B O O !!

Some people seem to think Halloween has to be scary but it can actually be quite cute too. Just check out this adorable little sign I am making for a friend.

Guess what? Her children did the ghost images with their feet. I watch her sweet angels on Monday, so today we whipped these out by dipping their feet in white paint and pressing their feet onto the black plaque. I then added the word BOO and some polka dots to jazz it up. I still have to add the clear gloss, drill some holes and wrap some wire with beads to form a handle. It is REALLY raining hard so that will have to wait till we have a clearer day. This is a great project to do with your little ones. I bet a lot of grandparents would love to receive this..... I could also imagine a bunch of these hanging around through the years to show their growth.

Have a great evening!
I am linking  this project up to these great sites:
733 Blog - What are little boys made of weekly party

Halloween Photo Garland

I am so excited to share this with you because this  idea has been bouncing around my head since August. I love this time of year soooooo much. I do not even know what I love more, the pumpkin patch, apple pickin, cool weather, crunchy leaves, candy corn or creating memorable costumes for my kiddos. Over the years we have created some wonderful , delightful costumes. We always take pictures but have always been saddened by the fact that we take them and just set them aside in a photo album.  Here are just a few :

Seriously ...How could you not want to see those proudly displayed????

They always bring the biggest smile to my face. Usually at Christmas I display our Santa photos on a garland in the living room so I thought it would work for all the Halloween photos I had too. This is what I came up with quickly. 

This is not the one I will be using for all of my photos but I thought it turned out great and gave me an idea if it would work or not. As a matter of fact, most of those photos are from magazines. *LOL* I promise to show mine by the end of the week.
My head is already swimming over all of the possibilities!!!

Candy Corn

Candy Corn.....some people eat it just during the fall. I could eat it all the time. I love those little pieces of candy. They taste sooo good! Even the colors are tantalizing. That is why I was tickled when someone ordered the candy corn font for their bucket. I have  worked on it off and on all week. I redid the tulle around it twice before I finally was satisfied with the end result. Here it is during the process. This was after I took the tulle out and started over again.

I do not know what the problem was but I just did not like how it was shaping up. I had the same feeling with the witch hat bucket right beside it. As matter of fact I just redid the tulle on it too. But considering I have been ill with a sore throat, I guess we ended on a good note. I think it turned out to be one of the sweetest buckets I have made! What do you think?

I will be linking this project to these parties:
733- A Creative Blog, Sugar and Spice Weekly Party
Sew Much Ado - We Did It Wednesday

Shopping

 I am serious when I say that all of you who have girls must have some fun times when shopping. I would be broke if I had a girl. The twins and I headed to the outlets today in search of sweaters and shoes. I saw so many adorable things for girls. It is just so much fun dressing a girl. Dressing a boy is fun too until they realize that tshirts and jeans are the best thing for them. They each found a pair of shoes and maybe two other things they liked. I found some really cool shoes for them but they looked like I had grown a third head when I suggested it. Their response was we have crocs, we have tennis shoes, why do we need these brown loafers? Well they did not need them but they would look cute with some of the shirts and jeans I saw. I finally called it a day and came home. Oh, do not get me wrong, I had fun with the munchkins. It was nice to get out in the autumn weather. They even remarked how pretty a day it was. Ben and Jerrys was the highlight of their day. I just realized I have lost them to the comfort world of jeans and Tshirts. Only so much we can do with that!

After we got home, I finished up this shirt for a little girl. It is a fun applique of a pumpkin. We could have stopped right there. It would  have look great as is but since I do not have a girl...... well I just had to add more to it because it is fun to do when you can. Ribbons and buttons now adorn the shirt and I added 3 inches of fabric to the bottom. 

I think it would look awesome layered over an orange shirt. We will have to see how Miss C wants to wear it. She knew she wanted the pumpkin design so I am sure she knows just how she wants to wear it too.

Overdose of cuteness!

This past week I have been working on a gift for a baby shower. A month back I had bought the fabric not really knowing what I was making but I just knew the fabric was definately her. Afterall she is putting a chandelier in her baby girls nursery. So you can just toss out the cute typical baby prints. That was not going to fly with this momma. So this is the stack of print I bought and fell in love with.

 My first thought was a blanket  but something told me she would be receiving lots of blankets. I finally decided on this baby capelet. It is sooo cute.

I do know of some things I will do a little differently next time but overall I was pleased with what I got, without a pattern. I managed to make as beret to go with it adorned with the pink ribbon too.

Check out Teddy modeling for me. He is cheap and stays right where you put him. The easiest model I have worked with. *LOL*

Oh and guess what, I did mange to put the magnetic clasp in the  Poopy Pouch or diaper clutch, whatever you want to call it.  See, it turned out pretty well and once again....super EZ.

With what little bit of fabric I had left, I made a burp cloth too for Ms. Audrey.

Everything turned out well. It was great to spend the day enjoying company of friends, laughing and hearing tales of the momma to be.

Productive Days

Sometimes you have an incredible productive day but just really do not have  alot to show for it. That would be the case today. I really got  a great deal of stuff done but it was all kind of like behind the scenes type stuff. I managed to do lots of domestic stuff like laundry, dinners in the freezer and  cleaned out the fridge.  Somehow I managed to get extra stuff done too. For example - I schooled the boys, designed 2 birthday shirts, 6 halloween buckets, cut fabric, made fudge for about 50 people, planned next weeks lessons for the boys and started baking cookies for a baby shower.  You would think I would show you something from all that but I do not think you want to see my messy kitchen from baking, my folded laundry or lesson planning book. 

It was a great day though. Trust me.....it was a productive day. That always leaves me with a wonderful feeling.  I like it when things are checked off my list, don't you?

However, I can show you these adorable hair clippies I made the other day. They are super easy to stitch out on the embroidery machine. As soon as A has some hair, we will put these pumpkins in her hair. For now we will have to clip them to her headband. Hopefully I can do a pumpkin applique shirt for her this coming week after I am done with this baby shower I am baking for.

These little scotties are too cute. For some reason I always think of herringbone patterns and scotties together. Wierd how we form these images in our head.

I have a few more to share but I may have another "not much to show you day" so I had better wait just in case!

Tuesday Toots

I stumbled across this  Poopy Clutch a month or so back and fell in love with the simplicity of the design. I was hoping I would eventually find a reason to create it. If you desire a Poopy Clutch too, you can find the complete tutorial at ISLY by Melissa Esplin . She has several different designs of the clutch to choose from. The Poopy Clutch is just big enough to hold a wipes case and a couple of diapers. It is perfect for when you need to  run out  just a moment and do not want to take that big diaper bag. This project involves absolutely no sewing unless you decide to make it out of cloth. I cut and put this together in less than 30 minutes while I watched The Closer last night. How cool is that? Twice I lucked out, the leather was on sale. YAY! The only thing that I could not find was a button stud so I am holding my case together right now with a brad but I plan on installing a magnetic closure on it tomorrow. Stay tuned for the update ................

Tomorrow I hope to feature the Poopy Clutch with its new magnetic closure and who knows? Seriously, I do not know. *LOL*

Have a great day!

Back to School

Most of you sent your kiddos back to school a couple of weeks ago but we just sent ours back last week. My oldest is in middle school and I am homeschooling the twins this year. Back to school shopping was easy peasy this year. I was elated with how short my shopping list was but then I became nostalgic for that feeling you get with back to school shopping.  New clothes, backpacks, lunchboxes......so much of that was not needed this year since we are at home. As we were kind of preparing for  back to school, a friend contacted me about making a special dress for her daughter, who was starting school this year. I really do not do dresses. Dresses like hair bows are just not something I have been allowed the pleasure of experiencing in a house full of boys.

Working on her daughters dress brought back so many memories of how we always prepared which new outfit the boys were going to wear on that first day. We usually took a pic of them with their new backpack and lunchbox heading out the door with a sign that has the first day of school written on it. I hope my friends daughter enjoyed her first day at school . This is what I was able to come up with for her daughters first day. I have this adorable crayon font that I have been waiting for the chance to use. This seemed the perfect time to try it out.

I really like how her mom wanted a bow tied on the crayon.

Since I do not get to hang around the girly world very often, I tried my hand at making some cute little hair clips.

 I kind of liked hanging out in the dress and hairbow department. I might have to live vicariously through my friends with girls for awhile.

;-)

Fall is in the air!

It will not be long till Halloween is here. I can already feel a little bit of the autumn crispness in the morning and evening air. I love this time of year. Fall colors are truly some of my favorite color combinations. Normally I decorate the house for the fall on labor day weekend but due to the appliance trouble that was all mine last week, it just did not happen. Maybe this weekend? Hmmm, we shall see.

I did get to work on this Halloween Bucket for Claire. Between working on the bucket and the crispness in the air, I am really starting to get anxious about decorating for the fall. Claire's mom liked the candy corn fabric so we used that and the curly halloween font with cats, pumpkins and candy corn to create this adorable bucket. I did tie on some lime green tulle bows just to give it that sassy, girly feel. What do you think? Did I get it sassy enough for a 3 year old girl?

  I just can not wait to see Claire all dressed up with her tote. It should be a precious picture!

Making lemonade out of lemons!

Guess what....... my cell phone can not hold its charge more than like an hour ....go ahead, laugh. It really feels as if every electronic, appliance in my life is taking a break from its responsibilities. Drama, drama, drama with the gadgets in my life. Even my embroidery machine has decided I was overworking it the other day. How, you ask.....

Oh it decided to chew up a blanket I was embroidering for a friend to give as a gift. Horrified, I was!!!!!!! Let me just say that blank blue baby blankets are not easily found in my area. I would know this because I visited every one in the area trying to find a replacement. After realizing that this was not going to happen, I knew that I would have to make her a new one to replace the one that was not so ready to be given. So I came up with this and had a little cooperation from my machine to personalize it as well.

I finally calmed down once I had it completed to understand not all was lost with the chewed up blanket. I was able to take the rest of the blanket and make the following:

A Monkey Lovie, He is a cutie!!!

A Burpcloth, a Bib and a Wrist Rattle

I love this Taggie Bib and the Wrist Rattle. They turned out much better than I could have imagined.

Life threw some lemons at me this past week, looks like it is still hurling some this week. But that is OK.......because I know how to make lemonade!

No more bad mojo!

I was hoping that my week of appliance mishaps was gone but it seems to really like me. Just as I got ready to load up pictures yesterday, I realized my camera cord has been misplaced. You probably noticed we did not have blog post yesterday. I spent most of the night searching for it. I was so excited to share some of the things I have done over the weekend and my brain was running with fifty different things like homeschooling the boys, gathering up all of my eldest sons items for school,  this blog, fall  items, holiday gifts to make, orders to be done, buy more ice, call the repair people again and the list just keeps going and going like the energizer bunny. Which brings me to the next ordeal I faced..... finally found the cord..... yes we will have pictures......hmmm.....maybe not...... the batteries are dead! Seriously, this can not be happening but yes it has. Kind of fitting after the week I had. Right? *LOL*

Stay tuned, we could either have some pics tomorrow or more appliance, electronic drama. It is really hard to say at this point!

:-)

Distance makes the heart grow fonder!

Oh ....How I have missed you guys! I had a wonderful time at the beach with my family, was so excited to come back all refreshed and well,  that was the plan! I planned on visiting with you everyday. I also planned on getting alot of new projects knocked off my list. Unknown forces thought this was just not very exciting! Instead I dealt with a broken fridge, a broken washer, non-stop phone calls to arrange repairs, countless hours waiting for repair companies, daily trips to buy ice, orthodontist appts for repairs  and I watched 5 extra kids too ( Ok that last one I had planned the whole time).

So that was my week in a nutshell. I still have laundry to do, I still have 3 coolers filled with ice to salvage some of my perishables,  I still have 3 kids to watch ( their mine, figured I will keep them) and I still have a ton of projects that have not been done. That is life though and I am just thankful tonight that I was not so exhausted from my day that I could share my week with you!  Cya tomorrow and I know I will have something to share because I actually did craft today but I misplaced the camera cord..............