My September theme started with a quote (as it so often does).  Every year I have a "word of the year" and for 2025 that word is Still. Every month, I have a quote in my journal that incorporates my word of the year. The quote I chose for September is:
"Serenity is knowing that even your worst shot is still pretty good."


This one really spoke to me because one of my goals for the year was to release a new pattern on September 1. While I did technically do this, (Yay! My tombstone pattern expansion pack is now available!) I did not technically do everything that I wanted to in order to prep for launching this pattern. Ideally, I would’ve had more examples sewn up and more photos and more videos ready to share before releasing it. But nothing’s perfect, I can’t let perfect be the enemy of good or whatever that saying is. And I’m feeling that although this pattern release is not everything that I wanted it to be, it is, in fact, "pretty good" enough.


So long story short, that is why I chose this quote for September. But as soon as I settled on the quote and began to think about how to incorporate it into a theme, I realized that I cannot read the word "serenity" without thinking about the movie Serenity and the TV show Firefly. If you know, you know.

The veil is thinning, the nights are growing longer, and Halloween is creeping closer… which makes it the perfect time to raise your stitching from the dead.
You may remember the original Tombstone Pillow Pattern—a creepy-cute sewing project that has become one of my top seasonal sellers. This year, I couldn’t resist adding even more magic to it. So I conjured up something new: the Tombstone Pillow Expansion Pack.

My goal for my August bullet journal layouts was to do them all in one sitting. I created them while traveling out of the country, and wanted to keep them low key. So, simple was the name of the game, and that included limiting the number of pens I used too. I originally tried to only pick one marker color. But ended up letting myself use two markers, as well as my black pen.
​

I've been experimenting lately with my monthly cover pages. I've realized that a purely decorative spread is one that I don't turn back to very often, which is a shame when I put a lot of artistic effort into it. So this moth, I decided to spread out the "cover spread" pages to ensure that my decorations are incorporated into my more useful spreads. Above, you can see that my beachy July ocean spread also has my aims page in the water, which is something that I look back at often throughout the month.
​

When I was pregnant with my second, a friend told me not to expect all my plants to survive the newborn stage. I would be sleep deprived and also have a very demanding new housemate, and that would leave little to no time to worry about all my plantlings. I didn't have any plants when I was pregnant with my first, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Now that my daughter is past the one year mark, I believe I am out of the woods in the realm of caretaking overwhelm. Therefore, my quote for the month was appropriately: "Almost all my plants are still alive". 
​

Let's take a look at my May 2025 planner spreads.
If you'd rather watch or listen to a video about these pages, skip to the bottom for a link to my youtube video. It features a time-lapse of me actually creating it, and also showing you some of the pages in better detail, as well as giving a voiceover to explain some of my choices.
​
But, for those of you who would rather read (or skim), let's get started.
​

​I've always been a pen and paper kind of gal. Packing lists, and to do lists, shopping lists, paper calendars, journals... all of it. I grew up with my mom using one of those giant monthly wall calendars in the kitchen, as well as a daily list of what needed to happen, written out each morning on a fresh piece of notebook paper. So it was a natural progression for me to continue this paper planning into my own life.  And as my life became more complicated with business and kids and partner, I’ve gravitated towards using a bullet journal. ​

A few weeks ago, my husband Eddie and I went to Gothenburg Sweden. Now, this trip wasn’t specifically for fabric shopping… but leave me to my own devices in a new city and fabric shopping is ultimately what you’re going to get. 

​So, in case you happen to find yourself in a similar situation (ie your spouse has a work conference in Gothenburg and you have several hours or days to fabric shop unhindered by someone else’s boredom in said shops…) then here are a few places that I recommend visiting.

Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough colorful clothing in my life. This is my solution to that problem. The instant I saw the cover photo for the MakeItYours The Label Dungarees, I knew I wanted it in my closet. And just by happenstance, a customer donated about a yard and a half of pink corduroy that she didn't want to throw out. Score!