Ready to Meet Little Brother!

When a friend of mine found out that she was having a little boy this time around, she called me and asked if I could make new shirts for the girls. You may recall this set of onesies I made for her girls before baby girl two came along. Of course I accepted and we talked about what she wanted. We found the blue shirts at Wal-mart and then she picked out the fabric to go with it.

Little boy tried to come early on her and she posted on her Facebook page about being in the hospital with contractions. I told him that he wasn’t allowed to come yet because I hadn’t finished the shirts yet and I was out of town!! Lucky for me, he listened! It was probably a good thing too because he was going to be a bit early. When I got back home, I got to work on the shirts for his big sisters and the onesie for him.

Big Sister Shirts and Little Brother Onesie

They all turned out great and their momma loves them. So now baby boy can feel free to show up anytime. And by now I’m sure his mom would be thrilled! Can’t wait to meet the new little addition and see everybody in their matching shirts!

 

I’ve Been Crafting

I haven’t been posting a whole lot lately….mostly because I just haven’t taken the time to sit down and really write anything. Part of that could be do to some of the projects I have been working on. I have made many projects over the past few months and I haven’t been able to share them all with you. I thought I’d share them in one big picture post instead of a bunch of smaller ones, so here goes!

First up is the Lobster Bow Tie and matching Lobster Headband that you may have seen posted on the Lobster Love post.

Lobster Bow Tie

Lobster Headband

Next up was the Cupcake Birthday style headband I also gave K and her daughter H.

Cupcake Headband

This elephant onesie was a special order. We have made some before and even have it available in our shop to order.

Special Order Elephant

This ‘m’ onesie was another special order. I love making initials and picking out the fabrics for these types of orders. I imagine the recipients also love these gifts. I know I liked getting personalized gifts for my littles!

Special Order 'm'

Someone requested this special order of A House Divided onesie. They even ordered two, maybe to have one to grow into? I am ready for football season to start back up, but of course we have all summer to wait!

Special Order A House Divided Football

This is the pillowcase style Rock n Roll dress I made for K’s daughter H. When I saw the bandanas at Wal-mart, the fabric just spoke to me that it would be perfect for her!

Rock n Roll Pillowcase Style Dress

I have a few more projects hanging around and hopefully I’ll get those done, photographed and uploaded for you to see!

Lobster Love!

I have this friend….and he has this sister….who is now also my friend. Funny, I’ve known her, at least of her, for a long time, but we’ve never really hung out or chatted. She lives clear across the country, but thanks to blogs and a few (just a few) similarities, we are now real life friends too. She has this great husband and amazing little girl. They came to visit their family and invited us to come hang out with them while they were here. They took us with them to Animal Kingdom. The littles loved it. My Little Monkey and Little Monkette became fast friends with her little one. Little Monkey has asked if we can go to her house (I showed him a map and told him, maybe one day.).

I had planned to make her little one a dress earlier in the year and mail it, but it never got done…so I made it my mission to have it done by the time they got here for their visit. I also wanted to make something for her Momma K, which meant I couldn’t leave her Daddy C out either! But what on earth do you sew for a grown man?!?! I decided on a bowtie. K and C are eclectic and it is so fun (I hope you know I do mean this in a good way!). I thought Daddy C would love a fun bowtie. (Thankfully I was right, though he did have to learn how to tie it!) I made a matching headband for Momma K.

Sweet Love!

I made the little one a pillowcase dress and a headband to share with Momma K. I love how everything turned out and that they loved the gifts as well. (In fact, Momma K has asked for more headbands! I better get on that!)

Thanks to Momma K and Daddy C and little one for letting us hang out with you while you were here! I wish you lived here so we could hang out more often!!

Little Monkey, Goofy and Little Monkette

Crochet Needle Clutch

A while back, my mom asked me to make her two crochet needle clutches, one for her and one for a friend of ours. I told her I would do it…it took awhile but I finally sat down and looked at the tutorial to figure it out. I used this tutorial from Little Birdie Secrets. It was pretty easy to follow and I used her measurements for all the inside pockets because I didn’t have any crochet needles to base the size from.

Crochet Needle Clutch

Above is the clutch closed up (not the best photo….sorry!) Below is the clutch opened up! It just need some crochet needles and other crochet accessories.

Inside-awaiting crochet needles

It wasn’t perfect…but not too bad for my first try. I think the second one was a little bit better, but I forgot to take pictures of it!

Four Seasons Towels

I found this idea on Pinterest–they were sold in an Etsy shop that is now closed until July.  I decided to use the photo as inspiration for my own set of towels.

Water4Christmas Etsy Shop 4 Seasons Towels

I did some free hand drawing (I’m not very good at that…) and cut out the trees from two different brown fabrics I had on hand. Then I picked out some fabrics to use for the leaves and just made an ovalish type shape. I ironed them onto the flour cloth towels I bought (Walmart $2 for 2 towels) and then stitched around the edges. I usually sew just about EVERYTHING with white thread but this time picked out colors closer to the fabrics I was using. These were all threads I had on hand too. My four seasons tree towels are similar to the ones I found on Pinterest but also a little bit different. I really like how they turned out.

Four Seasons Towels

As I was making them, I thought….I need to make myself a set of these! This set was given to my grandparents. My Grandma C really liked them and said that she didn’t want to use them, but just put them out for display. I assured her that they were meant to be used and could be washed and dried in the washer and dryer.

Christmas Card Display

Each year we have displayed our Christmas cards in a different way. One year we lined them all up on our bar counter top and another year we taped them onto our mirror in the dining room. This year I decided that I would make something to hang them from.

The red, yellow, green and blue streamers were still up from Little Monkette’s birthday party, so I decided we should probably take them down. I still had some streamers, so I headed over to the sewing machine with the red and green streamers. I used the same technique that I did with the streamers for Little Monkette’s party. Basically you make a long stitch on a very high top thread tension and it make them ruffle. After running together a LOT of streamers I decided there was enough.

I hung the streamers with a few twists in them on our mirror. I added a few curls of ribbon along both ends. To hang the Christmas cards, I just took some clothespins that I had on hand and colored them with a marker to make them red and green.

Our Christmas Card Display

I like how it turned out and added some festive color to the dining room. If you have sent us a Christmas card, you are up there somewhere! I’m not sure how well the streamers may keep in the attic for a year, but I’m considering trying to store them. They don’t cost much time or money to make though, so I could make another set next year.

Woody’s Costume

Little Monkey's Woody Costume

Little Monkey picked out the costumes for this year. At first he was not happy that I wasn’t just buying him a Woody costume at the store….but as it all came together and he got to help with parts of it, he started to love it. Once it was done it was hard to keep him out of it!

To make the Woody costume I got a craft foam hat from the Dollar Tree and added a ribbon around the center with hot glue. Next, I used the hole puncher to put holes around the edge for the brown yarn. Little Monkey did the actual lacing around the outside. We found the bandana at Dollar General, as well as the “Sheriff” badge. Finding a yellow shirt that would work for this costume was SO hard. We ending up buying some ‘golden’ fabric dye and coloring an old long sleeve button down shirt of Little Monkey’s. It still fits but is actually a size smaller than what he is wearing now. Once the shirt was yellow, I took a ruler and red fabric marker to add the lines. Little Monkey LOVED seeing this part come together. He started getting so excited. I made the vest out of black felt and cow print. I fashioned it after his old tux vest and it took me three tries to get the right side done correctly. I was getting so frustrated but it turned out great. Great until I noticed that our vest was pointed on the bottom and Woody’s is rounded. Thankfully Little Monkey didn’t realize that and was thrilled with the costume. We fashioned a belt and gun holster out of some craft foam, velcro and hot glue. The green gun sticking out of the holster was a glow stick gun I picked up for him at the Dollar Tree. I figured a glow stick would be fun when we went to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. I was planning, well at least considering, making some ‘boots’ out of craft foam to slide over his shoes, but it just didn’t happen. Little Monkey reminded me many times that the only thing he was missing was boots!

Little Monkey LOVES his Woody costume. I think he would wear it everyday if he thought he could get away with it! Pictures of the kids in their costumes to come!

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Jessie’s Costume

Little Monkette's Jessie Costume

Since Little Monkey decided that he wanted to be Woody this year, he suggested that Little Monkette be Jessie. Since Little Monkette doesn’t seem to care much, she is going to be Jessie. I decided to make the kids costumes, because I didn’t figure it would be too hard.

For Jessie I got a long sleeve white shirt from Walmart and sewed yellow felt to the front and back for the top part of the shirt. I then used a disappearing ink pen to draw the stitching on and then stitched over it with my sewing machine and some red thread. I made the cuffs the same way but they are not attached to the shirt. They will just slide over her hands. For the jeans, I grabbed a pair of jeans that she is almost outgrown and made some chaps with cow print and black felt. I was able to stitch the chaps just a bit along the top and sides to attach them to the jeans. The bottom parts are loose (just like the Jessie doll we have!). I got her the foam hat at the Dollar Tree. With GrandMom’s help, we made the red yarn braid, attached a yellow ribbon and used the glue gun to attach it to the back of the hat. I glued a little bit of white ribbon around the center and threaded white yarn around the outside. After finishing Little Monkey’s costume, we went back and made Little Monkette a craft foam belt with belt buckle.  Little Monkette loves her costume but wants nothing to do with the hat! Hopefully we can convince her to wear it for a few pictures!

I will post more pictures once they wear their costumes!

 

Jean Skirt Makeover!

My friend D, from church, wore this rather short skirt to church one day. I talked to her and her mom and we decided to add some ruffles to the bottom to help add some length to the skirt.

Plain Skirt

Since D likes FSU (Although I don’t know why!) I decided to use FSU fabric to transform her skirt. Along the bottom of the front and the back, I put some pleated ruffles across it. Then on the front there were those two worn hole sections. I cut a piece of FSU fabric and sewed them behind it. So once the hole is really opened up, you’ll see the matching FSU fabric and not her legs!

FSU Skirt! Front

FSU Skirt Back

This project took me way too long to do but I was happy to make it for her and now she has a fun FSU skirt that is a little bit longer. I also found some invisible thread to use on this project to help make the seam lines less obvious. You can see where the line is in these photos but not as obvious as if I had used white thread. D liked how it turned out too (even better!).

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Birthday Present

Our friends’ daughter recently turned one and we were invited to her party. I knew I wanted to make her something as her present but I wasn’t sure what. I headed to Target and found some shirts and shorts on clearance! Perfect! I loved the pink and yellow together and grabbed an extra pair of denim shorts too.

I decided on a pink and yellow flower applique. I searched online for a flower shape I liked and printed out a template. For the pink shirt, I made the flower yellow with a pink center and then the opposite for the yellow shorts! I love how they turned out!

Flower Outfit

With the second pair of shorts, I put the same small flower applique in the corner. A matching, but not exactly the same, set of clothes for the birthday girl! Thanks to the clearance rack all three pieces cost about $7 total. The fabric I used came from my scraps!

Flower Outfit II

The birthday girl and her mom loved the new pieces for her wardrobe!

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