Thank you, Sewjourners Place, for sponsoring this post, part of the 2017 Shop Small Spring series. I was selected for this opportunity by Sewjourners Place; the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
In our house, we do a lot of sensory play. Sensory play enhances learning through hands-on activities that stimulate the child's senses. This is a great way for children to explore the world they live in! Sensory play supports language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills, and social interaction! So when came across these magnetic fabric letters, I knew they would receive tons of play in our home.
They are made with colorful fabric, quilt batting filling, and strong magnet sewn into each of the letters. Each item is made to order as shop owner, Bethany, tries to offer her customers the opportunity to customize when possible! I simply sent her my Pinterest board for Oliver's room and they ended up matching my entire house. Possibly because my entire house may or may not have the same color pallet, but it is so perfect! They look adorable on the refrigerator and Oliver plays with them arranged on a magnetic surface most often like a baking sheet.
They withstand the careless play of toddlers with ease and you can hand wash and air dry them, if necessary. I also really think it would make a really sweet little magnet board for his room using a metal photo print! How cute would that be?
I'm seeing all over my Facebook of my mommy friends looking for unique ideas for their kiddos Easter's basket recently and I cannot stop telling them about Ollie's new magnetic letters. I LOVE them! They match our home decor and are so soft for him to play with. He is using them now just for play but as he gets older, we can also learn with them and get the entire alphabet to discover new letters. You should definitely check out her shop over on Etsy. Use the code "showersandflowers" will get you 10% off any purchase!
Here is a little bit more about Bethany, the owner of Sewjourners Place:
How did you get your shop started?
My love of sewing started when I was learning to tie my shoes. Apparently, I became a tiny bit over enthusiastic about the skill, and my parents would find any pieces of fabric or string I came across tied in knots. After discovering I had been systematically braiding or knotting the decorative yarn fringe on one of the afghans in the living room, they decided I needed a more constructive outlet. My grandma taught me how to sew by hand and it has been an ongoing passion ever since.
In Jr. High, I had the privilege of learning how to use a sewing machine from a lady who lived in our neighborhood. She was a true quilting master, but due to age and illness was no longer able to practice her craft. So she did the next best thing and imparted some of her knowledge to the next generation. Quilting never became a strong interest for me, but I learned a lot of valuable tools and techniques through that opportunity.
I continued to sew through high school and college and also began knitting and crocheting. I just loved creating pieces that were tailored for a particular friend or family member. Large numbers of my closest friends would receive handmade gifts from me at Christmas. I had a recurring daydream of opening a custom wedding dress shop.
When I heard about Etsy, I thought for a long time about opening a shop, but because I hit several major transitions (graduation, internship, engagement, new job, marriage) and moved several times after college, I wasn’t sure I was ready to tie myself to a business. Only a few months into our marriage, my husband and I found ourselves with a surprise baby on the way. We had hoped to have a couple years of both of us working and paying off school loans before we started a family, but God had a different idea for our lives.
As we began preparing for our son’s arrival, I naturally began looking up ideas for sewing projects I could make for our baby. Pregnancy provided me with the inspiration and motivation to make things that would be an essential part of our developing household. These projects were so much fun and turned out so well that I decided to try to supplement some of the income we would be losing by me staying home with our son by opening an Etsy shop which would feature some of my favorite projects. Sleep deprivation being what it is, I still didn’t manage to finally open my shop until this past summer, a little after my son’s first birthday.
What is the hardest part of owning a shop?
The most challenging aspect of owning my shop is that I have a lot more creativity and imagination than I do free time. If I could, I would probably spend 3-4 days a week holed up in a fabulously adorable sewing studio just working on projects for 10+ hours. I love waking up early in the morning before anyone else is awake and sewing. The problem with this is that when your child has been up and down all night or you don’t get to bed until midnight because there were 3 loads of dirty laundry and very few clean socks left, waking up early is not all that appealing. It’s also difficult for me to really throw myself into a project and have to tidy up every step of the way because the room is also an office and guest room. I would love to one day have that fabulously adorable studio! As that is currently not something I have control over, I am making strides to improve my time management skills so that I have fewer late nights and more early mornings. Fortunately my son now sleeps through the night as well, which is a big morale boost!
What is one thing unique about you?
Following my graduation from college, I had the amazing opportunity to intern with Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ). I lived overseas for a year with a fantastically fun and dedicated group of 6 other recent grads. We talked with college students about knowing God personally through Jesus and how knowing Him and living a life that honors Him as our maker and creator and savior has changed each of our lives.
Speaking as one who loves to design and create things and put a lot of love into the things that I make, knowing God as my creator is something that is very powerful to me. The time, effort, pride and care that I put into my fabric creations is just a small reflection of the tender love and care that God has put into designing me and everything else in life. I think this amazing truth and a deeper understanding of who God is can transform people’s hearts and lives.
What is the best part of owning a shop?
I love being able to help people with their ideas. I had listed a set of 3” tall fabric alphabet letters in my shop. One day a lady sent me a conversation inquiring if I could do a special order for her and change the size of the letters. She wanted 6” tall letters spelling her kids’ names on a large dry erase board to give them their own space in the art room. I was so excited to create a new product for her. The finished letters looked fantastic and she was kind enough to share a photo of the art wall in their home featuring her custom order – they looked so good and I was so blessed to turn her idea into a reality!
How did you get your shop name?
There is a play on words in the spelling of my shop name. A /so/journer is a frequent traveler, someone who is always on the move. I do happen to love traveling; however, the idea I had when I chose this word was more metaphorical. It is so easy to become so caught up in the constant motions of life that one forgets how to just sit down, be present, and rest. For me, sewing is like an oasis in the midst of a desert of to-do lists and obligations. It’s a private retreat that I can take anywhere. I want my customers to feel like they are my guests and to /sew/journ with me, even if it is just a brief retreat from their own daily chaos.
What is one way that you keep organized?
This is a humorously timed question for me. I do not like schedules. I never have. They kinda suck all the fun out of being a creative and spontaneous person! For the last couple years, ever since my son was born and I stopped working, I have been living free from schedules and, for the most part, loving that freedom. However, I have now been living in the same town for more than a year (previous to this, I had moved 9 times and lived in 5 different cities in a 4 year span). Being more established in a place means that I have been able to get involved and make commitments to things that didn’t fit into my previous life phase. I have recently been finding myself double booking, or getting everything on my to-do list done, but at the expense of my sleep and my joy in being a SAHM.
Therefore, I have just decided to inflict a schedule on myself so that I have fewer of those days when I just want to stay in bed for fear of the pending exhaustion. I know it is going to require my actual commitment to staying with the schedule until it all becomes second nature and I again feel like I am a free person. I am actually optimistic about this new regime, though. When I wrote down all of the things that I need to do on a recurring basis (laundry, dishes, meals, church commitments, family etc.) and the number of hours in a week, I was actually able to find more pockets of time to schedule sewing and Etsy business management for myself than I had previously been utilizing. I hope that I will use this new season of only having 1 kid who still takes a nap to get organized enough and settled into my new routine to be able to maintain my involvement in my home, my shop and my community even after we have a second or third kid and my son stops napping!
How do you balance family life and work life?
At this point, my son is less than 2 years old and as he is a very active, curious, strong and exceptionally determined little boy, he needs constant supervision during his waking hours. Aaaaaaand we got a puppy and a cat as our family Christmas gifts this year and they are both in the mischievously playful stages. Anyway, when my son is playing by himself, the animals tend to want to chew up any toys or food that my son has carelessly abandoned, and so my attention is really difficult to split when these three are awake. All of that was a very long way to say that I balance family and work life by keeping my work life pretty separate from my life as a mom. I only work on Etsy projects when my son is asleep for his nap or for the night and the puppy is in his kennel.
Having said that, there is more to family life than being a mom; for me there is also my role as wife, a sister, a niece, a cousin, etc. These roles all involve some sort of time, especially being a wife. I think this is the role that is most difficult for me to balance well. My husband has a rotating shift schedule and rotating days off. He works 10hr days 4 days a week and we do enjoy this schedule as it regularly gives us 3 day weekends. When he works a night or a swing shift and doesn’t get off until the early hours of the morning, the hours he is home and awake at the same time as myself and my son are few. Living 2 different life rhythms makes it even harder to find space to date your husband!
I was reminded lately that taking a day off for our family to really rest is crucially important to maintaining the kind of healthy balance we are all striving to discover. This Sabbath day is something that I have let go by the wayside as I rationalized that family life with a young kid, a husband (with a weird work schedule), etc meant that there was never a good time to just leave the laundry unwashed (or any number of other mundane tasks that would otherwise go undone). However, there is never a good time to just stop. If you wait for the moment when everything is done, everyone is well, and life just naturally comes to a break, you will never have that rest that we all inherently need. Resting regularly also has the benefit of making me feel less overwhelmed and desperate for a break, which means I am more productive on the other days of the week.
As I mentioned before, I have written up a schedule for myself which is helping to keep me on task around the house so things don’t pile up to the point of being overwhelming. This weekly routine also has pockets of time that are dedicated times for sewing and Etsy shop upkeep, for my husband, for playing with my son, etc. However, life doesn’t come to us in nice neat 30, 60 or 90 minute blocks of activity. Therefore I also have a couple hours of unscheduled time in each day so that I have time to deal with the unexpected and come back to interrupted tasks.
I have also found that the more I limit my time in front of TV shows or movies (i.e. Netflix, Prime, etc.) the more time I have for doing the things I actually want to do. (Although, I am a multitasking master and folding laundry while watching The Great British Baking Show is something I am totally amenable to!) I am developing my discipline to turn it off following the completion of the task instead of letting it automatically play the next episode.
In a nutshell, I have a schedule and yet I aim to be flexible with it and just accept that not everything can get done every single day and it is ok to have those “unproductive” days when they come. I take intentional rest for myself and encourage my family to take it with me to the greatest extent possible (sometimes you just have to do some dishes because the spoons are all dirty). And most importantly I dedicate each day to God and trust Him to help me appropriately prioritize the things I have on my plate each day.
