Pretty's Girly Room

One of the fun things about buying a home was getting to create a boy room and a girl room. While there is still decorating to do in both, the two kid rooms were a priority for me to paint before we moved in. And they are still the only rooms I've painted so far.

Hero was old enough to pick his own wall color, but since Pretty was only 19 months when we moved, I decided the colors for her. My favorite colors are blue and yellow. They don't scream "girl", but it turned out just the way I wanted. I decided that when Pretty is about 12 years old, I'll let her pick her own colors if she wants...

Here's my sister, Audrey, helping me make stripes (she also helped me with Hero's green stripes).

Pretty's room has a funny angled corner, so instead of only doing one wall, we did more that half the room with these light and dark yellow stripes.

Here's the finished product, taken just this morning. You can see the blue reflecting in the mirror. So pretty!

Since I picked two not-so-very-girly colors for the walls, I knew I wanted to add flowers and pink into the decor. I carried around the paint chip cards with me everywhere and one day, while randomly deciding to walk through the fabric section at WalMart, I found this beautiful pink roses with a blue background fabric! I was ecstatic that it matched well with the paint! I found a yellow to match, because I knew the design I wanted to create. It's girly, while still staying with the colors of the room.

The problem I created for myself was not having measured the window when I found the perfect fabric. I then guessed at the amount I would need. Never a very good idea... While I had enough to make it work, I was hoping to have the curtains hang past the bottom edge of the window by about 6 inches. Instead, it brushes the window sill... and that's with adding the yellow  piece at the top I wasn't planning on. Oh well, they are still beautiful!

 I have a lot more ideas for making Pretty's room girly (check out my Pinterest board on it). My vision includes a lot more of the dark pink, butterflies and flowers.

It may be blue and yellow, but it is definitely a girly room!

Check this one off the list! I hope to check off more soon!

Hero's New Room

When we moved to our new home, I asked Hero what color he wanted his room and he didn't even hesitate to say, "Green. Dark green." After some persuading I got him to get excited to about these stripes. We both won with him getting dark green, and me getting to do stripes!

The other 3 walls are a light grey.

I also just finished these curtains for the room. I decided that I wanted to introduce more colors into the room, and this orange is great!

I like the way they look with the sun shinning through.

I did three rows of stitching on the top and bottom of the orange cuff.

 I love the way the room is coming together. I've got more coming with getting ready for the new baby. I can't wait to show you!

More to come!

We moved! and Halloween!

If you follow me on FB or on Twitter, you know that my husband and I just bought a house and moved! It was a busy week, with us getting keys on Friday, and a week later on Saturday, moving. It was hectic with packing up all our stuff and trying to clean and paint in the new house. (I'll show you the paint later).

This is how I hoped I would be through the whole experience: happy, excited and lookin' cute.

(google image search)

Instead, I looked more like this, except even worse, because this woman has make-up and earrings, I had neither. They were packed...

(google image search)

I am so lucky to have my in-laws who helped me just dump stuff in boxes the night before the move so that when our friends/family showed up the next morning, we were out of the old place and into the new in less than 2 hours. Not joking.

(google search image)

After 3 weeks, I am mostly unpacked, with one big exception: my craft stuff. I just haven't had the energy for sewing/crafting anyway. It's coming out this weekend though, and I'm excited! It's a big endeavor. 

I only had 4 boxes of clothes (including hangers and shoes), but I have 7 boxes of craft stuff. And that's not counting the 3 plastic storage tubs of fabric... I think it might be a sickness. . . or at least a good entry for Linda's (at Craftaholics Anonymous) "You might be a craftaholic when..." contest.

Moving on to the Halloween part, I didn't do much for the holiday because it was right after we had moved. I whipped up a costume for Hero before we moved. At first, he wanted to be a tiger, then a gorilla. But knowing that I was going to be busy packing and moving, I didn't want to attempt anything big and was thrilled when I suggested Cat in the Hat (inspired by MADE) and he went for it! I did have a moment when he whined about wanted to be a gorilla instead. My response was the choice of Cat in the Hat or nothing. He chose the Cat, thank goodness! I made the hat (a bit too big), and the bowtie. I bought a black shirt and pants, and white gloves. The bowtie is just stitched onto the shirt. I took it off to store and Hero can now use the shirt while it fits.

I reused Hero's old panda costume for Pretty. I moved the bowtie onto the hat for a hairbow instead. . . make it a bit more girly. I figure I can move it back and forth depending on the gender it is needed for. It was a simple thing.

We always go trick or treating at Jake's mom's work in the morning.

And that night we went trick or treating in our new neighborhood. Hero refused to pose for pictures for me, but I tricked them with "Hey, Buddy!" and I'm happy with the resulting picture of both kids. It wasn't until I was almost done with Hero's costume that I noticed they would both be wearing red, black and white. Cuteness.

Hero wimped out on trick or treating after half the street, so he and Jake went home to pass out candy. Pretty was going strong and we did the whole street, both sides. She was so funny because as long as the bowl of candy was on her level, she would keep taking treats and putting them in her bucket. I tried to stop her, but the people thought it was cute. She ended up getting 3 or 4 pieces at each house! On the walk home, she wouldn't let me hold her heavy bucket or hold her. Stubborn girl walked and carried her own bucket the whole time!

Happy late Halloween! And here's hoping I get the sewing machine out this weekend! Wish me luck!

Why I feel a little bit selfish...

See this book? It's rockin' awesome. I found Closet Monsters by John Murphy by chance when looking through the craft books at the library. I borrowed it and just loved looking through it. I made plans to make something from it, so I renewed it the allowed 3 times before taking it back without making anything.

And then I did that 2 more times. This is my fourth time checking out this book and I finally made something! This book is great, because besides showing you how to make the creations specific to the ones he made, he shows you how to make each element individually so you can mix and match to make your own monsters! I really just need to buy this book for myself.

For my nephew's 2nd birthday, I decided to make this one:

I had the perfect old pair of PJ pants to do it with. I've owned these for 6 years, and I got them free at a swap meet. They are the most comfortable pants I ever owned. I wore them all through both pregnancies and they were a staple for me after I brought each baby home. They have stains from where I got paint on them, they were loved. They finally wore holes between the legs that could not be fixed. That was a sad day.

So I cut them apart and started making the "closet monster." Since the instructions where for cutting up a sweatshirt, I just estimated and dove in.

And here is the monster I gave my nephew.

I'm sure there are some questions going on in your head, so let me explain. I got about halfway through making the closet monster from my old pants and realized I couldn't give them up! I'm so selfish! But I just couldn't! Those pants were special... So I stole an old sweatshirt from my MIL and whipped this guy up in about 2 1/2 hours. I finished him by hand stitching the hole closed on the drive to the party.

And that's why these pictures are taken in the car.

He turned out super cute, and fit with his new owner perfectly.

My little brother said he looks creepy, like he's going to come to life and night and get you. My little brother is 21 years old... and dead wrong. That face is cute!

So what happened to the pants? Meet Chills. I finished him up the next day and I love him.

I lined up the stripes off center.

And he is huge! He makes me so happy, it's a bit pathetic!

His face is bigger than Hero's.

Hero agreed to take pictures with him, but neither of my kids really care about him. But I have plans for his role in our family.

When I was growing up, my family had a large teddy bear that was kept up in Mom's closet. If you had a nightmare, you could ask to sleep with Big Bear. Big Bear scared away the bad dreams. I think Chills will be perfect in this job. He can scare away the nightmares and the other monsters. He is a Closet Monster, after all.

The selfish feeling is passing... I'm in love with Chills, don't tell my husband!

Talina's gift.

I promise that I am working on the details of each of the decorations from the Library baby shower, but in the meantime, here's some pictures of the Straight-Jacket Swaddler and 8 burp cloths I made for Talina to go with the books I got her.

I bought 1 1/4 yard of the green, and 1 yard of pink for the back of the burp cloths.

I messed around with the fancy stitch options on my machine and did a different one for each burp cloth's top stitching.

This vine with leaves is by far my favorite.

Bright Robots for a Baby

A good friend of mine just had her 3rd baby, a sweet little boy. I wanted to make her something useful, but cute. Because this is baby #3 and boy #2, I knew it didn't have to be super baby-ish. I went to the store and when I found these robots, I had to get them! 

I used the yard of flannel to make one Straight-Jacket Swaddler, and three burp cloths. It would have been two, but I found some orange flannel floating around in my stash!

The swaddler sews up so fast, it really is an easy gift to make.

And it's so useful. My friend's husband loves it, and without knowing I called this already, dubbed it the straight jacket! Great minds think alike, right?!

The burp cloths are simple, I copied my sister who made me 20, (yes 20!), when I had Pretty. Just cut the rectangles 20 in x 8 in, sew right sides together, flip, and top stitch around the outside. She also sews a line down the center, going the short way, so the fabric doesn't shift with washes.

 I love how bright it all is!! Who says baby things need to be muted or pastel?

Congrats, Heather, on your adorable baby!!

Birthday Card Quilt

Wow, it's been a good while since I posted anything. I have excuses, but the most relevant one is that I'm busy enjoying the summer with my kids. But I did want to post about this project.

At the beginning of the month I mentioned that I was machine quilting my first quilt. Well, it was this big "Birthday Card Quilt" for my mom. 

As you can see, my mom just turned 50. Our family always has a pot luck breakfast to celebrate the 4th of July. This year, we turned it into a surprise birthday party for Mom! 

Everyone ate, played and of course, signed the quilt.

It was my mom who taught me how to sew and to piece quilt. I knew she would appreciate the work it took to make. It was a fun project for me because I was able to take ideas from blogs I love and sketch out a one-of-a-kind blanket just for Mom.

Don't you love the crazy scribbles of sketching? Ignore the math...

After I figured out just how I wanted to do it, I made the back first. I kind of based it off of this beautiful quilt over at Noodlehead. (I actually took a lot of advice from this post by Anna, about her quilt.)

And the front was based off of this adorable baby quilt by V and Co.

I used picnik.com to print out the letters. There were large enough, and enough of them, that I needed two pages. The first one, I printed normal and had to trace on the back of them to get the backwards on my Heat 'n' Bond. But then I remembered that picnik has a feature where you can reverse the images. So I did that for the second page. It just makes it less likely to mess up if they are already backward for you.

Anyway, I traced the letters backward on the Heat 'n' Bond, then ironed them onto the wrong side of my fabric.

 Then I cut them out, peeled the back, pinned and then ironed them into place.

Because Heat 'n' Bond will eventually dissolve, I stitched the letters down with the blanket stitch function on my machine.

I used the sandwich tutorial from Oh Fransson! to make this:

So many safety pins! I used regular safety pins, instead of "quilting pins".

I then used this tutorial for straight-line machine quilting. I used masking tape, and spaced them 2 inches apart, because it was easy with my 2-inch-wide ruler.

I sewed along the edge like I was told...

When it came to the words, I taped right across them, and then just back stitched at the beginning and end, just skipping over them.

For the binding I used this tutorial by Crazy Mom Quilts. The tutorial was easy to follow, and I chose to hand quilt it for a nice clean look.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you!