birch & lily

by Huestis Tucker Architects, LLC (via Houzz)

by Huestis Tucker Architects, LLC (via Houzz)

by Huestis Tucker Architects, LLC (via houzz)

Nautical Baby Quilt and Receiving Blankets

There’s a very special baby going to be born very soon, and I’m terribly excited. When I discovered that the nursery was going to have a nautical feel I was even more excited. I’d had this quilt in mind for years and this fabric in my stash for just as long. This was the perfect opportunity to bring it all together and surprise the mom-to-be!

The receiving blankets are a simple square of quilting cotton backed with a flannel. I adore this sailboat print. It’s an old one from Moda - a line called “Hamptons”.

The red blanket has a navy flannel backing and the blue one has a flannel navy ticking stripe. I love me some ticking stripes.

The quilt has a smaller scale patchwork sailboat that I adapted from the book Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. (I love that book.)

The reverse side has some sweet flag bunting:

I love doing baby quilts - they’re such a manageable size. Hopefully this one is well-loved!

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

- John McCrae

And there was great rejoicing. #Pinterest

Update - Picture Pirates

Some of you wanted an update on the progress of The Case of The Stolen Picture, so here you go…

I posted last week about finding a picture from my blog (of our nursery) on a store’s website. The picture had been used without consent and did not give any credit to me or this blog. It was a weird feeling - violated, flattered, annoyed, and funny.

On Facebook it created quite a conversation: they had some nice stuff… I should get store credit! Was this an outrage or a compliment? Someone’s 4-year-old daughter rightly concluded that they were pirates.

My own son was infuriated. He told me we needed to “tell them to give that back! That’s our condo! Give our picture back!” ;)

First thing I did was e-mail them politely but firmly telling them that the picture was mine, was obtained without permission, and they needed to either remove it or credit it. And I waited until the end of the week… there was no response. So I tried phoning the store on Monday. No answer. Left a message on the machine. No response. I was beginning to wonder if the store was even still in business.

That’s when I contacted Lindsey (from Little House Blog) and Jennifer (from Rambling Renovators) via Twitter. They’re like the big sisters of Canadian design bloggers, giving tips about blogging and planning events like BlogPodium. And they’re awesome. Within minutes they responded with some great advice on what I should be doing.

Lindsey pointed out that if they didn’t respond I should get ahold of their website host. Good call. And Jennifer pointed me to this helpful article about what to do when your content is stolen. I was glad to have a variety of options on how to proceed.

I decided to give them one more try - I sent a much more firmly worded e-mail then called the store again. This time someone answered. I can’t say the conversation was the most pleasant. The woman on the other end seemed rushed, annoyed, suspicious, and awkward (I mean, how awkward to realize you’re a skeezy pirate!). I tried to be firm but polite… but it was strange. I felt nervous being so confrontational. She hurriedly told me they’d take it down and hung up.

Click.

Wait a second! No click! I wanna’ know: were you oblivious to the fact that taking my picture was wrong a la Judith Griggs? Or were you evilly plotting this scheme with ill intent?! Where did you find my picture? Why did you take my picture!? I felt very unsatisfied.

By the day’s end the picture was still up. And after the very brief and none-too-happy phone call I decided to hit “send” on my e-mail to their web host.

Then, yesterday I received a phone call from the store owner. She told me that she was aware of a phone call I’d had with her employee and just wanted to know more. I once again explained that the picture was mine and was taken without permission, and that I’d tried several times through e-mail and phone to notify them of that. She apologized and explained they have trouble with that e-mail address and that the picture had been taken down. She also told me that she’d spoken with her lawyer who’d informed her she was not in the wrong because I didn’t have any kind of watermark on it (um… sorry, but that is not the case. In Canada, once a person creates an original work in compliance with the Copyright Act - blog writing and photography included - it is copyrighted. I own the rights to it. Period. ) She assured me that no malice was intended but that they found the picture and really felt that it fit the look of what they were going for. Overall she was professional and polite (even though she did try to put the onus on me for not marking my photo) and I was feeling better. I told her that I had given them permission to continue using the photo as long as they gave me proper credit and referred her to my original email.

So… I consider the whole matter dealt with. I won’t be posting any rage-filed attention-seeking complaints on their Facebook page now. ;)

And let this be a lesson to us all:

Bloggers, stand up for your original work, and
Pinterest is not a source. Go find out where a picture is from and credit it appropriately.

The End.

So much cuteness in one tiny package

I’ve got some grand plans for making the kids’ Christmas presents this year. For Little L I was the lucky recipient of an old doll crib being cleared out of our church nursery. It’s quite old (Sean’s sisters had one made by the same man when they were little) and pretty beat up, but I plan on sanding it down, repainting it, and creating some pretty bedding fit for L’s beloved little dolly.

Step one was making the pillows. I mostly followed the tutorial by Amanda Jean from Crazy Mom Quilts.

Oh my word. I love these little pillows. I want to make a hundred of them. I want to go into business selling just doll pillows. I want to make them for all the girls with American Girl dolls in my Sunday school class. These pillows are so easy and sweet.

I love the little separate pillow case.

Next up is the baby quilt… So excited!! (Why is everything miniature so much more fun?!)

Sharing a Bedroom

Design by Tobi Tobin, Photograph by Patrick Cline for Lonny Mag

Sometimes I have very strong opinions about things I probably have no business having an opinion about. Like how I firmly believe in my children sharing a room… when I grew up having a room to myself all my life. (Yay for being the only girl!)

It started in the condo as a necessity - 2 babies, 2 grown-ups, 2 bedrooms. You do the math.

The nursery in our old condo.

But since we’ve moved into our temporary abode (affectionately known as “The Pink House”), and as we plan our farmhouse, there are at least three bedrooms - yet we still keep the kids together in one room.

Am I a sucker for punishment? Sometimes… namely nap time. (Though sometimes Little M naps in our bed so that they don’t spend the first hour of nap time laughing, reading, singing, and eventually crying together.) But I really do enjoy it. There’s something about having all my babies together. And they really enjoy being together. Some nights we’ve even found that Little M has climbed into Little L’s crib to sleep. Part of it is my “it’s good for kids to learn to share” mentality, and part of it is some idyllic notion I have of a Peter Pan-style nursery with all the kids sharing a room, their beds in a row.

And not to mention, once we get them a set of matching twin beds it’ll be so wonderfully symmetrical. ;)

So here are a few more shared bedrooms that I love…