3000 fan giveaway shops AND coupon codes

Last night was a BLAST! After watching countless FB sites hold giveaways and comment games for reaching milestones, I decided I was ready to plan one for when FrayBabyBibsandMore hit 3000 likes. I wanted the giveaway to be steady, streamlined and smooth as possible. I also wanted it to be as beneficial as possible for ALL the shops involved. I thought last night was *close* to as good as it gets when it comes to comment games. I asked everyone to like fan pages or heart Etsy shops FIRST and then I posted the item that the shop was giving away. I let people comment as many times as they wanted and next time I might limit the comments to just one per picture. I didn't realize I was going to get 88 comments within 24 seconds! The Facebook limitation on the giveaway was that some comments show up as spam which  means only I (as the administrator) can see them until I unmark them as spam. So some people might have though they won when really there were 2 or 3 comments they couldn't see until I unmarked them. Also people, really? commenting 15 additional times AFTER you know that comment #20 wins and there are already 92 comments? That's a little excessive. ;) AND, after I counted to reach the winner, I stopped unmarking spam comments so you might have thought you comments didn't show up but I saw them. ;)
And now for the list of shops that participated!! What an AMAZING bunch of shops, I know I am going shopping with some of them this weekend!

Pacify Me & KBJ Design - adorable pacifier clips
Little Lady Designs - super cute hair candy!!
Abbie's Bow Creations - did you SEE those button center ribbon flower clips!? Just $4 a set! Go grab some, they are uber cute! :)
Graceful Girls - awesome hair bows AND 10% off your entire purchase with coupon code FRAYBABY3000 at her ETSY SHOP!!

BlueSkyDesignCo - her owl clips are ADORABLE and I am seriously tempted by the initial clips as well! TAKE 15% OFF purchases at her Etsy shop with coupon code FRAYBABY3000

BowHead Bowtique - embroidered onesies and tees with matching bows! AND 10% off your entire purchase with coupon code FRAYBABY3000 at her ETSY SHOP. Good through July 31st!
Polka Dots & Pearls - super cute shabby fabric flowers, hodgepodge headbands, baby doll diapers and so much more!
Tastefully Simple - If you haven't tried Tastefully Simple you are missing out! Amazing beer bread, taco dip, Nana's apple cake mix, potato soup mix and drink buckets! YUM! Head over to Melissa's official page to order.
31 Gifts by Stephanie Poeppel - bags galore!! I just bought the organizer bag, the insulated picnic tote and the large tote! There is a great July special going on AND Stephanie is giving you 10% off your entire order as well with code FRAYBABY3000! Contact her on her fan page to place an order with the discount. :) Good through July 5th.
HollyCraft - adorable appliques. Holly has made monkey heads, cupcakes, scottie dogs and so much more for me and they are always amazing and adorable.
AHMaher - the cutest vinyl decorated tumblers you will find! Holly also does custom order gifts - she can personalize almost anything - candles, signs, just ask her! Take 10% off your entire purchase with coupon code FRAYBABY3000. Good through July 5th. Holly just started a Facebook fan page - VINYL DESIGNS - head over and like her.
Gracie's Style - super fluffy fan approved tutus and cute accessories! AND take 15% off with coupon code FRAYBABY3000!!
Made Just 4 You - Brandy has been one of my bow makers for a year now and I am never disappointed. She specializes in made to match bows so if you have a hard to match outfit, she's your lady! Take 10% off your entire purchase at her ETSY SHOP with coupon code FRAYBABY3000.
Renee's Crochet Shop - adorable crochet creations. OWL HATS!! :) Take 10% off with coupon code FRAYBABY3000!
Tiny Tops - another crochet shop full of tiny goodies! Take 10% off your entire purchase at her ETSY SHOP with coupon code FRAYBABY3000!
Lilac Ave - yummy smelling tarts, candles, body butters, lotions, chap sticks and more! Take 20% off with coupon code FRAYBABY3000 at Deb's ETSY SHOP!!
Kenzie's Kreations - awesome necklaces, rings and bracelets! She offered the yellow/green circle necklace last night and she has other colors available as well! She has FREE SHIPPING through July 5th AND 10% off your entire purchase with coupon code FRAYBABY3000. Good through July 2nd (today)
BeBe Chat - unique accessories - flower rings, tiny rosette bobby pins, there is a lot of fun items for mom in this shop! Take 10% off your entire purchase with code FRAYBABY3000 at her ETSY SHOP!
Jewelry by Sebastian Design - BEAUTIFUL custom pieces at amazing prices. Another shop full of amazing items for mom! AND take 10% off your entire purchase at her ETSY SHOP with coupon code FRAYBABY3000

How do I do what I do

"I want to know how you do it?! Like, do you do assembly line, individual, etc. I have two kids too, love to sew, but would never have the time to keep them entertained and get work done. Are you up till all hours, etc."
"I want to know how you get it all done? Does the little one go to daycare/preschool? I'm amazed at how quickly you get things done and shipped out!"

Granola & milk: the newest hair trend

These are some of the questions that I get asked fairly regularly. How do I do it all? Well, for awhile I felt like I didn't. And even now I know that I still don't but have earned a "much improved." I loved the boom in business but it became a 24/7 kind of thing. I think most self employed people feel that way, especially at first, that your business consumes you and you become overworked, stressed and you realize you are neglecting everything else in your life. Clean house? What is that? Reading a book with little man? Oh crap, when was the last time I did that? Teach Destructo her ABCs? Uhhhhh.....Chick-fil-a for dinner anyone? In the beginning, there was chaos. And now, there's a lot more calm. 
My kiddos are age 5 (pre-K) and age 2 (no daycare or preschool, she hangs with her momma). 

A typical day for me is getting little man to pre-K and letting Destructo have rein of the house. I always have my sewing room in a central location (in our last house it was the dining room turned into sewing room/office and in this house it will be in a room right next to the downstairs den/play room.) so I can see and hear what is going on and so I can stop whenever I want or need.  Destructo has a great imagination and gets lost in her own little world so she actually is quite happy eating breakfast and then digging through the toy box, putting together puzzles and flipping through books while I work. In the morning I try to work at least 2 hours and then stop to clean, play, eat lunch and run errands. Nap time is around 1pm and while she naps, I work. I pick up little man from school around 3pm and the kids head out in the (fenced in) backyard to play and I sneak in 1 more hour to work. That is usually the last hour of the day that I sew and I stop to spend time with the family, get dinner ready, throw in some laundry or whatever else needs to be done. In the evening is usually when I get invoices sent, pictures posted, shipping labels printed and emails responded to since I can do all of that from the convenience of my laptop while I'm parked on the couch watching American Idol next to my hubby. When I am slammed with orders, I usually take an hour after the kids go to bed to prep for the next day - cut fabric, pin fabric, iron fabric, etc. I USED to be up all hours, working, working, working but after awhile I decided that I am more productive on a good night's sleep and I don't burn out as quickly when I am not working all day long.
Recap: work 8:30am to 10:30am, 1pm to 3pm and 3:30pm to 4:30pm. Invoice, email, ship and post pics in the evening. Sometimes work 8:30pm to 9:30pm. 
Do I assembly line work? Well, when 95% of your business is custom order you can't assembly line in the traditional sense of the word (making multiples of the same item) but I can streamline the process. I can cut out the fabric for all the pillowcase dresses, all the banded pillowcase dresses and all the fit and flair dresses at the same time and prep them the same way (finishing the edges, ironing, making bias tape for armholes), I can cut out all ruffles for all orders at the same time and take a chunk of time finishing their edged, ironing them and gathering them. When I get an order for a snack bag, I don't just cut out 1 bag, I cut out at least 3. I try to always make extra items so I get a nice stock of items for local customers to look at or for a ready to ship sale.
I've been doing this for awhile now so I have a good sense of how quickly I can get things done. I take a break when I need to and communicate with my customers as often as I can so everyone feels like they are in the know. I am easily accessible and I'm pretty normal which is a huge plus (don't underestimate the importance of normalcy, being friendly and just downright decent). ;) 
Not all days go so smooth. Sometimes I'm on a time crunch, sometimes I have a bunch of rush orders that come in and sometimes I just don't feel like sewing and I stay away from the sewing machine for a day or so. I have to stop and re-prioritize every once in awhile and make sure my house gets cleaned and the Mt. Vesuvios of laundry actually gets put away. When I start to feel like my sewing is taking away time from my kids I make sure I get on the floor and play with them, dance around to Ralph's World with them and read and extra book or two at bedtime to them. And every once in awhile my husband has to threaten to shred fabrics and vandalize machines for me to STOP.  But I'm sure it's like that for any crafter who loves their job. It is easy to get lost in it.

On the road (half way there)

Hangin' in the bed of a pickup truck. Yee-haw!!

Half way there! It's been a crazy past couple of days and NOT because of our move. For those of you who are following, we are in the middle of a move from Lubbock, Texas to Leavenworth, Kansas. Our packers arrived on Tuesday morning. We were exhausted after a long night of our youngest throwing up all night due to what we thought was food poisoning. The packers packed up our house all day long and returned the next day to finish up the job. I woke up Wednesday morning exhausted and by 3pm my son and I were victims of the worst stomach bug I have ever had. And guess who got it 6 hours later? My husband. And guess who was going to be at our house 8am Thursday morning? The movers to load the truck. We made it through the night (barely) and managed to get the house cleared out by Thursday evening. We checked into a local hotel and watched American Idol (what?!? James is out?!? outrage!) and I discovered that although our hotel had 102 other channels, they did not have carry ABC so I did not get to see Grey's Anatomy. On the upside we all passed out at 9:15pm and didn't move a muscle until 6:45am. 9 1/2 hours of sleepy time bliss. I can't remember the last time I've had that kind of sleep! :)
It took quite awhile to clean the house this morning before we cleared out. And the trip to Oklahoma City took about 7 hours with the pit stops along the way. But now we are settled in our hotel, flipping through the channels ("what kind of idiot puts CSPAN on channel 7? who would do that?", says my hubs), the kids are in bed and I am about to go kick the a/c unit because it is rattling and humming OUT OF CONTROL.
We are Kansas-bound tomorrow and I'm excited to check out our new locale! I'll keep everyone updated as to when our stuff shows up and when I get the sewing room up and loaded and am back open for business. I've had some great questions sent to me that I'll try to post answers to on this blog through out the weekend and early next week. Hope you are getting your lists ready because when I open back up, it's game ON and I can't wait! :)

Wiped out

I've been cleaning since I woke up this morning. The movers arrive tomorrow morning to start packing us up and I'm in overdrive. Laundry, vacuum, pack suitcases, dust blinds and windowsills, start yet another Goodwill bag, clean bathrooms, more laundry AND....the sewing room. I've been packing up bows, sacking up scraps, gathering up pins, finishing up projects and clearing off surfaces. I think it's almost ready for the movers. The goal is for them to have some sort or order when they pack up the room so they aren't throwing ribbon in with spools of thread and pinned baby bibs and velcro. It went from this

to this

While I was working the kids were playing. I heard them running around, laughing and jumping on the beds. Luke found a calculator and started testing my mad math skills while I cleaned. I finished up some paperwork on my desk and we walked out of the sewing room to this -

if you thought cleaning was hard work, playing is harder. :)

Going back to my roots (bibs and more)

Way back when I first started sewing, I was making mostly baby items. It was around 2006/2007 when raw edge (frayed) items were in. I had a lot of requests for the frayed edge burp cloths and lovies and in 2008 when I decided to open an Etsy shop, those little frayed items ended up becoming a part of my shop name. (Sidenote: Do you know how hard it is to come up with a shop name? Now that I have been FrayBabyBibsandMore for over 3 years, I finally had a shop name pop into my head that I would love to use but can you really just rename your entire shop? Would there be an uprising? A protest? Would I be known as "you know, that girl who used to be FrayBaby".)
Moving on, NEXT SUNDAY, May 15th, Roo over at NiceGirlNotes is having a Cute Stuff Sale and I am a part of it. AND she asked me to focus on the baby stuff so I did and I've had so much fun going back to my roots and making batches of cute baby items. I will still have a dress or two in her sale but the majority of the items will be revamped baby goodies - handy dandy diaper pouches that clip onto bags or strollers, grab and go sets and matching bib/snack bag sets!

Check out the official post with the shop list (100 items for sale! Eeeee!) so you can check out ALL the goodies and be ready at 8pm EST on Friday because when it's on, it's ON.

It's all about perspective

Eh-yo. In preparation for this big move of ours, I have been trying to clear out the old by sewing like a mad woman AND selling fabric like crazy. I've been pulling the prints that I no longer enjoy looking at or that I've had for awhile, I've been taking yards, remnants and scraps to goodwill with every household item drop off. And I thought that I was doing a pretty good job clearing fabric out. I mean, my bins and grid wall were OVERFLOWING and fabric was taking over the floor. I was starting to become a little paranoid and thinking that small children might get lost if they happen to wander in so I pulled, sorted, folded and purged and now most of the fabric is contained in those bins and compartments. I was proud of myself. Until I found this picture: And omg. I can see my floor, I can see the top of the grid wall. I can see the nice little fabric piles. and people were all "oooo, look at all the fabric", "I love it, I wish I could come over and pick out my fabrics!", "WOW, THAT IS SO MUCH FABRIC!!" And now I am ashamed and a little scared to post the latest picture of this very same wall. Maybe I should tidy up and retake the picture. Oh man. (do it! do it!) Gah. Okay. Here (gulp) is my fabric collection now. 14 months later. See? Perspective. Now THAT is a lot of fabric. ;) (Did you scream in horror?)

Leaving the Heart (of Texas)

And we're off! Well, soon anyway. My husband has finished up grad school at Texas Tech University and it is time to get back to Army life. We are headed to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas next week and despite our local friends saying "oh, you're going from worse to worse" and "what?!? from Hawaii to Germany to Lubbock to Kansas? what did you guys do wrong?", we are excited. We had a great time in West Texas. Who wouldn't? Oil derricks, jack rabbits, tumbleweeds and West Texas dirt blowing in the wind. We went to a rodeo, the South Plains fair, drove to San Antonio more than once and took a road trip down to Galveston. Oh and how can I forget the tamales?!? I will surely miss the tamales. And now we look forward to Kansas. Hmmm...flat. farms. tornadoes. AUNTIE EM! AUNTIE EM! I kid, I kid. We are excited about a new city, a new house, professional sports teams, being within driving distance of St. Louis and the direct flight out of Kansas City to Nashville and Atlanta, because let's face it, with 2 kids under the age of 6, non stop flights make air travel 98% better and a helluva lot more likely.

And now for the breakdown. I know not everyone sees every post on Facebook and some customers don't even have a clue that I am moving and will be temporarily closed for a couple of week. I want to post the schedule for your reference. Feel free to pass along the info.

MAY 10-12 - movers come and pack up everything we own. I'll have to act fast to make sure they don't load up the suitcases full of clothes we need for our hotel living for the following week.

MAY 13th - we clear our house and have one last night in Lubbock.

MAY 14th - on the road to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for the night.

MAY 15th - on the road to Leavenworth, Kansas to get the keys to our new house

MAY 16-23rd - sit in empty house and wait for movers to arrive.

Sometime after May 23rd I will reopen from my fabulous new sewing room in the fabulous city of Leavenworth, Kansas. And I hope to see you then. :)

It's Gonna be a Throwdown! (Shoppers Gonna Shop)

A little over a month ago I was introduced to NiceGirlNotes on Facebook. Roo is the mastermind and comedian behind NiceGirlNotes. Through the Etsy Homefront Team (military spouses), I heard there was a Cute Stuff Sale going on at Roo's page so I went over to check it out. Cute Stuff Sale? A sale put on by Roo with multiple Etsy shops, all items $20 or less (shipping included) and then? A coupon to use at ALL the shops that were part of the sale, just in case you missed out on an item or two that you were after. The pace - FAST. The item - AMAZING. You have to get there quick, stake out a spot overnight (okay, okay, just start stalking the page 5 minutes before it's go time), copy your email address or choice phrase so all you have to do is CTRL+V to do a quick heart racing paste and cross your fingers that you are the chosen one. Seriously, it's bananas over there! (Don't believe me? Check out the aftermath for yourself ) SO SO SO....WHO, you ask, will be participating in the next Cute Stuff Sale? Well, I dunno about the other shops but I AM!! Mark your calenders for May 15th and stalk NiceGirlNotes on Facebook and even better, follow her blog because she is a fantastic writer, hilarious, a baller and she's crafty! (Check out those tutes on making a dollhouse out of old drawers and quiet time activity bins - genius.) Now, wanna see my cute stuff?

I still have to decide what items I want to put in the sale. I have a few ideas including some baby accessories! Hope to see you there!

Starting Anew

A few years ago I had a business blog that I posted to fairly regularly. It wasn't spectacular but it was decent. Then I got a dot com, switched to wordpress and had my site host my blog. I was pregnant, living overseas and wanted SOMETHING, ANYTHING to help my business take off. So I had my dot com designed and built. It was pretty. It was nice. It was a little cumbersome. My business took off (and by took off, I mean went THROUGH THE ROOF) in February/March of 2010 and since then my dot com has died. I am not technologically savvy enough to understand hosting, databases and the like. I don't think I did a very good job keeping it new and fresh or even user friendly. It was a learning experience and thankfully, not too expensive. My new cool blog that came with my dot com is lost forever in cyber space. I don't know how to get it back and I don't think I care all that much. So here we are! New blog! Woot! Let's get this party started. And please be patient with me as I try to make this place pretty. If anyone has any cool decorating tips, hook a sista up.