Apron from upcycled materials......

It's been a late night, so I decided while waiting for the baby to wake up and eat, that I would make an apron.

I made it out of an old scrub shirt that I had. It took about 2 hours total to finish it.
It's a pretty simple apron with 2 pockets and straps for around the waist.
I took each side of the shirt apart, took the straps off, took the pockets off, cut it down to size into a rectangular shape, made some new seams, added the straps, seamed again, seamed around the pockets, then attached them. Pretty simple really.

A new shop....

My husband and I are opening a new shop in mid April.

We will be selling on Etsy under the shop name "waybettercards"

This is our first joint venture together and should be tons of fun!

Please join us on Twitter, the website or even the blog to keep up with our updates as we take steps forward to unveil our new products!

My Review of Podee BPA Free Feeding Kit

Toys R Us

The Podee Baby Bottle is a welcome solution to todays time crunch when it comes to feeding babies. The kit includes the Podee Feeding system (bottle not included).

Podee BPA Free Feeding Kit

Meh

Busy mom of 2 Indiana 2/27/2009

 

2 5

Cons: Hard to clean

Describe Yourself: Parent of Two or More Children

Picked this up today and have used it twice. The idea is there, but the product really isn't at it's peak performance. You have to prime the tubing to get the milk to come out, which is fine, except the milk doesn't continuously flow into the nipple. As soon as the nipple is empty my daughter spits out the nipple and starts to cry because she can't get more out. Then I have to prime it again. This continues until the bottle is finished. The bottle is a pain to fill because you have to put on the top of another bottle to shake it up. If you try to put the tubing in and then shake, the tubing clogs. Not easy to clean either. You would be better off using an angled bottle and propping it up with a blanket if you want to go "hands free".

()

Meet the newest member of our family!

Alyssa Grace

01/02/2009

6lbs 12oz

18 inches

@ 3:40pm

Yet another.....BABY UPDATE!

We saw our OB on Monday, baby is doing just fine.

It looks like we will be induced on the 5th of Jan!

We have less than a week to finish getting everything ready for baby Alyssa. This includes finishing the upstairs bathroom which still needs the floor grouted, sink and toilet installed. EEK!

We picked up the car seat yesterday, just have to pull it out and get it installed. Diapers will wait until we know how big she is.

Grandma just showed up to stay with us for a few days while hubby works the night shift.

I will be taking 6-8 weeks off to recover and get into a new routine. Please be patient with me as we welcome the newest addition to our family.

Have a happy, healthy new year!

A long few days.....

Well, as of yesterday baby is full term! Have been exceptionally tired as of late, 4 hour naps don't seem to do the trick either. Hubby is back at work after 2 weeks of vacation. He was sick for half of it, and called in a few days.

Christmas went off without a hitch. Hubby and I went over to our friend's house on Christmas eve and had dinner with their family. This is the second year we have spent with them and it's so nice! After dinner there, we took off to my mom's house for the night. We gathered up all the presents from under our tree and transplanted them under hers. Mom made waffles for breakfast Christmas morning, and it was so nice not to have to do it! After breakfast, the kiddo (Katie) was dropped off at my mom's by her dad, and it was time for presents. Katie is in Kindergarten, so this year she passed out presents and was able to recognize letters and put them together to figure out who the presents were to. It was slow and steady, but she did a great job!

Around 1pm we took off to visit my step-dad's side of the family to have lunch/dinner. It was nice to see all of the cousins, aunts and uncles. We had good food, and a good time. We left around 6 back to my mom's house to pack up presents from earlier that morning, then hubby and I took off home. Katie stayed with grandma and papa, as her dad was scheduled to have her this weekend.

Hubby got home and we put together the new heddle loom that he got for me, then we went to bed.

Hubby went back to work (again) yesterday, but had some trouble getting there, as all of our streets and highways were a solid sheet of ice. He made it down the road about 1 1/2 miles, got stuck there for an hour, then decided to try and come back home. He left for work at 5am, and was home around 9am. It took him 4 hour to go 3 miles round trip. Hubby called work by borrowing someones cell phone whose car was parked on the side of the road in front of him. As hubby was walking back to his car, a large pick up truck slid into the car he was walking by, and he had to jump towards the ditch to keep from getting pinned between the two cars. He fell pretty hard on his knee and now its bruised up, but thank God he is safe! Little to say, we didn't make our OB appt yesterday. Hubby left again for work around 10:30 am, the roads looked like traffic was moving (traffic cams) so he decided to try again. He made it there, finally around 12:30pm.

So its been a long few days for the both of us and I can say that I'm glad that it's all over with. Now all we have to do is concentrate on having this baby :)

To the 8 truckers....

I would like to thank the 8 or so truck drivers who held down their horns while passing me Tuesday evening around 9pm near the 65N/S exit on 80/94 E. I have Indiana plates and I drive an SUV, but that does NOT mean that I know how to drive in the snow. I have only lived in Indiana for a short while and moved here from down South. Please do all the drivers on the road a favor, and slow down! You don't have to be rude to get your job done and I have just as much right to drive on the road as you do. Flashing your brights at me, and honking your horn at me isn't going to make me speed up. Stop speeding in dangerous weather conditions and in general, and start thinking about the lives of the people you're on the road with. You should be ashamed of yourselves for treating people like that!

I'm HUGE!

Well, baby and I are doing well. I am on insulin once a day, and having to go in for non-stress tests 2 times a week. I'm utterly exhausted, but managing. Only 5 weeks to go!

I will be listing some supplies in my Etsy shop in the coming days, so keep an eye out for those, they will be a bargain!

Hope everyone is doing well.

Dear Etsy.....

With almost 3 million listings (as of 12:30 am Central time).....it's hard to find anything on your site! Why can't you be more like eBay?

When I search for "Fairy"...I want to see things that are relevant to a "fairy". I don't want to see feather earrings, butterflies, tree earrings, magic wands, gnomes, bears, tutus, yarn, corsets, or unicorn things. I want to see a damn fairy!

22,506 results for "fairy" and I can't find what I'm looking for because you let people get away with mis-tagging their items! How can you expect customers to wade through 22k listings without being able to narrow things down?

Here's a novel idea: Allow search results to be narrowed down by category. Yes, you can do this if you do a basic search by clicking on "buy", then on "categories". Even so, this does not yield but 22,506 crap results. Yes, you can search within a certain category...but, what category does "fairy" fit into? Please let me know so that I can find what I am looking for. How about building and utilizing sub-category search results like eBay. You've been around for a few years now, maybe it's time to step up to the plate and give buyers the resources that they need. Stop slacking off and telling sellers that you're in the PROCESS of doing something.....JUST DO IT ALREADY!


I searched eBay for "fairy" as well, and got a well broken down amount of results. "Fairy" was found in 31 categories in which I could choose which category which was relevant to what I was searching for. I chose the "Collectibles" category, which further narrowed down my results. Then I chose the "fantasy, mythical & magic" category, which again, narrowed down my results. Then I chose the "fairies" category, again, narrowing down my results. I still had the option from there to chose from 8 sub-categories in which to search in. Point being, I found EXACTLY what I was looking for on eBay, not Etsy.

I would tell you that I won't be a customer on Etsy, but you probably wouldn't care anyway. With over 1 million buyers and sellers combined, you most likely could care less about the loss of a single unhappy customer.

Search the Etsy forums yourself and see what kind of uproar there is about mis-tagging and the search not yielding the results one hopes for.

Keep up the bad work, and you're bound to loose more buyers, along with your sellers. If a sellers products can't be found, whose going to buy them?

Cyber Monday Sale!

Cyber Monday has officially started in my shop!

Select items are on sale, you can find them here

Also, every item in my shop has absolutely FREE shipping!

Check out all the items available for purchase here

Ear drums and pregnancy

So, in case you don't know, I'm almost 8 months pregnant with my second child, another girl. I saw my doctor last week, and he told me that I have gestational diabetes....great. I'm doing finger sticks 4 times a day and on a diet now that leaves me more hungry than ever!

How do you tell a pregnant woman that she can't eat?!

On top of that, my belly is feeling a bit on the blimp size. Let's add onto that, a back surgery in 2006, a right hip and knee problem since forever, and the holes in my ear drums. No...the holes in my ear drums don't directly affect the pregnancy...you'll find out where that comes in very soon.

Baby is growing well, even though I have only gained 2lbs. Even though doc says that my weight gain is ok because baby is still growing the way she should be, it still drives me nuts.

Anyway, during the appointment, I told doc that I was having some back spasms...a result from the surgery and the pressure the baby is putting on me. So he wrote me an Rx and sent me on my way. While I'm leaving, he says that I can try some warm baths to see if those will help with the back pain. Well, silly me, I didn't know that I could take baths because I might fry the baby like an egg. Nope, no baby frying, baths are ok.

So, last night while hubby was at work, and after I put my daughter to bed, I decided I was going to pamper myself and take a bath. The weight of the baby makes it extremely uncomfortable to stand up now, so I figured I would give it a try.

Stupid me, knowing that I have holes in my ear drums, decides that I'm going to wash my hair and just dunk my head backwards into the water. Shampoo, rinse....good. Condition, rinse.....not good. Somehow I managed to dunk my ear under the water, which sent me into a HUGE panic and running out of the tub for cotton swabs. The water immediately made my ear hurt and I couldn't get it out fast enough! My ear hurt like a SOB for the rest of the night. I slept with that ear down last night, hoping that if I missed any water, it would drain out during the night and it wouldn't hurt in the morning.

No such luck! My ear is killing me this morning, and we are getting ready to leave for Ohio in a few days. Keep your fingers crossed that I don't end up with an ear infection while I am gone!

Anywho, here's a pic to send you on your way and for getting through this whole post lol.

Incrowd Team Members

I have updated the links to the Incrowd team members' blogs. If you have a blog, and I missed you, please leave a comment and let me know, and I will add you asap.

If you are not part of the Incrowd, and you happend to end up here, take a look around and see what you can find. There are plenty of great shops!

Are you a member yet??

I'm sure most people have heard of the websites E-Bay.com and Etsy.com, but have you heard about Silkfair.com??

If you haven't yet heard about Silkfair, you're most certainly missing out!
Silkfair launched it's website this year, and currently has almost 2,000 members, consisting of buyers and sellers.

Like E-Bay and Etsy, Silkfair offers a range of products. Buyers can find anything from handmade items such as jewelry, clothing, and bath and body products. BUT.....you can also find things that are not handmade, such as antiques, cameras, DVD's, and video games.

With the holiday's creeping up on us, now is a great time to sign up for Silkfair!

On top of being a Silkfair customer and feeling great about your purchases, right now when you sign up, you will automatically be entered for a chance to win a $25.00 American Express (AMEX) Gift Card!

OR...if you sign up as a seller on Silkfair and list at least 4 items in your brand new shop, you too will automatically be entered to win a $50.00 American Express (AMEX) Gift Card!

With the awesome items and prices on Silkfair, how can you pass this up!?

So....go to Silkfair.com to sign up as a buyer or a seller for this coming holiday season, and feel great about the purchases you will make!

And finally, if you love Silkfair, and you feel like being generous, you can put in my shop name (Designsbyabbi) as the person who referred you to Silkfair - Where buying and selling is fun AND easy!

Re-Designed Listings

I have re-designed my listings for my ribbon and suede necklaces. I am doing this, because I have been keeping track of my over all views, and there seems to be a link between items listed on my second page receiving less views, opposed to items listed on my first page.

So in an attempt to keep all of my items on one single page for testing purposes, you can now choose the LENGTH and the COLOR of your ribbon or suede necklace! This helps me to not have to use a second or third page for each color of necklaces that I have.

Both types of necklaces include FREE shipping as well!

There are many colors to choose from, so you are sure to not be disappointed in the selection.

You can find the Solid Colored Ribbon Necklaces here

You can find the Sheer Colored Ribbon Necklaces here

Or

You can find the Suede Necklaces here