Paper Pie

Winter Weekend

On Saturday, Rylie took her first train ride. She had a great time and was quite happy as long as she had something to chomp on. Her two bottom teeth are cutting so she does a lot of chewing and drooling these days. We took the 3:00 pm Pacific Surfliner to San Diego and sat on the west side of the train for great ocean sunset views.

On Sunday, we went to the San Diego Zoo and saw all kinds of creatures to Rylie's wonder and amazement. She may still be a bit young to fully appreciate all the zoo has to offer, but she loved being outside and around so many kids all day. She was rather fond of the lovely flamingos.

But her favorite? Definitely the giraffes!

What did you do this weekend?

Sugar Pop! By Liz Scott For Moda

Back at my corporate design job, I would spend my days in my cubicle dreaming about sewing and starting a family. I thought it would be amazing to be a work-at-home mom designing fabric. Almost two years later, I am doing just that! Back then I had no way of knowing what a colossal juggle it would be, and it truly is, but each day I put one foot in front of the other and somehow it all comes together. My first fabric collection, Sugar Pop!, is in stores now.

WonderFluff (I had so much fun curating a few precut fabric bundles)

Fabric.com

City Craft

Pink Chalk Fabrics

Sew Mama Sew

Your local independent fabric retailer

Cutting fabric while eating heart shaped red velvet cake. Just kidding! Ryan and I are saving that cake for tonight!

It is a dream come true to be surrounded by my very own fabric collection in my very own studio. It was hard work and quite challenging at times to put it together while pregnant, but now as I see it all before me, I know that it was truly worth my greatest efforts. It is hard to remember what it was like to work so intensely with such determination and focus. That was the way I used to work, but for the last six months I have slowly learned a new way. My days are broken up into lightning quick work sessions, never knowing when I will get the chance to come back to my task. I use a lot of notes and lists to keep myself on track and to stay semi-organized. Weekends have now turned into marathon workdays when I can enjoy a little extra concentration because Ryan is here to help out. But this new way of working is very welcome and it is inspiring to find out that I have choices in which tactics I employ to reach my goals. Motherhood requires that I invent all sorts of clever ways to get things accomplished. Multitasking, delegating and becoming more selective in my endeavors are just a few of my newest and most sharply honed skills and strategies.

A bouquet and valentine from my beloveds: Ryan and Rylie.

I feel so blessed to have this place to blog everyday, or at least to blog as often as I can. I would love to blog everyday, but somehow there is about a three week gap between idea creation and blog completion. But I am ok with that for now. Thank you for reading my words and for all of your thoughtful compliments about my fabrics. Your support means so much to me. I hope that you enjoy sewing and playing with this fabric as much as I enjoyed designing every little bit.

It is truly thrilling to see the creations that have already been made with Sugar Pop and the kind things that people are saying about the fabric. Stay tuned for a little round up of some of that good stuff.

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Any orders of fabric from my WonderFluff shop will ship within two business days. So start planning your spring projects!

P.S. Happy Valentine's Day!

Journey With the Baby

When traveling to Michigan in January, the proper attire is most important. If you are a California baby, it really helps if you can borrow a snow suit from your cousin that is your same size. Kenzi just happened to have an extra suit lying around and Rylie was thrilled to dress up like her favorite animal...a bear!

A snow suit is the key to staying warm when you are going from place to place, meeting so many new people.

She met her cousins Kali, Kelci and of course Kenzi.

She met her Grandpa.

And even her Great Grandpa!

Rylie was an awesome traveler and handled everything in stride. She loved meeting her family and didn't cry much at all. But if she did get upset, there was always Mom and Dad to cheer her up.

Six Months

While we were away for Rylie's first trip to meet her family in Michigan, she and her cousin Kenzi marked six months on the exact same day! (Our trip was pretty smooth, the only real obstacle was an incredibly messy diaper that needed to be changed at 30,000 feet. Changing that diaper felt like a rite of passage, a true test of my mommy skills! I'll fill you in on the more pleasant details of our trip tomorrow.)

As the story goes, my sister Andrea was only two weeks behind me in her pregnancy. Late in her third trimester she learned that baby Kenzi was breech and she would have a scheduled C-section on July 29. My due date was July 22, but Rylie was content in my belly and waited for a few days longer to enter the world. On July 27 my labor began which was the same day that Andrea's doctor asked if she would be willing to move her birth up one day due to a scheduling conflict. Andrea was more than eager, and Kenzi was born just after 2 pm on July 28, just a few hours later than her cousin Rylie who was born at 5:25 that morning. Pretty amazing, huh? I mean, what are the chances?

Every child that is born, brings with it the hope that God is not yet disappointed with humanity.
—Rabindranath Tagore



 




 
One thing was apparent all weekend...these two really love each other!