Wishing everyone a wonderful Sunday to enjoy outside in the sunshine.

Hugs to everyone, Freda & Debbie

We are so excited to announce the Grand Opening of our new store “Creative Chics Home Store”.

We want you and your friends to CELEBRATE with us so we are offering “Free Shipping” on any single towel, any set of 4-6 napkins or a set of placemats for the entire month of April. (Continental USA First Class Parcel Post)

Our new store “Creative Chics Home Store” opened March 31st and had the honor yesterday of appearing on the front page of Etsy.  We have moved all of the towels and clearance items and are moving the last of the napkins over this week.

Here are just a few examples of items you will find in the “Creative Chics Home Store so please drop by and check us out.

Deb Newest Napkins                    Lizzy Dish Napkins               Red Robin Spring Towel

Stacked Animal Towel            Red Tulip Placemats             Momma Owl & Babies

Deb and I never imagined having our business (actually it’s an expensive hobby) grow so rapidly.  We have almost 200 items in our store and nearly 50% of the items are aprons.  We are both determined to have an inventory ready to ship for Christmas this year so we are not sewing 16 hours a day for the entire month of November.

So while this winter’s cold winds blew we have been at our tasks of cutting, sewing, pressing, taking photos and listing new items .

We have split the products in our store leaving Creative Chics with our entire apron inventory and we continue to add almost daily to keep up with demand and keep it growing for the holiday season of 2010.

Thank you so much for helping us along the way, we feel very blessed to do what we love and love what we do!

One of our favorite things to do is get a request for a custom order and work with the customer to select their fabric and colors and styles that they would like to see. It’s fun to see their ideas come to life. This past week we had an order for a  mother daughter apron set for a lovely jewelry artisan and her daughter.

She loves teal blues and chocolate browns together. So after sharing several fabric swatches we narrowed it down to this.

I like that we can use the same fabrics for mother and daughter yet give both of them their very own unique style too!

Mom’s apron is feminine with ruffles and ties that will look great with a bow in the front or back of the apron.

Oh and the little girl’s apron is so “girly” with all those ruffles and the sweatheart neckline. I wish I could see her 4 year old receive this gift. I bet her face lights up with excitement knowing she is going to get to help Mommy in the kitchen and look just like her.

I think this is a wonderful gift our friend is giving herself and her daughter for Mother’s Day. If you are interested in your own custom aprons, just let us know. We love collaborating with you to get the exact look and style you are after.

I just had to share this adorable Easter idea for making cupcakes very cute and special for your family or others.  Skip to My Lou is a feed I subscribe to that always has creative, easy to do projects with step by step instructions and lots of pictures.

These cupcakes will be on my “to do” list and thought you might enjoy also.

Seriously these are so cute and the template for the face is free in PDF on her website….let me know if you tried them too.

A wonderful blog spot Natalie’s Sentiment’s has a fantastic post on things to prepare for Easter, both food and decor.  Check her out at the following link Natalie’s Easter Lovelies.  Here are just a couple teaser pictures I borrowed from her website to coax you to go take a peek.

Creative Chics is participating in a super Mother’s Day Giveaway at Natalie’s Sentiment’s so be sure you sign up for the giveaway while you are there.

Fresh flowers, so simple, easy and beautiful!

This is precious and you will love the fantastic Easter treats she has posted for you!  Enjoy!

“Vintage”, what does it mean? After yesterday’s discussion of “retro” I wanted to share with you what I discovered about the term Vintage.   Vintage is not  reproducing an item as we found retro to be but rather an actual item from the past, made in a prior era and “being brought out of storage or the closet, or wine cellar” so to speak to sell in today’s marketplace.

I loved how one definition I found that summed it up very simple, “Second hand, damaged and EXPENSIVE!”

The truth of the matter is if it is real “vintage” it might have all of those adjectives apply.  Someone else has used it, making it second hand and possibly damaged or soiled; if  there is a limited supply available and/0r was expensive in it’s original time period, very likely it will be expensive today.  So we cannot create “vintage” today we can imitate it and that is okay as long as the seller says it is a reproduction not the real deal.

I had to laugh to myself thinking if I should every remarry I might fit into the “vintage” category as I would surely fit all of these adjectives, second hand, damaged and expensive so I think in the future I will tell people I am a vintage woman not a senior citizen.  Well as my kids would say that last line might be TMI, too much information Mother:)

Moving along, vintage wine and vintage cars are the most traded items in the vintage category.

For $539.00 you could purchase this vintage French Charles Heidsieck,  Charlie 1981, from Champagne, France. 

A little more than I would want to pay!

Or perhaps you would want a vintage vehicle?  For only

$22,000 you can have:

1930 Chev Wagon!

Perhaps some of you already knew all this detail, but I am willing to admit it was to a large degree new information to me and  I found it interesting and enlightening.  I will be more thoughtful when I use the terms vintage and retro in the future, well perhaps except when I speak of myself, I intend to get some smiling mileage out of those adjectives.

These cute-as-a-button cottontails, made from spray-starched square napkins, will energize any Easter table.

Perhaps these adorable napkin folds are not a new idea for you but they were for me and I love them….

The bunny on the pink plate is from Good Housekeeping just click on the link I have created here at Good Housekeeping and find simple step by step instructions with lots of pictures that should make them easy for anyone.  I do have to give Living credit for having the bunny on the yellow plate in this month’s magazine and their website led me to Good Housekeeping.

I hope to try this for my Easter Tables this year.  If you have already completed this project, leave us a comment and let us know if it is as easy as the tutorial says.

I made this terrarium for myself and enjoyed it so much I decided to do one for my son and Debbie.  However my middle daughter Kim came over the weekend and wanted me to make her one with a purple African violet and I could not find another so this terrarium ended up in her house That’s how mommy’s are you know.

This is David’s and the turtle that I got at Hobby Lobby for $2.00 on sale jsut makes this my favorite.  He does have a pose David is familiar with

And this pink African violet is Deb’s.  She is hopefully going to find that forgetting to water for a couple of weeks won’t be too big a problem with a terrarium.  I put a small piece of fern in hers as I love ferns in terrariums.  Her’s also has a small piece of mirror in the center, to look like a lake,  that was impossible to get a good photo of.

This ended up being mine.  I love violets of any color but thought this soft lavender was perfect with the begonia I used.

Easy to do and lots of fun to make, terrariums can be expensive or on a budget, however if you make four you will blow the budget .  I hope you enjoyed my creativity with terrariums and will give it a try for your home.

One way to beat the long winter blahs is to have growing plants indoors.  A suggestion is make a terrarium, time required an hour or less.

What is A Terrarium? A terrarium is a miniature landscape with living plants and even sometimes small animals like lizards or turtles.

A terrarium is a miniature ecosystem which is a complex system of relationships between organisms and resources of different types.  If you have a good balance of plants, soil, nutrients, and water in your terrarium you will be able to seal it up and watch it grow and thrive for very long periods of time – sometimes even years.

It’s quick, easy and doesn’t have to be expensive. To save money, on your terrariums, look around your house for a container or shop discount stores, flea markets or consignment shops to find glass containers, jars or even goldfish bowls. The plants you’ll use are generally small houseplants, which can often be bought for a couple of bucks each, so the whole project, depending on the size of your jars, can be made for well under $20. Terrariums also make wonderful and impressive gifts, even for people who consider themselves plant-challenged.

There are lots of tutorials online to help you along the way, here is one I found that has very specific easy to follow instructions.  Kerry Michael at about.com has a great tutorial with lots of pictures..here is an example of her finished project.

When your done send me a picture and I will post a picture of mine.

Apple Blossom Azalea

What type of bulbs do you have in your garden?  When do you plant them?

I lived outside of Atlanta for a few years and missed Spring bulbs immensely. I found a book at the library on what types of bulbs could be grown in Georgia climate and found it was as easy as in the Midwest.  The secret, I had to refrigerate the bulbs for six weeks in the winter and then place them into the soil in early February and lo and behold I had tulips and jonquils just like I had always enjoyed in my Midwest garden.

If you live in the southern regions of the States or any other part of the world where the temperature never drop low enough to cool the soil try the refrigerator trick and you can have them Spring or Fall.

I have so many spring flowers I love I am going to share a few this week.

Creeping phlox is one of my favorite in early spring…and in the background the crimson azaleas are in the shade and you can barely see the buds ready to burst on the rhododendron.

Magnolia Blooms

Let’s keep looking at these reminders of what we can expect in just a few weeks!!!