The Handmade Dress

:: The Caffee children were taken to be spoiled and coddled at Granny's house. :: The mama and daddy are to stay at home ALONE. :: The rules are: It's just like vacation, mama don't cook, mama don't clean, and mama and daddy get to sleep as late as they want. :: No phone, no email, no business....unless they want to. :: The only things mama and daddy eat will be things that WERE NOT PREPARED BY MAMA!!!! Glory halleluiah!! :: Mama finally gets to see all of those movies that people are always saying "What? You've never seen that? Where have you been?!" about. :: Daddy gets to google until his little heart is content, and mama gets to catch up on all of those blogs that she never has time to read. :: Mama gets her very own eight pack of the cute little bottles of her beloved Diet Sunkist!!!! Oh, and Dove Chocolate! :: Daddy gets a whole box of Chicken in a Biskits. I'll be here show-doggin on the couch until Monday evening. I like s...

So can you stand it? I know I may sound prejudice, but seriously, this has to be the cutest set of twins on the planet! Lily is in the purple "Miss Lily" dress, and Iris is in the "Miss Alice". These two angels just melt me! They call me "Pantha". Most of my friends and family call me Sam, but Ben's brother's name is Sam too, so to curb any confusion I started calling myself "Aunt Mantha" to them. "Mantha" is what all of the Caffee kids started off calling me so I thought it would be easy for them too, but they changed it! I'm "Pantha" and proud of it! LOL! My brother Simon is "Himon"! LOL! I guess I should mention the trunk show now....not as much fun to talk about, but I guess I should! (Fabric # 646) All of the fabrics are from Fabric Finders. If you've never tried their fabric before you are really missing out, it's top notch! The day they delivered all of th...

Jenny! From Petalz and Finz! Thank you all so much for playing along! It was so much fun reading through all of your sweet comments. I was also thrilled with the response to Miss Mary! Thanks friends! xoxo, Samantha PS. I'll be back tomorrow with a cuteness overload....Lily and Iris (my twin nieces) modeled the dresses from my trunk show for me! Oh my goodness those curly headed girls are angelic! I can't stand them!

You know how important it is to me to be able to provide feminine, modest, yet stylish patterns for our older girls...well as far as Molly and Mary (my 12 year old sis-in-law) are concerned, this version of Miss Mary is a winner! View B is a skirt that is slightly A-line instead of gathered. Molly likes it so much that she's already begging to wear it Sunday to church, that's a really good sign! It sort of reminds me of the shirtwaist dresses that I've read about in my Grace Livingston Hill novels. In dressy fabric it could be quite elegant, no? Now I will explain some of the particulars that I sort of skipped in my excitement yesterday! Miss Mary has a lined bodice, but not skirt. It could easily be made reversible by adding a skirt to the lining, it would use up a good bit of fabric, but you would have the option nonetheless. The front skirts overlap almost completely so that modesty can be maintained, even with very active young maidens. There...

Isn't she lovely?!  Oh, I'm so happy with her!  Little Miss Mary is a quick and easy sew too! I think I've said this before, but I really mean it this time, I think she's my favorite! Just you wait until you see View B....I think our older maidens will really like it. Miss Mary will have a size range of 6 mo-4 and 5-12 yrs. Let me know what you think! It's now or never, give us some feedback, I promise I always listen!

Hello friends! Lot's of new and exciting things are going on here at The Handmade Dress loft! We have several new shops that have just started carrying our patterns, we are about to send off our very first trunk show, we have new business phone numbers for Ben and I (I'll give you those at the end of this post), and a new design is in the works! During the next week I will be showing off all of the sweet dresses that are heading out for the trunk show, in beautiful Fabric Finders fabrics, and I may even be able to give you a peek at the newest "Miss" pattern that should be finished in March. With all of this exciting pattern talk going on I decided to giveaway an entire set of our patterns (that's 8 patterns!) to one of you! All you have to do is leave a happy comment (anything nice or funny will do just fine), with your name and email and I will let the random generator choose the winner on Thursday morning. UPDATE: Anyone can enter, I don't care where you...

Just moments ago we woke suddenly to loud thunder and lightning. Maddie was stirring so I scooped her up and kissed her sleepy little face, she put her tiny arms around me and squeezed....then, with a sleepy voice she said "When I sleep with my Sissy, she holds me and kisses me too, and I kiss her back." "Really?" I said "Why?" asking just to hear her little voice again "Because we love ashother!" she said with a sleepy smile "Because why?" I asked, again, this time just to hear that word again “Because we love ashother!” she repeated “Well what about Mama?” I questioned as I kissed her again “We love ashother too!” she answered with a smile, that I could hear in her tiny voice. Thinking about it now I'm almost sad.....Why do they have to grow up and learn to say things right?! I may never get to hear that little made up word again, or I may get to hear it for only another week or so, but I already miss it. Before long she will ...

Every now and then we just need a little something to mix-up our days of homeschooling, and because I think that creativity and a love of learning is one of the most important things that I can teach my children, we tried something new today! I let them listen to a book on CD and draw the things that were described. Our book was called "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" , it's a beautiful story about a china rabbit and the descriptions were extra nice! I love to read to them, lately it's always a Ramona Quimby book, she's our all time favorite! As you know it's not always easy to fit mama reading into our schedule, so today was such a treat for all of us. I think this will become a regular mix-up in our routine when we all need a break from the same-old-same-old. I like that it challenges them to take the descriptions and use their imagination to draw them out onto paper instead of just listening as a sort of entertainment. It stretches ...

That was the feeling we all had as our social worker walked out of our house today! Not that she is scary or anything, but it's just knowing that our homestudy is FINALLY DONE!!!!!! Oh my goodness! This is our first big hurdle and we have done it! This is so huge! Oh my heart, I can't even explain how bad I want to squeeze our little Bulgarian babies right now!!! I keep dreaming of the day that I get to walk into an orphanage on the other side of the world and kiss, for the first time, my sweet children that God handpicked for us.....I try to imagine how it's going to feel for us to be together after all of this time. How will it feel for ALL of my children to be in one room and to not feel like someone is missing? Oh I can't wait!!! I just wish I could call out "Mama's coming!" and they would hear it and know that we are working hard to get to them. Oh friends, could you pray with us? You are like our family here. Could you pray that everything keeps go...

I just figured that you would have to smile today if you could just see this outfit. This is another newborn jacket with a dress that's a couple of sizes too small, and she has just started branching out to shoes that are mismatched too.....I don't really get that one but it's...so perfect. Happy Saturday friends!

I did it! I found a picture of market! It's not really of the booth, more of Ben and I, but it's market! Jeannie  came through for me, she took a lot of good pictures and posted them on her blog along with names and links. Thank you Jeannie! Now that market is over we have a lot of work to do. Our pattern inventory is uncomfortably low (which is a really good thing, but a lot of work to remedy), I have emails backed up like you wouldn't believe (I'm sorry if I owe you an email, I plan to get that tackled tonight and tomorrow), and my loft was a pigsty until today. It wasn't just messy, it was to the stage where it just needed a good cleaning out (like my inbox LOL!). I spent half of the day yesterday cleaning, after school was done, and half of the day today cleaning...and at this very moment.....I am sitting in a perfectly clean loft! It's like a fresh slate! Oh the ideas that come bubbling out of my head when I have an uncluttered work area! It feels so...

This morning I was using some left over roast to make a pot of beef stew for lunch, so I asked Maddie to wash six potatoes while I peeled the carrots. She has washed potatoes under mama's supervision countless times so I didn't think to explain the process again, I just gave her the bag. After I finished up the carrots I turned to check on her and found that she was really taking her work seriously! That kid was scrubbing those potatoes with a scouring pad and soap! LOL! What made me laugh even more was the memories that came flooding back from my own childhood. I remembered one day that my mom was late getting home to get dinner ready and I, being the oldest, was at home with my younger brother and sister. She called from the store and told me to go ahead and wash the potatoes so that she could get started as soon as she walked in. Now I had probably seen her wash potatoes a thousand times in my twelve years, but for some reason when I went to wash those dirt...

....when some people can't play nice it ruins the game for everyone. I really should be in bed because we had a really long (but wonderful) day at market, but instead I am awake trying to delete inappropriate comments left here by heartless spammers (I say heartless because if your children or mine were to read the disgusting things left by these people I would be absolutely heart broken), so I will have to leave the comment moderation on. I'm sorry, I know it makes it harder for us to communicate, but to protect this family friendly environment I have no choice. I am furious! Please forgive me if you had to read any ugly comments. I'm sorry, and I promise to do all I can to keep it from happening again. xoxo, Samantha UPDATE: I wanted to thank you all for understanding the comment moderation rant. Just to be clear (because a couple of sweet blog friends called to make sure I was OK), it wasn't a bad comment directed at me, it was some crazy person leaving filthy a...

I mean IT IS COLD people! I told Ben the other night "I'm about to die of cold!" LOL! It looks like we will have a winter this year, and maybe even snow (the kids are just insanely happy about that).....but oh my, we are just not made for cold weather. We are the biggest cold wimps on the planet! Molly and I have decided that the people in Alabama are like lizards, we can only move slow in the cold. This means that the wool socks have come out, but it just wasn't enough, no not at all....I felt like my toes could just break off any second! So I found this FREE slipper pattern and I got some wool yarn and made these babies. I love them! They are so cute and they keep my toes from breaking off too! I wish I had a better picture but turns out it's a little tricky taking a picture of your own feet. Who knew? With all of this cold weather came another shift in our normal routine. We are spending a lot more time in front of the fire....it's funny ...

That's kinda what this post is about...the closing of doors and then the opening of windows... As you all know we had another "door" slammed shut (that's how it felt......like I was sitting there peaceful reading a book in the quiet and then I was startled by a slamming door) in November . I have to admit, I have not been as open this time as I have been in the past, not with anyone, even myself. It feels like my heart has been scarred and now it's harder to get things "in" or "out" than ever. I hope this doesn't disappoint anyone, but I haven't wanted to talk about it at all, I have distanced myself from that pain that seems to come over and over because I'm tired of feeling it all the time. My survival tactics have changed from "say what you feel and get it all out" to "just try not to think about it and maybe it will all go away". I don't really know if it's wrong or right, it's just the way that...

She put her tiny little arms around my neck while I was chopping wood and getting the fire going this morning...... Maddie: "You're a good mama" Me: "Am I?" Maddie: "A gooder and gooder mama....cause you don't beat us or nothin" I got to thinking after that about all of the silly things we say as a family, that only we understand, and thought about how sweet it is that we have our own little language. I'm sure every family does. You see, I say "I'm gunna beat you!" about 100 times a day when they are being too cute, obnoxious, silly, or when they spray me with the old rubber band around the sprayer trick AGAIN (one of these days I'm gunna learn to look at that sprayer before I turn the stinkin water on!). When they are just looking extra cute (like she is here in this "Maddie made get-up") and they are in danger of being smothered in mama kisses I usually say "I can't even stand you right now!...