S hirley grew up in St. Petersburg, graduated from Northeast High School and is a proud University of Florida alumnus. During the college football season you can frequently hear Shirley cheering on her Gators. Shirley married Dave, her high school sweetheart and his job had them moving to Houston, Texas where they spent many years building their family. Missing Florida and family, the DeGroots packed a moving truck with lots of boxes, two cats and three kids and have made St. Petersburg home since 1990.

In Houston family life is what kept Shirley busy. She was an active mom of three children always making time to bake for school functions, throw fun birthday parties and teach crafts to church children each year for Vacation Bible School. Besides all that she was one of those moms who knew how to sew and made a lot of her children’s clothes. Her love of sewing started when her Grandmother put a needle in her hand and helped her sew her first skirt. From then on she was hooked!

Besides children’s clothes, she has made aprons, her own prom dress, her bridesmaid dresses and even a stuffed zebra! As a stay-at-home mom Shirley started her own home-based business designing and sewing appliques on shirts and baby items called Needle Little Love. She sold her adorable products direct to consumers and at local craft shows. It didn’t take much for Shirley’s passion to turn to the beautiful art of smocking. Learning this intricate sewing technique she added fantastic embellishments to clothing and household items.

Once back in St. Petersburg she found out that like most lost arts, smocking supplies were hard to find in local stores. A mutual friend of Shirley’s and Jill’s introduced them and they found that they both shared a love of smocking. A quick friendship began and business began not soon after! Jill and Shirley opened Whim-Sew-Doodle a smocking supply store in the back room of Beach Drive Papery. After Jill introduced rubber stamping and scrapbooking supplies to the store Shirley found a whole new creative outlet. “What could be better” she thought, “than crafting with paper and photos of my kids?” Slowly her craft closet changed from material to paper, from thread to stickers and from patterns to page layouts. As the store changed so did Shirley’s role. Since her degree was in finance she gravitated to running the financial end of the business.

Through the years Shirley has seen many types of scrapbooking products come and go and she is a self-described “craft collector” getting to sample many of the products we get in the store. Her style is clean and simple with a hint of altered design elements and besides scrapbooking Shirley is really into card making and creating yearly family calendars. It seems that creativity is a family gene that Shirley has passed on to her children. Kristen is getting her degree in Studio Art at USF, also works at Whim So Doodle and a web design firm. Jeff is working for a contractor doing home remodeling and additions. Lisa is a current student at St. Pete High, works at The Doodle and wants to go into photography. When not balancing the books at The Doodle you will find Shirley kicking back at home enjoying a glass of wine, traveling to some major hot spots including an annual mother/daughter weekend fling in New York City or lounging on the beach working on that fabulous tan.
Life is wonderful when you get paid to do what you love in a fun place with great people!!