Keeping in Teutsch

UPDATE (10/7/14): I now sell these applique name seersucker backpacks (and lots of other cute stuff) at www.haydenandjules.com.

This baby gift was LONG overdue (the baby is 3 months old) but I finally got it finished last night and think it's adorable. It's for a girl that I used to babysit for when I was a teenager and she was preschool age, which makes me feel really old! :)




In case you haven't noticed, I'm a tiny bit obsessed with these seersucker backpacks, which I personalize and give as baby gifts to pretty much everyone. Last week, I posted my 100th post, so I thought it would be fun to "celebrate" by giving one away. Just leave a comment (make sure you leave your email address as well) telling me what color seersucker backpack you would want if you won and what color combinations you would choose for the applique name and ribbons. The backpack colors that are available are: chocolate brown, turquoise, lime green, tan, orange, lavender, red, navy, and pink. I'm opening anonymous comments for this, so you don't have to have a Google account to comment. You can comment until Sunday night and I'll announce the winner Monday. Thanks for reading and continually clicking on my links or coming to my blog to read!

UPDATE (10/7/14): I now sell these applique name seersucker backpacks (along with lots of other cute stuff) at www.haydenandjules.com.

One of the professors in Matt's department had a baby and so Matt asked me if I would do a backpack and some other things for the baby shower that they had today. I always love making baby gifts since I never got to make a lot of these things for Juliette. (I didn't start sewing and monogramming until after Juliette turned a year old.) Sometimes I don't have as much time as I'd like to make baby gifts, but I had plenty of time yesterday and was able to have fun doing it. The last few times I've given the seersucker backpack with the applique name on it as a gift, I have filled it with other stuff...some monogrammed stuff and some essential stuff from the store and given it unwrapped. This time, though, I wanted to do something a little differently, so I got a clear basket bag and some colored shredded paper and did it up like this:

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...in Hobby Lobby (but it's been Christmas there since June!) and also in my little monogramming corner of the house! I've been having fun making Christmas tee samples for the web site and I'm not done yet, but thought I'd share what I've done so far.
I did a shirt similar to this one last year that Juliette wore at Christmas time and I love it, so I just had to make her one for Christmas this year, although I used new Christmas fabric this time.


This sample tee will go to Juliette's friend Hannah back in West Monroe. I figured Juliette didn't need more than two Christmas tees, so I've started making samples for other people's kids, although I suppose I should limit how many I make or I might not have any business!! :)

In other news, I went for a job interview at the charity hospital yesterday and it went amazingly well--so well that I am positive they would have offered me the job except for a little pay issue. It seems that they can only pay $8-9 an hour, which is around $18k a year. Less than half of what I used to make...and about what I am currently making on unemployment. I was REALLY bummed about the pay because I think I would have really liked it there. But, it's out of my control, so I just have to move on. My next prayer request: to get an interview at UL for Assistant Director of Alumni Affairs and for that job interview to go really, really well!! Applications for that job are due Friday, so please pray I'll get a call next week for an interview!

Also, it looks like we might not be closing on our house this Friday, which was the 2nd time the date had been pushed back. We've had a contract on the house since the end of August, so we're getting a little frustrated that it still hasn't closed. If it doesn't close by the 15th, we'll have to pay the mortgage for October, and we REALLY don't want to do that, so please pray that it closes this Friday or next week before the 15th!

That's it for now. Thanks for the prayers!

Melissa

I haven't posted in a while because I really prefer to have pictures in my posts and I've been unable to find a memory card reader for the camera I've been using. I finally found a reasonably priced one, though, so all is right in my little picture-taking world again! And now I can finally show you some pictures...some of which are from earlier this summer before my original camera broke beyond repair.

Juliette is a tinny bit obsessed with birthdays right now and it doesn't seem to help that they've had two birthday celebrations at preschool the last few weeks. This is Juliette having a birthday party with her dollhouse people. Notice the each have Happy Birthday cups and forks and she has Happy Birthday napkins in her hand that she is about to put out. Also, I believe the big pitcher is their drink...she didn't tell me what it was. The little people are sitting around the birthday cake which is actually brown PlayDoh. (I know...it looks like a plate of poop!) Also, can you tell what the Dad is sitting on? The toilet from the playhouse! :)
Juliette also LOVES to take pictures and has gotten quite good at it actually. She took this pic of Zoe all by herself. I occasionally just let her have the camera and she walks around snapping pictures. It's fun to look and see what pictures she has taken when she is done (although I do erase all of the unflattering ones of me, though!).
Uncle Chad came to visit for about a week right after we moved in and I believe this picture is from a little "recording session." Notice her pretty accurate hand placement on the the guitar. She looks like a very serious musician!
A couple of weeks after we moved to Lafayette, we did the Tour of Families that I talked about in another post. Well, here are some pics of Juliette on the slip-n-slide at my parents house.
Since she doesn't understand the whole bit about running and sliding on your belly to get to the end, we just took turns practically throwing her down the slip-n-slide.
She had A LOT of fun, but we had to call it quits pretty quickly because of the Attack of the Mosquitoes.
I think I've probably said this before, but my favorite thing to do is applique names and I really love doing them on the backpacks and adding coordinating ribbon. Here are a few I've done recently:



I did this shirt for a teacher at River Oaks for her little girl to wear to the football games. This is the first time I've used the shiny sequin material and I thought it turned out pretty cute!
Less than 2 months to Thanksgiving, so I had to get an example made of a Turkey Tee for my web site and of course, Juliette always gets the first examples I do. I am in love with this turkey...isn't he adorable?!!

I also really like this new embroidery design that I got. I'd been looking for something like this and found it on a new embroidery design web site that I ran across and just had to buy it and do Juliette one. I know it appears as if Juliette's name is plastered all over her clothing, but it's really not...although she will have quite a lot of monogrammed things this fall and winter. Christmas is sneaking up on us VERY quickly and tomorrow I plan on doing a couple of Christmas applique tees for the web site.
As far as the day-to-day here at our house, Matt is busy, busy with his classes and the tons of reading and writing that go with them. Juliette is loving preschool and we have been very pleased so far with UL's program. As for me, well, a job would be nice. I got two rejection letters this past week from two interviews I went on recently, but I got a call Friday for an interview this Tuesday at the University Medical Center (affiliated with LSU Health Systems), so I'm praying this one goes well and would appreciate prayers from everyone else as well!

Next weekend we are supposed to be closing on our house in West Monroe (finally!!) and I also have my 10-year high school reunion in Springhill which I'm looking forward to.

That's about it from our end.

Happy Fall Y'all!! :)

Wow! This week flew by and we really didn't do anything other than take the occasional walk, play outside and check out a couple of neat little grocery stores. One of them is The Fresh Market in the high-class area of River Ranch. It's pretty much a small scale version of Whole Foods Market. Matt and I were really impressed by it, but not by the prices, which we expected them to be high anyway considering the area of town. It's one place that we'll only be able to shop at occasionally for a special occassion.

The other place we checked out was Little Veron's, which is mostly a meat market. What I LOVE about this place, is that they have a lot of stuff made up that you can buy and just reheat, like Chicken Spaghetti. Matt got fish stuffed with crab dressing and said it was really good. I got a container of homemade Chicken Salad and it was just like my friend Jessica's chicken salad, which I love! She gave me the recipe for hers, but I think I might just buy it from there!

This is one of the jobs I did this week that I thought turned out pretty cute! I was a little worried when I first started working on it that it wouldn't be that cute, but once I put the ribbons on it, I breathed a sigh of relief! This is for a little girl (yes, her name is Bradley) to use for her backpack at school this year, so I hope her and her mom like it!
I have been searching all over for a cute initial garden flag that doesn't look like everyone elses (you know those fleur de lis flags that EVERYONE has)! Well, I found this one on this site by chance, really, and I couldn't resist getting it because it was a) different from everyone elses and b) really cute!

While waiting on my cute little garden flag to arrive, I've been looking for a wreath for the door that had some bright green in it. I finally just decided to try my hand at making a wreath out of nothing but ribbon (and of course, the round foam base). Basically, all I did was tie strips of ribbon in knots all the way around and then attached a ribbon on the back to hang it with. I even bought a little wooden "T" and painted it lime green, but after multiple tries I couldn't get it to stayed glued to it, so I just have to be happy for now with this. Of course, now that I've done this, I can't help but think how cute it would be to do one with Halloween ribbon, so I guess that will be my next project! (By the way, Matt says that the wreath looks "morbid" because it's black. I told him to leave me alone!)
We have a busy weekend planned. Matt's parents are coming to visit and we are going to take them out for their birthdays (Matt's dad's is Sunday and his mom's is next Friday). We also are going out to dinner with Matt's cousin tonight and I guess somewhere in there we'll have some birthday cake and maybe I'll get to sneak away and see JULIE & JULIA this weekend too, although I think Matt said he wanted to see it too, so maybe we can make it a date! I read the book BEFORE seeing the movie and before I even realized it was going to be a movie, which I really hate because now it's not going to compare to it. I'm going to be analyzing everything because I'm sure it won't follow the book all the way, which is the entire reason I never went to see MY SISTER'S KEEPER, because I read in an interview with Cameron Diaz that they changed the ending up and it wasn't like the book. Now why would you go and do that? Change the ending? That's not like changing a minor scene in the middle...it's the ending! It's what makes the book! Ok...I'll quit ranting about that, but if you saw MY SISTER'S KEEPER, but haven't read the book, I encourage you to read the book and find out how it really should have ended!

Off to check on Sleeping Beauty! She fell asleep in the chair watching THE INCREDIBLES for the gazillith time this week and she doesn't have a Pull-Up on, so I'm hoping she doesn't have an accident while sleeping. She has been doing awesome going to the potty...I just haven't been brave enough to put her to bed without Pull-Ups. I'm not quite ready for the middle of the night sheet changing! :)

Have a good weekend!

We really haven't done a lot this week other than conduct Potty Training Boot Camp (more on that later), so this is just going to be a blog of random things.
Is this backpack not the absolute cutest thing?? I meant to add this to my blog about Baby Gap and forgot to load the picture on there, but really want to show you how adorable it is. It isn't like Juliette needs any more bags, but it's tempting to buy it because it's just so darn cute!

Look what I've been doing this week and I am SO OVERJOYED that I have gotten these done! Sure this doesn't look like a lot and it's because this isn't all of them. A lady ordered 15 custom made towel wraps as late graduation gifts. Custom made means that not only did I have to monogram them, but I also had to sew ribbon on them, so it took a little time. I thought they turned out really cute, though. (On a side note, who buys graduation gifts for ALL of their daughter's friends? I'm not complaining because it was the biggest order I've ever gotten, but I just think I'd have to draw the line at like only her very best friends or something like that if it was Juliette!)

Wanna know what Juliette has been up to this week other than potty training? Well, she's almost 3, so we thought it was about time she started doing some chores around the house, so we gave her mowing duty. Just kidding! :) This is a bubble mower, that doesn't shoot bubbles like it's suppose to. You can read more on how she got the mower and see a video on Matt's blog.

And now for the BIG news! We "think" Juliette is potty trained!!! (Knock on wood!) Here she is showing off her big girl panties. We started off Monday with just putting her in panties and taking away the Pull-Ups and she has only had two accidents this week and the last two days she's been telling us when she needed to go to the potty. We have been putting her in Pull-Ups still at nap time, night time and when we go out, but she's been doing great at going to the potty in public and not going in her Pull-Up. Now, poopin' in the potty isn't coming as easy and I thought I was about to have a constipated kiddo on my hands until she decided yesterday that her tummy just hurt too much and she broke down and went in the potty, so we are happy about that! I think she's still a little unsure of that part of it, but she definitely got the hang of peein' in the potty. She is almost 3, so it's about time, huh? Of course, I guess we did bribe her quite a bit between an array of Dollar Tree toys and candy that I put in a basket on the back of the potty as a "grab bag" for every time she went, as well as the promise that if she pooped in the potty we'd take her to the movies today to see the guinea pigs (G-FORCE movie), so I guess that might have helped a little!

And, since my other camera still hasn't been fixed, I had to use my video camera to take the above pics and since I'm just down downloading this video, I thought I'd share it with you guys. It's a hoot! It was from this past Christmas (notice how much hair Juliette has grown in just 7 months time) and it is of Matt, Uncle Chad and Juliette playing Rock Band while my niece Madison looks on. Matt is playing drums, Uncle Chad is playing guitar and Juliette, well, she is the singer! I laugh everytime I play this video and this is the way she sings EVERYTIME Matt lets her play Rock Band with him, although recently she's been partial to playing the drums, which is cute, but not nearly as entertaining as her "singing"!