The sewing bug has bitten me again. I’ve been spending free time making ridiculous little things for my girls to wear. Have been thinking about making some silly tutorials for some of my most recent projects, though they are pretty heavy on the serger use. I’m certain they could be done without them, but I have a feeling they’d take a bit longer.
For now I’ll leave you with pictures.. ones you may have already seen if you follow me on flickr. Oh wells!
who hates pennant banners? Yeah, thats me.
Don’t get me wrong, I WANT to like them, I just … I can’t.
Until now!
Okay, okay, its not actually pennants so much as a circle garland, but I LOVEY! Check it out on Purlbee.
Truthfully I’ve been finding that I like a lot of stuff on that gosh darn lovely site. I also love the idea that someone added of using hearts to make a little Valentines garland. Sure, not as versatile, but cute much?
We’re hoping to make a big deal out of Valentines day to help chase away the After-Holiday-Blues.
Any other fantastic V-day crafts out there?! Go ahead, speak up! 
(Just cheesin’ I know I have like, ONE READER.)
I try to make some every year, though honestly I dont get around to printing them and using them. I’m a lazy person, OKAY?! It’s true! I’m working on it though, I really plan to print these out. Tomorrow, I swear.
You should peek at them and see if you want to print them out too. Go ahead, I know you want to.
I’m sure there’s something fundamentally wrong with me. I’m a mom, but I just dont swoon for most kids art. It’s not that I dont admire children’s creativity or wonder at their budding skills.. but a lot of kids art looks like garbage… Probably because a lot of it is made from garbage.
Okay, I know this rant is sounding harsh, I’m sure I’ll melt when my own kids come home from preschool with some animal constructed out of egg crate baubles and glitter. All I’m really suggesting is… wouldnt be nice to sometimes give our kids better tools and knowhow and help them create art that is universally aesthetically pleasing?
For example:
These leaf rubbings my three year old and I made. I honestly can not tell who made which ones in most case, and when I can, its only obvious to me because I remember using certain color combinations on some of my leaves.
What makes this so great is that I've prepped this project in a way that removes the need for skills that my three year old does not yet possess.
I've removed the need to carefully hold the paper just so to prevent the leaf and/or paper from slipping during the rubbing process.
How? Contact paper.
I could go on and on about the merits of this stuff. It’s not just for the irritating job of shelf and drawer lining anymore..
Lay your sheet of contact paper design side down on a surface that you can tape things to. (so maybe your grandma’s antique hand carved table, yeah?) Secure it to your surface with heavy duty double stick tape, or pull back the shiny paper and tape the corners down to your surface. Remove all the shiny paper backing, leaving a big sticky surface. Perfect!
Now place your leaves on your sticky surface. You should be able to even lift them and reposition them if you want. (as long as you do it before you stop rubbing) Lay paper over the leaves and using the side of a naked crayon (with the paper peeled off, you know) rub gently over the leaf. My three year old did very good rubbing over the leaves!
bad photo of leaves on contact paper
The tricky part is removing the paper from the contact. I found this to be a little challenging, and this part for the three year old. Sometimes the paper curls a bit, but my guess is that a night of sitting under a stack of books would solve that. For us it really wasn’t a concern, because my plan was to just cut them out anyway.
Cutting them out in our case is an adult job. If you do this with older kids who have good cutting skills then just let them go nuts. Laurel has been practicing, but she wasn’t even interested in helping me cut them out. She gets frustrated trying to cut out complicated shapes anyhow. (I’m apparently raising a perfectionist.)
These leaf cut outs will all receive family member names and become Thanksgiving place cards.
Oh So fancy looking. Who would have guessed that the three year old actually did a lot of the work on these?!
More pictures can be found on My flickr photostream
When I started this blog, I had all sorts of ideas, and sure I would have all the time in the world to post all my crafty thoughts and domestic goddess feelings.
After-all, I’ve kept a personal blog for years and years, and was even able to keep a craft oriented side blog for quite some time, so why would the leap to this blog be any different?
I can’t lie, we HAVE been extraordinarily busy. Last year with two little kids and the holiday approaching, I was feeling stressed as is.. but the Husband also was offered a new job! It was a huge leap of faith to take, but it really opened some doors for us. The main one, and most crucial was we were suddenly able to start looking to buy our first home.
We found the house that we couldn’t stop thinking about on the first or second trip out with the realtor. I knew it was something big when we got home from the look-see and both me and my husband picked up our cell phones to call our respective mothers. I was mentally moving into it from that day.
Shockingly, it turned out well and we were able to buy… though the process was not without it’s ups and downs and brain shaking stresses.
Beyond the house buying, there was bread making adventures, and trips to our new local park! We made great friends, and played often. We planted our first vegetable garden, and identified all of the fruit trees in our yard. (Two cherries, a plum, and a peach, if you’re curious!)
The girls had birthdays and now the holiday season is upon us again! Halloween was a blast. It’s been a full and fulfilling year, and I can not wait to see where the next year takes us..
and I sure hope to capture just a LITTLE more of it here..
Look forward to pictures and maybe a tutorial.. and mayyyybe even a few give-aways!
For now I’ll leave you with a few pictures from our past year.
After months away from blogging here, I am plotting a return.
I find that I only have small bits of time to use for online endeavors, and up until now, blogging on the website involved too many steps. (I’m a big wuss, okay?)
Hopefully things are looking up, I’m trying out a blog client and it seems like it’ll be much easier to do an update every now and again.
For now it looks like nap time is coming to a close, and this post will have to follow suit.
I will leave you with one little recent picture (if it works!)
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labor day at Rockaway Beach, Oregon
Last night we attended the annual (almost, they had a hiatus last year) Halloween party out where we were married.
Driving into the “Hamlet of Beavercreek” the drive seemed much shorter, much more manageable and quaint. I enjoyed seeing llamas, cows, a real live pumpkin patch (with many still intact pumpkins!) Christmas tree farms, maybe a horse or two, and a gaggle of sheep eating leaves (or bark?) off a little yellowy leaved deciduous tree by a little pond…. all of these were picture worthy moments but flew by in the car in a blink of an eye.
We got there as daylight was fading, there was enough time for Laurel to see the goats, chickens, and turkeys before it was too dark. She refused to wear her witch hat, I hope we have better luck for trick or treating, because without the hat she doesnt look like anything really.
I brought purple and orange cupcakes, I made them myself, but when I packed them up in the foldable wilton box that I purchased they looked like bakery cupcakes. This was somehow disappointing, because I’d spent hours on them, and I’m sure everyone was like, “oh, just bakery cupcakes”
bah
I should have made a personalized little label to stick on it so that at least they would have thought it was from a cute little private bakery instead of a giant Safeway or what not.
Joel went as a pirate and me as a witch. I really DO wish we’d switched, but I would have never convinced Joel into those orange and black striped tights 
Maybe I’ll dress up as a pirate for trick or treating.. and let Joel just wear whatever he wants, he doesnt care about dressing up for answering the door.
My mother, myself and Laurel ALL were witches though, a big creepy coven of witches I suppose.
(mom couldnt resist removing her teeth, ugh, I know she’s just trying to enjoy the only good part about having dentures… being outrageously creepy when you want to)
I had dressed Alice as Muno, a red cyclops monster from Nickelodeon’s Yo Gabba Gabba… but the muno hat made her cry!!
(okay, not crying non stop, but i promise she didnt like it.)
so, on the drive over I fabricated and sewed little kitty ears onto her brown hoodie.
When we put it on her with brown pants over brown tights, she made the cutest little kitty! she looked just like a Lost Boy from Disney’s Peter Pan! so cute.
(We didnt get a good picture though, so I’ll have to dress her up this week and snap one!)
(we actually didnt get a lot of good pictures at all, low light and such)
I’ve been having trouble finding things to write about here, as I’ve totally ran out of free time for crafting for the time being.
My daughter Laurel will be TWO years old in a few short days. She was just recently my baby, but its funny how our perception changed when we brought a newborn home. Now Laurel seems like such a little lady. A girl, a KID, a child, but not so much a baby. It’s sad how perception or time can rob you of your baby before you’re ready.
Alice, our lovely teeny one is growing and changing daily. Wide eyes which are kept open more often, a head that is continually trying to hold itself up, sleepy gas smiles are starting to transition into real meaningful smiles.
I do have one quick project to share. I finished it just a few days before Alice was born. I didn’t get fabulous pictures, but managed to snap a few this morning that at least show what it is.
crochet snail!!
About to eat the herbs in the Aerogarden I suppose..
Too bad it wont actually eat some of the herbs, they grow so quickly we really have trouble keeping up with them!!!
I hope everyone is well and enjoying the transition into fall.
I’m sure there’ll be birthday posts and baking and pumpkin patch things all over this blog soon enough, but for now its quiet around here.
At my OB appointment on Friday I told my doctor that we’d been so sure that “labor” was imminent that my husband had been home from work since Tuesday. We were starting to feel pretty desperate.
This whole pregnancy I’ve been trying for a VBAC. (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean for those of you not savvy) Despite a diagnosis of Gestational Diabetes and some other small complications and hurdles along the way, I found myself past my due date with a provider who was still willing to let me give this a try.
I’d felt like I’d been truly laboring since Wednesday night when contractions became largely regularly and LARGELY painful. Friday Morning I went to birth triage because I felt like this had been going on forever and wanted to make sure everything was okay. I felt really, really silly going in, as I knew I was not in active labor, contractions had slowed down, even stopped, instead of picking up. No one belittled me though, in fact when I saw my doctor later on that day she seemed overjoyed that I’d gone in.
She said, “Andrea, this really may be what early labor looks like for you.”
Again, she’d given me a strange validation, and I went home feeling as if maybe I really wouldnt be pregnant forever, besides, we’d scheduled an induction for the following wednesday, just incase.
I took half a benadryl Friday night. I’d been told it can stop false labor, and since I hadnt slept for more than an hour at a time for over 3 days, I figured it’d be a good idea to get some rest. Unfortunately I got about an hour of sleep before contractions came back, to their regular 7 minute apart pattern that they’d been doing EVERY night. They hurt. I had to breathe and concentrate through them… and I could NOT be laying down when they hit. I’d propel myself out of bed at the beginning of each one so I could ride out that torturous minute kneeling on the floor.
I felt pretty broken down. No rest, and this was obviously the same old deal. Everyone said I’d know the difference between false labor and real labor, the contractions would CHANGE, they said.
They never did.
Saturday morning my water broke. We slowly made our way to the hospital.
Saturday night around 11pm or so I broke down and got an epidural. I didnt want it, but after 14 hours of “laboring” (after my water broke) and 4 days of “pre laboring” (no difference in pain intensity really, I’m inclined to lump them all together). I was pretty exhausted.
Sunday morning, after two hours of pushing. (and a night of sleep laboring) We welcomed Baby Alice Rose into the world.
I was able to do a little self pregnancy portrait, which felt like a really nice way to honor the pregnancy, even though its certainly been a somewhat difficult journey.
Like most of my portraits, I dont feel like its actually *done* and most likely it never will feel totally done.
I’ve now had my baby shower, had a few impromptu portrait pictures taken, and am approaching due date. I’ve been blessed with so many handmade gifts this pregnancy, so I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of them!
My long time best friend, Gwyn, and her mother, Sally came over the other day, both bearing some lovely handmades!
Hand knit leg warmers!
I was unfamiliar with the idea of babylegs for quite some time, and didnt own any until Laurel was a year old! (when Gwyn bought some for her birthday, actually) but since have fallen in love with the concept. While I think they’re a tad pricey, I still think we’ll be buying some for the girls to share, along with the pairs we already have and these two new lovely handmade pairs.
I am a crocheter through and through, and I think the ONLY thing that could convert me to knitting would be promise of being able to make these!!!
This hat, made by Sally resembles “a berry tart!! HEEHEEE!!!” and is uber cute, dont you agree?
It was difficult to photograph, but I’m really excited about getting it modeled on our new arrival and getting more pictures.
This sweater also by Sally is apparently the infamous Baby Surprise Jacket. (correct me if I’m wrong, like I said, I’m no knitter!)
Amusingly enough, we never were blessed with any handknit sweaters for Laurel, but have been blessed twice with handknits for this baby, AND they apparently have matching flower buttons!
maybe I’m seeing things, but I totally see the same button, different color!
Moving away from knit, we have this lovely dress that my friend Bobbie Jo crocheted for us. It is exceptionally girly and yet remains tasteful and something that I actually like. Some other crocheted dresses really do look like iced cupcakes.. Dont get me wrong, I love cupcakes and I DO think frilly little girl things can be very adorable, its just hard not to be inundated with them.
However, even though this is pink, lacy, and girly it still seems sensible and .. well .. cute!!! I can NOT wait to try this on the little one either.. I may even pair it with the little pink crochet booties I posted previously…!!
This is the last thing I have to share, and these little guys really deserve a post all their own. I cant help but totally gush over them, they are SO incredibly cute. This picture doesnt do them justice, neither has any other photo I’ve tried to get of them. They’re so COZY and comfy to hug. Laurel absolutely LOVES them and I think there will be constant wars between the girls over them. They feel just like a fresh rumply crinkly handmade quilt from the wash… that crisp yet comfortable feeling that handmade quilts have… I always call it “quilt magic”… when you’ve finished quilting and binding your quilt and you throw it in the wash and out comes this.. magical thing, infinitely more cozy and beautiful than what went in the wash. … These!!! embody quilt magic.
These were made by the lovely talented Gwyn as well, if that wasn’t mentioned.
Gwyn also gave me a sneak peak of the quilt is is doing for new baby and while I said I was fine with the fact she hadn’t finished it, I have to say I’m anxiously awaiting its arrival almost as much as I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new little one, because it is SO beautiful and adorable. I look forward to heavily photographing it and making another gushy post about it as well.
