BITTY ONES - a whimsical series of monthly designs!

Let's move onto my Bitty Ones monthly series of designs that offers one new design for each month of the year. The last 3 designs were recently released and again, feel free to have your LNS store order them in for you or order them directly through me at picklebarreldesigns@yahoo.com! They retail for $6.00/each - don't you just love a nice price break away from the usual $8.00 a pattern?!! Be sure to let your stitching friends know how adorable these easy finish designs are - you can easily have one done in a week if you just stitch in the evening and on the weekends and not even every day!

Scarecrow Silhouette design!

Who doesn't like a great Fall design like this "Scarecrow Silhouette" pattern?!!! The leaves are falling, the air is crisp and you can smell woodsmoke in the air. I do believe this is my favorite time of the year, yes indeed! This beauty can be ordered through your LNS or directly from me at picklebarreldesigns@yahoo.com. I have to apologize to everyone as I try and get all of my social media sites figured out, updated and with brand new content going forward. While it has been quite the exercise in learning new things, I am almost there and will have everything completed by Christmas at the very latest. This blog on Blogger has caused me so many headaches over the past year since any Apple products won't work with it now as Blogger has not updated their site to work with IOS operating software which of course is what Apple products run on. Arghhhhhhhh. Anyway, feel free to start checking me out on: Facebook: Pickle Barrel Designs @picklebarreldesigns. Instagram: Pickle Barrel Designs. Word Press Blog: picklebarreldesigns.wordpress.com. I will do my best for the next couple of months to update both here and on Word Press with any new designs coming out so please be sure to check back often as I have so many new designs to share with you that I am excited about. Until then, Happy Stitching! Nancy xoxo

NEW! "Mini Me FEBRUARY"!

Here is the new February "Mini Me" design coming out in early March! For the first time since I started designing as Pickle Barrel Designs I won't be sending any new designs to Nashville Market and it just feels crazy. I have to say that the last 6 months have been a whirlwind of things diverting my attention from designing back to family basics. In September my husband literally went blind overnight in one eye - then they discovered more heart problems which turned into a stroke at the start of 2017, Doctors attempted surgery on him but discovered a blood clot sitting on his heart so now we sit and wait for the clot to dissolve before re attempting the surgery on his heart. Combine that with keeping schedules straight for our two kiddos and trust me when I say my hands have been so full over this time. So hopefully as 2017 really gets going I will be able to design more patterns to share with all of you. My goal this year is to try and design most of my new designs so that they fit into "off the shelf" frames like 4x6 or 5x7 or 8x10 frames - easier for everyone stitching them to save a little money! Oh and did I mention it is February in the dead of winter here in North Dakota and yet it was 50 degrees above yesterday and today!!!! How does that even happen - but I will gladly take it!

NEW! "Mini Me JANUARY"

As promised here is a sneak peek of my new, upcoming monthly series called "Mini Me JANUARY"!

Fingers crossed this post works!

Oh. My. Goodness. I swear if this post doesn't easily work tonight then I am going to find myself a new blog engine and that will be it. Nothing but problem after problem with how Blogger runs SOB! I have been working on a monthly series of 12 fun designs - and stitched January through September - just stitching the October design at the moment and need to design November and December! I promise you will love them and I will post some sneak peeks shortly! That is as long as they will load on Blogger. Thank you for sticking with me as I try and sort this Blogger business out. The good news is my web guru is almost finished updating my website and as soon as it is ready I will bring a Facebook page up to connect with the website! Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow! ❤❤❤

Baby it's cold outside!

It has been crazy cold here for a week and we had temps all the way down to MINUS 46 F last Friday morning - eeeeek! So I have stayed inside and designed the first 3 months of a new monthly design that I will release at Nashville Market this year - I am almost finished stitching the design for January and I know you will love the designs. I'll try and post a teaser photo later this week.  In the meantime I am going to post more delightfully warm photos from December's vacation to keep everyone warm!!!

App problems updating here! Hot Weather! Weddings!

First off it has been far too long since I last posted - sorry except to say that everyday life got in the way! We had lots of events going on at school for holiday themed events that needed Mom volunteers - check!  Packing for 4 people to go away for 11 days...check! Renewing your wedding vows after originally getting married at City Hall in a black business suit on your lunch hour?...check!

Off to the Bahamas we went - enjoyed our favorite resort on Paradise Island (Atlantis) and renewed our wedding vows with our 2 kiddos being part of it - a great experience indeed and long overdue.  The day we arrived there was a temperature difference of 110 degrees F from the time we got up in Fargo to the time we went to sleep in the Bahamas 😳😱! We spent time at the beach, the pool, enjoying the water park at Atlantis and really just relaxing a lot and enjoying each other's company - mission accomplished!  I will share some of the sights of the Bahamas and promise that I have some terrific plans for new designs coming out this year from Pickle Barrel Designs so keep checking in for updates! 

Happy New Year! 🤗

February 2017 issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine!

I am very excited to share with everyone that I have two designs in the brand new issue of Just Cross Stitch in the February 2010 issue!  When you see the "Love is a Journey" just know that I stitched that design 3 separate times until I was 100% happy with the colors working together - I think it turned out great!

I am still not able to post blog updates using my iPhone and it continues to make me crazy - so if I am slow to update my blog that is why! I am finally having my website updated for the new year and am excited to get it back up and running and most importantly UPDATED!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

From our home to your's I wish everyone a great Thanksgiving today. I don't know about you, but I am so thankful for my family and of course each and every one of you - celebrate!

Blog posting woes and a sneak peek!

Something good and something bad!  First off I did the IOS update for my iPhone a couple of weeks ago and apparently the fine folks at Blogger haven't released their compatible Blogger update - sigh - so every time I try and post to my blog via cell phone it lets me write everything and as soon as I click "post to blog" my new blog posts vanishes - whoooosh and GONE! 😳😰. So please be patient with me while I wait for Blogger to offer their update.

Then the good news is I am almost finished a lovely Christmas design - sneak peek below - can you believe Christmas is only about 6 1/2 weeks away - and don't get me started on Thanksgiving!!! I love my Black Friday shopping too!

Happy Stitching and I hope you are all enjoying the great weather that we are currently - Nov. 5th and 70 degrees... I'll take it!

Take a walk down my "Haunted Halloween Hallway"!

Both of our kiddos are in elementary school and what is a Mom to do when she goes to a PTA meeting to hear they won't be doing a Haunted Hallway this year because it is too much work and no one is willing to give the time up to do it - not to mention that the Mom who organized it last year switched schools for this school year and ALL of the supplies personally belonged to her!

Ahhhhh so of course my hand shot up in the air and I offered to do it! EEK, perhaps I had a lack of oxygen to my brain at that very moment because really....what the heck was I thinking!!!! Three weeks later, 2 dry run throughs set up in our garage, a TON of supplies and approximately 5,321 "Mom" hours later (with the amazing help of my sister Karen!), we did that Haunted Hallway on Thursday night. It was a great hit and note to self...never use leaves as decor inside of a carpeted school!!!!

Happy Halloween from my house to your house and of course happy stitching!

Sullivan's Thread Packs - check it out!

I am doing some work with Sullivan's Threads in the next year and just received these seasonal thread collections - aren't they so cool! I love that you can have the thread color palettes by season already chosen and you don't have to try and figure out what goes together!

New Hanukkah treat bag design featured in "Just Cross Stitch"!

In the brand new December 2016 issue of Just Cross Stitch I have a Hanukkah treat bag featured - it turned out so cute that I couldn't wait to share it with you!

Hiking into Autumn and plenty of stitching

I know I've been slow in posting to my blog recently and have to say that it was a combination of getting designs ready that are appearing in upcoming print publications as well as stitching my new Christmas designs - whoohoooo - there are some good ones coming out, I promise it will be worth the wait!

In other news I went hiking today with the kiddos at Buffalo River State Park in Minnesota and enjoyed the changing colors of Autumn. Here's the worst story ever - my sister came along with us and is a huge photography fiend and brought her fancy camera along with various specialty lenses - walked the trails with us capturing the scenes around us then realized at the end that her camera didn't have an SD memory card in her camera and poof - no pictures at all - everything she so carefully framed out and snapped didn't exist...EEEEK! 🙀😱😩😤😰

I will post a bunch of the photos that I took today though!