Gertrude is on Sabbatical!

A BIG Thank You to those of you that read our blog every week!

Gertrude and I enjoy brining you fun new projects, as well as the funny little stories about life in a household with three little girls!

This last month has been so busy that Gertrude and I haven't been able to spend much time together, however, we do have a few BIG projects that we will be working on over the course of the next few months, and we look forward to sharing them with you.

We are planning to take a few weeks off of here to get our projects in order (as well as some Blog facelifting) and come back online on February 1st to show you what we have going on!

We will miss you while we're away, but know that with all the work we plan on doing while we're "offline" you will be just as excited as we are when we come back!

In the meantime...

Happy Sewing,
Enjoli (and Gertrude)

Cookie Coma

Gertrude and I are slowly recovering from the holiday madness with the three little munchkins! We haven't gotten much sewing done since we finished the girls Grinch blankets, though we did have a little "incident" making some pajama pants on Christmas Eve (more on the later)!

We spent the week leading up to Christmas making Gingerbread houses with one set of Grandparents, and then making Christmas Cookies with the other set!

Our Gingerbread Village

Santa ate ALL of those cookies!

We even managed to make it by to see Santa before he went back to the North Pole! We were a bit behind on that this year! 

Ascher & Avalyn still NOT impressed with Santa!

We had a great Christmas morning opening packages from Santa, Auntie and Uncle came over to have breakfast with us! Santa brought me the DVD TV Series of the original Batman Series so my Christmas was made! We even watched it for a bit before heading over to Great Grandma's house for MORE Christmas fun! 

Since, I know you're all wondering.. the Pajama Pants Incident..

Well of course, why do things ahead of time when you can wait until the last minute to do them?! I decided (on Christmas Eve) that I wanted new PJ pants for Christmas morning! I had some awesome fabric that I scored during the HUGE clear out sale from the shop! I LOVE this fabric (can you sense the impending doom yet?!) and figured I need some "super easy" pants made out of it!

So what do I do.. I hop on Pinterest, find a tutorial and get to work.. 

The tutorial suggests you use a pair of your favorite PJ pants to draft your pattern.. Ok, no big deal, got those.. 

Cut, cut, cut... Sew, sew, sew... Try on the pants.... 

...... hmmm ....... hmmmm .... &*%*$*$....hmmm... they don't fit.. can't get them over my hips... 

What did I miss?! 

Go back, re read the tutorial.. Well Crap.. yes she is very clear that you SHOULD NOT use a pair of knit pants to make non-knit pants OR cotton pants as it were... 

SO.. this is where my beautiful Christmas PJ pants sit.. waiting for me to have a smaller butt (NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!) or add some fabric to the side seams so that I can actually wear them! 

Maybe I'll have them fixed for next year!

I'm hoping my New Year of sewing endeavors prove a bit more fruitful than the Pajama Pant Incident!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas, and have a safe New Years Eve!

Happy Sewing,

Enjoli (and Gertrude) 

an Event and an Un-Eventful weekend

Whew.. what a weekend we had at Seams Like Home! It was our Grand Opening weekend, and we had an amazing turn out! Thank you so much to all our Friends and Family that came by to say hi, see the new building and enjoy our Grandma's delicious cooking!

If you were in the shop at all last week, you probably saw the huge pile of boxes & a pallet that held our new Bernina fixtures! Some of us (ME!) have been anxiously awaiting these fixtures since we were in the University Mall! We are so happy to have them! They look wonderful and show off our AMAZING Bernina machines so wonderfully!

Featuring the Bernina 530 Swiss Edition

Bernina 830 & Beautiful Bernina in the background

This beautiful image is what you see when you walk into the new shop! 

All the Sergers you could want!  

the Bernina 880 & Sterling Edition goodies

the Bernina 880 Sterling Edition

 Bernina E16 Embroidery machine & Bernette machines

We are so overwhelmingly excited to have these beauties in our shop, especially since we LOVE our Bernina machines so much! 

And speaking of our Bernina machines, Gertrude has been feeling a bit neglected lately because I've been in the shop working quite a bit more this month. But, we did get some bonding time in together today to work on a quilt for my baby Nephew (due in March)! 

I probably say this in every blog post, but every time I sew on Gertrude it makes me happy. I love sewing on a Bernina machine, she is so smooth and so quiet! It's a nice change to hear her purr rather than the crazy screaming of my three little girls; which is wonderful, of course, but the quiet hum is a nice change! 

Our weekend on the home front was a little less eventful! 

I came home from the shop the other day to find our Christmas Tree like this...

I looked all over trying to figure out what happened..maybe the Grinch paid a visit to our house?! I was in such a hurry to get upstairs to play in my sewing room that I pushed him back up and a few minutes later the dog came tearing upstairs because the Tree had fallen over again! Our ornament casualties have been quite high so far this year! Here's hoping you all have far less! 

Happy Holidays & Happy Sewing,

Enjoli (And Gertrude) 

an Elf & the Nutcracker

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a great time spending a the day with my in-laws. I ended up cooking my first turkey, which turned out amazing (if I say so myself)! My husband was trying to eat it right out of the roasting pan, so I took that as a good sign!

We had lots of leftovers, which meant that I didn't have to cook for the rest of the weekend! 

We stayed home and hid from the Black Friday madness, and only ventured out in the evening to go to the Nutcracker! Our cousin had a few parts, she was part of the dragon and one of the soldiers on horseback! She did great, and it was Alia's first time going to the REAL Nutcracker show! She was so excited that she kept asking me questions throughout the show!

The Ladies of our Family! 

Mommy & Alia

Alia & Auntie

We had such a wonderful time that we may have to make it annual thing! Maybe next year the Twins can even come... we'll see how brave Mommy feels next year!

You're probably wondering where the "Elf" comes into the picture..

Well if you keep up with the Seams Like Home Facebook page, last week you would've seen this cute guy hanging around our page..

He is a FREE project from WeAllSew.com, which is Bernina's Blog and has some AWESOME projects! I absolutely love how he came out. He was easy to put together, as you stuff the limbs and ears before you sew them on so you're not trying to wrangle his whole body trying to stuff him at the end! 

If you are looking to create your own "Elf on the Shelf" this year, he comes together in a few hours (maybe less if you're in a kid free zone!), he is a little bigger than the standard shelf elf, but still very cute! 

This time of year makes me so happy, with all the Christmas lights and SNOW (yay, finally!), it just seems magical! 

I hope you all have a magical week, enjoy the snow and...

Happy Sewing,

Enjoli (and Gertrude)

Strait Family Thanksgiving!

This past week has flown by (quite a change from last week!) and I am starting to panic about how to prepare the Thanksgiving Feast for my family! 

Let me just admit right now... this is my FIRST Thanksgiving doing the cooking! :P I'm not going to lie.. I really hope it turns out edible! 

Got my Turkey in the fridge.. lots of veggies.. don't look too closely.. I know I need to clean my fridge! 

Other than stocking up on turkey, stuffing, and lots of veggies we've had a fairly low key week at the Strait house this week! I was able to get a little bit of sewing done this weekend though...

The twins have been a challenge during nap time the last month or so, and last week they destroyed one of their pillow covers, which led to creating these! The zig zag is a minkee and the thing1/thing2 is a cotton (pre-washed of course)! You can find a great tutorial for this at: 

http://www.vanillajoy.com/free-boppy-slipcover-pattern-and-tutorial.html

My number of completed projects has been low this week, however, I do have a fun project in the works to debut next week, so stay tuned (it is SUPER cute)! 

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, I hope you get a chance to relax, eat lots of yummy food and just enjoy your families! 

And because I can, here are some moments from our family this week..

Ascher & Avalyn snuggled up with Mom!

Alia and her foam Gingerbread House!

If you are looking for a fun tradition/conversation starter for your Thanksgiving table, we have a great tradition from my husbands family..

When we sit down to the table, before we eat, we each share three things we are thankful for this year! It is one of my favorite traditions, it is always fun to hear what the kids say! 

Happy Thanksgiving,

Enjoli, Gertrude & Family

Long week... new projects!

I don't know about you all, but last week was a long one for me.

I felt like the days went dragging by.. I had a few new projects in mind (of course, because I have like 100 UFO's waiting for me!) that I wanted to start on, but never enough spare moments to start them. 

At least that's how I felt by Monday night.. ehhh. You know you're in for a long week when you feel like that on Monday night! SO, I decided that I needed a little sewing therapy. On Tuesday night when my hubby got home for work, I was anxiously waiting by the door with my bag of sewing supplies, ready to head to the shop for my sisters "Spiced Chai" class. Momma needed a night off!

As most of you have probably heard by now... I am getting a NEWPHEW! YAY I am beyond excited. So in celebration of him, I themed my Spiced Chai for him! Here is where I'm at ... I only got through cutting the first night.. but it's a start!

I have been saving those glasses and mustaches for a special project, I think they're just so stinkin' cute! Hubby has a basketball game this week on class night, so I don't get to go, but, by some miracle of the stars aligning this week.. I have Wednesday & Thursday with kid-free time, so I plan on getting a big chunk of this quilt together! 

(Not to mention a few other awesome projects that you'll have to stay tuned for!) 

My other "must-do-now-before-I-have-a-conniption" project, was a new wallet made out of some cotton+steel fabric I have been hoarding! :P  This beauty is almost done, due to the mercy of my husband on Friday night! 

Loving those arrows!

I feel like it looks like a hungry monster... see how empty it is.. that's because I spend all my money on fabric! 

As you can see, all I have left to do is sew up the binding.. which.. yes.. I do..by hand! It really is the easiest way. If you know me, you know that I avoid hand sewing AT ALL COSTS! But, this project really requires you to get down and dirty with your needle and thread and sew by hand.

So, after Monday being a bit rough, my week recovered and I got a bit of sewing in... cross your fingers that this week will be a bit smoother, with a bit more sewing!

Happy Sewing,

Enjoli (and Gertrude)

Happy (Belated) Halloween!

A Happy (Belated) Halloween to you all!

Since I know that you were all sweating and worrying about whether I would finish the costumes in time ... you will be pleased to know that I DID! 

I had two very cute little Minions and a beautiful Queen Elsa to take Trick-or-Treating on Friday night! 

Don't they look sugared up?! 

Miss Ascher enjoying a Twizzler! 

Avalyn was busy throwing her Twizzler on the floor! 

This week is short and sweet as I recover from the Halloween excitement and costume creation! 

Have a great week & Happy Sewing! 

Enjoli (and Gertrude)