Mermaid Baby Gown

One of my favorite sewing blogs to follow is See Kate Sew. Ever since I saw her mermaid baby gown I have been looking for an excuse to buy it. (My youngest was still small enough, but also so small that I couldn't find time, at least I thought I wouldn't be able to find time.)

Fast forward a bit, and my bestie pregnant with baby number 3, and it's a girl!! So, I talked myself out of being afraid of knits and the envelope neckline and bought it. And then I spent at least a month looking for the right fabrics, probably because I hadn't fully talked myself out of the fear of working with knits.

But when I finally found a fabric that I loved for this gown and got to work. It really was so easy. Kate does a great job of walking you through the steps in the pattern. I cut the pieces one night after the 3 youngest were in bed, and the next day I was able to get it all sewn together -- that's less than a day, total!! I felt pretty awesome, even though I know a huge part of it was great instructions.

Anyway, here's the finished project:

 Isn't it just the most adorable baby gown ever!?! I love it so much!
I also used some left over fabric to make a few headbands to match (one in the floral and one in the pink and gold polka dots) but I absolutely did them the day before I took the gift to her and so I didn't get a picture of them.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Fun with Nails

Summer break seemed to fly by, but nail polish was on my girls' minds. So we bought a few fun tools and played around a bit.
We did a lot of just plain or sparkly nails, but here are a few of our more artistic designs.
(I thought I took more photos than just these, but I guess not.) 

A fun floral for mom, free-handing some flowers (the flower centers were the same glitter as the accent nail) :

 A blue to black gradient, with white donut stamps for KK:

 Inspired by Disney's Descendants, purple and black (Mal's signature colors) and since we didn't have a dragon stamp she chose a seahorse - or sea dragon, as KL chose to call them.

I feel like I've been super concentrated on house tasks that I've not had much time for crafting. It doesn't help that I still have a VERY curious 2 year old who likes to take anything I'm working on, if it's in her reach.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to get fully back into the crafting/artistic swing. Maybe...

That's all for now,
Jo!

Family pictures

A few years ago I sent my mother and mother-in-law (and grandmothers) a series of photos of the kids holding, in age order, the letters L, O, V, and E for Mother's Day. This was obviously before KO. I spent some time trying to figure out how to add KO into the series. I thought maybe an S, because I call them my "little loves"; I thought about a D, because we were sending the pictures to people who we want to make feel loved; I was suggested a U, so it would say "love u"; but I finally settled on a heart. The problem was I had a hard time finding to make the letters. They were either the wrong size, or I didn't like the way they looked, or they were pre-decorated and cost no less than $20 which I didn't want for something I was going to have to re-decorate to fit the format. But I finally found one, it was still a little bit bigger than what I wanted, but I was tired of looking and settled, plus it had a string that made it easier for the little one to hold on to.

Here's where we started, it was a dark stain, but I had already painted it black by this picture:

After adding the tissue paper I took the girls outside and took some photos.

Here's the final chosen photos:

Aren't they the cutest?!?! I love them!

That's all for now,
Jo!

Theme Days

End of the year means theme days for the ABC countdown.

Here's what we've thrown together:
B = Book Character Day
KL went back and forth between Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter and Rarity from MLP (she's an interesting mix, and I love it).
She settled on Rarity, which it great because I only had to make a skirt and a hair clip.
Here's the crafting:

We paired it with a white shirt and leggings, along with tall purple socks to try and imitate for tall purple boots. Then we used a little eye shadow to make the cutie mark on here cheek. She also kept her hair in a bun after washing it the night before so that her would be wavy.

Here's the comparison photo (apologies for the early morning quick shot before heading out the door poor lighting):

E = Eagle Day (AKA Spirit Day)
I love my little KL who is just a little extra. Along with wearing her school shirt, she also asked me to make her an eagle costume. (She probably comes by it naturally because I didn't even think twice about making it for her.) I followed the same pattern that I did for the parrot earlier this school year for jungle day.

 Here she is showing off her wing span <3.
And she smiled the whole time she wore it (at least that I saw), she spent the whole morning showing it off.


Edit to add a little cuteness, KO wanted to be Rarity too:

That's all for now,
Jo!

St. Patty's Decor

The kids are on Spring Break this week. Monday is library day, so since they are home they got to pick out their own books. KL chose a book of St. Patrick's Day crafts. This isn't the first time, she's an artistic child, she has checked out several "learn to draw" and craft and kid themed cookbooks in the past. Most the time, she looks through them and maybe picks out a few to try. Most the time it gets brought to me, I say I need to check and see if we have what we need, and it usually gets forgotten or we don't have the materials/ingredients.

This week, all the crafts were pretty simple, and she picked out 4 (I think) and only 1 did we not have the materials for. So here's what we made:

Cute little window garland. (She chose to let it fall down instead of combining them for a long chain across the top.)

These were pretty simple, I cut a ton of 2" paper strips in the colors of the rainbow. She glued them together to make long chains, and then folded them, what I always called, "snake" style. (Where you stack two and then flip them one over the other.)

Here's a few action shots:

(And a peek-a-boo, twin

The first 2.

Having fun folding, after she got the hang of it.

While KL was working on this, the twins were busy playing with the scraps. Since construction paper is 9" wide and I was cutting 2" segments, I had left over 1" lines. So I split these among the twins, gave them a glue stick and said have fun. (They don't get the glue very often, so they were pretty happy.)

Here is what KM came up with:

She made a lot of "x-rays" (this is what she currently calls the letter X), and then didn't want to be done with the glue yet, so she glued all of them on top of each other.

Here's KN's:

Sorry, the brightness is way up on this photo, I was doing my best to try and get the color to show (I should've taken the photo before I hung it in the window). I think it slightly resembles a prism - she was just gluing strips together randomly, there is not pattern to the madness, just simply glue and paper.

Also while KL was working, KK looked through to see what ideas were in the book and she found the rag/scrap wreath. So here's how her's turned out:

 The book used lots of green, I thought a touch of gold would be nice too.

So here's our all involved, individually, decor. It was a fun way to spend the first day of Spring Break, here's hoping we can continue to stay busy, but we also have a new round of sickness moving in so we'll see.

That's all for now,
Jo!