New Furniture

I'll admit, this one is not my handy work- but it is my design. Last year I saw an idea in Better Homes and Gardens for, what I called, a free floating kitchen island. It was two sided (meaning cabinets on both sides) and was on wheels to be pushed around when needed. So I talked to my daddy, who recently retired and I didn't want him to be bored (yeah, that's it), and he told me to draw up some plans and he'll see what he can do. This weekend he delivered it. I'm so excited!! I love it!

Here is what it looks like in my kitchen right now.

Before we get into too much detail, here's what you need to know.
I LOVE being in the kitchen, well usually. I enjoy taking my break from the children to bake or cook or jut have fun in the kitchen. When we went looking to buy a house a few year back, the one we loved (and eventually bought) had a very small kitchen :( It was the only down side we could find though. Everything else we liked. So we've created a few storage solutions to help. First we changed the coat closet that was next to the kitchen into a pantry so my overabundance of cooking supplies all had room to stay and we had room to store food- because without one there is no use for the other, right? We also had a set of black metal storage shelves (that were never intended to stay) that collected all the things that we didn't have counter space for (I disassembled them once they were empty before they had the chance to collect anything else, you can see the pieces by the garbage can on the right side of the above picture).

Now for my custom island!!
The easiest place for me to sew is in the kitchen. Hopefully, one day, I can have a craft room and I'll have my own space, but for now that's just a fantasy. So the kitchen is the place that we can easily keep the little ones out of, and therefore is best to keep the sharp scissors and needles when in use.
So I planned on one side holding me sewing materials and the other to replace the black metal shelves. And since we were at it, having extra room to allow a desk space for the kids, or a snack table, or etc. seemed like a great idea. (I have purchased, but not yet received bar stools that will sit in the middle section).

Here's a few more pictures:

This is the sewing side, notice the long shelf on top to hold the ironing board, and I threw the 4 ft straight edge and longer cutting mat up there too because they're too long for the cabinets.

This is just a close up of the sewing side with cabinet open so you can see. I've got to make/buy some cute boxes to hold my fabric (right now, the cardboard box on the bottom shelf there is just my scraps and smaller cuts), my larger cuts aren't even in the cabinets because there are too many to fit. The top shelf has my patterns and the blue box there holds my needles, and feet, and pins, and chalk pencils, and etc. etc. just a bunch of the small notions. The iron is next to the blue box, and behind it is a plastic container that hold all my bias tape and elastic, and a few other small accessories that I don't even know how to classify (most of which was handed down to me from my grandmother).
In the cabinet that is closed holds my unfinished projects on the top shelf and the bottom shelf holds my recycled fabrics (old shirts and sheets mostly that haven't been cut up enough to get moved to the scrap box yet.

Here's an open cabinet shot of the "front" of the island. This side is mostly craft supplies (the top and bottom shelves) and the middle is the collection of tools that seem to be kept handy for when needed.
The other side is mostly empty. It's got my husband's lunchbox, but that will probably end up staying on top, as well as a few small boxes I like to keep in case I need to send a box somewhere (like out of state birthday or Christmas gifts), and a few recycled plastic containers that are waiting for a use. As well as the liquid starch that I forgot to put in the sewing side, so it'll be moved next time I pull the island out (if I remember).

That's all for now,
Jo!

MLP Hair Bows

Here's my most recently finished project:

I found this adorable heart shaped My Little Pony (Rarity, they also chose Pinkie Pie but you'll see her later) on this cross stitch sight, along with several others. And knew that my big princesses would love them... the question became what to do with them.

I figured since they're small-ish in design I would try my hand at making some hair clips out of them, although, I couldn't find any directions on how to do it. I couldn't find anything like them. So I decided to wing it. I looked for instructions on making pins and ornaments out of cross stitch designs but all of them seemed to included perfectly square designs, that pulled the excess material behind and I knew that wouldn't work for me. Anyway, here's how it came together, and I'll include "instruction" as I go.

My mother gave me some Aida cloth that she had found on sale but never used, so here's the finished cross stitch.

After that I thought I would add a little interfacing to secure the stitches and stiffen them up just a bit.

After that I found a site that gave instructions on turning a cross stitch into an applique. It seemed to be the most secure way of cutting around the shape. As I cut, very carefully, around the design, I used some Fray Check to secure the Aida from unraveling, which was my biggest fear.

Then the problem was attaching the hair clip piece. I use alligator clips with all my other hair bows, so that's what I had to work with. I decided the safest bet would be to use felt over the back and secure the clip to that. I ended up cutting a few slits in the felt (after deciding which corner of the felt the design best fit and glued it there. Here you can see how I just slid the clip through the felt, and I put a dab of hot glue on the back side.

Then I glued the cross stitch to the felt over the clip.

Then I cut off the excess felt, and as an extra security measure I back stitched around the design through the felt (although if I would have thought of that before I wouldn't have used the glue all the way to the edges).

(I hadn't done the back stitch yet when I took this photo but you can see it in the first picture of KL with it in her hair.)

And here's KL at school this morning, fake smiling because I told her I wanted a picture of her with the clip in her hair.

That's all for now,
Jo!

New Addition

Along with everything else I updated you on earlier this week, there has been something else in the mix:

This is baby KO, another little girl (5 can't be much different than 4 right?). She is due on July 4th, and is ornery already. She hasn't let us see much of her face, but we have one last sonogram in 2 weeks and hopefully she'll cooperate a little better. As for now, everything looks great though.

I have a lot of friends who are pregnant with their first or second, so for this pregnancy we enjoyed quite a bit of time where it was just a family secret- it was actually kind of fun to keep a secret in a world of oversharing.

That's all for now,
Jo!

A Few Updates

Here's a few updates on the long term projects I've been working on.

First off, I just finished a cross stitch that I started last August.

At first I was little upset with just how long it took me and then I realized just how much else I did while working on it. (I went back through my Facebook pictures and realized that I finished the downstairs bathroom, including the refinishing projects, made a TON of bows, along with several other Christmas crafts, skirts, etc, etc, etc.- It was a busy 6 months.)

Next is an update on my quiet book. Here's what it looks like (mostly) right now.

Since this picture was taken, I did push the corners out make them nice and neat and then ironed the pages to help them lay flatter. It's finally starting to look like a book!! All I have left is a few activity pieces to attach.
You've seen the patch work pages, here a picture of the unfinished color sorting page.

I took the picture at this stage to show you just how I did it. I printed a font that I liked (and thought wouldn't be too hard to hand stitch) to the paper side of freezer paper and then ironed it onto my felt pieces where needed. I will admit that removing the paper proved harder than I thought it would, but I still managed to do all this stitching (even what's not done in this picture) in one night (that included a school art show and cooking fried chicken for supper too). The little pieces were attached to the crayon shaped pieces of felt to look like a crayon label and help with color word identifying (I believe there are pictures of those on my last update).


Last I have made progress on my first quilt, although it's not much.
I received all the shirts from my brother and took measurements for the designs on them all (minimum size and preferred max, to not have too much empty background). I decided due to the placement of some of the decals (several over one side of the chest up the shoulder), it would be easier to just cut the decals out. Since I'm not a quilter, and therefore don't have the tools that go with, here's what I did. (I know there are computer programs to help with placement of odd shaped squares, that is the tool I don't have.)
I went into Microsoft Paint and turned on the grid lines (through the "View" menu).
Then I used a thick black line to mark the minimum size (one square/inch). Then I went over it with a thinner red line to mark the maximum size. Last I labeled them with what shirt it came from. (I tagged each with a number when I initially measured.) When I was done with all of them, I printed it off, cut it out, and after much trial and error was able to find a way to fit them all together.

I started by sorting them out by similar sizes, but that really didn't help. Eventually, I just started with the bigger ones and fit the others around.

This is the finished placement of the pieces, and to make sure I can keep track of what went where, I made a new Paint picture with the full size and sections. Labeled with what number and final size they would be cut to.
I know it doesn't look like much but to me it feels like progress.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Valentine's Day

I am slightly opposed to Valentines's Day. I don't mind the simple "take time to think on the one's you love" aspect, but the candy filled backpacks drives me crazy!! So, I try every year to do non-candy (and mostly non-edible) valentines for my children to hand out. This year we chose Kool-Aid Play Doh kits.

KK received a similar kit a few years ago at the end of the school year (with a tag that said something along the lines of "Have a Kool summer"). We had a blast making it and it lasted for about 6 months before it dried out (that's much longer than a little piece of candy lasts).

The girls had fun helping me measure the ingredients and tape off the top of the bag (just to be safe). And then they sat and chose which color would go to which person. KL went easy and gave all the boys in her class pink (strawberry Kool-Aid) and all the girls purple (grape Kool-Aid), KK on the other hand chose to get a variety of scents and took the time to specifically choose each color for each person, including rearranging a few to make sure it was just right.

The neat thing about this play doh, the Kool-Aid not only gives it color, but a scent too.

That's all for now,
Jo!