The Elving has begun!

It's December!! That means baby month and of course, Christmas!

I got all of my shopping done last month. I just wanted to be prepared and have gifts ready for the girls when I'll be recovering from having a baby. So, here I thought I was all prepared when a few bigger projects popped in my head and I can't/couldn't let go of them. I HAD to at least attempt to make them. As I looked at the plastic crap gifts I'd purchased for the girls, the lack of mama made toys ate at me.  

So I thought, how about make a little Waldorf doll for each child? Does that sound like something feasible to do while 39 weeks pregnant? We'll that's what I did!  Here's a picture of two of the three that were made:

I plan on making night gowns for the girls out of the same fabric that their dolls have. I think it's going to be super sweet on Christmas eve to open these little guys and have matching dresses! 

There are more big projects I'm working on, but I can't share just yet, as some of my "readers" are the intended recipients of these gifts.  It's all starting! 

New (old) Pants

How has a month gone by since I've written on here! So much is going on- school starting for two in our family, preparing for baby, and daily life seem to be taking up a ton of time! The weather has FINALLY cooled down a bit, letting us enjoy open windows and longer sleeves. I'm pretty proud to say that I survived the Kansas summer while pregnant! Go me!
   Speaking of cooler weather, it's time to go through the girls' clothes and see what fits and what we are passing on.  I started yesterday with a small pile and surprise, surprise, A is still a peanut. I blame this on her diabetes, in that she's still playing catch up from when she lost weight at her onset. She's grown a ton since then, but is no where near growing a size a year, clothing wise.
 Another thing, I'm not sure if other mamas deal with, is that my girls are very picky about the style of pants they wear. They will NOT wear jeans, sweat pants, or anything too baggy. They will only wear super tight leggings and tightish stretchy pants. All of their stretchy pants from last year still fit them, but they are just a few inches too short for them to be called pants!  A's favorite pair of pants happened to be about 5 inches too short for her this year. That's when I added some mama magic to them and wala! New (old) pants!

She asked for red ruffles and we are both very pleased with how they turned out! Over the next week, I plan on going through the rest of their clothes and seeing what is going to work for this years colder months. 

  (Also, I can't claim this idea. A few months ago, I tucked the idea of adding ruffles in the back of my mind after seeing this etsy shop. Their stuff is SO fun!)

His fanciness continues:

A few weeks ago, I pinned this link on how to repurpose old T-shirts into newborn gowns. After making one, I was hooked, which seems to be a reoccurring thing these days. Both of the girls lived in gowns for months after they were born and I really wanted to stock up for baby J before he comes. After a long afternoon of sewing, I had six made! Just the perfect number of these little gowns to add to his fancy wardrobe :)  

 Three of these gowns were made out of my old concert T-shirts and the other three were made out of my dads old T-shirts! I just love that he will get to wear something that I remember my dad wearing years ago. 

 These two below might be my favorites from the bunch. The pattern was very straight forward and easy to follow. I also LOVE the fact that I did not spend any money on these. I had everything including the elastic for the bottoms already here. Now they will sit for another 4 months and wait to be worn. 

Oh and one more thing, if you are going to make these, make sure to get a package of Jersey needles for your machine!!!  I've been sewing with jersey for a while, but man, if you don't have one of those needles, there will mostly likely be a ton of cursing :) You have been warned! 

Baby BOY!!

Earlier this month, we found out that we are expecting a little boy!! We could not be more excited with that news!!  I think I knew before hand, as everything I had made before finding out for this baby was all blues, teals, and greens. I kept telling myself that even if we had another girl, she would look great in blues.  Low and behold, mama intuition was right. He's a he.  And apparently, with my ever moving hands, he will be a very well dressed he at that. 

I bought Anna Maria Horner's Handmade Beginnings a few months ago with plans to sew some clothes up for this little one. Little did I know how addicting the little Quick Change Trouser pattern would be!  So, our little guy now has 5 pairs of reversible pants that are waiting patiently until December to be worn. They are teeny tiny and I can't stand how cute the patterns are on them! 

I'm sure there will be more sewing out of this book for our guy.  I think he might need a spring time jacket, yes? 

doily garland

Here's the how to: Buy a package of small paper doilies. I think the one I bought had 35 for about $2, found in the wedding section at Hobby Lobby. Also, get a package of ribbon. I got the thinnest I could find, 18 feet of it, for $1 on sale. Then, sew the doilies onto the ribbon, leaving a few inches in between each doily. (It helped me see the ribbon if I slid each doily underneath the ribbon, then sewed on.) That's it! Cute doily garland for about $3!

These would be really cute in heart doilies for Valentine's day, right?

Sewing for the girls

I've been sewing little things over the last few days and have been making/finishing little easy projects. It feels so good! We also started on E's room, which needed to be painted ceiling to floor! Lot's of painting going on around these parts. I am so excited for how it will turn out. The color is totally her, as are the things going up on her wall. Can't wait to post pictures on here! Here is the little corner that I have finished so far:

I love making new spaces!
Back to sewing! I've made each girl their own dress over the last two days. A gets the sparkly red one, as she adores anything red and sparkly. Her dress is just a t-shirt dress. I used an unused undershirt, cut off the bottom 3 inches and attached the red fabric. That stuff was so silly to work with! Here Jean, from the artful parent, shows just how to convert a t-shirt to a dress, (which is more or less what I did with this one, and definitely where I got the idea to do so :)

And here is little E's dress. I had this idea last year to make a dress with a knit top for the last year or so and even made the knit part last spring. Last spring! So, it sat there for the last few seasons, waiting for me to put it to something. I used two fat quarters that had originally been intended for napkins, but never were actually sewn. And the little flower I found at Hobby Lobby, in there scrap booking section. I think the pack came with 5 or 6 little flowers for a few dollars. So, I just made a tub with the fat quarters, cinched them up and sewed them to the knit top. I didn't sew the knit top closed but did have enough sense to put a button hole in. It fits her great and I LOVE how it turned out. I'm kind of kicking myself for not starting this last year, but oh well :) A wants one, too, so she's up next.

I think it would be so cute with pockets, or in ladies size :)

Kindle cover!!

A few days ago, I made a cover for Aaron's kindle. I followed this tutorial, only I used 9x12 pre-cut felt for the padding, (instead of 10x13.) This is what it turned out like.

And yeah, that's right, this is Aaron's kindle, not mine. I just use it more :)

Halloween 2011

This year, I made the girls' halloween costumes. They turned out great, aside from the fact that I started E's Alice dress a few hours before we were out the door. She even went without it hemmed or buttons sewed on. Do you think she minded? Of course not! Especially since she finally has a big girl dress like her sister.
A's Dorothy dress was made about two months ago, and has gotten a ton of use out of it already. She adores dressing up as Dorothy and can go days without taking that dress off.
Our Halloween was nice and quiet. We went to a few houses, then went to a little barbecue at our friend's house. It's actually quite nice having a diabetic kid on Halloween, we didn't have to do near as many houses.
The pattern I used for their dresses is McCall's M4948 and was great to do really slow the first time. I had never sewn a costume from a pattern, so that was fun going through and figuring all that out. The second dress flew by, partly because I had already made one of them and partly because I was on crunch-time.
So, here they are:

The cloth diapers

Going along with my attempt to become a bit more frugal, I've decided to put Elliot back into cloth diapers. Back on April 29th, 2010, when my sweet Addy was diagnosed with diabetes, I had to make the decision to put Elli in disposables. It wasn't that cloth diapers were hard to do. No, that wasn't the case at all! I do not want to scare any one into thinking they are to hard. I stopped cloth diapering because I needed to focus more time on Addy and getting her well again. Cloth diapering does take more time and a little bit of thought and along with learning about blood glucose monitoring, humalog, lantus, glucagons, a1c's & insulin dependance, I just could not do it all.
So, we started again last Friday. I also got down to sewing business then, too. I remembered Jean's post showcasing her new soaker stash. She used this pattern and I love it! So far, only 4 dollars have been spent on a thrifted wool sweater that's next in line to be upcycled. Luckily, I had saved all of my prefolds, about 2 dozen. I also have 2 of these, which I love.
So, there you go. My little stash of cloth diapers. Cloth wipes are up next. I'm going to be going through our closets and find more sweaters to use.
Side note: Today we are starting Addy's insulin pump! After a cancellation last week we are finally getting this girl on a pump!

Table quilt

I am so thankful for all of the inspiring blogs over the web. This week I was in desperate need of some sewing and new what I wanted to make. I had just seen this table candy so I dove in for my own. Mine is more of a huge placemat and everything is now where is should be on the table.

A dress/apron of sorts

In this new year, I'm working on saying YES more often and No less. During a bit of down time yesterday, Addy and I caught some of a movie. She saw a little girl wearing a dress and asked for one just like it. More like, asked me to make her one. I hadn't sewn since my last little round of slings, right after Christmas so I agreed. We went through my stash together and picked out this brown plaid. I wanted it to be easy to wear and new I wanted the back open. This is what was made.


I used vintage buttons from my stash and added a little patch of the same fabric to the back, then cut the front out so that when it gets washed, it will fray. I may add pockets for her, as she loves stuffing her pockets with Addy things...
Addy loves it. She wore it last night to Awana, slept in it, then wore it again this morning back to church- with her Christmas pj pants. *Sigh... I love her :)

Just a few more Christmas items to show here, so bear with me :)





I love scarves, I love making them and I love doilies! This scarf was so easy to make, just some flannel, a vintage pillow case, a doily and some vintage buttons and voila! You have this oddball of a scarf. This was made for my dear friend for Christmas and I had a hard time parting with it. I love doilies so yeah, I just about kept it for myself...

Christmas Making: Part 2

I've seen little handmade quilts all over the web and have always wanted to make one, (or many :)). Through our new church I joined a group called iMom and last week we had our Christmas party. We were told to bring a $5 gift for the gift exchange. This miniature quilt was given along with some handmade soap from Mullers Lane Farm. Whenever I make anything, whether it be a doodle, baking or an intentitional gift, I always pray for the reciever. It is very easy to keep God in mind in whatever I'm doing and is just something nice to do for others. How amazing it was that at the end of the gift exchange, my very good friend, (the first to ever come to our house here in KS,) recieved it!

making, making

there has been lot's of making going on here in Kansas. A lot of baking, as we are trying to save money on snacks. Also, lots of knitting, crocheting and of course sewing. Here is a little preview of a gift that's almost done for one of my oldest friends. She just became a mama.




And, since Addy went as a kitty on Halloween I thought she would like a kitty hat that she could wear more often. And she does. She says its itchy but will wear it outside if we go anywhere. There are bells on the ends of the ties. I did not use a pattern,just winged it again... I searched all over ravelry but couldn't find a pattern. We like it:)

Introducing Pongo

This very ugly kitty came about this afternoon. Addysen very convincingly asked me to make her a black kitty. So, with the sounds of my dear Billie Holiday and a (few) cups of peppermint mocha coffee, Pongo was made.
He did not cost a penny. Every peice of material was from my stash. His body is a knit fabric that used to be a pillow and did some rather wonky stretching during Pongo's making. I wanted him to be odd looking so all his stretching was really a good thing. The rest of his peices were thrifted colored felt I picked up last year. Pongo is stuff with about a third bag of batting (left over from high school!) and a lot of fabric scraps from my scrap bin.



Here Pongo is sitting with his friend Hootie. I made Hootie last summer and used the same book for inspiration.


To make both of these stuffed animals I used this book for a bit of instruction. It is a book called Stitch by Stitch, volume 2 copyright 1985. I did not use the pattern, just eyed the shapes of the animal and made my own. Hope you like them.

I think next up on the list might be a boat for them.

Little things,

like making curtains and thrifting plates make me extremely happy. One of the things I am enjoying is making for all the different rooms at this house. We have an actual laundry room on the first floor, (which is awesome!!) It is big enough to keep a table in, acts as a pantry & it needed some window treatments. This fabric was found at walmart, (sigh... I know,) and was on the clearance rack. I was able to make two valances for about $1.60. The cherry print is rather refreshing from all the floral prints that I pick up.

 

 

 

This window is my kitchen window and that yellow is one of two on the walls. The other yellow is very mustard-y and I absolutely love it! Now if I had time to actually finish painting is another story :)
I love hanging plates! I equally love thrifting for them. These plates were thrifted in Illinois at two different stores. I've actually had the brown one since this spring but wasn't put on the wall until after this move. I'm pretty sure I spent less than a dollar on the plates and the curtain was a thrifted bedsheet left over from this blanket made earlier this summer. The little flower pot up there is a wedding favor from our wedding.

 

I really like how these little spaces are slowly coming together. Our home is coming together.