Kids Clothes Week Challenge

You up for it? I'm going to try, although I am hesitant to believe that I really can sew for 7 days straight without some...life getting in the way.

I wasn't gonna post today

even though it's been awhile & I even have something to share. I've just got a gazillion things to do, so I was gonna skip it. But while eating my delayed breakfast, I read SouleMama's 10 good things list & I thought, "well, I can manage that." So here's my 10 good things:

-getting plants in the ground (that have been waiting a week)
-eating a delicious dinner someone else cooked
-& then being blessed with leftovers!
-eating CANDY for the first time since February SQUEE!!!
-the husband that went WAY overboard in supplying me with my first candy since February
-preschool (hey, I'm not gonna lie)
-babysitter day (ditto)
-seeing some amazing help and cooperation out of my 3 littles
-the inspiration I get from the creative women I come across on the internets
-a house, food, money to pay my bills and then some, my health, my children's health, my children, my husband (I can roll this into one, right?)

No Sew Emergency Belt

Twin B has the tinest hiney you ever did see. Everything falls off her hips. Even leggings. One morning, she had her sights on a particular pair of jeans, which mysteriously were missing the button elastic. Would my child accept a different pair of jeans on this already rushed morning? No, ma'am, she would not. This left a frazzled mama scrambling for a quick solution. I almost braided some yarn for her to tie around her waist, but remembered I had long strips of fabric ready for a certain project. Those would do it! The belt "buckle" was something picked up at SCRAP several years ago by same child. I luckily remembered seeing it in the dress-up drawers & prayed it still was where I saw it last. Add a rubber band & a quilting safety pin & we're good to go.

Who says motherhood makes your brain go to mush?

Happy Scrappy Bathmat

Oooh! I'm so happy! I've had the idea for this in my head for awhile. I started sewing it several weeks ago & it had to be put aside. I was itching to finish.

Isn't it cute? & I love looking at all the scraps, remembering what I originally sewed with the fabric. & it's comfy on my feet.

Want to make one too? Here's what you need:
ugly old terrycloth bathmat

scrap fabric, cut into 3" widths*

sewing machine and thread**

* Obviously, you can cut the strips into whatever widths you'd like.
** Yes, you can do this with needle and thread, but it goes so much faster with machinery. :)

Sew scraps into lengths. I made this with piecing and without. I think long-term, the pieced lengths will be better, but if you need a quick fix craft project, you can skip this step.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I am a fast & lazy kind of sewer. At this point, you could serge the long edges of your strips, but I didn't. I like the frayed edges...and I'm lazy.

Then, due to my laziness, I did NOT measure / draw lines on my bath mat. NOR did I run a running stitch down the center of each length of scraps. I recommend both of these steps if you are a more meticulous sewer than I. I matched the edge of the fabric with the edge of the bathmat, centered my needle over the scrap & started sewing. I backstitched the beginning and ending of each line, but not when switching fabrics in the middle of a length. Instead of sewing the running stitch, I pushed the fabric lengths under the needle as I sewed, creating the gathering. I'm unsure if this actually saved time in the end, as I had to sew slower to do this.

When I was ready to start the next row / column, I laid the next strip alongside the first, but then pushed it nearer the first stitched line, so there would be density to the rows. Make sense? In math terms, my sewing lines should have been 3" apart, but I made them more like 2 1/2", so the strips would overlap when laying flat.

Finish across the mat. When you get a few rows in, roll up your mat & use a hair clip to keep it rolled.

Enjoy the new beautiful out of old ugly!

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments over at SouleMama for all to find and see.

spring break

We are on spring break this week. I had so much fun daydreaming about the things we would do this week. Instead of doing those fun things, I am playing SuperNanny to them. So today, they are going to the preschool where my best friend is guest teaching and I will take the oldest to the mall for bathing suit shopping. I'd rather be in the backyard, under this tree, finishing the embroidery on a long overdue quilt. Maybe this afternoon...

cake WRECK

You've seen this blog before, right?

Here's my submission:
My attempt at a "cupcakes falling off the cake" style. I thought I had it figured out: bamboo skewers & toothpicks. Even some strawberries to prop up some cupcakes. Totally cute & easy to decorate.

Good start, no? But the Teenager wanted whipped cream for frosting. No problemo. Except it was an 80 degree day. And I had the Twinnies helping assemble. I do not have air conditioning. You see where this is going.

This is where it ended up.

We ate it anyway, and it did get polite, "It's delicious!" But I'll definitely have to try again...in December.

(Please excuse the poor photos. My phone was the only handy camera.)

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments over at SouleMama for all to find and see.

pretty trash bucket

I transformed a costco laundry detergent bucket into a pretty trash can for the twins' room. It was easy peasy!

Supplies: ugly bucket, mod podge or white glue, scrapbook paper (or wrapping paper, children's artwork, see what you can find), a scrap of sandpaper, foam brush.



Measure the top and bottom circumfrence of your bucket. My bucket was slightly tapered, being larger at the top than the bottom. It ended up not being a big deal because of the papers I had available to me. However, if you are planning vertical stripes or a pattern, you will need elongated rhumbus shaped pieces, not just straight strips, if you have a tapered bucket.

Roughen up the surface of the bucket with the sandpaper. This will give more ridges for the glue to adhese to.



Cut your papers, or tear for a decoupauged look. I found a few pages that my kids had made and then abandoned, so I used those. After all, this was for their room. :)

Protect your work surface, and then paint the bucket with a layer of mod poge or some slightly thinned white glue. Lay your papers, smoothing from one end to the other, to push any bubbles and wrinkles out. If you don't like what you've made, you can pull off the papers gently while the glue / podge is still wet and reposition.


When you've covered your bucket, go back over the scrapbook papers with a good coating of mod podge / glue. If you have a lot of cut / overlapping edges, this is a good time to press the edges down and add mod podge.



Let cure. After drying, trim the papers that are hanging off the edge of the bucket. If any edges have lifted, or if you'd like a shinier surface, add another layer of mod podge / glue and let dry again.

Then enjoy your beautification!



You can see ours has a lot of depth, because I was using already "made" artwork. That accounts for a lot of the wrinkles I ended up with - the paper was already stiff with glue. I was worried that the dimension would lift or be foder for little fingers to pull, but it's held up so far through the 6-7 months we've been using it like this. (Just one tiny tear.) It's a waste basket in a bedroom - it's not like it's getting wet or kicked around. Have fun with it!

Stock.

What's that saying? "One man gathers what another man spills." I love taking something that is usually considered unusable & finding a use for it. Take, for instance, stock. Chicken bones, chicken necks & gizzards I've been storing in the freezer, the rubbery carrots off the bottom of the bin, a sprouting onion with some of the skin still on, and a green apple all found their way into my crockpot last night. I covered them with water, turned the crock on low and went to bed. This morning, yummy broth. If I didn't have a sicky kid (& volunteer duties at the school & karate & ...) this would have been dinner with some home made noodles. But I did have all those things, so this will probably be tomorrow's dinner. Or I'll freeze it & cook rice with it. My point is: I made something usuable out of things other people might have thrown away. And I love that.