Craft Therapy

I practiced some craft therapy today to help relieve some of the anger from last nights bad news. Due to focusing on Cameron's birthday party & then taking care of sick family members my house has been greatly lacking in Spring time cheer & decor. So after seeing this craft over at Crafty Sisters I decided to dress-up my mantle.

Here is what my mantle looks like now.

My jelly bean topiary

I ran out of jelly beans so I wrapped a few styrofoam balls in variegated Spring color yarn

P.S.

Remember how I said that I won a give away from Dana over at MADE ? He are some photos of the cute hair clips I received last week

The baby shower story

On Thursday I spent several hours making the following girly get-up. Beautiful, right? So, you ask, what is the problem? The problem is that I forgot that the baby shower on Thursday was for a boy. After going to at least 3-5 baby showers & missing but still preparing gifts for 2 others in the last month or so, plus having spoken to my sister-in-law who is expecting a little girl (I have another sister-in-law also expecting a girl) I got my shower recipients mixed up. I got to the shower and saw all the blue and immediately felt like an idiot. I knew she was expecting a boy, I was her visiting teacher until last month. Oh, well I blame the fact that I had been dealing with sick kids & husband for 3 days.

The whole outfit

The skirt & matching hairbows

I love ruffly bottoms

P.S.

Sorry, that last post was not very bright sidey. It was definately a glass half empty and cracked kind of post.

Not Quite As Planned

This week did not go as planned. I posted this last weekend "We have a fun week of Rodeo, parks, walks, garage sale-ing & the Zoo planned. " Monday was the only bit of sun-shine that we got all week. Tuesday morning I was woken up at 5 am by being vomited on (mostly neck and hair- gross) by Lilliana which continued all day. 3 baths for her, 6 clothes changes for me, 2 sets of king sheets & mattress protectors, 2 blankets, 6 towels, 4 loads of laundry and over a dozen vomit messes to clean-up later she felt better (it lasted about 14-16 hours). The next day on his way to the rodeo with Grandma Cameron started throwing up too. The first mess was GROSS to clean up, I basically stripped him down to his skivvies before sending him inside to take a bath. I had to completely take apart the car seat and clean nooks and crannies with q-tips. The rest of the day though he carried around a bowl and never missed. He even carried it to the toilet and dumped it. He has been feeling better since Thursday minus throwing up halfway through dinner Th-F-Sat & today. It is the most bizarre thing; all day he is fine and eats things that would make someone with a stomach bug throw-up (grapefruit, jalapeno sausage, cheese, etc) and is fine, then at dinner half way through he throws-up profusely & comes back to the table wanting to finish dinner-weird. Brian came down with the bug too. Luckily he was just tired and nauseated. Needless to say, aside from Monday, there were no walks, parks, rodeo trips or zoo excursions this week.

I did get to go to the big town of Needville ( the town is not big but the town wide sale is) wide garage sale & found some EXCELLENT finds. Several pairs of jeans in bigger sizes that were in good condition and had adjustable waist bands (genius invention) for $1 each, several pairs of nice jeans in my size (even the Long sizes I need) for $1 each, lots of cute shirts for myself & Cameron and to re-purpose into several project I have in mind, an awesome old-school sewing book - the front cover would have been enough for me to buy it (photos to come) & a super cool tool to help form armscyes, hip curves, front & back crotch curves, neck curves in patterns - you usually would have to have several different tools and this one is all in one, & some photo frames to refinish and a few other odds and ends. The best finds were probably the book & tool- I got them both for $ .50 combined- & the jeans. The garage sale was cut short though. An hour into my bargain hunting it started torrentially pouring rain, so most of the good sales packed up and went inside, a few that were actually in garages stuck around.

The week ended poorly as the beautiful weather turned cold, windy & grey. Thursday I worked really hard on a baby shower gift & got it all wrong. I will post about it tomorrow as it is slightly humorous despite how frustrating it was. And lastly, the worst thing that did not go as I wanted it to was the stupid Health Care bill being passed. I am so mad. I don't understand how stupid trivial bills get pulled apart and stay in committee for years, but this one bill that the majority of the nation does not want that is pretty much the biggest step toward socialism our country has ever taken get force fed through the house and senate in less than a year. I am not saying that there was no call for change in the healthcare system that we have/had, just that government run systems are WAY worse than the system we had. Why couldn't there have been research done, options weighed and discussed, open discussions about possible solutions, public clarity in the bill. Obama campaigned on promises of open and clarity on all legislation, on putting an end to ear marks & backroom deals & in this one bill alone he not only broke all of those promises but stomped on them and lied to and deceived millions (again) as to the nature and meaning of this bill. I am depressed. Perhaps some fun crafts will cheer me up this week.

I Made it ALL by my self

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Proud Mama

Action shot. The skirt is the perfect length.

The turquoise has yellow contrast thread & the yellow has turquoise contrast thread.

I made this using the 90 minute shirt tutorial from Dana over at Made - one of my favorite craft blogs. Last month they had celebrate the boy month and this tutorial came up. I haven't had the guts to try and adjust the pattern for Cameron yet, but that is my goal this week. Anyway, I used fabric from 2 different shirt that had shrunk & some ribbing the I had purchased. I love the color combination, thanks Cameron- he picked out the colors. this is the first time that I have done sleeves. I tried doing a smaller gather at the top in the middle to make it more girly, you can sort-of tell but not really. Anyway, I love it & am proud of it.

Something else super great about the Made blog is that I one of the giveaways last week. I was totally floored. I never win anything, ever. So, thanks to Dana for her great blog. I will be eagerly checking my mail box this week.

Here Comes the Sun

Sorry for the lack of blogging about us more lately. We have been spending as much time as possible outside enjoying the sun shine & 70 + degree weather that we have had for the last week. Brian finished midterms last week & has Spring Break this week. Basically, that means that he is at work all day instead of at school all day. We were able to get a lot of desperately needed yard work done this weekend. And cooked up a tasty roast dinner for Sunday and had friends over. I sure do love Spring time.

Oh, we also got our tickets for Utah. I am SO, SO excited to get to spend the Summer with family and friends. I get to attend the Pinegar family reunion for the first time since we were married almost 4 years ago. I sure do love my family reunions. I already have a running packing list in my head. I think that I can pack a good deal of Lilliana's clothes now since she is in borderline sizes; I will just keep her in the smaller size until we leave and pack up the next size up. I have so many people and places that I want to see & visit, I just hope that I will have time for it all.

Well, I hope everyone else is starting to see the signs of Spring too. We have a fun week of Rodeo, parks, walks, garage sale-ing & the Zoo planned. If flickr, picasa & I can all decide to get along I will have photos for you guys to enjoy.

Learning curve

I had an idea pop into my head the other day for a gift for an upcoming baby shower, but wanted to try it out before making something to give away. So, I scrounged up an old onesie, some scrap fabric (for the flowers), buttons, ribbon, tulle & "silk" flowers. I was guessing my whole way through & learned a thing or two about working with knits. Here is the finished product. Needless to say, I have some kinks to workout before I feel comfortable giving it away to someone.

I made this yesterday & definitely learned a lot. While from a distance it is cute, if you look closely you can tell that I haven't worked with knit fabric & embellishing it much.

I really like the concept & the flowers are way cute. The machine didn't feed the fabric well though & to get this to fit I had to put Lilliana's feet through the top and take her diaper off. Apparently the fabric got bunched in a few spots and so the ribbon was a little on the tight side. I also misjudged the hight that the skirt needed to be added.

I cut the crotch part off & put some white bloomers on her. The shirt kept sliding up over her cute pudgy belly. I learned several good lessons about working with knits. Hopefully I remember them next time. As for this cute little number, I am not sure if she will get to wear it again.

Fireman Party Cont.

Here are some more shots from the party

Getting in on the fun

Lilliana liked the truck a lot too

Not only did the cake look good it tasted delicious

I think he liked it

After a bad case of the shy and grumpies Cameron decided to be happy and sit on the back of a real firetruck

The Fireman Party

We through Cameron his Fireman Party today. The party was so fun, despite the very small turnout. *Note: I was so sad for Cameron, while he enjoyed the 2 friends that came +1 that showed up for the fire station tour, he kept asking where all of his friends and buddies were. He even had me delay the cake twice saying he wanted to wait until more friends came* All the effort was well worth it Cameron & Lilliana have both spent all day playing inside the firetruck & if for no other reason than that I am pleased with the turn out. As a recap, I made a 3D firetruck cake, a large card board firetruck to play in & for favors each child got a fireman hat & badge and a hose to put out fires (cut up piece of an old damaged garden hose with ends taped shut). Since pictures can say a lot more than I can, I will show you some of the details & add commentary as needed.

Side Shot- Our friend's came over, one of whom is a firefighter, and were impressed with the accuracy of the fireman's emblem on the side. The Truck is the size of half of a sectional couch (3'x6' maybe?) and we stayed up until about 2 making it.

Front view- The truck is about 3-3 1/2 feet tall

Action shot

I made a platform for the cake out of cardboard wrapped in paper so that it would look like the truck was actually driving on the wheels. I used 1/2 of a 9x13" pan & two loaf pans for the cake (I double the recipe and then made 1/2 chocolate) & made my favorite frosting recipe, which I divided it up as needed and used gel coloring to get the vibrant colors

I looked at several pictures online and then pretty much winged it from there. Everyone was impressed with the cake, including myself. I don't have much experience with children's cake, but Cameron's last two cakes have given me the confidence to create many more fun, 3D cakes in the years to come. Hooray for an "I can do that" attitude.

The baby shower onsies

As promised (to the whole 2 of you that read this) here are photo's of the onsies that I made for the twin boy baby shower I went to. I used a combination of techniques from online tutorials here & here. I think they turned out really well considering it was the first time I tried either technique.

Happy Birthday Cameron

I have this whole Ode to Cameron all thought up in my head, but Lilliana is sad and teething so I have 5 minutes while Brian gets her ready for bed. I just want to mention how much I love my little boy. I can't believe that he has been around three whole years, time really does fly.

P.S. Cameron is sporting his birthday shirt that I made for him this morning using fabric of his choice and a stained t-shirt. I seriously finished it in less time than it took his birthday muffins to bake. I used this technique to applique.