I first met Angie last fall when I was trying to get my vintage peacoat repaired. It was in sad, sad shape. The lining was messed up, the sleeves were splitting, the buttonholes were in a very bad state, one of the buttons was glued on. Let’s not even discuss the pockets. We live in Homedale and I really wanted to save this peacoat. I picked it up for $50 at The Youth Ranch in Caldwell and wore it all the time during cold weather. I wore it so much, I thought it was probably beyond help. I took it to Angie. About a month later it was as good as new, in fact, it was better!

Angie saved the coat and the original label that went with the coat. She has fixed dresses, skirts, and shirts for me that I wear on stage during our performances. I thought some of these items were lost and should just go to the Youth Ranch. Like magic, she fixed them, fitted them, and I never once had to take off my clothes and take a fitting. It’s like she can gauge your size just by looking at you and your build.

Angie (Angela) Hopkins has lived in the Treasure Valley in Idaho for most of her life. It is the state that she loves the most. She is devoted to education and family and has 13 grandchildren. She received a BBA (Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration) and then decided to start her own business.

Her maternal family is long in the tooth with scenic design, tailoring, design, and sewing, so it was only natural for Angie to pick up the needle, so to speak. She decided to follow the family line and be the best tailor/seamstress she could, and she has succeeded. The quilt work she does is amazing. My grandmother spent hours making quilts for all of her grandchildren out of scrap material. She sewed it all by hand and Angie carries on the tradition, but with a sewing machine. This Folk Art tradition has been lost to many people.

I could go on and on about Angie. She is amazingly talented, has the patience to deal with an eccentric hippy musician/artist, and does her work with all care, she envisions the project before she even starts, and she is a very warm and loving person. You can tell by the first time that you meet her. She loves creating beautiful and fun gifts for her grandchildren, just like my grandmother did. I really like her and hope she will get out to one of the Farmers’ Markets to share her art.

Angie works with some of the most difficult fabrics including silk and leather, and she does a great job! She lives in Homedale on the outskirts, but it is a pleasant drive. Use your GPS and enjoy the drive. It’s calming, and when you walk away with your garments or whatever it is you want her to make or fix, you walk away with a smile! Her prices are great, and I always leave a tip, whatever I can afford at the time. It’s well worth it!

Please call ahead to set an appointment.

Angela Hopkins

4703 Clapier Lane

Homedale, Idaho

The Ideal Sew Shop

208-859-0160

I don’t know how I did it, but I caught the full moon over Indian Creek with the Christmas lights. I just thought it was the most amazing thing! I didn’t know it until I got home and put the pics on my computer, but there it was! Merry Christmas to me! Anyway, if you have never been to Indian Creek River and visited the Christmas Lights, you don’t know what you’re missing.

It’s the most beautiful walk you will ever take! I love all the lights and the people. The lights go on forever it seems like. By the time we got back in the truck my hands were frozen from holding the camera and taking pics. I thought my fingers and hands were never going to thaw out! So here are some of my favorite pics.

She’s endearing, intelligent, driven, and fascinating! She has an outstanding sense of humor about life and the funny things that can happen from day-to-day as well as over a lifetime. Niccole and Luke, her husband, have five children. Four are girls, of which two of the children are twins, and one is a boy. When it comes to understanding children, she has a house full of children to garner stories from. Not only that, but she raised her five siblings when they were growing up, and she did it from around the age of 14. She has always been the backbone and strength of keeping the family together, running the household, and keeping herself on track to boot. One can’t help but be amazed by her!

She always has a positive spin on everything. Her books started as a whim. She wrote this cute story, “Juniper Jade and the Dreadful Dare”, and when Mike was wandering around the market, he found Niccole’s booth. She shared her latest book with my husband, and he bought it. That is the last thing I expected him to walk back to my booth with. In his hand, he had a Trump shirt, Trump hat, and “Juniper Jade & The Dreadful Dare.” I am looking at him, and I am like, “What is up with you?” It was bizarre, my husband just walked up with political items and a children’s book. It was pretty cool because I found my next subject for The Idaho Gazette.

What blows me away is how many parallels we have in our life. Her mom bailed out on her, and her dad was pretty much her fixture in life, but got sick and passed. We won’t go into the reasons why her mom faded out of her life. It’s irrelevant at this point. She has succeeded, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

She has found more success selling in person than selling online. We have both tried Etsy and other websites that tout selling, and they were a fail. It is so much better to sell at the Farmer’s Market. She can sell to the child and the adult. Her stories, while simplified for children’s purposes, are easily read by adults as well. My husband bought one!

She home schools her children, which is amazing to me! I would never have that kind of patience. I have one child, and she has five! I don’t know how she does it. Her fun sense of humor never quits! For date night, she and her best friend took paper cutouts on a date night. How funny is that? I have done some really strange things in my life, but that is funny!

She is amazing to me because she had, much like I did, a lonely life. She was left in charge of her siblings from about the age of eight, and it never really stopped. Her dad got sick, and she had to take everything and everyone under her wing. It’s difficult when you have to live that way. I didn’t have siblings. I had two older brothers that were pretty much non-existent from the time that I was nine on. I was left on my own to figure things out. Niccole, on the other hand, had to try to make sure they had food and could keep warm.

Her children are endearing and warm. All of her kids are wonderful. Her homeschooling methods are amazing! She let’s her kids have free reign once they are finished with their lessons. They dissected a worm last week, and one of the kids almost passed out, but their son thought it was awesome! I am sure, if she’s anything like me, she’s got one eye on the window watching her children.

They focus on the three R’s, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. They allow their children to pick and choose where they want to focus on science and they are doing labs. She is teaching children from ages twelve to four, so chances are they are advanced beyond most school levels at your typical elementary school, junior high, and high school. She is teaching them life.

She had her first daughter, a girl, and then twin girls twenty-three months apart! She didn’t know how she was going to do it. She must have felt overwhelmed. But, Niccole handled it like a champ! She has an amazing family. She thought it was going to be like Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”.

Luke and Niccole started dating when she was 19. They firmly believe that if you put the time in with your children, whether private schooled, public schooled, it shows. I looked at the cost of public education as opposed to homeschooling. Public schooling comes out at a $10,000 bill, and homeschooling comes in around $3,000. But, you have to have infinite patience to homeschool your children. They are an adorable couple.

With homeschooling, they have more options about the hours that they choose to teach their children. Luke works nights, and that’s the way it is going to be, but Niccole found that when she worked at a preschool, the children that thrive are the ones who see their parents on a day-to-day basis. Because she had to raise herself and her siblings, she didn’t want that for her children. She wanted stability, normalcy, a comfortable surrounding.

She wants to connect with children in a meaningful way, on a level that they can understand. She wants her children to stay close and not meander apart like so many siblings do. She wants them to have each other to hold onto and get strength from, so they don’t feel alone. I can understand that because beyond my husband and daughter, I really have no one. Feeling alone is the worst feeling in the world. She is doing a great job with her kids, and it shows in the children’s stories she writes.

I could go on forever, but I don’t need to tell you that Niccole is a wonderful writer, and her “Joy Book Series” is a lot of fun! She reminds me of “Encyclopedia Brown” by Donald J Sobol. I absolutely love the Desert Horned Lizard in the picture, when I lived in New Mexico we called these Horny Toads!

I love dogs! They make your world go around, and they are the best friends you could ever want to have. Sophie is one of two large Pugs that live here at Snake River Resort. Their owners are great people, and poor Doug was a rescue. It took me a year or better to make friends with him. He and Sophie can hardly stay away from our place now!

I have many more cute dog pics. These are just some of my favorites, they make me happy and make me feel like the world actually has hope.