Welcome to "The Girl's Gone Crafty!" blog about all things, well, crafty, of course! My name is Raquel, owner of Calico Craft Designs, and lover of all things Craft. I hope that you too will join me on my journey to finishing one more UFO (unfinished object), stitching for charity, and just learning more about the wonderful crafts available out there.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

The Big Move is Over!!!

We are officially moved and now reside in beautiful Charleston, SC!!!  We are now ready to begin the next chapter in our lives.  Our moving day was Friday, 1/23/15.  The movers we used did it all in one day.  They packed us up in Atlanta during the morning, drove the 5 1/2 hours to Charleston that afternoon, and unpacked us that evening.  What a long day!  The weather was absolutely horrible for moving.  It rained from the time we started in Georgia until we went to bed in South Carolina that night.  It was still raining the next morning and part of our parking lot was flooded.  Lowcountry.  I see why they call it that now!  I'm actually surprised that more of our stuff didn't get damaged or wet but the movers really did a great job of working quickly and covering everything up.  There is absolutely no way that we could have done this without them.  The peace of mind was well worth the cost.

The furbabies were quite a bit stressed and wigged out on moving day but they are adapting very quickly.  The cats have especially done well.  They were really scared on Friday but by Saturday evening, they acted as if they owned the place!  The dogs are taking a bit longer, still trying to establish some type of routine.  We all are working on getting used to a much smaller place and having no back yard but we are doing well.  Boxes are slowly being unpacked and we are figuring out what is around our area.  Hubby and I haven't done much site-seeing yet but we did go to Folly Beach today because the weather was so beautiful.  Here it is February 1st and it's 67 degrees and sunny outside!  Gorgeous!  This was Max and Casey's very first visit to the beach/ocean.  I think they enjoyed their trip and wore themselves out!





Tuesday, January 20, 2015

TUSAL 2015! January Update

Once again, I am joining the TUSAL Challenge!  This year I decided to add my ORTs to a Ball Mason jar instead of my usual small wine glass.  Since we are moving in only a few days (three days actually), I haven't done much cross-stitching in the last month and now almost all of my craft stuff is packed up, ready to head to Charleston.



The next posting is due February 18, 2015.  I better get stitching again soon after our move or my jar will be empty!  

If you're not sure what the heck a "TUSAL" or "ORT" is, be sure to check out the link to the TUSAL challenge hosted by Daffycat by clicking on the link on the main blog page. 

The New Moon dates for 2015 are:


January 20
February 18
March 20
April 18
May 18
June 16
July 16
August 14
September 13
October 13
November 11
December 11




Happy Stitching!

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Christmas Fun and a Happy New Year

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2015!  Wow.  2015.  Hard to believe.

Casey, ready for her close-up
Christmas this year was spent in North Carolina with both my family and my husband's family.  It was great to see them both within a day of each other.  Usually, it's two separate weeks.  We normally spend Christmas with one family and visit the other in January.  This year, it worked out so that we saw both families in the same visit and it was great!  Everyone seemed to really love their gifts, including the fabric Christmas ornaments that I made.  But most importantly was getting to spend time with each other.  Being in Georgia for the last 14.5 years has limited our time with both families.  This is one reason why we are looking forward to our move to Charleston; we will be able to see everyone on a more frequent basis.

And speaking of the new year, earlier today we celebrated Christmas with our furbabies who were unable to go with us to NC for our family holiday celebration.  We decided to wait and do a separate celebration with them on New Year's Day.  They all seemed to enjoy opening gifts (with a little help from the humans) and getting new toys and treats.  I've included a few pics of them enjoying the morning.

I hope that you also had a wonderful holiday!

Max and Casey getting new toys

Sissy and Trundle checking out the stockings

Trundle has claimed his stocking of toys


Sissy decided it was nap time

Max, sporting his new bandanna and waiting for a treat

Pip, watching everyone and investigating the gifts

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Happy Holidays!!!

Happy Holidays everyone!  I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season!

It's become an expected family tradition for me to make at least one handmade item for the ladies in my family (and sometimes the men too) for Christmas in addition to the usual store-bought items.  This year I decided to make fabric Christmas ornaments as seen in an earlier blog post.  I really enjoyed picking out the various fabrics and even had a fabric swap with one of my friends, Kelley, who is also making a few for the holidays.  I ended up making almost twenty ornaments!  Boy, were my fingers sore from all those pins!  Even with a thimble.  Ha ha ha!  But they were a joy to make and I thought I'd share a few with you to celebrate the holiday season.  I will definitely have to make a few more just for my tree next year!  I do hope that everyone will love them when they open their gifts tomorrow.






Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Update on Our Impending Move

Exciting news!  My hubby and I have finally found a place in Charleston, SC that we are happy with and is within our budget.  We're going to be living in a condo about 25 minutes from Folly Beach and downtown Charleston.  It will be much smaller than what we are used to and we'll definitely have to downsize and get rid of a lot of stuff.  This is, however, a good time to go through my craft stash and clean it out!  

We will be moving near the end of January 2015.  We have already packed a few things but now we have only about 5-6 weeks to go and we have soooo much to do.  It looks like our moving day will be around January 24th or so.  We have to get the dates finalized and get this house packed up quickly.  We'll be living among boxes for much of our last weeks here in Georgia.  Our friends are happy for us but not so happy at the same time.  We will definitely, definitely miss them but I hope we can visit often.  Now that we have a tentative date, our move seems more "real".  These next few weeks will be difficult and I probably won't have a lot of time to post many new messages but I'll try to pop in around the holidays if I can.  Now...back to packing!!!