slow to update & Patty Young!

I never wanted to have a blog that is not updated at least every week! I hate that when I have a friend, or a sister :)- who will update a lot & then all of a sudden, they are gone for like two weeks! What is up with that? Are they on vacation? Did they think no one was reading? Did they forget? Or perhaps.... life go SO busy, they could not get everything done & the blog was on the cut list! I understand now... sometimes there is just too much going on. So, sorry if I have ever been upset with you for not updating on a regular basis... & sorry for not updating as often as I think I should!!! :)

My reasons for not updating as often as I think I should are many... it has been a crazy time at my house! The ceiling in my storage room (see post below) is almost half gone now... I am living with boxes all around me :( the termite man has come & gone & has to come out again, after we take a hammer to the affected boards & make all the termite poo fall out.... awesome.



So, since we have sorted all of this stuff out, we had a monster yard sale, I mean HUGE!!! Completely filled the garage with stuff & it spilled out onto the driveway all the way to the street, it was amazing. :) It took me most of a week to get it all, sorted, priced set up. My friend Stacey & her daughter came & helped. I got tables from two other great friends, my hubby & daughter helped with SO much!

As I was working on all of this, our cat had a seizure or concussion or something & had to be rushed to the e-vet in the middle of the night. The dog needed her rabies shot & the day I had to get to the bank for change, my car would not start! I try not to whine, but MAN! I could use a break! :)-



So the yard sale went really well! Phoebe & her friend Emily had a lemonade stand, all the money going to their school library & they made $19!!! Good food (thanks to Stacey!) cute kids, a good cause & generous people! Amazing!

Have I mentioned that my life is normally a very quite time? I mean, nothing goes on here! SOOOO quiet. So, imagine my surprise when I got into the car that would not start last week & it started up! I drove it part way to the bus stop, thinking how lucky I was that it was working again & the power steering failed. Yep...... one more thing.

All of these negative things were starting to build up & get me down... the yard sale was a great success, but I still had so much other stuff that was not in the positive column, I was starting to be a real bummer... & then it happened, the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me personally... besides my daughter & husband & all that gushy stuff, I mean in an accomplishment sort of way..... I was mentioned in Patty Young's blog!!!! Yes, I almost died, and or wet my pants! It is so AMAZING!!!!!


Now, if I could find enough time in the day to get my shop open, I would be all set! :)

My Shop

Hi! My name is Ariel and my shop is
Tootsie Marie.

I love to sew & my family has been telling me for quite a long time to set up a shop & sell some things. I put it off & put it off, I was not convinced anyone would buy the stuff I was making.

I have a great friend, (one of my very, best friends in fact) named Melanie, she owns a fabric store, Above All Fabric.
I buy all of my fabric from her, she carries the best designers! We get together to sew & work on projects pretty often, we laugh a LOT & sew a little! :)

I brought my latest idea over to Melanie's house to have her look at it, a water bottle carrier made from Patty Young's fabric... Playdate, goldfish - teal.
She loved it & the rest is very recent history.

She Tweeted a picture of the water bottle carrier & sold two of them right then! I didn't have a blog or a shop or even a price yet! I freaked out a little & then got to work.

I could not have done this without her help. She has held my hand through everything, from my trademark name to teaching me about HTML code! Thank you Melanie! I would be a total wreck without you!

I also owe a huge thanks to my husband & parents for always encouraging me and to my daughter, for being so darn sweet. :)

I think 'water bottle carrier' is a bit of a long name, so I am calling it the 'Carey Jane'. I am working hard to have them available in my shop as soon as possible. I am also working on a Carey Jane pattern and a kit or two.

Thank you for reading this! I hope everything is spelled correctly! I am having some trouble with the formatting, but I promise to work on it! :)