Happy Halloween!

I hope you have a fun day!  We’ll be going to our church’s annual Fall Festival.  It’s going to be really great.  We carved our pumpkins on Saturday and the kids seemed to enjoy it.  Of course, I couldn’t keep the little one from eating the pumpkin.  Oh well, she’s eaten a lot worse.

To get in the Halloween mood take a look at some pretty sweet costumes over at one of my favorite sites, Modern Kiddo!  I was honored to have mine included in their annual costume parade!   I am always amazed by people’s creativity.

Here is a sneak peak of my 5 ft. creatures that will make their debut this week.  I am pretty excited about them.  

The other day we were pushing the kids on swings at the park and a bunch of college students ran by on brooms on their way to practice quidditch.  That is certainly something you don’t see every day.  Apparently, the college here has its own quidditch team.  Makes me laugh every time I think about it.

Camp Out

We love camping but haven’t been able to do it much since having the kids. In fact, I haven’t been camping since I was pregnant with Josiah.  Ken has taken Josiah twice which has been great but I’ve been biding my time until we could all get out there together.  Last weekend we finally had a free moment and great weather.

We just went to Lockhart State Park which is about 30 minutes from our house because when camping with such little ones it is good to not get too far away from home base.

As you’ll see from the pictures most of what we did was eat.  We got there and Ken, our camp chef, immediately went to work starting dinner.  I started in on setting up the tent.  The kids made stick collections and ran up and down the hill.

We ate hotdogs, chips, and fruit.  Unfortunately, most of the state is still under a burn ban because of our continued drought so we couldn’t grill or make a fire, so we had to do all cooking on our camp stove. 

Since we didn’t have a fire we couldn’t cook our smores the normal way either.  But they were still tasty.  Audrey wasn’t sure what to think of it but ended up just eating the graham cracker with the melted chocolate on it.

One thing the kids thoroughly enjoyed were two glow sticks Josiah was given long ago from his Nana and Papa for the next time he went camping.  There was lots of dancing and begging me to take more and more pictures of them.  Too bad I didn’t have a tripod.  They played with those things forever.  I’ll have to remember to always bring some when we camp.

Afterwards we got ready for bed and headed into the tent since it was already dark and there wasn’t much we could do sitting in the dark.  If we had had a fire we would have stayed out longer, but hopefully we can do that next time.

Since it was still a bit early we pulled out the laptop we brought and let the kids watch a few minutes of a dvd wet.  I know, I know, we are out in nature, but it was fun to do in the tent together.

We knew it would take longer than normal to get the kids to go to sleep since they sleep in their own rooms and Audrey in a crib.  But after 11 pm when they were STILL up and active Ken took them for a quick car ride to knock them out.  Thankfully, they slept till about 8 am but with the sleep they were lacking, there was definitely some grumpiness the next day.

In the morning, Ken cooked us pancakes, bacon, and eggs.  Yum.  Josiah helped with the mixing.

We then packed everything up and headed over to the little playground.  After playing there for a while we took a short walk on one of the hiking trails.  It was really pretty.  We collected pretty leaves and ran into two snakes.  The first one was a tiny green snake and the next one was either a huge cottonmouth or another type of water snake.  Either way I am very glad it slid away from us and into the creek.

So, it was a quick and pretty simple time but that is about all we are prepared to do with a 1 and 3 year old.  Both of them did great.  The only hard part was getting them to go to sleep.  I can’t wait until they are a little older and can do that easier.

When we got home we glued the leaves we found onto some paper and decorated it a bit.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Ok, I know what you are saying…”It isn’t even Halloween yet!”  And I totally agree with that sentiment.  But since these items really only sell for a short period of time I figure the longer people have to see them, the better chance I have of selling them.  And I thought I’d let you guys, my friends, have a look at them before they get snatched up.  All of the pictures in this post are links to the item in the shop.

I have filled my shop with Christmas-y goodness.  I have 5 different styles of stockings that are all made from vintage tablecloths.  I love to think of all the happy times these tablecloths were used.  Think of all the family gatherings that happened with them.  Where were they?  What conversations were had over them?

There are different quantities of the stockings depending on how much I was able to use from the tablecloths.  All of the quantities available are in the shop.  They are the only ones like them in the world, so once they are gone, they’re gone. They would of course be a great way to add charm to your holiday decor or they would be awesome as gifts for friends.

I also brought back my popular Baby’s First Christmas ornaments.  I’ve been showing you previews of the bodies and tails as I made them but they are now ready for purchase.

New this year is an ormanent for the newlyweds in your life.  Of course, this ornament could be personalized with anything really.

I still need to make one last ornament option and will hopefully get it out very soon.

I will also start rolling out all of the sock animals I have been hoarding next week.  Including a new one that is 5 FEET LONG!

Halloween Costumes 2011

Here they are!  I can’t believe they are finished a week in advance.  That hasn’t happened before.  But it is a great feeling because I have so many other things I need to be doing and these are the most handmade costumes I have done..except for Audrey’s little strawberry costume last year which was a nice attempt but didn’t turn out like my vision of it.

I finished Josiah’s late last night and was so thrilled.  I had gotten the idea from Martha Stewart but after looking at her pattern it wasn’t at all like I thought it would be.  I had assumed I’d be making it like her other cape tutorials (like I used for Audrey’s) but they did it in a non-sewing way.  It actually looked harder to me and used a lot more materials.  And since to print out her pattern would have used 22 sheets of paper, I just made it up myself.  I used a piece of yarn and my disappearing ink pen to make a compass to make the circle for the cape.  I cut out a quarter of the circle and made a smaller circle for the neckline.  I made a collar to match the neckline, sewed it all up and voila!  A CAPE!  I was amazed at myself that I made Josiah’s costume from start to finish in about 2-2.5 hours total, including the hat.

Audrey’s hood alone took me that long or more because I couldn’t figure out what in the world Martha’s instructions were telling me to do.  Her cape was as simple as they come but I finally realized that the hood instructions are lacking the pictures that were originally with it when it was published in the magazine.  So, they are very cryptic.  If anyone needs help deciphering them let me know.  I had to figure it all out using paper first so I didn’t ruin my fabric.  And thankfully I did that because I totally thought they were wanting me to fold and cut it a different way at first.  I also didn’t like how they wanted me to put the hood together because it would leave the unfinished seams showing in the hood.  I noticed that when it was almost too late, but was able to sew it so the edges are hidden.  But if I had realized what they were doing from the beginning I would have sewn the pieces of fabric together differently to give an even more professional look.  oh well.  No one will notice or care but me.

I am excited about how Josiah’s hat came out.  On Martha’s site they have two fitted baseball caps glued on top of each other.  But I couldn’t find any brown hats at all until I thought to try Dollar General and they had two khaki ones.  They had those velcro straps on the back to alter the size though so I cut off the back half of each hat and sewed them together.  I kept resewing the hat smaller and smaller until it fit Josiah’s small head.  I cut the brims and hot glued bias tape on them.  The glue job isn’t perfect but it’s good enough.  Then I just sewed the little flaps and hand sewed them inside each side of the hat, added a bit of hot glue behind them on the outside for added strength and tied them together on top.  That is the same bias tape on top, I just sewed it in half to make it thinner.

I found Audrey’s little basket at Goodwill yesterday for 99 cents.  I just cut an extra piece of red fabric to lay in it.  She loved that basket and didn’t want to put it down.  I love that it is small and she won’t be able to accumulate much candy in it!

Josiah’s shirt is the same one we used to make him a hobbit.  It is just a white dress shirt.  The khakis are ones he already had too.  Audrey’s dress is the vintage one I showed you that I got from a little shop on Etsy.

I think my favorite part of her outfit is the ribbon I sewed around the edge of the cape.  I was afraid that my machine would growl at me and give me a hard time going through all that fabric but it worked perfectly and didn’t give me any trouble.  I wanted to hug my machine for its compliance with both of these projects.  They couldn’t have gone as fast as they did without its cooperation.

Little Ladybug

My poor kids rarely benefit from my non-stop toy making.  Two days ago Josiah suddenly asked if I would make him a ladybug.  I figured he was wanting some kind of sock animal and didn’t want to make one, especially since his birthday is nearing.  But after he also started asking for broccoli and other foods I realized he was thinking of when I have made him felt food in the past.  So, at 11:30 pm when I was closing up shop for the night I grabbed my stash of cheap felt and found some red fleece scraps left over from Audrey’s strawberry costume that I made her last year.  There was just enough to cut two small ovals.  I then cut a couple pieces from the black felt and hand sewed a little lady bug together.  I was even too lazy to get up and go in the next room to grab a bit of fluff so I cut up some more fleece and stuffed it inside.

It turned out to be a perfect size for him to hold in his hand and put in his pocket.  Plus the fleece is super soft.  He found it yesterday morning where I had left it out and he didn’t put it down all day.  He has even slept with it.  Who knew that a few minutes and some scraps could make a kid so happy.  You can see in the picture that it is already looking well loved.

And it helps me feel like a good mom to actually make something for my own child for once.

Coming soon is a post about my 10 year college reunion that we went to this past weekend and a shop update or two.  Plus it is time for some more great etsy finds.

Do any of you ever have about 20 things on your list that all need to be done right now?  I feel like that at the moment and it is of course impossible to get all of the things done at the same time.  It is hard to choose what should come first.

Oh, and one last thing, my son’s birthday is mid November and he has suddenly requested to have a snake themed party.  I am not sure how to make it fun and friendly for all ages.  Plus, there will probably be more girls than boys there.  But I guess at their age, most of the girls probably still like snakes.  I am thinking of making it more reptile/amphibiany.  It is all going to be pretty low key though as far as decorating etc. goes this year because we are doing it at one of those jumpy places.  I am all about less work at this time of year.

Fall is in the Air

I saw two things out my window yesterday.  The first one was a bit shocking at first because when I saw it from afar I thought it was the beginning of a birds nest.  I couldn’t believe the birds had done so much, so fast, without me seeing them.  But as I focused on it I realized it was a GIANT moth, probably about the size of my hand.  The picture doesn’t do it justice since there is nothing next to it for scale.  I kept telling Ken he needed to put his face in the picture but he wouldn’t play along.  I guess the moth (which I have seen before at our house in the past) was just trying to stay out of what is in the next picture.

Rain!  Glorious rain!  We haven’t seen this stuff in way too long.  And this wasn’t one of those 10 minute puny rains that we’ve gotten this summer but an actual downpour for hours rain.  Our yard is still damp and muddy from it.  We were woken up by the sound of it during the night and it was the happiest sound ever.  The day before I had the kids with me in Austin to get some fabric for Audrey’s halloween costume and it started to rain as we were getting out of the car.  Audrey stuck her tongue out to catch the mysterious stuff.  Poor girl has only seen it rain a few times in her life.

Oooh, did someone say halloween costume?!  Why yes I did.  I bought this cute little vintage dress off of etsy for a good price.  And then we took a ride to Joann fabric’s to buy some pretty red corduroy to make a hooded cape.  Any guesses as to what she’ll be?  I loved that I got a dress that can be worn again as a regular dress.  And I went a little crazy on the fabric buying so her cape is going to be much nicer than it needs to be and will probably be able to be passed down to her children.

I was all set to make a similar cape for Josiah to be Sherlock Holmes because the boy loves him and all things detective and mysterious.  But we went to Goodwill as soon as they started selling halloween costumes back at the end of September to see what cheap alternatives they had and we found a cool dragon costume.  It was marked $16 dollars but had orange highlighter marked over it so I asked what that meant and the guy said that it just meant that it was from last year and didn’t change the price but he would give it to me for $10.  So, I figured even if Josiah still ended up being Sherlock, he would have an awesome costume to dress up in.  So, while at Joann’s I went ahead and picked up some suiting material to make him a sherlock costume for either halloween or just for play.  He loves dressing up so it’ll get a lot of use.  And since his birthday is fast approaching I can give it to him then if I want.

Here are the tutorials I’ll be using to make the attire.  You can click on the pictures to see them.

Ok, so I want to hear.  What are your little ones going to be?  Are you going to dress up to?

You Betsy! – Pincushions

Ok, so I love etsy as much as the next guy and since I spend a fair amount of time on it for my own shop I want to share some of the other fabulous people and wares I find along the way.

Up first is my new obsession with pincushions!  I don’t know where it started but I think they are just so lovely and they can be useful which is an added bonus.  Right now the arm of my couch is my pinchushion.  It works great except for when I forget to take some of the pins or needles out of it and the next day my little kids find them.  Oops.  So, it would be great for me to have a portable place for me to stash my pins while sewing.  And while I could go and buy a plain old utilitarian pincushion, why, when I could buy a handmade one that is so fun and beautiful.  They are like little pieces of art.  In fact, I think I may start a small collection.  But before you all go out and start buying me pincushions, I don’t want to be known as the pincushion lady and have 50 of them.  I certainly don’t have room for them anyway.  But maybe a couple…or a few would be cool!

Here are a few of my favorites.  They range in price from $5.75 to $25 .

Hedgehog Pincushion $12.50 from Strawberries and Cream

Brilliant Red Flowers $25.00 from Spincushions

Luscious Lemon Pincushion $14 (on sale) from Pinpinn

Pincushion $13 from Lynn B’s Country Cottage

Navy Blue, Red, and Yellow Bottlecap Pincushion $7.50 from Up the Creek

Red Rainbow Striped Felt Pincushion $5.75 from Overspill

Felted Cactus Pincushion $20 from Fabulous Felties

Embroidered Felt Summer Strawberry Pincushion $25 from Sea Pinks

Daisy and Mouse Pincushion $16.99 from Lifepieces

This last one, Lifepieces, is the only shop I have purchased from so far.  It is a great shop that usually only has a few items in it at a time because as soon as they are made they get snatched up.  I bought one similar to this mouse for a dear friend’s birthday as a custom order.  It was made quickly and beautifully.  I want a few of the cushions from her…look at the sold items and take a look at the little pig and elephant ones.  Melts my heart!

You can all thank me for giving you a new obsession as well!