Hopscotch Designs

… and more nice words….

“I hope you enjoy the photos of Cauley as much as we enjoy your dresses!  We get compliments every time she wears one of them.

Thanks!
Kit”

“Hi Michelle. Well, I couldn’t just send one picture, so you’ll have to pick. I love hopscotch designs and every time my little girls are wearing one of their many dresses, I always receive so many wonderful compliments. Thanks!!

Thank you all for sharing your great candids!  Keep ‘em coming and receive a $25 gift certificate as a thank you.  (See below for details.)

Happy 8th Anniversary . . . to Us ! ! !

To Celebrate We’re Giving Away 50 $25 Gift Certificates.

Just send us a photo of your cutie pie in their favorite Hopscotch
Designs creation and we’ll post them on the website and send you a
$25 Gift Certificate.

Gift Certificates available to the first 50 people who email a photo
of their child wearing a Hopscotch Designs creation to
hopscotchdesigns@yahoo.com  through May 31, 2010.

One certificate per household.

Sending a photo authorizes Hopscotch Designs to post the photo in the
blog section of the website. Gift certificates valid 6/1/10 - 6/30/10.

Too Cute In Her Charlotte Dress!

Send us photos of your cutie pies in their favorite Hopscotch Designs creations and we’ll post them here.

Yeah!

The Jane Dress in Cranberry for Fall 2010

My 9 year old daughter Gracie is a girl of many talents… or maybe just interests….  She loves horseback riding, painting - really art of any kind, soccer, reading, dancing, making up songs …. the list goes on and on.  A few of these interests she does seem to have a talent for.  One of those is art.  When she grows up she wants to be an artist and art teacher who rides horses on the weekends.  So, this summer she asked if she could teach some art classes for her friends… she thinks one a week would be good… hmmmmm… I think one period…. we settle on two and invite 20 of her closest friends. 

We just had the second class and it turned out great!  Birdhouse painting 101 was a huge success.  You should gather all your kids and their friends and go for it.  Seriously, Michaels has these adorable little wooden birdhouses for $1 each!  Look how cute they turned out!

In fact I tried to keep them all… but the kids wanted to take home their works of art.  So, I’m off to Michaels to buy a couple dozen more so my back fence can always look this cute!

We’re off to Vegas for the tradeshows and couldn’t resist giving you all a sneak peak at what’s in store for Spring 2010.

A little bit about our inspiration:

Who hasn’t fantasized about running away to live with gypsies?

Late nights by the campfire, guitars playing, children dancing, songs being sung, fireflies flittering… and the bright, beautiful, swirling skirts of the gypsies.

Our Spring 2010 line is inspired by the wonderful vibrant colors of the gypsy campfire.  As always, we add our special Hopscotch twist and combine the gypsy spirit with a vintage silhouette.

Hope you love it as much as we do.

Let us know what you think!

So, I woke up this morning with a niggling thought in the back of my head that something cool just happened that I should blog about.  Hmmmmm….. what could it be…. back to school shopping?… no… inspecting orders?…  no… Oh right, I played poker with Phil Hellmuth and Chau Xiang! 

Wait, no I didn’t!  Hmmmm…  That’s right, I had a dream, that was so real, I mean real, real, like I remember every detail real, that I played poker with poker superstars Phil Hellmuth and Chau Xiang.  See, I was playing in this tournament and ended up at a table with Phil and Chau (we’re on a first name basis now, you see) and all three of us ended up going out in the same hand so, we decided to start a side game.  I was really nervous because I’m an amatuer and they’re major pros and how am I possibly going to play against them… for cash!  And I really wanted to take a photo with them but didn’t want to be the goofy stalker fan.  Arg!  It was all so exciting and stressful!  …. and then… damn, it was only a dream!

How good do we look together?

I’ve never come across a bigger misnomer… Clearlake is decidedly, unequivocally, inarguably not clear.  I mean not at all!  It’s green!  Bright, mossy, monstery, can’t see the bottom green! 

So much so that last year when we went up for a family vacation I didn’t get in the lake once all week.  This year the kids conned me in to going in “just one time”.  Being me, I ran full speed (about 1 mile/hour) off the end of the deck and did a canonball!  Splash!  and hit the bottom… this year Clearlake is not only not clear but it’s quite shallow.  Ah well.  Once in, it is a little creepy with all the muck floating around and the bottom feeling like moss filled sponges.  However, it’s kind of nice!  I mean if you don’t touch the bottom, which I managed to do by staying out somewhat far and treading water for the entire 30 minutes I was in (and occasionaly hanging onto my husband!)  And it was really neat that the top 18 inches or so of water are about 85 degrees and then at the 18 inch mark it immediately drops to 65 degrees.  It feels great!  And you can mix the water up with your hands and have the cold swirling around you with the hot!  Very fun! … at least for about 30 minutes… then it’s a disinfecting shower and a giant glass of wine!  You sure can’t beat the view!

Speaking of wine… Clearlake is surrounded by wineries.  So, when you’re not busy disinfecting from your last swim you can go winetasting.  It’s no Sonoma (or Napa for you snobs) but it’s actually pretty good and the wine is way cheaper.  They’re not so snobby here about wine having to be $40 a bottle if it’s good.  In fact, on Sunday during their Wine Adventure (food and wine pairings at all the wineries) there were some amazing case deals!

So check out Clearlake some time.  Take a swim (watch out for the fish!), a shower and have a glass of delicious local wine!

So what happens when your hobby becomes your business?…  You find a new hobby of course!

I still love to sew but… it’s work… fun work! but work!!!!  So, Jenn and I came up with the bright idea to take an upholstry class!  I mean we have so much free time, why not tie up 4 hours every Thursday night?  Here’s how it works - we go to estate sales on Fridays (oh, hmmmm, that’s a hobby too I guess… well no one says you can’t have more than one hobby) and sometimes we come across great chairs dirt cheap.  Sometimes we even are just driving along and find them on the side of the road!!!!  How could anyone throw away a perfectly adorable vintage chair!  If nothing else you can just sit it on your patio to look at.

Anyway, so we’d both started to accumulate a certain number of chairs that our husband wouldn’t let in the house due to their supposed stated of disrepair.  Then - tada! - we remember hearing about this great upholstry class offered through the local adult ed college.  We sign right up.  Show up on night one with our ragged chairs and high hopes.  Supremely confident that with our finely honed sewing skills we’re going to tear it up in class.  Tony, the instructor, gives us tutorial on the industrial machines.  Yikes!  You could lose a finger on those.  Well, we’ll just do the machine sewing part at home.  Okay.  “So, Tony,” we ask brimming with confidence “how many classes do you think it will take us to re-upholster our chairs?” ……  What!  At least two sessions?  That’s 20 classes!  Hmmmmm.  On the way home that first night Jenn and I regroup and regain our confidence.  Tony’s never seen the likes of us.  We will rock these chairs out in one session of classes.  No problem!????????

Hmmmmm.  One year later - SUCCESS!!!!

Isn’t she pretty!  I even popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate her completion!

So, we weren’t a fast as we thought we’d be and sewing skills don’t necessarily translate to upholstry skills and Thursday nights have a surprising number of school and family activity conflicts.  But we loved it!

Here’s the next project I have lined up. 

A great old chair from my husband’s Uncle’s house and I’m re-upholstering it in vintage ties!  That can’t be too hard can it?

I’ll let you know in a year!

LOL