Puppet Profit!!

Puppets, puppets EVERYWHERE!! One day back in June, my son and I had a spur of the moment idea...SOCK PUPPETS!! Toddler was playing with a sock on his hand, 4 yr. old decided he needed one too...VOILA! Craft idea!

We were at grandma's house who happened to have a HUGE bag of sock singles. We dug out about 2 dozen socks, dug out her yarn and felt stash, cut up her caffeine free Diet Coke boxes and searched all over for the hot glue sticks. Then made these fun Fairy Friends!!

SO CUTE!! Both boys got to keep one, then we sold the rest at the Ye Merry Greenwood Faire we went to also with grandma (who had a booth of fairies!) We didn't have to buy ANY supplies!

If you want to make one for your child...check out this tutorial by DownWithClutter.

ENJOY!!

Long time no see...

Life has been a whirlwind in my neck of the woods. Even before my absence from blogland. Weekend after weekend of busy-ness, and not just two day weekends. Oh no...some as long as five days. But that's how summers are right?? I think we're making up for last summer of absolutely no traveling because I was pregnant. Well....here's what I've been up to...the 4th of July the boys were baptized. After a meeting with our pastor on how the ceremony will proceed and how to dress them, we decided on robing them after being baptized. A few days later I described over the phone what I designed after a little research and the pastor approved. SO...I set to work on my first ever muslin pattern....Here's toddler modeling his muslin while not being distracted from his movie. Believe it or not, this stripe fabric was cheaper than muslin. I had hit a 50% off red tag sale at JoAnn's. I was pretty stoked to work on my first muslin pattern to create a final product. After three days of stressing over both my toddlers and 10-mo-old muslin patterns, I finally got it figured out and got to work with the white linen. Here's the un-ironed finished product....
It's designed after the Alb. Why you ask?? I really don't know since that's the robe style of a pastor. (I do tend to create things on the costumey side...I'm not sure if this was truly okay or not though). They both turned out AWESOME and my craftsmanship on them are SUPERB!! (not to brag any) I used single fold bias tape on every seam and velcro to close on the top at the left shoulder. The finished pattern ended up being SO SIMPLE! Looking back I don't know why it took me three days to figure that out. Oh wait...because it was my first time and I've never pattern drafted before! haha!

Well, that's not all I've been up to...more to come this week...

Never trust a quiet baby...

Why?? Because when you have a 10 month old who can crawl, climb, open cabinets and drawers... they become quiet when they've discovered something new and fun to play with, such as a whole jar of petroleum jelly. You say WHAT?!?!? I'm saying, YEAH...petroleum jelly!! Apparently I left a little jar of it in the boys bedroom in a small drawer that I keep cloth diapering things in. You know, a drawer of stuff that you assume they will never get into because it doesn't have toys in it. It was a jar left over from when they were....you know when baby boys are "cut" (get my drift??) and you have to keep that area covered in the stuff to keep it clear of infection?? Yah, I left it in that drawer because it was never bothered with, until last night when 10 month old decided he could open that drawer (for the first time ever), pull everything out, discover a jar of non-edible-jelly, and open it (how the heck did he figure that out??). He must have been looking for crackers to go with the non-edible-jelly because it was smeared all over his hands, arms, face and the open drawer. There went the rest of our evening. I didn't get to finish drafting a new pattern I'm working on for this weekend for the boys baptisms. :) Maybe I'll have time to post about that soon, assuming the rest of the week goes smoothly and we don't have any more 10 month old caused mishaps.

Ridding of the Sicklies

I've been absent for two weeks, I think, (If I'm doing my math right!). We've all been sick in our neck of the woods, first me a week ago with a little cold I couldn't shake. Now I've graciously shared it my two little boys who are experiencing the symptoms a heck of a lot more than I did. I don't buy boxes of tissue, so we're going through toilet paper twice as fast with three runny noses in this house! Their poor little immune systems...they just aren't as strong as mine yet, I guess. I'm going to have to sterilize the whole house once it's all gone because of all the snot and hacking and weezing that's infected our house air. Bleagh!!!

We're all now on the mend and I hope to be adding some new photos of what we've been up to soon. Several destashing projects, several in-progress projects and a new ornament. Yay! In the mean time, here's a pic from my parents back deck I took back in February. You can see Mt. Adams peaking over that hillside in the distance. One of my favorite things about my parents house is the view they have of the valley facing west. On a clear day you can see both Mt. Ranier and Mt. Adams AND the Yakima valley all the way to Yakima (maybe, never really checked the accuracy). Check back soon!

Toddler times

The past couple of nights we've been reading a Richard Scarry book to our toddler that we got from the library (not the one in the pic, that one is the cover of the one I got when I was four back in 1981!!) The library book has about 15 different easy to read stories in it. Last night after my husband read him one or two, he decided it was his turn to read to daddy. So CUTE!! He flips through the story explaining what's going on in the pictures. He starts out with "One day.." and as he's turning the pages he'll say "And then..." Good times!

No Sew Costumes...

THIS is the CUTEST costume!! I'm not the biggest Martha Stewart fan, however, from another blog I follow, I learned about her no-sew costumes. The tutorial for it is here on Martha's website, it is so easy to make. I would LOVE to make this for my 3 year old, however we just bought our costumes yesterday and he wants to be a dragon (you can view it here at the Target website). I know, I know, I should be sewing his costume like I did for the past two years. Last years Halloween costume is shown here in last years blog and the year prior to that he was an Oompa Loompa from the original Willy Wonka movie. I made both of these costumes. The Oompa Loompa costume was so cute, I even made two others for our friends kids we went trick-or-treating with, so there were three little Oompa Loompas together. This year, time is not really on my side. But I do have to make the hooded head and dragon legs, it's only a partial costume, it was missing pieces so we got it for a great price. I'll have more pictures after the event, until then, I do need to get sewing on the dragon head.

Ten Tiny Toes...

You'd think that I would have been able to post sooner, time just flies when you have two kids. My new little guy was 8 days late and now he's 8 weeks old! I think I've adjusted pretty well from working mom to home mom, I've managed to maintain a semi-clean household. However, in doing so, I have had very, VERY little me time. What I mean by me time is craft time. I have spent about 5 hours in the past 8 weeks on crafts and only then was it because I'm forcing myself to get a baby gift completed. My crafting is my stress outlet, is my form of relaxing from a long day, and I have no time for it!!! I will manage. In the mean time, baby is doing great, 3 year old brother is adoring little baby brother, gotta watch him with his love squishes, and the house is cleaner than when I was working and pregnant. :)

Happy Easter!

A little late, but that's okay! We dyed eggs Friday night with the little one, this is how they turned out. The interior designer in me just had to put them in order by color....it's always more pleasing to my eye. I look at A LOT of paint fan decks....to me, the colors needs to be orderly. So pretty!! This was our first Easter we stayed home. It was so quiet, it was almost sad and lonely. But then our friends came with their two toddlers and the quietness was gone. It's always fun to watch them play. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Latest Projects

Well, I finally got around to taking a pic of at least the fabric I used for the nursing covers that I mention is this entry. I've given them to all the area La Leche League leaders to sell at their meetings as a fundraiser. I even sold one this past Sunday at the Baby Fair. So cool! I could sell them on Etsy, but after having done a quick search I saw that this area of the market was already a little saturated. So I'll just stick to the local LLL leaders and their meetings. If you're interested, I sell them for $25.00

I want to enter this gemstone beading contest using the square new jade beads I showed in my Leavenworth post. I've designed a bracelet using 4mm square new jade, 6mm opalite rounds and labradorite rectangular chips with various silver beads and components. I'm not experience enough with clasps and finishing simply strung beads on wire. I bought a crimper and crimp beads to attempt a few ideas, but I'll have to pull out all my magazines to get techniques and ideas. The deadline is March 31, time is running out! I'm pretty excited to enter it though. It will be my second beading contest that I've entered! Maybe I should'nt be showing my design...hhhmmm.....oh but I must!

I just had to show this picture...

One night I was getting ready for bed, my husband was in bed reading, and all I heard was this thump-thump-thump of little feet from the bedroom to the living room over and over and over. When I finally came out of the bathroom and entered the bedroom, this is what I found all across the foot of our bed. My sons Cars stickers, all in a row at our feet! He even put one on my jeans which were hanging off the foot of the bed and were apparently in the way of his line up across the bed. He was so proud of himself it was too cute to pass up the photo op!

On this evening...

Do you ever wonder sometimes why you agree to certain things? You get yourself into a situation, and not necessarily a bad on, then wonder "What was I thinking??" Well, I may have done that for this evening. I agreed to babysit two kids under the age of three, along with bringing my own two year old......yeah! So far it's been okay, nothing stressful has happened, but I have almost three more hours to go. Yikes!

On the brighter side, I believe Suzy Q has gone to her new home by now. I took her in to the LYS yesterday after work. The three ladies that were there thought she was just adorable! :) By now they hopefully called the lady she was going to and she's been picked up. If not, then she's still at the LYS on display for many to say hello to.

I took these pictures of her boots while at work before taking her in to the LYS. I used a brown vinyl fabric sample from work, I thought she needed some brown (faux) leather knee high boots to go with her outfit. I reshaped the pattern that was in the Knitted Babe book, added a zigzag stitch along the front, hand sewed the bottom and heal, then added some size 8 rootbeer Miyuki seed beads to button them up. I think they turned out okay, I wasn't as pleased, probably because vinyl is a little slippery and frustrating to work with.