A Few Things About High Cotton

Hi there.  Welcome to High Cotton. 

Things are new here. 

A new house, and a new blog, and our little family is settling into the "newness" of both.

Please pardon the off-center and fuzzy blog head at top.  And I do apologize that Life on Surrey Lane does not automatically redirect you to High Cotton.  I've learned a few things about Blogger.  When you change your address, you lose all of your "popular posts" links and your followers, so this feels a little bit like starting over.  Obviously I have a few quirks to work out.  Please bear with me.  And if you're still reading, THANK YOU!

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An Introduction
So, since this is a new address, I feel like I should start with a little introductory post about High Cotton.  If you're from the south, you're probably familiar with the phrase, "high cotton" meaning "the best of times" or "good fortune."  I did a little research and learned that the phrase borrows its jargon from the antebellum rural farming community.  Most cotton grew fairly low to the ground, and therefore required a great deal of effort to harvest, stooping low to pick the cotton.  Those who had more favorable (and expensive) crops grew cotton that didn't require you to lean down.  Instead, it grew tall and was therefore know as "high cotton."


A Little Dream: a sewing business called High Cotton
I've had a little dream for the past year or so of starting a sewing business.  I love creating something useful with my hands for others to enjoy.   When I sew, I like to think of the generations of women who sat at their sewing machines or with needle and thread making items to adorn their family and homes. Sewing provides me with a "back to basics" kind of satisfaction and a sense of providing for those I love. 

Right now, High Cotton Handmade is just a dream, but I'm slowing moving closer to "go."  The plan is to start out very small and just offer one or two items like the silhouette pillows I've shared before here and here. 

The goal is to create items that are unique, fresh, and meaningful.  Bo has known about this dream of mine from the start, and I am so thankful for my super supportive husband who knows more about business than I do and can offer me plenty of advice.  I also hope that you will offer advice on items you'd like to see offered.

 I'm quickly learning that this new endeavor will take a lot of courage! 

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We Have A Walker & Other Adventures in Motherhood

...and a few funny moments in motherhood lately:

1. McCord has figured out how to start the CD player that is attached to his crib (looks kind of like this one).  He takes the liberty to start his CD player when he's ready to get up in the morning or from a nap.  He doesn't do this all the time, but the majority of the mornings this past week, Bo and I've woken up to "Who built the ark? Noah! Noah! Who built the ark? Brother Noah built the ark!"  We look at the video monitor, and there's Monkey, hanging onto the railing of his crib, bouncing along to the lyrics. 

2. The other day, McCord woke up from a nap after being asleep for only 1 hour.  Instead of listening to his CD, he started fussing.  I looked at the monitor, and he was in his usual standing position, ready to be picked up.  I decided to let him cry it out for a while so he'd go back to sleep as is our usual practice when he wakes up early.  This proved unsecessful.  When I went in to have a serious conversation with a one-year-old about how much Mama needs you to take a nap, so she can shower, do the laundry, vaccume the upstairs  the benefits of sleep, I noticed that he'd taken off his pajama pants and thrown them overboard.  He also had taken off his diaper and it was laying abandoned in his crib.  Even though McCord isn't saying any words now, I'm pretty sure his look meant, he had a dirty diaper during his nap, and where was I when he needed me?!!!  Let's hope we don't make a habit out of this. 

A Playdate and Hardwood Floors

Earlier this week, we were so thrilled to have some of McCord's friends over to play.  We tried our best to grab a shot of all four of them together: McCord, Taylor, Delaney, and Riley.  They are all about the same age and just had the best time bumping around together.  Thank you all so much for coming over to play in our new house.  We look forward to many more playdates! 

Here's a picture we took of the playroom before we put in the hardwood floors.  The carpet was really damaged by the previous resident and it had a terrible pet odor that we just couldn't get rid of, so we are so relieved to have clean hardwoods now. 

BEFORE

Walls are painted Benjamin Moore's Gray Horse.  I found the credenza table on the left at a thrift store for $30 and painted it navy to match the fabric on the ottoman I slipcovered.  This room was added onto our 1940s house in the 90s (and it shows!).  We plan to rip out the crown molding and replace the large window to make it look a little more consistent with the age of the house.   More info on the gigantic chicken beanbag here.

Not quite an AFTER shot, but an In Progress picture



I'm looking forward to making some pillows out of this fabric to add some whimsy to the room.

Do you remember this lamp of my grandmother's?  I blogged about the before and after here.  There's a great tutorial on how to recover lampshades at Isabella and Max Rooms.  Janelle does a great job of writing tutorials, and this one doesn't disappoint.  One of my blog readers told me about the oil rubbed bronze spray paint made by Rustolium, so I re-sprayed the base and I'm liking the lamp much better now.  (Just FYI, if you haven't used this spray paint before, you'll love it - the coverage goes on great, and I've since used it to spray down an old brassy overhead light fixture I picked up at the Habitat Restore and I want to use it on our outdated kitchen knobs - will blog about those topics soon.)

Name Change

Just a note to let you know that Life on Surrey Lane will be undergoing some changes in the next few weeks, starting with a name change.  If the blog head on your screen reads, High Cotton, you're in the right place!  I'll be updating my web address soon as well as playing around with the design. 

More info on High Cotton to follow...

Birthday Pics and A Few Others

I just got my camera back and wanted to include a few of these birthday pictures for my memory. 



My mother-in-law put together this thoughtful grouping of McCord photos.



I made McCord's birthday cake, and come to think of it, that might be why he wasn't too interested in eating it.  Perhaps something went wrong?!  There are two layers inside: strawberry (red) and vanilla (blue).  The candles came from Target.



McCord's cousins Emily and Kyle helped me decorate the cupcakes in our red, white, and blue theme.



And here's the birthday boy with his daddy pre-celebration, wondering what all the fuss is about!

And we've been playing with finger paint. 

My parents kept my sister's kids while she and her husband were out of town for a couple of days.  So McCord and I went to see Aiya and Doe Doe and his cousins Bayer and Calla.  The idea was for me to help my parents out, but instead, I may have caused more trouble.  We took all the kids outside, stripped them down, rolled out some brown packing paper on the sidewalk, and let them play with finger paint.  Bayer and Calla were over-the-top excited; McCord was not too sure how he felt about it, but that didn't keep him from getting messy. 

Bo and I are so thankful that my in-laws came to visit us this weekend.  Bo's dad brought the pressure washer and his mom brought lots and lots of food to stock our fridge.  She also washed the windows after the men did the pressure washing.  We are so thankful to have parents who have been so willing to help us make our new house feel like home. 

Today marks 1 month that we've been in our new house and every day that goes by, we love it more and more and look forward to making many family memories here. 

 

A Few Random Things

ONE --We celebrated McCord's birthday this past weekend with family at my in-laws house.  What a great day to be one year old!  It was a red, white and blue birthday party and everyone dressed accordingly.  McCord loved watching his cousins jump into the pool from the diving board, and he enjoyed splashing around the shallow end.  I left my camera at the party, but here are a few shots my mother-in-law sent us. 

A great snapshot of McCord and my Dad ("Doe Doe") goofing off by the pool.

A great photo of my sister and my mom (otherwise known as "Aiya")

McCord wasn't too sure what to do with the birthday cake, so he tried a little bit of icing, and then he decided I should try it too.  He stuck his finger in it and then put it in my mouth!



But he LOVED the homemade strawberry icecream that Gee Gee made!



This is a needlepoint sampler that my mom made for McCord with his name and birthday on it.  It is truly a labor of love.  I remember her working on it right after McCord was born.  She'd bring it with her whenever she came to visit, and we were able to view the progress.  Now here it is complete and ready to make a special wall hanging for McCord's new room.

Thank you Papa and Gee Gee for letting us celebrate at your house!

 The older I get, the more I realize how special it is to be able to have our family together.  In this case, it was special 2 times over, because we had both sides of our families together to celebrate Mc's 1st birthday - 4 grandparents, aunts and uncles, and 4 cousins!  It was such a gift for us to spend that time with them. 

TWO -- We closed on our new house yesterday, so we are no longer renters, but home owners!  We plan on celebrating by ripping out the carpet in the playroom on Monday.  The hardwood floors will be delivered today so they can get acclimated to our house before the installation.  Here's a before picture of the playroom.  Once this is complete, we'll be installing a new exterior door and completely gutting both of the bathrooms, insulating the attic and installing a fence.  We can't wait!

THREE -- My dad is coming up today to help us with lots of homeowner repair stuff like hanging a smoke detector, blinds, drapery rods, and McCord's swing.  Exciting stuff, right?  We're just glad to get on his calendar because he's been pretty busy lately writing articles for the local newspaper.  Here's his first article and the one published most recently about "beaver fever." And when he's not hanging drapery rods and writing articles, he makes grills out of old tires.  Here's a video my mom shot in their backyard of his contraption. 



FOUR -- Last, and certainly not least.  Thank you so much to those of you who read the last post and commented on the photoshoot.  You are all a thoughtful bunch of readers and we're humbled by all of your comments.  We are able to order an extra 5 x 7 because of the number of comments we got, and that helps tremendously when you're a sentimental mama like me who wants to order every photo taken of her child (will that make him stop growing up so fast?!!! ).  Many, many thanks!

The Photoshoot & A Favor, Please...

Saturday was a really fun day. 

We had Nicole Rogers Photography out to take a few pictures of our family in our new house.  Oh, how fun it is to be one year old!  We loved watching McCord flirt with Nicole as she captured his smirky little smile on camera.  Here's a link to the sneak peek she shared with us this a.m.

And, we need your help, fellow blog readers.  We are trying to get as many comments on Nicole's blog post featuring Mc's photo shoot as possible.  Now, don't be shy.  Even if you've never posted on this blog, we'd love, love, love it if you'd post a simple comment on Nicole's blog.  If we get a certain amount, she'll allow us to get a free print.  That would help us out tremendously!