Sewing Stuff

I just never get as much sewing done as I would like.  I have big dreams of fabulous sewing projects, but life just gets busy.  And my family always comes first!  I did get a few sewing projects done though & I always feel bad for the recipients of my sewing gifts because they are my guinea pigs as I practice & develop my sewing skills.  Ha ha ha!  Hopefully they like their gifts though!

I made this big tote bag for my sister-in-law for her birthday last year:

 She'd been asking for a big tote bag & this one was big!  And I love the fabric!

2013 was the year of the baby in my husband's family.  There were 4 babies born!  And it seemed to be the year of the boy as 3 of the 4 were boys!  It was fun to shop for boy fabric for a change.  I made baby quilts for the new babies & I really enjoyed making each one.  You'll see a chevron theme on most of them.  What can I say?  I {heart} chevron.  And I feel like it's a great basic pattern that goes with just about anything.  And for quilting purposes it was really easy.  I just bought the large chevron print fabric for the front of the quilt & then a patterned fabric for the back of the quilt.  Then after I layered them with the batting in between I quilted along the chevron pattern for the actual quilting.  It was easy & they turned out great!

This one was for our cousin's baby girl, Saylor:

 I just love yellow & gray together!  And after having 3 girls I really love other colors together for girls besides just pink.

This one was for our cousin's baby boy, Ethan:

 I love, love, love these bold colors together!  

And chevron & polka dots together = I die!

This last chevron quilt was for our nephew, Elliott:

I love this pop of orange with the aqua & gray!

My brother-in-law loves Star Wars & so when I saw this fabric on sale I had to get it!  I just made a simple flannel blanket:

And I love the light blue star flannel on the back.

I also made my sister-in-law one of those infant car seat canopy covers:

 I loved this pattern!  It's not a great picture of how it works as the car seat canopy, but I'm sure you've seen those out & about.

This last quilt was for my great-nephew, Hudson:

His nursery is a nautical theme & when I saw this fabric I just had to get it.  I love the bright colors!

Yay for all these babies so I could practice my quilting!  :)

Crafty Stuff

Hello blog world!  Wow.  It has been almost one year since I last posted here!  Yikes!  Time really does fly when you are having fun.  I don't have any excuses for not posting for so long other than life is busy!  Even though things have been crazy busy around here I still manage to get my craft on when I can.  I decided to do a few posts with some pics of craftiness from the past year (I have been trying to remember to take pics when I do make something).

Here are the teacher gifts I made for the girls teachers for their end of the year gift last year:  

 I had gone to Utah in May with some friends & we went to this awesome wood/craft store called The Wood Connection.  I picked these cute wood pencils up at that store.  Then I just painted them, added pink glitter to the eraser, tied some silver ribbon around them & put each teacher's name on the pencil in black vinyl.  They turned out great!

When we moved to our new house the big girls decided they wanted to have their bunk beds separate for a while.  I decided they needed something above their beds.  But I didn't want anything too heavy (hello, we have earthquakes here!) so I just painted a canvas in a pink that coordinated with their bedding, painted a wooden letter of their initials white & glued it on the painted canvas:

 The pictures are from my phone & they are horrible!  Ha ha ha!  But they look really cute in person.

Then I painted some Ikea wooden spice racks white & we hung them on the wall next to each girls bed so that they could have a little shelf to put their reading books on:

 I know you saw that idea on Pinterest too.  But it works out great!  They love their little shelves.  Oh & the cute pink reading lights are from Ikea too.

My Aidynn has always wanted long hair.  She talks about it all of the time.  So for her 4th birthday last July I made her a Rapunzel braid:

 Isn't she darling?

Here's a better view of the braid:

 This was so fast & easy to make & it was by far her favorite gift.  It has definitely gotten a lot of use!  To make it I just braided yellow yarn, tied it with some pretty lilac ribbon & then hot glued some fake flowers in different shades of purple all over it.

I made myself a necklace for our family photos:

 I just used wood beads in different sizes & painted them a pretty aqua color.  I strung them onto ribbon & that's it!  It was an easy & inexpensive way to get exactly what I wanted to go with our colors for our family photos.

Speaking of, here's our family photo from last July:

I also made Aidynn a yellow wooden bead bracelet to wear.

(Photo credit:  Shari Hanson of Shari Hanson Photography)

In September we had our annual back to school dinner the night before the new school year began.  Every year it seems I add just a little bit more to it which is fun.  I totally got the idea for the apple plates off of Pinterest.  They looked so cute on our table: 

The chalkboard we use every year on our first day photos:

We also got the easel out for the girls to color on:

And they love coloring on the table when we cover it with paper:

Also inspired by Pinterest, cupcakes decorated like apples:

The annual dinner?  Spaghetti, zucchini & garlic bread:

I made my niece some thank you cards for her nautical themed baby shower:

 Simple is always nice.

And a Christmas photo of these 3 beauties:

They keep me busy, but I love them so!

Well, that takes care of some of the random crafts from the past year.  Stay tuned for the sewing & baking adventures!

Happy New Year!

I can still say, "Happy New Year" right?  There are still 3 hours left of January!  Well, have you missed me over these past 4 (four!) months?  A LOT has been going on around here.  The biggest thing is that we bought a house & moved at the beginning of November.  It was, of course, crazy moving with 3 kids, but I think we are feeling pretty settled in now.  We also really enjoyed spending the holidays with our family & friends.  Every year the holidays just seem to come & go even faster.  And then we began 2013 with a round of a nasty stomach bug followed 2 weeks later by all of us passing around a yucky head cold.  Ugh!  But most of us are feeling better now & hopefully we can leave the illness behind in January & enjoy a much healthier February!  Anyway, I was scrolling around my photo library trying to see if I've done anything crafty over the last few months that I could share with you.  I did find a few things.

First, look how big my babies are getting:

Whew!  They are keeping me busy, busy lately!  But I love them so much!

So earlier in 2012 I had decided that I wanted to make my girls poodle skirts for Halloween.  In August I bought the felt & poodles & I even made Kaylee's skirt.  Then we found this house, put an offer on it, opened escrow, started packing, etc.  But since I had already started making the skirts I wanted to finish them in time for Halloween.  Luckily these skirts are so easy to make!  Honestly, a circle skirt is probably the easiest & best skirt to start with if you are a beginner to sewing.  I loved how the skirts turned out!  And my girls loved twirling around in them!

Here's Kaylee:

And Aidynn:

And Quinn:

Even though we had just moved, we hosted Christmas dinner at our house this year.  I had gotten the free download for my Silhouette machine for the holiday photo props & thought it would be really fun to have out on Christmas.  They were super easy to put together (Thank you Silhouette!) & they turned out very cute!  Everyone had a blast using the photo props & taking some pictures.

Mommy kissing Santa Claus:

My oldest girlies:

I also made some sugar cookie place cards for Christmas dinner.  I love making sugar cookies.  Growing up we made them quite often & I love making them with my girls now too.  I kept it simple for the place cards & just used a scallop circle cookie cutter & then wrote everyone's names on them.  Then we put them in a little treat bag, tied them up with some twine & set them on every plate.  They turned out pretty cute:

I cannot believe that our youngest baby just turned 1!  This past year just went by way too fast!  I made her a teeny tiny cake for her first birthday party.  It turned out pretty cute for my first time hand piping on a cake.  Luckily it was a tiny cake!  I thought I had a picture of it on my phone, but I guess I don't & I didn't feel like uploading the gazillion photos from my camera right now.  But you can sort of see it there.  

This girl did not waste any time smashing up her little cake:

 I also made a big cake for everyone else to eat & I tried that scallop technique I've seen a dozen times on Pinterest.  I love how it turned out!  I love that it looks great & it was super fast & easy to frost like this.  

Pretty & pink of course:

I also made a couple of tooth fairy pillows for my hubby's partner at work.  They have a little boy & a little girl so they wanted 2 different ones.  Having 3 girls over here I actually had a hard time picking some fabric out of my stash that was boy-ish & a decent print for this small pillow.  But I really love how it turned out.  I definitely dig the teal & green together.

Here's the boy pillow:

And the girl version:

Well, hopefully we can stay healthy over here & I can actually do a little crafting soon!  

Fingers crossed!

Summer Crafting Wrap-up

Hi!  I know, again, it's been a while.  We've just had such a busy summer & it flew by way too fast.  I can't believe that school starts next Wednesday!  Here are the highlights of our summer (& the reasons why I didn't get very much crafting done):

Kaylee had her tonsils out.

Kaylee learned to ride a bike.

We went to Mammoth for a week.

Quinn got 2 teeth.

Aidynn is fully potty trained now.

Kaylee lost 2 teeth.

Aidynn turned 3.

Quinn sits up by herself.

We went to Palm Springs for a few days.

And add in there many fun play dates, lots of house guests, beach days & some swimming.

It's been great!

So although we seemed to be so busy this summer I managed to make a few things.  I was too lazy to get my camera out to take decent pictures, so I'm just using these ones off of my phone from Instagram.  

When Quinn started eating solid foods we got out the bibs that we used with the older 2 girls.  Or, rather, the ones that had lasted through both girls.  Now even though these saved bibs were in decent condition, we soon realized that the velcro no longer held.  Bummer!  So every time we'd feed Quinn she could easily pull her bib off, making a huge mess, or the bib would just fall off by itself.  I grabbed some of my fabric scraps & made some new bibs for her.  Bibs are really easy to make too.  I simply used one of my favorite bibs as a template & before I sewed them I used some iron on vinyl to laminate them & make them waterproof.  On the back of the bibs I just used some soft flannel.  Then I attached snaps because I like them so much better for bibs than velcro.

Here's the assortment of bibs:

As I mentioned above, Kaylee lost 2 teeth this summer.  Her teeth had been loose for a couple of months & so I knew I wanted to make a little tooth fairy pillow.  Of course I procrastinated making it & she lost both teeth (one day after each other) before I had made one.  So the week after she lost her teeth I finally made her a little pillow.  Now at least she can use it for all of the other teeth she'll lose.  I had splurged & bought this super cute pink chevron fabric over the summer too & had been itching to make something with it.  And I love the aqua flannel that I used to make the little pocket out of & I used it on the back of the pillow too.  I had traced the shape of a tooth on paper & then just used that as a template to cut one out of white felt to glue onto the pocket.  This was such a quick & easy project & I love how it turned out.  I was going to put a K on there for Kaylee, but then figured it's better without because all of my girls can use this same pillow.

Here it is:

I actually did a little sewing for myself too this summer.  Ok, nothing big, but I had bought this cute striped maxi skirt at the beginning of summer & then I never wore it because it was actually too long.  Way too long!  I decided to shorten it & I am so glad I did!  Now instead of this skirt just hanging in my closet not being worn, it is a great length & I wear it all of the time!  And this was just a simple hem job too.  The skirt is knit which can be tricky to sew, but if I use the walking foot for my sewing machine it makes it so fast & easy.

I should have taken a before picture too, but here it is all hemmed up:

And now I'm off to enjoy our last few days of summer!

Hopefully I can get some more crafting done once the girls are back in school!

Baby Blessing Dessert Table

Hello!  Are you still out there?  I'm still here, even though it's been a while since I've posted anything.  What can I say?  Life has been hectic.  We've had some ups & we've had some downs.  I won't bore you with all of the details.  And I am sorry I have not been able to respond to any of your emails.  And thank you for all of the nice requests for buying things that I make.  You all are so sweet!  I would love to be able to craft & sell, but at this point in my life it just is not feasible.  Maybe in the future?  Anyway, hopefully I can get back to blogging a little more regularly now that life seems to be quieting down.

Well, on Easter we blessed our baby Quinn.  In our church, children don't get baptized until they are eight years old.  But after they are born we have a baby blessing for them.  We decided to bless Quinn on Easter since so much family would be in town, it was the perfect time.  Now back when I was pregnant, I knew that I wanted to do an all white dessert table for the baby blessing.  I know, I'm crazy to have already been thinking about that before she was even born.  But I loved the idea of all of the desserts being white.  Just like the beautiful white blessing dress she would wear on her special day.  I think the white is so beautiful because it is symbolic of the purity & innocence of this new baby.  As I started actually planning the dessert table for the blessing after Quinn was born, I decided that I did want to add in a little bit of color.  I decided to add a kraft brown color & light pink, just like I used for her birth announcements.  I think it added a nice contrast to all of the white.  *By the way, sorry for the dark photos.  Our house hardly gets any natural light at all.

Here's the entire table set up:

 A while back I finally broke down & just bought a nice white cotton tablecloth.  It's so versatile & this way I can use it for anything & just change up the accents depending on what kind of party or event we are hosting.  For the baby blessing I used some kraft wrapping paper that I had gotten at IKEA before Christmas.  It made the perfect {cheap} table runner!

I also used my Big Shot to make a banner that said "Quinn Marjorie" to hang above the dessert table:

I made a little printable for the table too using My Digital Studio from Stampin' Up!  I simply had it printed out at Costco & used some Mod Podge to adhere it to a plain white canvas & then added a couple of paper rosettes made with my Big Shot:

The glare is really bad in that photo.  Here is what it looks like digitally:

The pink verses are taken from a primary song at church & the overall idea I've seen used many times online.

And a close-up of the paper rosettes: 

I made a chocolate cake with chocolate mousse from Our Best Bites in the middle & then covered it with white buttercream ruffles.  I have to say the chocolate mousse is so stinkin' good & it's found in this recipe here.  It looked really pretty, just what I wanted for the blessing dessert table.  I also made a Q to put on the top of the cake with some pink melting chocolate:

 (I just typed & printed out a Q on my computer.  Then I covered it with waxed paper.  I melted some pink melting chocolate & then put it inside a squeeze bottle & then traced over the Q.  I let it harden back up & then it simply slid right off of the waxed paper & I stuck it down into the frosting on top of the cake-easy!)

I stuck with the monogram theme with my sugar cookies too:

 People always love my sugar cookies.  I can't take credit for them though, the recipe is from Our Best Bites & it is so good!  I used a scalloped circle cookie cutter for these ones & then my large Q stamp (thoroughly cleaned & sanitized first) to lightly stamp into the cut dough.  I baked the cookies & then just filled in the Q with some light pink royal icing.

I had also made some white cupcakes with white buttercream frosting, my sister-in-law made some of her yummy spritz cookies with light pink sprinkles & then I put out some various white-colored candies in the small dishes on the table.  It looked good, I was happy with how it turned out.

And here are my 3 pretty girls on Quinn's blessing day:

 The blessing dress was made by my grandma for my mom to wear, then I wore it & now each of my daughters has worn it on their blessing days.  It is very special!

We also attempted a family photo & managed to get one decent shot:

The rest looked more like this:

Oh, my crazy family!  But I love them more than anything!

Digital Birth Announcements

For my older two girls I hand made their birth announcements to send out. It was a big job, but I really enjoyed making them both times. With baby #3, however, I knew I probably wouldn't have much time to hand make the birth announcements. So I turned to my favorite digital software, My Digital Studio by Stampin' Up! It is so fun & easy to use!

I took some pictures of Quinn & picked my favorite one that I wanted to use for the announcements. Then I just needed to figure out what style of announcement I wanted to use.

So here is the first design I came up with:

I like how it says "So worth the wait" since Quinn arrived a week after her due date! And I liked this announcement, but then I got to thinking that maybe it had a little too much going on.

So then I made this design:

I really love the bunting look that's so popular right now. But then I was looking at this design & I started thinking that it was maybe too plain.

So here was my third design & the one I had printed up & mailed out:

I love the birth announcements!

I love the colors & I love how it's simple, but still very pretty.

These are a great way to say "hello" to our little Quinn!