Time? What time?

I am a mother of 3. I work full time. Somewhere I have to find time to feed the kids, do laundry, clean, etc. That leaves very little "me" time. Never mind the fact that I am trying my damndest (that is too a real word! spell check can bite me!) to start a sustainable business that will allow me to be home with the kids and not pay out the ass for daycare. (Even if daycare is totally awesome and the people there feel like family.) How do you manage to set aside "me" time? I admit that I really do love working in my studio and it feels like "me" time, (Why the hell do I keep putting "me" in quotations? And this talking in parenthesis is getting real old.) but the reality is that I am working and not decompressing. Last night I met with 2 of my bestest friends for dinner and I was able to just let loose - be myself for 2 hours. I got to actually shovel food into my own pie hole, without having to stop to tell so-and-so to leave his sister alone for pete's sake. It was amazing.

So, lemme know what works for you. How do you find time for you? That oh so important time everyone needs to be able to stay true to yourself.

SALE!

Because I love me some Christmas in July shopping, I thought I would have a sale of my own! All my dresses are 15% off from now through the end of July! I should be getting more up for sale shortly. If you want any dress custom made I will also offer the same discount. Yay! Sale! My panties are on fire. Well, they would be, but I really hate the word panties. Ick. My under-roos are on fire!

Funklicious Etsy Store

The latest dress creation:

I also purchased a flouncy pillowcase dress pattern. Can't wait to create! What would you like to see me add to my Etsy shop? Please note, my goal is NOT to end up on Regretsy. Not that there is anything wrong with Regretsy, but crocheted sperm is not on my list to make. Mostly because I can't crochet to save my soul.

Toddlers make for difficult models

I took the suggestion from a fave blogger of mine (*cough* Pamela *cough*) and decided with my next reversible dress listing on Etsy that I would have Sophia, the toddler wonder, model the dress for me. May I just say that my free spirited child proved to be a very difficult model. She insisted on playing with magnets. Not picture is her sitting down and showing off the shorts she was wearing under the dress. Oh well. Enjoy the out takes. I know I did!

A tip, perhaps

I can't stand tissue paper patterns. I hate how they move and pinning to them to the fabric never works for me either. Maybe I am just dense when it comes to the best way to use tissue paper patterns. For my reversible dresses, sometimes due to the pattern not staying exactly in place, the material for the dresses didn't come out exact. I had to give myself some wiggle room in lining up the fabric pieces to sew. Not a big deal, every dress turned out cute as a button in the end. The other day I had a major AHA! moment. And then I smacked myself upside the head for taking this long to figure out a different option. I transferred the pattern to poster board and cut it out. The hard board didn't move at all when I cut out my fabric pieces for the next dress. The pieces lined up exactly this time and I didn't have to fudge anything. (insert crazy laugh here) I only wish I thought of this sooner!

Hope everyone had a safe and wonderful 4th. For those of you outside of the US, I hope you enjoyed a nice cold beer just because.

(Cute picture of my kid that has nothing to do with this post at all. Can you blame me?!?!)

Scatter brained

Okay. I admit it. I am the least organized person I know. The saddest part of this is that I love anything that has to do with home organization. Drawers, bins, folders, files, pens, paper clips, shelves - I love them all and would easily drop hundreds of dollars if I had it just on organization products alone. If I do go all out and purchase a new shelf or something, I go and clean my studio. Everything goes in the proper place. All my fabric gets folded and put in it's own basket. Colored pencils get placed by color. And it all stays that way for approximately 2.5 seconds and then it goes into complete disarray and stays that way for most of the time. The only thing I can relatively keep organized are my scissors and that's because I am super neurotic about keeping paper scissors and fabric scissors separate. Partly I think it's because I have the attention span of a flea. I cannot concentrate on one medium. I like to paint, draw, sew, make jewelry and sometimes I even make sculptures. Thus I have about 18,000 art materials crammed into one itty bitty area in my basement. Although I threatened my husband the other day if I get any busier in my studio I was going to have to overtake some of the kid's play area (note - they really don't play down there much at all. Aaron is the only who sometimes goes down in the basement when he needs to escape the toddler.) So, I give up. I need to find a better way to organize and stay organize, but obviously I lack the discipline and time to keep it that way. Therefore I turn to you lovely people through my computer screen. What are your organizing techniques and how to you make yourself keep it that way?

Thanks a bunch. Smootches!