A Fabulous Friday

{kristie's picks}

1. vintage tablecloths… and this is one of my favorites!

2. Treasure Mart

3. Deluxe Chocolate Marshmallow Bars — tonight's dessert!

4. ruby red glass

{apphia's picks}

1. I love this gray tee with a sweet peter pan collar

2. new favorite snack — vanilla Greek yogurt

3. so very, very true

4. the dress I'm hoping to sew for myself (in black wool)

{abigail's picks}

1. vanilla wafer cookies

2. amazon.com gift cards. My go-to birthday pick!

3. polka dot chambray + red = fantastic!

4. sweet as sweet can be

{achaia's picks}

1. I love this outfit… patterned tights are the best!

2. a clean, organized closet

3. signet rings

4. Steve McQueen and his son — absolutely, adorable

{abiah's picks}

1. an adorable mug that my best friend painted for me. It happily sits on my dresser and corrals all my lip gloss.

2. doing my hair in a top knot!

3. a hotel in Greece… I'd LOVE to go there!

4. peplum tops!!!

Alright, now, everyone, for our own enjoyment, please tell us ONE thing you've been loving recently.

Happy Friday~ xox KAAAA

Clean Slate.

Sometimes in life you are all of a sudden taken with the thought that you need to wipe everything away and start off with a clean slate.

Well, that's the way we've been feeling lately about organizing our home, stored boxes, rooms, studio, you name it. It just seems that things build and build until finally you want to throw everything into the middle of the floor and start doing something about it. Inevitably when we do that we make a huge mess. And we're up to our eyeballs in piles of things.

So, we've been wading through things the past few days and gone to bed beat. Which isn't a bad thing. Occasionally we get kind of 'overly organized happy'. Like today when we decided to clean out the HUGE deep freeze, two small freezers, and two refrigerator freezers. Oh, and the laundry cabinet. See? Overly organized happy definitely.

Oh, and like Saturday when we went through bolts and bolts of fabric rearranging them into their (new) proper places. But, it looks SO much better now!

So, here we are. Not exactly out of the woods yet (the hall closet is still untouched), but definitely headed in the right direction. Now that we are going the right way we're planning on taking a break tomorrow with a good friend coming out and spending the day with her sweet kids — talking about fabric, eating yummy food (we haven't officially decided on the main meal), guacamole dip & chips, and banana pudding. Oh, and Abi and Achaia have plans to make some adorable handmade cards like these soon. Aren't they darling?? We're adding that to our list.

Much love from here! xoxo Kristie + Apphia + Achaia + Abigail + Abiah

Celebrating a Life: our Nana

97 years 1 month 21 days old.

Nana died yesterday, on Sunday morning. We are thankful for the time spent with her, the days she talked with us, the nights spent at her house, and the memories she left us. She was a sweetheart who loved her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She loved crocheting dishcloths for us and telling us about all the things she'd seen, done, and lived through. Nana outlived her first-born twin babies and three husbands. She was very hearty, strong, and truthful. Her life was full.

We'll miss you, Nana, but will see you later. We love you!

xoxox

looking back…

Looking back to when we were little girls. Paint. Nan was almost always painting. Painting with us girls on a tote bag (our name, of course), or maybe a little apron. If Nan wasn't painting, someone was. We were the girls that loved going to the paint section in Lowe's as much as we loved going to the mall with our Nan and Mommy. (Which we must confess, was a lot of love.) We still love Lowe's. And we still love our paint. Living in a fixer-upper when we were little only compounded that love. To Lowe's. For paint. More paint. (And lumber. We loved walking down the lumber aisles!) So we stepped back. We painted. And loved every minute of it.

We love you too! happy Saturday xx Us

27.

When Nan, Apphia, and I visited the Moda warehouse in Dallas, Texas a couple of years ago on our way to fall Quilt Market, it was difficult to not shop for too much, needless to say. However we did pick up this roll of 17" wide fabric. It was pre-hemmed on two sides, so it seemed like just the perfect thing to make napkins with! Of course, as can happen sometimes, we just got around to doing that this week. It was easy peasy to just rotary cut them into squares and then stitch up two sides on each.

Now everything's great, since we have 27 new napkins to wipe our messy mouths with! We'll need them today since we had Manicotti for dinner and are planning on cheeseburgers and fries for supper.

xoxo Us

The year of lace.

Around here lace has been the best thing ever lately. To us, it's just hard to beat a piece of clothing with lace involved.

A few of us have a couple of lacey things — Achaia a camisole and tee, and Abi wore a lace top on our Indianapolis Zoo excursion this summer (seen here and here). Oh, and Apphia found this fabulous lace dress while we were on vacation on a real killer sale (and we all wanted it to be our size— but we're not going to talk about that). We can completely blame Mom for this problem, as she's been collecting bits and pieces of lace for the past 20+ years.

However, sweet little Abiah didn't own one cotton-pickin' piece. Poor baby. Well, when she, Mom, and Joe went out shopping yesterday Bug found this great top in Target! Would you imagine it was in the girls' section too?? Three cheers! She's one happy camper. Now she can jump around in lace too.

Oh, and we had to show this picture, even though you can't really see her new lacey top, because it's just that neat. Abiah's decided to grow her hair out even longer. We talked her into it, since she has great hair, and it's the prettiest red color ever. And, no. We're not biased at all.

Now we're off to do a little swimming. Stay cool!

xoxo K,A,A,A,A

Back again….

Hello, hello! Wow. It feels like forever since we've been able to sit down and chat a little with you all! Please forgive the silence around here. Our summer weeks have been sadly dwindling fast, and we just don't think we're ready to get back to school schedules.

This past week we've spent a long, fun day with friends, a few of us came down with these odd sinus-cold symptoms that make you feel draggy, and had Darison and Emerson over for a fun day, as we mentioned here. Oh, and we can't forget stuffing ourselves on chicken sandwiches and waffle fries on Chick-Fil-A appreciation day (did any of you go?). Throw in Apphia speaking at a small mother/daughter retreat this past weekend, and two new fabric collections here to put up on the site, and share, we've just been a little pre-occupied.

So, let's gab about that new fabric we spoke of!! First off, we have Cameo, the newest pretty line from Amy Butler. Infused with lots of vibrant blues, it's just fabulous. I think this has got to be my favorite print of the pieces we got. I've been toying with the idea of using a vintage pattern to make myself a dress out of it… should I???

Now, that cute picture at the top is a pretty hint of what else came…. the newest installment of Lecien's ever-popular Flower Sugar! This time, Lecien's surprised us with adding in doses of purple, which is completely new for their Flower Sugar lines. Of course, it also includes the always good shades of turquoise, red, pink, yellow, and green.

Whew! That should catch everyone up for now! What have you been up to?

xoxox~ Achaia for K + A + A + A