For us Musers one of the places we have drawn a lot of inspiration from over the years is Yosemite National Park. It is one of my personal favorites as far as National Parks go, and I use to only live about 3 hours away! My mom and I went when I was pregnant with my first child, and it started a bit of a tradition for us to go back!

We visited in November and expected to find some fall foliage but apparently we were a bit late in the season. It was a tad cold, but luckily I had my own built in heater keeping me warm. We went again in October 2011 when Gabbie (my first little) was about a year and a half. This time around it was actually really warm and we saw some fall foliage.

Then in 2012 we all designed some of our first patterns with Yosemite as our inspiration and it started our very first collection. We turned a bunch of our original designs into a book! Enter our Yosemite Collection Book! It has 9 different critter faces inspired by real animals you will find in the park! A raccoon, cougar, snowshoe hare, owl, butterfly, CA quail, pika, bobcat, and fox. I even gave them names based on places in the park.

We brought tons of our samples with us, and rode bikes all over the park taking pictures of our fun projects all over Yosemite Valley! Of course we had my cute little daughter with us in the bike trailer and we put her in a bunch of the pictures to make them even cuter!!

Then in 2013 I moved from San Jose, CA to where I am now in Castle Rock, CO. I knew it would be hard to visit the park as often as I use to, so my mom and I went back in March of 2013 when I was pregnant with my second baby. This time around it was a bit rainy and cold, but still beautiful. We just had to get one last trip in right before I moved! 

Then in 2014 we revamped our cover of the Yosemite Book and renamed it: Through the Woods, and remade all the samples in new fabrics.

So naturally we had to make a trip back to the park to photograph all the new samples. In October of that year we flew back to California and drove out to Yosemite, and I had 2 cute kids to tote around with us this time!

We were suppose to go back this last October and take all 3 of my kiddos for the first time, but we backed out at the last minute due to a snow storm! We postponed until Fall 2018, so stay tuned for our next trip end of this year!!!

If you don’t have our Yosemite Book yet, you should! hahaha 😉 But really, it’s one of our favorites and you can use the 9 cute critter faces for so many more projects than even just the 8 we did in the book! If you are interested in our book check it out here:  

If you’ve never been to Yosemite National Park, you should definitely add it to your bucket list; in the mean time, or if you’ve already been and love it as much as we do, we hope our Yosemite Collection Book will help fuel your love for this beautiful natural wonder!