Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great, relaxing day. I did most of my cooking on Wednesday, so until the last hour of the turkey cooking, I got to rest all day long and hang out with the kids. :) The kids made the table decorations, little pilgrims & native americans around the table and cute little colored ring napkins, complete with Savannah drawing a "personal" picture of each person & placing it on their plates. We laid two large strips of craft paper out with crayons ... it made the kids last at least 15 minutes, they still didn't eat much, but it didn't feel like wasted effort at least! And of course the funniest part was Savannah coming upstairs, dressed "fancy" for her favorite day of the year ... and insisting that we all dress up for her too, it was actually really fun being "fancy" together too. :)
My hubs is working today, so I have LOTS of sewing/project finishing on my agenda for the day. Have a nice weekend! :)

Still Kickin'

Tonight a friend mentioned that I keep getting sick because I'm not sleeping and resting at all the last month or so ... she may be right. After losing my voice for almost a week, being healthy for four days and then catching the next cold from the boys ... I've realized I have to slow down a bit. And it's been nice ... not much to report because of it ... but nice. :) I did however finally make a use for the random Christmas ornaments I picked up in January 2010 ... I was inspired by this Pottery Barn wreath. And for $5 (the cost of the wreath form from Hobby Lobby), I was able to hot glue the ornaments onto the wreath ... and I absolutely LOVE IT! :) I actually had enough ornaments to make three more wreaths (and cleared out a box and a half of my closet in the process!) ... So, I made a fun afternoon craft project of it with a gal from church and another gal is planning on coming over (as soon as she has "free time") to make hers as well ... I know I shouldn't skip over Thanksgiving, but the twinkle lights and Christmas colors are so much more fun!
Think about how easy it would be to make this wreath with the random ornaments you already have at home???Admit it, you want one too now! :)

4th of July Headbands

We had an awesome fourth of July! I wanted to make some flowers for the girls & my hair ... and also for our friends' girls that we met up there! So I stayed up until 1 am burning the edges of the flowers ... which was especially painful waking up at 6 am (with 3 feedings in between) for the parade. But! It was so worth it to see all the girls with their flowers on their heads! I got the tutorial from here. The flowers have six layers, I did layers 3-6 for my headband, 4-6 for Savannah and only 5 & 6 for Lizzie's head ... it made them the perfect size for each girl and they are so inexpensive to make, love them! In total I made 14 different flowers (for my girls and my friends two girls & her as well) ... and it only cost me $4.50 for the fabric ... with LOTS left over! YEAH! :)

Valentine's Day Shirts

I wish I could say the valentine's day shirts were my own original thought, but they weren't. I found this etsy store & loved her designs! But, with four shirts needed, it was way beyond my budget. So I tried my best to come up with my own graphics to make it. I really liked her's better. Maybe it's because of the wonderful finished edges she had, and the way that the black made the colors pop!

Anyways, I found shirts for $1.50 on clearance at Target, and so that's what I used. And fabric from my own stash ... so $6 for four shirts was feasible. Colton loves his, and wouldn't take it off ... but also has become camera shy & ran away from me every time I tried to take a picture of him in it. LOL.

I had seen a similar design on a blog somewhere for Savannah's shirt, but I can't find it now. I used the target modern elephant as a template, and then a single heart. I wish I had used a different color thread so you could see all the little details I sewed into it ... but eh. It's done ... project one complete!

Now I've cut the fabric for the apron and plan on using this tutorial as a guide to finish it. I wanted to use the blue fabric as the bottom trim, but cut into it too much for a "7" for Hunter's birthday ... so I'm going to find some pocket tutorial and make them instead. :)

In 9 days ...

What a busy & stressful & fun & tiring week! In the past 9 days I have:

• made 40+ gift bags (whole wheat pancakes in a baggie, yum! -here's a pic of the kids helping to stuff the bags I made-) & delivered them all too!
• mailed off 40 Christmas cards
• made 24 bags of magic reindeer food for the kids to drop off to their friends
• had nine families (for a total of 44 people!) over for a hot cocoa party ... so crowded you could barely move! IT. WAS. AWESOME!
• made 7 gift bags for church teachers & bosses (breakfast in a bag - pancakes, hot cocoa, syrup & hashbrowns)
• put the binding on FOUR christmas blankets (two nativity blankets for the kids, finally finished the Christmas tree blanket & a disappearring nine patch blanket for a family friend)
• made gift tags for the three kids ... they love seeing their faces on their gifts from Santa each year! (This is a picture of a gift from last year ...)
• attended the Las Vegas bowl with my husband (BYU vs. Arizona)
• AND ... finally finished the Christmas shopping and wrapped all the gifts. Tonight, the only plan is attempting to put up a swing set in the dark ... wish us luck!

Hope you all finished your to-do lists & have a very Merry Christmas!!! :)

Hunter's Nativity Blanket

**Sorry for the BAD pictures ... crappy lighting with all the winter storms.**
So another blanket that Mati did for me was Hunter's choice for his Christmas blanket. I let him pick out his colors and ALL he wanted was blue, I threw a sash of the golden angels fabric in with it, but otherwise, all him. I didn't have enough of any particular blue for the binding, so I alternated every 20 inches with the three blues I had, i really like the scrappiness of that! I couldn't convince him of even looking at the other stuff. She did shooting stars all along the large blue border,stars in the light yellow angel sash and then the first few lines of "Hark the herald angels sing" in the blue sash next to the panel. What amazes me about this quilt (besides the fact that it's now done, bound & on their bed ... before Christmas too!) is that the different colors REALLY make the panel look different. Savannah's blanket looks so much darker, while this blanket seems to scream out blue and softness to me. The kids love the blankets too ... which makes it perfect. I think now the piano lessons are paid thru the end of next month (maybe longer) ... thanks Mati! :)

Christmas Pajamas

I'm sorry, I am still working on the tutorial. It's hard explaining (in a way you'll understand) a couple points ... but I at least had a finished project to share in the meantime! :)
For our trip to the Polar Express (which was absolutely amazing by the way!!!), I wanted to make pajamas for the kids. Last year I didn't realize how popular of an idea this was, and needless to say my then 4 yo was asking the WHOLE TIME why he didn't get to wear his pajamas like everyone else. So, I bought 8.5 yards of this cute flannel ... and figured it would be enough for the five of us (I have NEVER done a pattern or any of that type of sewing before). I got the fabric in October so that I would have PLENTY of time to figure it all out before the big day ... which means that I completely put it off until Saturday and then spent all day and all night working on them. I freaked out when the pattern for the adults called for almost 5 yards of fabric per adult, so I placed the pants VERY close together and ended up with just scraps & 12 inches of flannel spare. BIG THANKS to my husband! He was up stuffing the elastic in the waists at midnight. Such a great guy. I love the way that they turned out! :) It only took TEN bobbins of thread & 13 hours ... but the end result was so worth it! :) Now if I could have only interested the kids in smiling for one single photograph ... they were too busy having fun & wanting to see Santa to be bothered with that ...

Savannah's Birthday

Yeah for fantastic hubby! He fixed the computer, so I finally was able to load up the pictures from Savannah's birthday! :) I came down with a nasty flu bug the last couple of days ... which is actually a bit of a relief. I've been having hot & cold flashes for about a week and kept thinking ... "I'm too young for menopause, right?" LOL. I wanted to make more for her birthday, but with Hunter starting school in a week and a half and baby's birthday coming up next week too, it limited my "making" ability. I did however make her a birthday banner. I had made my husband one like it for his birthday and both took me about seven hours from start to finish. I don't have a fabric stash, so I picked up scrapbook paper, and was able to get 4 triangles out of each paper so it works out to be pretty in-expensive. Of course, I was finishing it like crazy the night before her birthday, when I realized I had run out of bias tape for her ... and there was NO way I was doing a Wal-Mart run at 11:30 at night, so I used some light blue that I already had and put Savannah's name on a separate string in the front room. Then I also made up a little tutu for her using this tutorial. Unfortunately, this is the best photo I have of the bunch ... but you can still see it and she loved being dressed like a little princess for the day. :) Which is what really mattered, right? I'll post pictures of the AWESOME blanket that Mati did for her on Friday ... but if you'd like to see some of the pictures, here's her posting about it.

Happy 4th of July!

We had an awesome 4th of July, lots of good friends and good food. I really wanted to decorate this year for the 4th of July, but I didn't want to spend too much money with gas prices and food shooting up so much. So, I checked out Martha Stewart! :) I loved this garland for our fireplace, and these cute napkin decorations for dinner! Then I wanted to make this star banner for around the dinner table ... I also thought the kids could going to help me make firecracker cupcakes. We've done the coconut coloring before as green grass for easter, they love it! :)

I even bought all the supplies ... but on Thursday night I was so tired I couldn't walk or see straight. So, I wimped out and put up some bunting that I bought from Jo-Ann's instead. The amazing thing was ... nobody cared and it was still an awesome 4th of July!!! LOL. :)
But we did do some fun crafty/amazing stuff. We made fireworks (it's the video on the right hand side) ... which was a big hit with the kids. I also picked up some darling 4th of July outfits for them ... anything for a cute scrapbook page! :)I also made this drink for the kids. Mainly for the "oh my goodness Mommy! You are magic!" comments. LOL. They weren't quite as amazed as I thought they should be.


And yesterday, I started on a new project with a friend. I've never had a sew-along buddy and it was really fun. :)

Post a Day in May #7

Is anyone else out there stressed over Mother's Day? Seriously? Anyone??? Maybe, just maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself for something I *know* will not be saved and looked at for only a day or so and then thrown away. Maybe. But at least I have now finished up the Mother's Day gifts!!! They are so sweet! Of course they won't be getting into the mail until tomorrow at this rate, so I am making my husband call up his grandma's and telling them it's on the way ... so they don't think we forgot them.I used a quick fill set of pages from the shabby princess' site. Love the name badge kits! They weren't very much money and two pages fit on a single 4x6 card so it was very inexpensive. I picked up the vinyl name badge holders from Office Max for $4.59 for 12, so each one made 2 sets of gifts. Seriously, inexpensive and so sweet looking! Then I just tied some ribbon I have around to add a little funk. I love, love, love the shabby princess' designs. Seriously, her stuff is so great, the attention to detail and colors and quality are fabulous! No, unforunately I don't get anything for advertising for her like this ... I only wish I was good enough to join the ranks of her talented scrapbook team. But, you seriously should check out her stuff sometime, fabulous! Total it cost $25 for all five sets and I have enough left overs to make myself one ... which is what's on the plan for today. :)

Happy Easter!

So I went for a different idea on Easter egg decorating this year. First of all, we made and hid less eggs. The kids never are really interested in them (not when there are candy ones to be found!). Then, I found a kit where you actually color on the eggs. The kids loved decorating them with their own style and trying to come up with their own unique designs (although my oldest son found it frustrating to paint on a curve). They turned out darling and I think we'll definitely do this again next year!

A finished WIP!

So I love this bath mat idea and finally finished one yesterday! I had only really planned on making one, but the more I look at it, all lonely on the bathroom floor ... I realize it needs a second and third mat to keep it company. I'm not sure I really like this color set-up personally, but I do not spend a lot of money on fabric, and I'm sure it will grow on me more. :) But before I make two more bathmats, this unfinished wip is hoping to be finished today ...