Where the heck have I been? Sweating!

Ohmygosh, it's been since March since I was here last.  I told you I couldn't keep it up.  Summer with three kids home from school was, well, summer with three kids home from school.  I'm just glad it's over.  Maybe I have a bad attitude or maybe it was the 108+ degree weather we had around here!  Good Lord I thought it would never end!

With school being back in session, I'm super busy once again with all the volunteer duties I swore I would never over commit myself to.  But we all know how those things go.  I also said I would never get all crazy and wait in line for hours and hours to register my kid for Mothers Day Out, but ask me how that turned out.  Seriously though, being active in your child's school is a good thing if you have the time.  I think there's like a secret special list for super star Mom volunteers, and by gosh I want to be on it!  Plus it's really fun to have an excuse to pop in to my kids classes and embarrass them.  My oldest is the best because he'll actually try to pretend I'm not there.  It makes me feel good.

Ok, so really what I wanted to show you was one of the coolest ABK Couture projects we did over the summer.  It was another Bunco driven project (I love Bunco!!!).  This client had two huge windows in her family room.  The room just felt too stark and open.  She really wanted to anchor the room with panels.  Her taste is contemporary and she had recently ordered her furniture from I.O. Metro up here in Allen.  She wanted something bold and graphic and she preferred geometric prints.  So I found an amazing black and ivory lattice print fabric from Kravet (pattern is Jerry, color 81).  It has a great texture - a heavy basketweave cotton.  We decided on a grommet header for a contemporary look with shiny nickel hardware to go with her chrome lamp.  After looking at a couple of scenarios, we decided on doing three panels - two single widths at each end and a double width in the middle.  I am in love how this turned out.  I don't get to do contemporary very often so this was really really fun. Check it out:

Before...

After!

Nickel hardware and grommets

Pine Bluff

I love reading on Facebook about my friends' fabulous Spring Break vacations.  Some hit the slopes in Colorado, some are having fun in the sun at the beach, and some headed to Disneyworld.  So where did the Bettisons go for Spring Break?  We hit the road to Pine Bluff, Arkansas.  Now, I know it sounds like I'm doggin' on the Bluff but I'm really not.  I like visiting Pine Bluff for several reasons.

The #1 reason is that Nana (Jeff's mom) makes the best chocolate pie you could ever taste in your entire life.  I'm being serious.  If Heaven is as great as they say it is, they will serve her pie there.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of this amazing confection but I was way too busy stuffing it in my mouth.  Once the pie comes out of the fridge you'd better just get yourself a piece because it goes quick.

#2 is that my kids get to play outside all day and get dirty and pet dogs and burn stuff.

#3 is getting to stop by James Hayes Art Glass and watch them make cool art glass bowls.

#4 Pine Bluff makes me want to keep it simple.  Jeff likes to drive past the house he grew up in.

  

Every time I think I could use a bigger house, he likes to remind me that there were FOUR kids in his family and they all lived in this house just fine.  No one had their own room, the closets were tiny, and they only had one bathroom.  And when I gripe about how much doing laundry sucks sometimes he'll chuckle and tell me about how his mom had to hang the laundry on a clothes line because they didn't have a dryer.  And when I'm feeling unappreciated because I cooked three whole times in one week and no one ate it, I remember the story about how Nana served her kids leaves for dinner one night because she got tired of cooking seven nights a week with no one eating it.  Nana is the opposite of crappy.  Thankfully Nana now has 2 bathrooms and a dryer so she's on my team and says she doesn't think I'm crappy (I believe her too).  She even gave me her pie recipe a while back.  So while I am pretty certain I will never have to share a bathroom with my kids and I will never use a clothes line, I can make Nana's Chocolate Pie.  But I was a lot happier before I knew what was in it.

I Love Bunco

I love Bunco.  And Baby Showers, too, for that matter.  It's not that I get super excited to attend baby showers and I don't even know what a Bunco is, but what I do know is that when my clients are hosting these events in their homes they sometimes feel compelled to spruce the place up and back burner projects come to the forefront.  Projects like, say, window treatments.  And that's where I come in!  I spent a good chunk of my morning browsing a couple of my online fabric sources for another wonderful client of mine.  I'm helping her with the design and fabric selection for some valances in her kitchen.  Or panels, we haven't quite nailed it all down yet.  She's hosting Bunco in April so I have to work fast!  But I love a deadline.  And I love Bunco.

It never ceases to amaze me how many different fabric choices there are out there.  Thousands and thousands!  It used to cause sensory overload but I've looked at so many fabrics over the years I'm getting pretty good at knowing what I'm looking for and where to find it.  But it's still crazy that after browsing so many fabrics today, I'm down to a selection of maybe 5 good choices.  There are a LOT of ugly fabrics out there.  Kind of reminds me of dating...

Tonight Jeff and I got the kids together to write letters and draw pictures for an injured Marine.  Ben, my little artist, drew a pic of a knight fighting a dragon.  He can draw awesome dragons (thanks to Ed Emberly).

Kelsey drew purple princesses with stars and hearts.  Aiden and Jeff wrote very sweet letters.  And me?  I was cleaning the kitchen.  I am a schmuck.  But I did sign my name to Jeff's letter.  Maybe I will find some quiet time tomorrow to write a note before I mail everything off.  That would be the right thing to do.

So what is a Bunco anyway?

Day 2, Sewing Saturday

So here's day two of blogging.  Any day could be my last since these types of things don't hold my interest for very long but I'll just go with it as long as I can.

The day started out really well because I actually took a shower, washed my hair, AND shaved my legs.  It was amazing.  I never thought I'd see the day when taking a shower became optional but now that I have three kids and a business where no one sees me that day comes more often than I care to admit.  I know, gross.

It was Sewing Saturday so I had two cute first grade girls over for a sewing lesson in my kitchen.  Kids used to scare me to death so the fact that I'm teaching them is crazy.  The fact that they're actually learning from me is even crazier.  In our class we made adorable little tote bags.  Here they are modeling for me:

The best part is that they were SOOO proud of their bags.  I told Ms Sassy on the right that her friends were going to be jealous of her bag and with wide eyed amusement she replied, "How jealous??"  Ahhhh, girls.

Maybe one day I will post instructions on how to make the bags.  Maybe...

By popular request

So I've been told numerous times I need to start a blog. I have no idea why because my life is really boring. I spend most of my days walking past baskets full of laundry, both clean and dirty, like it's not there. Beds never get made, carpets don't get vacuumed, and toys never get picked up. I don't really have much of an excuse except for that I really hate doing it and I figure why bother because it's just going to get all messed up again once my kids get home from school right? I guess my friends enjoy my Facebook posts because I'm not afraid to tell it like it is. I'm a self-described crappy housewife and my crappiness seems to make people feel really good about themselves.

So what DO I do with my time? Well, I sew. Every minute that I can. I have a business creating custom window treatments, bedding, pillows, and whatever else I can dream up. I started sewing eight years ago and I discovered very quickly that I'm really good at it. I'm an engineer by training so all the math and planning involved with sewin

g doesn't bother me, in fact, I really enjoy it. And I don't need a lot of outside stimulation so I'm perfectly happy when I'm holed up by myself in my sewing room.

I'll let you guys in on my day in two parts, first the crappy housewife part. Actually, the crappy mother part. See, I discovered a couple weeks ago that I never took my daughter in for her 4 year old well visit at the pediatrician. She turned 4 last June. So early this morning I had the pleasure of taking her to receive no less than FIVE shots in her little legs. She was very brave but I know it hurt. So to make it up to her I took her to Starbucks for a fudge donut and vanilla milk. And that's all she had to eat until 3pm when I finally found time to feed her again. See I told you, crappy.

So the second part - I went by a client's house to photograph the beautiful dining room window treatments my trusty assistant Debbie and I installed yesterday! This client is so fun to work for because she has impeccable taste and picks beautiful fabrics, but she leaves the details up to me. So I get to exercise some creative license in the design of her window treatments. Everything we've done together has turned out beautifully so she makes me look good. Don't those pics look like they came out of a magazine?