The Sewing Mom

I am so jealous! My Mom & sister are going to this Embroidery Digitizing Seminar in Indianapolis today! If we hadn’t just relocated to Texas, I could go with them! Well, I guess I’ll just have to get on my computer and start working on my embroidery software to make myself feel better. I am really interested in learning more about using my embroidery sewing machine. I want to take advantage of all of it’s features.

I finally finished painting the sewing room!  I completed all the trim work this morning and my husband rearranged the furniture for me just a bit ago.  I am so excited!  I’ve started organizing into the cabinets and I need to build my bookcase that I bought at IKEA. Then I’ll unpack a few boxes of fabric and sewing supplies, get my sewing machine set up & I’ll be ready to go! My daughter picked out the greenish color on the lower part of the wall, she said I needed a “calming” color! Here are before & after pictures.

YAY!  I’m going to finish painting my sewing room today!  It’s been a slow process I know!  I put the primer on the walls over a week ago, then just couldn’t find the momentum to go in there & paint!  Day before yesterday I finally made my self do it.  The room has 10 foot ceilings and a chair rail that goes all the way around the room, it’s a lot of ladder climbing, up & down all the time.  I have the bruises on my legs to prove it!   I painted a light cream color from the chair rail up to the ceiling, then couldn’t decide what to do on the bottom, under the chair rail.  I had originally planned to do a darker beige, but decided I wanted something else, just didnt’ know what.  I went to Home Depot yesterday and found a pretty green and that’s what I’m going to do.  I’ll post pictures when I’m done!  At least this won’t require me going up & down the ladder, it will go much faster.

I am currently a stay at home mom of one 11 year old daughter.  It is now summer and my daughter and I are together almost 24/7.  We relocated from Chicago to Dallas in April and my daughter attended her new school for about 4 weeks before summer break started.  Not really enough time for her to form friendships.  She did however meet the girl who lives behind us and they really hit it off.  Unfortunately, that little girl is currently on her 3rd vacation of the summer and is relocating to Philadelphia in about 4 weeks.  My daughter did attend one week of daycamp, but hasn’t been interested in anything else.  She started her guitar lessons and likes those, but it’s only 30 minutes a week, so I sit and wait while she has her lesson. 

My problem is, I have no alone time.  I can’t just leave the house and go get my hair cut or anything like that because she is not comfortable staying home by herself.  I understand this because we’re in a new place, new surroundings and all.  It just gets frustrating.  I love my daughter and I love the time we’re getting to spend together, I just need my own time, occasionally!  I’m sure this is something that happens to a lot of moms.  The other morning though, I went for a walk and my daughter decided to stay home.  It was a wonderful 30 minutes of just listening to my IPod!  When I got home I felt refreshed and ready to spend the day with her again!  Think I need to do that more frequently!

Anybody else out there feel like this sometimes?  What do you do about it?

We are so excited to be adopting our new puppy next Sunday! In preparation for that, we’ve been puppy proofing the house and buying all the necessary supplies. I think though, most importantly, we’ve been trying to learn puppy training techniques. I found this great book, very simple to read and it outlines step by step directions on potty training, crate training and leash training, among other things. The book is called The Super Simple Guide to Housetraining and I find it very easy to follow. My 11 year old daughter has also read this book, in fact, she read it before me and highlighted important facts! I told my husband last night that he also needs to read the book because I want us to all be on the same page when it comes to training. As it says in this book, “consistancy is important when training your new dog.” We found our book at Petco and I’ve also seen it online at Amazon.
This will be our first time crate training a dog. This puppy is currently spending time in her crate, but with her siblings. It could be scary for her being alone. One of the breeders I was talking to highly recommended the Snuggle Puppy to put into the crate with the puppy. It is soft and a little bigger than some dog toys. It has a real heartbeat so the puppy will feel like another dog, possibly it’s mom is in the crate with her. It also came with 2 heat pouches that can be placed inside the Snuggle Puppy to provide warmth, like a heating pad. I couldn’t find this locally, but did order it online from PetExpertise.com.
I think we’re almost ready for the puppy’s arrival. I just need to finish reading my book and we have to decide if we’re going to bell train the puppy. This is when the dog uses her paw to tap a bell hanging on the doorknob to let us humans know she needs to go outside. Has anyone done this?
If you have any tips or suggestions, let me know!

Okay, after talking to the breeders vet and my cousin, who is also a vet, we decided to give that puppy up.  The vet was unable to determine the cause of the hair loss and I was afraid this could be a lifelong condition and be expensive with medications, etc.  The breeder was extremely good about the situation and immediately refunded our deposit.

I got on the phone and found another puppy, what we think may be an even cuter puppy, if that’s possible!  This one is a week younger and so we have to wait another week to pick her up.  We think it’s all for the best and that gives us another week to puppy proof our house.  Here’s our newest baby.

Well, the breeder called me last night and informed me that our new puppy had developed some sort of skin condition and was losing hair in spots.  She immediately took her to the vet who proceeded to run all sorts of tests on the poor little thing.  They didn’t find anything at all wrong, so they’re thinking it could be allergy related.  She had been out in the grass for her first time the day before and may have had a reaction.  The breeder didn’t think she’d been bitten by anything.  They started giving her daily baths with an antibacterial shampoo and we’re waiting to see if that helps.  I will get an update from the breeder tomorrow.  Now we’re trying to decide if we should still bring the puppy home or not and wait for another one.  My daughter is very upset, she’s all ready started a scrapbook with the puppy’s baby pictures!  Just our luck, even buying a puppy became overly stressful!

My daughter had her 2nd guitar lesson this afternoon. Her instructor was somewhat astonished at how quickly she had picked up the finger movements and the fact that on her own, she had completed the 1st chapter of the instruction manual during the week since her 1st lesson! So, he bumped her up to the 2nd chapter and I think she has made it her mission to complete that rather quickly as well. She said playing her baritone, which she plays in school band, is more difficult because it only has 3 valves to make all those notes and the guitar has 6 strings! She has a very good instructor (at least I think so!), his name is John Wynn

Okay, it wasn’t even supposed to rain today according to the weatherman!  This is what it looked like 10 minutes ago and now it is pouring!  And, now they’re saying we could get up to 2 inches in the next hour.

Isn’t she the cutest! This is our new puggle, we get to bring her home on Saturday!