Sleepy Time Pillows

You guys know I’m divorced and that I split the custody of my three little cherubs with my ex. Because of weird Christmas schedules and such, the kids didn’t really get to spend very much time with me in December. One of my girls is doing a daily teary countdown, “Mom, we are only (sob) with you (sob) for three more days!” It breaks my heart. She is the same one that says things like, “Mom, it makes me so sad when I am gone, because I can’t remember what your face looks like!!” Because they are traveling for the holidays and gone for two weeks, I made them all little sleeping pillows. I used this UrbanThreads.com embroidery and put a picture on the back. They are only about 8” square.

 

I added little straps so they could easily hold on to them in the airport and when they are in bed.

 

I used that fabric that is mounted to paper (like this – mine was a different brand but same thing). You send it through the printer, peel of the paper backing and use it for regular fabric. The photo quality isn’t the best but the kids love them and my little girl had tears in her eyes when she thanked me. It’s so hard to be strong for your kids all the time. When my littlest on cries over missing me, I want to cry right back. It’s so hard sometimes.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

We had lots of fun opening our stockings and presents. I hope you had a fantastic day too!

 

I made all the girls jammies too. Love her metallic iron-on Pegasus? She loves it!

 

We love My-my!

 

My favorite pair of jammies . . .

 

Remember the stockings? I decided to attach my stocking letters with a safety pin and ribbon. I just tied a cute little bow, put it on top of the green ribbon, and safety pinned it to the inside of the stocking. That way, we can change who gets what stocking every year. All the girls wanted the angel stocking so we did a little drawing to figure out who would pick first.

Here are three of them. With the letters that didn’t have holes (the S and C), I added some hot glue so the letters are firmly attached to the ribbon.

Here’s our beautiful holiday mantle. Yes, I live in a construction zone. The gas fireplace is behind the “fire”. It just needs to get hooked up. The kids are funny. They will run over to the “fire” when they are cold and say their hands are getting warm next to it. Funny butts!

More photo fun.

 

Feel free to ignore all these photo posts. I’m just having fun with my camera and want to to document it! We’ve gone for some chilly winter walks with the temperature hovering right around –3 degrees F. It makes for a very quick and short walk. This camera takes great pictures on the Snow setting. It knocks out a lot of the blue and washed-out look of the snow.

 

I’ve also been having fun with the manual functions on my camera. These are our Christmas lights with a very l o o o o w shutter speed. The kids took turn making designs with the lights.

 

The camera has this fun color select function. Only one color will photograph, the rest is gray scale. Obviously I chose red for this shot.

 

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the camera. I don’t love the little dial on the back, it’s hard to turn with gloves but it works fine if you are careful with it.

Looky who got a new camera . . .

Someone is a lucky girl with a cute husband who listened to her complaining about the old camera. So, of course I’ve been annoying everyone by taken a ba-jillion pictures with the new camera. Husband and I went to the zoo the other day and walked around. It’s hard to take pictures in the snow without everything turning out blue. This camera does a great job, I think. The following pictures are unaltered except for some cropping.

 

Am I the only one that gets creeped out by goat eyes? It has a 20x optical zoom.

 

My most favorite way to take pictures (with my arm out and big grins).

 

This is inside with the macro. I used a large aperture, slow shutter speed, and no flash.

 

Pretty lights. I would have played around more with these lights but it was about 3 degrees out and Momma’s hands were getting cold! If I had had more time, I would have focused on one bulb and set the aperture very small so the other stuff was out of focus. You sort of get the effect I was going for here. You really should click on the photo and see the larger picture.

 

Here’s my latest project. See the ugly laundry room with crap on floor? The yellow on the wall if from where we removed a cabinet to put in the stacking washer and dryer. It was driving me crazy!

 

See the new pretty laundry room. The cabinet will be installed in that corner and the crap with go in it. I’m tired of stuff on the floor! We’ll cut a hole in the cabinet in the back for the plumbing to fit through. Doesn’t the new camera take nice pictures? This is a hard color to photograph. I tried with the other camera and it was either very dark with no flash or very shadowy and gray with the flash. I opted for no flash, a low ISO, and let the camera pick the shutter speed, and aperture.

 

I wasn’t too excited about the wall color when I was first painting it. It seemed too gray which is not what we need in Alaska (can you say 5hours and 30 minutes of daylight today?) but now it’s a cool green-blue which I really like. I think the laminate looks great with this too. I’ve always been sort of so-so on the flooring in my house but the white trim makes it look fantastic!

 

I painted the ceiling, walls, and trim. Now we just have to put in the cabinet and trim out the window. Oh, and the light, don’t forget the light! We also changed out the hinges on the door because they were awesome brass.

 

I have actually done quite a bit of sewing. I need to hem stuff and then post about it with my new fun toy!

Oh, and for those that are curious, I did not buy a DSLR. I wanted something that was still pocketable but had all manual controls if I wanted them. I bought the Canon Powershot SX260HS and I think it’s love! I will have to see how it does on my posed tripod garment shots though. Those are the ones with which I seem to struggle the most. 

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season!

Squeeeeeeee. I love being the “crafter” in the family!

I love, love, love when people give me things because “I’m crafty” or because “I sew.” I’ve acquired two machines this way and lots of fabric and trimmings. My Necchi is my go-to machine and the Pfaff is a close second. Well, imagine my excitement when I get a Facebook message from a friend’s mom (truthfully, she’s been a mom to me too) asking if I want a bunch of old patterns. Um, yea. Look what showed up on my door step last week. Three boxes of patterns and the best part is that they are my size! There are a ton of kid patterns too but the women’s patterns are a size 8 or 10 which is what I typically make in McKwikVogueRick.

 

I randomly pulled some out so you can see a few of them. They are all from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.

 

Most of them are Buttericks, Simplicity, McCalls, Vogues, etc but there are a few of these pre-KwikSew pattern. This one isn’t even opened.

 

Pretty!

 

 

Most of the patterns are size 8 or 10 but there are a few 12s sprinkled in there.

 

I like the warning on this one. Upper right: Coat cannot be worn over jacket. Oh, dammit! That was my plan!

 

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

 

 

I love this hairstyle from the 60s. I could never do this with my hair. It’s too fine and too wavy.

 

Two out of three boxes are little kid patterns. I’ll be putting these on Etsy probably. I have no use for them because they are too small and there are so many of them. It would be fun to have a wall of pattern covers though.

 

Okay, this might be my favorite one. I have to say I love the butterfly collar and the ascot. Hee Hee, I said ascot.

 

This one is really cute and I would make it for my kids if it was a larger size.

 

Ra ra! I didn’t look but I wonder if these are for knit fabrics. If not, they would be pretty restrictive. Well, for a cheerleader.

 

Aaaaaaauuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

I think it’s funny that the kid pants are so high up on their little torsos.

 

I’ll let you guys know if I post any of these to Etsy. I know there is a market for adult vintage patterns. Is there any market for kid vintage patterns?

Stockings

When you have a family of six, any little project turns into a big project. A while back, I decided to make stocking for all of us. Between cutting, embroidering, and sewing, it’s taken me a while to crank these babies out. I really like them and I love the embroidery. The embroidery is from UrbanThreads and it’s the Yuletide Revelry package. 

 

Each stocking is different but has the same theme thanks to the package of designs.

 

The insides are a fun green Christmas fabric from JoAnn’s. Instead of ribbon hangers, I decided on these clips from IKEA. They are just pinch clips so I can remove them when we are done hanging them.

 

Here are some detail shots. The embroidery turned out fantastic.

 

I added bling to most of them. If you look closely, you can find the crystals on the others.

 

My plan is to do a little lottery for the stockings. All the girls want the angel so we will draw for who gets to choose first. Then, I’ll put their letter on the stocking. These are the flat wooden letters from JoAnn’s.

Happy holidays everyone! I have a lot of things to do before the 23rd! That’s the day we will have all the kiddos so that is when we are doing Christmas this year.

Weird Ass Window Part II

You may remember my weird-ass window. For those of you who don’t remember the original post, here is my very badly drawn floor plan of my house. This weird window goes between the kitchen and the living room/entryway. It’s weird.

 

Here’s what it looked like a few days ago.

 

And here is what it looks like today. I took your suggestions and used a large mirror to cover the hole. Many of you suggested using a one-way mirror. I did investigate that idea but the mirrored glass was not mirrored enough. Because there are windows in the kitchen, you’d always be able to see through it from the living room side. I found this large mirror (it’s a big hole, 50” by 40”) at Lowe’s on Black Friday. Score! It was only $40!!!

 

My inspiration was this gallery wall from Martha Stewart.

 

I also tried my hand at a gallery-type wall with photos and knick-knacks. I love these types of walls of photos. First, I mapped out a level horizontal line because I wanted the tops and bottoms of the photos to be even with that line.

 

I used the tape as a guide. You’ll see there are a few photos with the generic photo in them because I don’t have all the photos I want yet.

 

Are you so distracted looking at me in the reflection? Can we see my random x-mas tubs in the living room? And do you see the insulation and Visqueen. Yeaaaaaah, we are still working on that too. Anyway, same photo with less distraction.

 

Do you like how it’s arranged? The three mirrors were purchased at Burlington for cheap and the rest of the stuff I had here and there around the house. I love the big, black chunky display case in the upper left. I’m no good at this type of stuff because I cannot do random. I want everything to be exactly the same distance away from each other. I drive myself crazy! It took me forever to realize that the four kids didn’t need to be in the exact same frames. Now, two of them are in 8” by 10” frames and the other two are in 12” by 14” with mats.

 

Does this drive you crazy or am I just anal like that? I was trying to line the tops and bottoms up with the original blue line but then I was matching the edges to the left-hand wall and the mirror. Maybe I should center the bottom print under the larger print? What do you think?

Wanna know my secret to getting the damn little nail where I wanted it so the frames would match up? It’s this little thing I call a crayon and it’s my best friend! I can write a little tutorial if you guys want one!