Purple Skirts

Did I mention that Janey is obsessed with skirts and dresses lately? Cory asked her if she likes pants, and she said "No, pants look kind of funny." So there you have it. Due to her obsession, I decided to just make her skirts this year instead of buying her pants like the other girls. First was yesterday's denim number, today I have two more--

A purple twirly skirt,

The flowers peeking through are the inside, which can also be worn as an outside, as it's reversible--

And then there's this purple knit skirt. I'm pretty proud of this one, as I actually got the gathering to work right, and the skirt came out just as I envisioned it. Now if only I was a better photographer... Oh well. Maybe in another lifetime. In the meantime, just believe that this is much cuter in person than on the hanger. I'm excited for her to try it on.

Denim Skirt

If you made a skirt like this for a certain skirt loving two-year-old you knew,

Would you add a flower or something to it, maybe on the side? Or leave it as-is?

Sew and Tell

Though I finished a few other projects this week (baby blanket, carseat cover, and reversible skirt for a friend), the only finish I took pictures of this week was my advent calendar. I'm pretty in love with how it turned out, and I've really enjoyed seeing my girls figuring it all out.

Advent Calendar Day 2

Today, our activity calendar contained "a message! A message, Janey! A message!" (I overheard Breanne excitedly telling Janey about the message...), telling us to make cupcakes today. And in the pocket calendars, the girls received these:

Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of the cupcake making process--toooo messy with two little girls wielding the knives. I did, however, snap these post-mixing shots:

(I promise, the cupcakes were IN the oven before I let the girls have the beaters. No mixing of germs there.)
We took most of the cupcakes out to neighbors, and enjoyed a few ourselves. Mmm.

Advent Calendar Day 1

So this morning I put up our Advent Calendar, and the girls were so excited about the Christmas decorations, we couldn't help but decorate the rest of the house.
My favorite nativity set is currently missing, which means it's either hiding in our basement, or I just didn't see it in our storage unit when I pulled everything else out. Either way, I'm bummed that I haven't found it yet, but I won't rest until I do. Anyway, that is not the point of this post.

Today, our activity advent calendar dictated this:
Which had these two "a little nervwous"
...but not this one, she was ready to take that fire head on.
...and laugh in it's face.
Fortunately, I was there to hold her back and entertain her.

Janey and Breanne wanted to take turns taking pictures with our real camera (as opposed to my phone, which I usually use), so I showed them how, and let them each snap a bunch. The picture of the fire above was Breanne's doing, and the next several were Janey's shots--pretty good for a 2 year old, huh? And check out Cailin's eyes--blue, blue, blue. I love these little girls.

Advent Calendars

So that fabric I mentioned the other day? It was destined to become an Advent Calendar.

(Oh yes, I did just hang that crookedy on my dusty blinds... I haven't figured out how to put it up somewhere more practical yet--that will have to come tomorrow).

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a meeting with a few women where we talked about starting up good traditions with our families. Mirjam, the woman who was leading the group, talked a lot about her family's advent calendars--she has one for each of her children, to be filled with little treats and toys, and then one for the whole family that is full of activities. I loved both of these ideas, and immediately started planning out how I'd like to implement them in some way in our own home. For each girl, I came up with a pocket calendar, in which I'll be putting little treats, toys, books, and other fun things. We already have a calendar I made a few years ago that is just a big Christmas tree with little ornaments you place on it--I plan on putting an activity we'll be doing in with each ornament this year, and letting the girls pick them out every day. Several days I have crafts planned as our activity--on those days, the treat in their pocket will be the supplies to do the craft. Lest you think I'm totally insane, be assured that some days the activities are very, very simple, like building a fire in the fireplace, visiting friends, and attending parties we'd already be going to, regardless of whether we had the calendars or not. It just gives me more motivation to do fun things with the girls, too, like making cookies, cupcakes, garlands and ornaments.


So, I've made 3 of the pocket/bag calendars, one for each girl. Actually, to be honest, it's currently 2.5, because after sewing something like 68 little pocket bags, my sewing machine jammed up, and I have no idea what's wrong with it, so it'll be heading to the shop tomorrow... sigh. But I'm excited to see how the girls like them, and I know that they'll be a wonderful thing for all of us--I am really looking forward to having something positive to do planned for each day. I do so much better at providing good days for the girls when I plan ahead a bit. I am hoping to really make some positive memories this year.

What I'm Working With Today

Repurposing Take 2

Today, I attempted a dress for Janey. I found an adorable white with tiny yellow polkadots shirt that I really wanted for myself, but there was nothing even similar in my size, nor do I actually *need* another shirt. So Janey gets it. Having learned from Breanne's dress, this time I cut off the "skirt" part of the dress first, and left it full. I cut out the top (in the fashion of Made's 90 Minute Shirt), using the original neckline again. The pattern on the fabric is SO light, so I decided I might need a little more contrast in it. I found an old, stretched out yellow t-shirt of mine, and cut a strip out to put in the middle of the top and bottom of Janey's dress. The last step was sleeves, which I was able to cut out of the extra scraps leftover from the top of the shirt. After I pieced it all together, I came out with this:




Janey really likes it, and insisted on wearing it all evening. Once again, though, it's just so-so. But better than Breanne's, I think. Progress. :) I want to take the yellow strip in, make it about 1, maybe 1.5" across instead of the 2.5" it is now. And while I do that, hopefully I can fix some of the gathering. This is really my first experience in sewing with knits, and it's definitely been a challenge. Maybe someday I'll sew with a pattern, and get things that actually come out looking nice... but first I'll have to learn how to do that. :/

In the meantime, Breanne loves her new dress, too... but mostly just likes to make crazy faces at the camera:

T-shirt to Dress Refashion

Yep, that's right, I'm jumping on the repurposing boat. And I'm excited about it. :)

In case you haven't heard, Shade is going out of business. So naturally, I had to go to their liquidation sale here by me, and get a few things for myself. While I was there, though, I noticed that all of their extra large clothing was marked down to $5. Now, that's not an *amazing* deal by my standards, however, for nice, new clothing for the girls (a $5 comfy dress? yes please!), I figured I could spend that much. So, here is my first project using one of the shirts.

I wanted to make Breanne a dress out of this sea-green-ish fabric. I ended up cutting the original sleeves off the shirt, chopping the shirt up into the size of dress I wanted, and re-sewing it all back together.


I added the shirring for a little detail, but I'm not totally sold on it--I think the dress either still needs something else, or needs to be a little bit shorter (maybe a drop waist? I wish I'd thought to do something different with the waist before I chopped it all off and made it skinnier, if that makes sense to any of you). I can't decide what it is, though. I still think it came out pretty nicely:



and Breanne insisted on wearing it all nice tonight (hence the chocolate milk stain down the front... good thing I'm taking pics with my phone so you don't notice it so much... :)), but I didn't think to get any pics until after she went to bed. Maybe next time, since she seems to like it enough to wear it many times.

Ariel in the Pink Dress

So... I was seriously planning on buying costumes for my girls for Halloween this year. Don't get me wrong, I love to sew. I'm just not quite good enough at clothing yet.

Breanne, on the other hand, had different ideas. When I asked her a few weeks ago what she wanted to be for Halloween, she very specifically requested to be Ariel, in her pink dress (she wears it to dinner, when she thinks the fork is a dinglehopper, in case you're trying to remember it). Her response has not varied in the slightest every time I've asked her since then. So, I looked around a bit for the costume, but it's difficult to find such a specific costume for a reasonable amount of money (read--I can't find it anywhere but on Etsy, cheapest I've seen is $240...what!?!). And so... I am now making costumes. Yes, costumes with an "s," because Janey now also wants to be Ariel in the pink dress. Only sometimes Janey's Ariel dress involves purple, too... we'll see what she ends up with. :) In the meantime, I've pretty much finished Breanne's dress--I may add some more trim (it's actually supposed to have some white around the collar and waist, as well as a lace-ish bottom), but if it doesn't get done, it will work as is. I tried to get a decent picture, but someone couldn't stop twirling around the living room in it, so this is what I got:





It's not perfect (obviously), but I wanted to make it big, so she can play in it for a while. Also, the fabric, while slightly stretchy, is not overly so, and I wanted her to be able to get in and out of it with ease. I can't decide if I should figure out something for the shoulder part to make it poofier, or if I should just leave it alone... The important part is that she loves it, which she does. Now I just need to get working on Janey's. :)

P.S. Not sure if you noticed my KCWC button on the side--this week is the Kid's Clothing Week Challenge, and this has been my project for days 1-3. I want to sew some actual clothes for the rest of the week... but we'll see. I feel like I need to get Janey's costume done, too, so she doesn't feel left out. :/

Bumpers!

I don't know how many of you have pacifier babies, but Cailin is definitely a pacifier child. As such, she is constantly throwing/spitting/knocking them behind her crib. I have to try to fit under her crib to fish them out of the back corner, and it's just been a pain. Since I had a bit of fabric leftover from the girls' quilts (just need to be put together, but my machine is seriously BEGGING for a service... weird sad noises and everything... ugh), I decided to try my hand at making a set of crib bumpers to help solve the pacifier problem. I'm pretty ecstatic about how they came out:




I finally finished them last night, and couldn't wait to put them up. I put Cailin in bed when she was almost asleep for a nap this afternoon, but her slightly open eye caught sight of the new bumpers, at which point her eyes flew open to examine her new surroundings. She hung out, awake, just talking to the colors, for about 20 minutes. And when I came back to get her out, she'd moved her head to the one opening in the corner so she could see out. Pretty darn cute.



Linking up to Amy's Sew and Tell. :)

Bunkbeds!

So you may recall that back at Christmas time, I was very excited for Breanne and Janey to move to their big girl beds--Breanne was getting a twin, and Janey was moving up to the toddler-size bed, in preparation for Cailin to have the crib. Well, that worked. Kind of. If you've never been to visit us, you may not know this, but we live in a very small house. The girls' bedroom is about 9x12, if I remember correctly. And we're trying to squish three girls in there. I didn't realize just how big the twin bed was, either. To make a long story short, their room has looked like this since Cailin arrived and was ready for a crib:



Way, way, WAY too crowded. We moved almost all the toys and books downstairs to a playroom, but even still, just the 3 beds and a dresser were taking up the entire room. So I talked to my dad about the possibility of toddler-sized bunkbeds. While I would've liked to do twin sized, I had several reservations--#1 was space, #2 was safety of toddlers on big bunkbeds, #3 was ability of the girls to climb to the top of twin bunkbeds, and #4 was our ceiling fan--I didn't want the girls getting hurt, obviously. I reasoned that toddler-sized bunkbeds could be built much closer to the floor and much smaller, resolving all of those issues. So I was supposed to help my dad make them... but that just didn't happen. He's amazing, and I don't go up there enough to really help. But at any rate, he made them, and my mom sanded and painted them (another big job, she's amazing too). And tonight, they delivered them to my home, and we set them up.


The girls LOVE them, and so do I! It's so great for them to have nice, safe, reasonably sized beds, finally! And with our kids being as close as they are, I think they'll get a lot of great use. Thanks very much to my wonderful parents for this gift. I love them. :) My only regret is that Breanne doesn't get to use her quilt anymore, but don't worry, I should have some new ones (real quilts, I've been participating in a quilting group for fun) done soon, and they'll be all matchy matchy. :)

New Skirt

So one of my most favorite creations... a skirt I created pretty much out of my own head. I saw a tutorial months ago on doing a knit waistband, and thought it was kind of genius. When I saw this fabric, I knew just what I wanted to do with it. Because of the thickness of the skirt, though (the fabric itself is actually quite light, and so definitely needed to be lined), I couldn't do a twirly skirt type (tried it, and totally failed, believe me!), and so ended up cutting an A-line based on a skirt I already have and love. And I love it. Maybe someday someone will take a picture of me in it, and I'll post it. But I'm not taking a picture of myself. Today, at least. :)

Linking up to The Train To Crazy's blog party this week.

4th of July Outfits

So... even though we won't be going anywhere this weekend due to the chickenpox, I still wanted to make the girls festive outfits to wear. Maybe Cory will take the older girls to the parade on Monday or something, we'll see.

Anyway, I saw these adorable shirts over on Make It and Love It, and knew I wanted to make them... and then I remembered the Reversible Twirly Skirt Tutorial my friend E. did over at PinkSuedeShoe, and decided to pair the two. I've only made one skirt so far, (because I was trying to change up the pattern, and apparently the way things work in my head is not how they work in real life, so when I tried to take some shortcuts, it.. uh.. did not work and I ended up recutting some things and resewing a lot...) but hopefully by the end of today, I'll have a couple more done. Still, I love the one skirt, and if I don't end up making any more, it'll go on Cailin, with her onesie and baby legs (as long as they don't bother her poor chickenpoxed legs... :( ) and the older girls can just wear some jeans.

My very silly older girls (with Janey sporting the skirt I made):


And Cailin's onesie (she's sleeping a lot today, and I'm not up for waking her up just to show off a shirt, sorry):


And baby legs:


And a closer-up of the skirt--there's a tiny white polkadot red side, and a navy gingham on the other side, very fun and patriotic. The white bottom trim also has tiny white stars. I really love how it turned out, thanks E.! :)


I'm linking up to Amy's Sew and Tell, and to Skip to My Lou's Made By You Mondays. They're part of the reason I was still excited to get these done, even when I realized we probably wouldn't be heading out anywhere to celebrate. We'll just have to come up with some great activities for our house. :)

Genius

Every now and then, I have a stroke of genius. More often, I see someone else's genius though... inspired by these, the girls and I had this for a treat today:



We just melted some milk chocolate chips (I bet frosting would work equally well) and crushed up some graham crackers. You just take your marshmallow, swirl in chocolate, and dip in graham cracker crumbs. Not as messy as a real s'more, and not quite as tasty because it's missing that toasted bit, but still... Yum. :)