sewing • cooking • crafting • all things domestic
Dear Caspian,
Today you are 2 years old. Happy birthday my little man! I was recently thinking about you and what a big boy you are becoming; however, since you are my youngest I was wondering if I will always feel like you are my baby? Your sisters both felt so old to me when they turned two because there was already and new baby in the picture. But not you. I’ve heard from other mothers that your youngest is always the baby. I hope that is true because I’d like to keep you as my baby forever.
If you are reading this blog post in a reader or via email, you may not have even noticed that The Cottage Mama has a brand new website! This site has been a long time in the making. I wanted to keep everything all in one place……the blog, the shop, the book, etc. And I wanted it to be easier to navigate and find exactly what you are looking for every time you visit. So from this point forward the blog will no longer be called The Cottage Home, but will be just like everything else…..The Cottage Mama. Click here to come check out the new website!
This past week I had the opportunity to sew up the Bateaux Neck Top from ‘Wee Muses Patterns‘ by my blogging friend, Anneliese from Aesthetic Nest. I was excited to get my hands on this pattern as I’m trying to start sewing with more knits for my kids.
As you already know, I have a wonderful sponsorship going on with Skinny Cow brand and have been working with them on their WoCave campaign. For the second mission, Skinny Cow sent my good friend, Jen, and I out for lunch and for a day of antiquing searching for items to add to our WoCave’s (aka Woman Caves). So here’s a little bit about our fun adventure treasure hunting……..
As you may know, fabric applique’s can be very tricky to cut out, especially extremely intricate designs. Well, leave it to Nancy Z. to come up with an easy solution with her new Laser Cut Applique Designs.
Well, it happened. My oldest child, Savannah Rose, started full-day Kindergarten yesterday. Wait, please press the pause button……..I was not ready for this one. But even though I wasn’t ready, she was MORE than ready to go!
One of the best parts of summer to me is definitely grilling. Now I’m not the grill master around my house (my hubby helps out in that department), but I absolutely adore the smell of food cooking out on the grill and like to eat it even more. If you like shrimp, you are going to absolutely love this recipe! It’s so super-simple and there is no worrying about your shrimp falling through your grill because the whole dish is cooked inside a foil pouch. SO easy!
So for my 1st WoCave mission, Skinny Cow sent me and three of my girlfriends to do something a little outside of our ordinary routine. My friends and I all love to craft, decorate, create, etc., but generally we get together at someones’ home for our creative night once a month. So for this mission, we were taken outside of our comfort zone and sent to paint pottery at a local shop in town.
We were all give a large mug and saucer upon arriving at the shop. We walked around taking in all the inspiration and planning out what we wanted to paint on our pottery. The planning part was the hardest part for me since I agonize over my creations.
My friend, Jen, had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to paint on her pieces. She had an inspiration print that she had been thinking about so that really helped her create her design.
The colors at the pottery shop were very muted when you first put them on, but they had examples of what the different colors would look like once they had been fired and were ready to go a week later.
My friend Laura ended up doing polka dots with some sponges on her big giant mug and plate and stuck to really sweet palette of colors. It was so cute!
Ellie has a really beautiful home decorated in blues, greens and earth-tones, so she stuck to those colors in creating her two pieces.
So here I am with my mug. And here’s the thing……I had a little problem…….I needed about 8 more hours to actually paint the design I had planned. It was pretty funny. I had an intricate design drawn out in pencil (since the pencil marks burn off when the pottery is fired) and ended up just having to paint right over it because I only had 45 minutes left to finish. Same thing happened with my plate. Note to self for next time: ‘must arrive when shop opens in the morning’.
But with that being said, I think there will definitely be a next time. We all had such a great time trying something new. Isn’t that what life is all about? Getting outside of our regular routine and experiencing new things together. I think so. And what’s even better is when you can experience these things with your good friends and build memories to last a lifetime.
We just completed our second mission and I can’t wait to share more about it with you, if you follow me on Instagram (@thecottagemama), you may already have an idea where we went. Thank you to Skinny Cow brand for helping me experience such fun missions and activities with my girlfriends (and thanks for the Cookies ‘n Dough ice cream bars…….they were delish)!
Products and mission tasks were provided to me free of charge from Skinny Cow Brand, however, as always…….all opinions, ideas and experiences are 100% mine.
Lindsay Wilkes is the owner and designer behind The Cottage Mama. She creates timeless, vintage inspired sewing patterns for children’s clothes. She is also a fabric designer for Riley Black Designers / Penny Rose Fabrics, author of the book ‘Sew Classic Clothes for Girls’ and can be seen teaching nationwide and online in her video series ‘Lessons with Lindsay’ sponsored by Baby Lock Sewing and Embroidery machines.
Welcome! My name is Lindsay Wilkes and I am the owner / designer of The Cottage Mama, a boutique children's sewing pattern company and the author behind, 'Sew Classic Clothes for Girls'. The Cottage Mama blog is where I share my love for sewing, cooking and crafting and all things domestic. If you like what you see, you can read more about me HERE.