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. :)

This Year's Garden

So in years past, my garden has looked like this:


Now, there's nothing wrong with having a garden built like that in a normal place, but you wouldn't believe the weed issues I have here! As far as I can tell, the area I'm using as a garden has never been anything but a weed patch, and as a result, getting rid of all the weeds, with their seeds everywhere in the soil, and their runners, and however else they reproduce, was practically impossible. It didn't seem to matter how many times I sprayed, they just wouldn't die. Add to that our bad soil, and I was ready to try something new this year.

After researching things a bit, I decided I wanted to do some boxes. I thought at first I'd do the square foot gardening method, but I don't need as much produce as I feel like that would actually produce. Plus, I'm starting way late this year, and I'm just not confident enough that my plants will mature quickly enough to justify purchasing all the plants that method would require. So, for this year at least, I just planted the plants that I would like the produce from.

For the last few days, my garden has been pretty much all I've been working on. I bought 2 x 6's and had them chopped down to be 8 ftrs and 3 ftrs, then used those to build my boxes (my dad and Cory actually did most of this work, but only because there were only 2 hammers. I did hammer in one nail... :)). I placed the boxes, and then Jake pounded in my stakes (because he likes to use a sledge hammer...). Then I found soil and mulch and had it delivered to my house--5 cubic yards worth of materials, if you're wondering. That's a LOT, I promise. I've spent the last two days moving dirt and mulch while my kids ran around the yard and generally played in the dirt. I am so impressed with how well they've done outside--makes me want to fence off my yard so they can just go play out there all the time. Maybe some day... Anyway. Without further ado, here is my beautiful new garden--I'm so excited about it!



The pile of dirt left over... to be used in a flower bed in the back yard, among other things, I guess...


How the girls entertained themselves:


and the remains of where the mulch was...


So glad it's done, the garden's in, and I am able enough to do this. I really, really love accomplishing such a project, and I can't get over how beautiful I think it is.

New Bag

So I bought a bit of fabric to make a bag for my mom for mother's day. It came out pretty cute, I thought, and I was excited to give it to her. She seemed to like it, so I thought all was good.

Yesterday, I realized I didn't have a gift for bunco last night, and I didn't feel like going to buy anything, so I decided to use my leftover fabric from my mom's bag to make into my gift. Now I just have to apologize to my mom, because this bag came out so much better than hers... Sorry mom! If you want me to make yours better, I totally will.

I've been wanting to participate in amylouwho's Sew and Tell for a while now, but rarely have anything great to post. I'm excited today to actually have something to add. :)

A few pics--

Smocks

So ever since I saw these smocks over at Make It and Love It, I've wanted to make some for our kids. I wasn't sure about the cotton material, though, or the ruffle. Seemed like those things would cause it to hold on to paint/playdoh/whatever else they were using for their creations. Then when my friend E. talked about making a raincoat for her daughter out of a vinyl tablecloth, an idea struck me. What if I just made my smocks out of a vinyl tablecloth? So I did. I bought the tablecloth at Walmart for a whopping $4, and have enough to make a ton more stuff, as it was a 60"x84". The more expensive part would've been the bias tape I used around the edges, but I already had that (and have NO idea where it came from, it's just been in my stash for a while now). Other than those two things, the only other stuff I needed was a little velcro (about 6 inches total for 2 smocks) and some ribbon for a tie, which is totally optional. So now, for just a couple dollars and a half hour each, I have 2 smocks to keep my girls' clothing clean while they paint/sculpt/craft to their hearts content. I'm pretty excited about them.

General size and shape (I decided to do this differently than the smock at Make It and Love It--I wanted one that I didn't have to pull over the girls' heads--if they get gunky paint or whatever on them, I don't want to have to pull that up over their heads.):


Simple Velcro fastener:


I changed up the pockets, too:


and this is how I attached the ribbon (I went over it at least 5 times for some security, since this will get the most pull of anywhere on the smock):


And the smocks in action:


(And in case you're wondering, we are having a jammies day over here, what with the rain outside and everything. Normally I don't like them, but I'm being productive this morning, so it's going ok. And I know it's hard to believe, but I really do actually do my girls' hair every now and then... and I usually make Janey wear pants... and Breanne generally wears pj's that match... just not today. Oh well.)