A Guest Post

My sister noticed it had been awhile since I'd posted anything on my blog and suggested she do a guest post for me. Wasn't that sweet of her?? I thought so too! Soooo, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about her. She's older than me, although not by very much. I think our parents were romantic little lovebirds in their youth. (Ewwww! Our PARENTS??) What a thought! Anyway, back to my sister. She loves animals, especially horses. If there was any way that she could spend her entire day with horses, she'd be the first in line. Well, maybe right after her daughter! And she sews. Boy, does she ever sew! Wedding dresses, bridesmaid and prom dresses, and smocked things that are professional quality. I just look at them in amazement. Girlfriend is good!!
I'm happy to say that she and I live about a half hour away from each other, so we do a few girl things together regularly. I hope you enjoy Linda as much as I do!
~~Lori

Hello and welcome to the guest portion of Lori's Blog. I am Lori's sister Linda and am guest writing for this segment. Fasten your seat belt.............................

So I am, like Lori, a sewer. But I sew clothes, machine embroider and quilt after a fashion. Lori is a better quilter, but I do manage a quilt on occasion. I also am a smocker and heirloom sewer, which is weird in California. But I digress.
I decided that over Lori's Easter break I would go up and help her celebrate her vacation by sewing with her. We both are trying to sew up our fabric stashes (stop laughing everyone) and I had a cool pattern that I bought off of Etsy from Sew Spoiled called the Cabrio Tote. I had made one and felt that it needed a tweak or two. (Like Lori, I cannot leave a pattern or recipe alone. My apologies to Sew Spoiled-Ido love it though.) Anyway, Lori had some batiks that she thought would make a cute purse. I have a Brother sewing machine with built in Disney characters and some Disney cards so we planned a day of sewing and dessert. We started with the fabric and then picked out a large Minnie Mouse to put on the body of the tote. Then we let the machine work its magic:

I am not stoned. Lori took the picture and like the paparazzi only sent me the dorky one. It is her blog after all. Honest we had not been drinking. But we had made this:

What is this???? Straight from Ree Drummond – The Pioneer Woman and Tasty Kitchen Blog hostess it is Birthday Cake Batter Popcorn. Tweaked of course. I am me after all. The original recipe called for white chocolate and white cake mix (Yes, there is 1 and ½ cups of cake mix in this recipe, totally shocking I know.) Me being the chocolate lover that I am I used dark chocolate chips and a chocolate fudge cake mix. We made it festive with the red, white and blue sprinkles supplied by Lori since I forgot the sprinkles. Let’s hope that my post makes Lori as famous as Ree. I am sure that we can convince Geoff to wear chaps for the cause.

Meanwhile, here is a close up of the completed Minnie Mouse embroidery for Lori's purse:

How cute is that?

We originally sewed early in the week that Lori had off and on Friday she had the purse finished. (Not to mention the popcorn!!!)

Can we just say, “How cute!!!” The main tweaks were we made the tote overall larger. We decided that just making the top band and bag body bigger would have been sufficient. Lori and I both get lots of complements on our bags and we are enjoying using them. Sew Spoiled has no idea that I exist except in that I bought the pattern and Ree is also blissfully ignorant of my existence. Lori however, is neither blissfully ignorant nor unaware of my existence. We had a fun day and used up part of both my stash and Lori’s. A huge coup in the world of sewers, who love having “someday” fabric. I find that it is harder to keep the stash to manageable levels than it is to decide which project to make next. I also am looking forward to your comments and hope that we both have inspired you all to shop at home for your next project. I am amazed what I find on occasion.

Cheers and best wishes, Linda

P. S. We also checked in with the hen that I took up to Lori and her chick that is now a teenaged chicken. How cute she is and how big. It was fun to get to see her again and to figure out that we are pretty sure that she is a hen.