work together, creating your own custom layered trims and more! At the conclusion of the lecture, I gave the students three fat quarters of fabric, a great sampling of trims and a child’s t-shirt. From there, they were to get creative and create their own, unique one-of-a-kind shirt for a child. I love seeing what people come up with………everyone is so creative, yet so different. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you may have a seen a few of my phone pictures during class and I also included a couple pictures from my sewing class in the top image for this post.

Also, I don’t know if you remember, but last October I flew to Colorado to film an episode of ‘Sew It All TV‘ (you can check out that post HERE). Well, the new season is now airing on PBS, so you might be able to catch my episode about Peter Pan Collars on your local PBS station. My PBS station here actually doesn’t pick up that show, but I know they get it a few towns over. Each PBS station selects their own shows, so check your local listings to see if you get ‘Sew It All TV’. And if you happen to see me on there, let me know……..I haven’t seen the episode yet!

I’m hosting Easter brunch this year and I’m pretty excited about it. I don’t get to host too many holidays here at our house because we have my husbands family in town or we are occasionally traveling. But I always really love having the festivities at our house. I’ve got a really fun brunch menu planned and I’m looking forward to having a low-key day focused on attending Easter morning Mass, Easter egg hunts, food and family!

Right after Easter I’ll be heading to a blog conference in Salt Lake City called SNAP. I’ve never been to this conference before, but I’ve heard it’s a really good one. Each year I like to chose one conference to attend where I’m not teaching and I can just enjoying learning, meeting up with blogging friends and having a good time (last year I attended Alt Design Summit). I’m rooming with my blogging buddies: Stef from Girl. Inspired, Amy from Positively Splendid and Melissa from Melly Sews. I love all three of these girls so I think we will have a great time.

So that’s a little bit of what’s been going on around here. I didn’t want you to think I had fallen off the face of the earth…….I keep myself pretty busy. And with that said, I also didn’t want you to think I had forgotten about our giveaway winners. Today I have two winners to announce, one is for the Fat Quarter Bundle Newsletter Giveaway hosted by Riley Blake Designs and the second is the Batik Bundle Giveaway hosted by our lovely blog sponsor, Crafter’s Vision.

Riley Blake Designs Bundle Giveaway Winner:

Sheryl Andrews

Crafter’s Vision Batik Bundle Giveaway Winner:

Congratulations to the winners of both these wonderful giveaways! And thanks to our amazing blog sponsors for providing such great prizes for all of you. If you were one of our winners, please contact me at Lindsay[at]thecottagemama[dot]com and I will make sure you get your prize as soon as possible!

I hope you all are having a great week!