Sewing with Kids - part 1

Santa gave my 7 y-o a sewing machine. While Grandma (my mother-in-law) was here during the holidays, we made some time to sew with her! They made a girly cover for my daughter's boring computer chair. She did an awesome job and actually did a lot of it herself. She learned how to make a casing for elastic. The fabric we used was just from a pink sheet we bought at Ikea for $2.

BEFORE

AFTER

Valentine's Day Cards 2010

I found this idea on this site. We had fun making them and giving them out to friends and family this year for Valentine's Day. (We actually have some packages ready to go out to long distance family. They've been sitting in the packages for a week, on my counter. Why is it so hard for me to get to the post office???)

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And we finished our Valentine's heart garland last week. My daughter actually did most of the sewing herself. I didn't even know she was doing so well. I left her doing it all by herself. When I came back to check on her, she was almost done. This picture doesn't show the colors very well, but you get the idea. It was fun to have it up for the lovely little holiday.

Christmas Hot Pad

With scraps from the zig-zag quilt. I wanted to try out the swirl quilting style. (There's definitely room for improvement, but it sure was fun!)

Christmas Zig-Zag Quilt, Done and Gone

I wish I had more time to write about this. But I'm just too busy today!

Just pictures for now. Maybe I'll get around to writing about it soon...

Almost done!

I'm working on the last step - binding! I hope to be able to show you "finished" pictures tomorrow.

Peace

I got bored (for a bit) with piecing the zig zag quilt. (I'm sooo slow at quilting. Ugh!) So, I needed a new small project. Over Thanksgiving weekend I decided to use a few scraps from the zig zag quilt to make a Christmas banner. I had some cream felt leftover from making the birthday crown awhile ago. I wanted the felt to be thick so I double it. I then decided it should be reversible. I was going to put another Christmas word on the other side, but thought maybe I should go with a word from a neighboring season/holiday. So, the other side says "Fall" with a fabric leaf on the extra square. I hung it on the mirror in my living room. The only thing I don't really like about that is that you see the fall colors and letters. Oh well.

I free handed the letters on parchment paper and traced them on the fabric. My artistic husband helped me. :)


I used dark green thread to zig zag around the letters (before I attached the Fall letters felt squares to the back).


Easy peasy! But, I thought it would be a two-hour-or-under project. Nope. Not for me. I'm slow! I also broke a needle and stuff like that. When I was done, I was happy with it, but wished I had spent the time quilting instead.

Christmas Quilt Progress

Yay! I'm making progress! I am so grateful to my husband for letting me quilt on Friday night, while our kids were being babysat. We hung out and watched Twilight while I quilted. (We were preparing to see New Moon the next morning. LOVED it!) He actually helped me a bunch. He lined up squares and drew a diagonal line on them so I could sew them. He also helped me the next day by watching the kids for hours while I was pluggin' away in our room, piecing this quilt together.

I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the piecing. But I LOVE seeing the progress! I am a slow quilter, but I still have hope that I will find the time to get it finished. I have about three and a half weeks left.

Giveaways!!

Sorry if I fooled you with that title. I'm not hosting a giveaway. But, V and Co. is!! Go check it out and leave a comment for a chance to win! These things are gorgeous! If you don't have a camera with a strap like that, you could probably think of someone who would like it for Christmas.

Go check out *Shey*[B]'s etsy shop for all of her choices. Honestly, they are gorgeous! (I made one awhile back, for my camera, and it's okay, but nothing compared to hers!)


Okay, here's another one. The Burnt Daisy is having a giveaway. She has an adorable blog and makes beautiful decorative letters. Check out her "Believe" giveaway.

Good luck!!

Two Crafty Things Today: one online, one in person!

Thing 1:

Ooooh. I'm so excited!! When I opened my google reader this morning and saw the post from Heather Bailey, I was so happy and so sad at the same moment. There is a craft fair event in Mesa this weekend (yay!) and it's Friday night (tonight) from 6pm-10pm (NO!!! I can't make it at that time!!) Oh wait... As I kept reading I found out that it going on (10am-5pm), on Saturday also!!! Woohoo! (Now if I can just fit it in...). Heather Bailey will be there along with Stephanie Nielson (nienie) and her husband (don't know if they'll be there both days, though), and many more!

I don't want to go alone. Anyone want to go with me? I asked one of my crafty neighbor friends and she reminded me that she would be out of town :-(. So, let me know if you're interested in joining me!

Here's a link to the Domestic Bliss blog (that's the boutique store where the craft event is at).

Thing 2:

Some of my favorite craft bloggers (click there to read about them) have been chosen to participate in a crafter's challenge. It's called So You Think You're Crafty (S.Y.T.Y.C). This is the last day to check out their "anonymous" first-round project and vote for your favorite. There are some REALLY beautiful creations. Very talented women, I tell you!

When you go to the So You Think You're Crafty blog you click on "this week's challenge" on the top tab. Look through those crafts and vote. Then you get to see the results so far.

It's fun! Go check it out. Don't forget to vote! And come back here to talk about what your favorites are. (It's SOO hard to decide).

Busy Halloween Week

Three of my kids, with three of their cousins.

It's been a week since my last post, but it seems like weeks! We've been so busy that I feel like there should have been multiple blog posts from each day last week. There just never seemed to be any time to blog about things. Now, I guess I'll try to fit it all in at once and only share a few of the more interesting things that we did.

My baby chick. I need to send this to Little Birdie Secrets. I got the idea from them.

I stayed up so late one night making/altering this Draco Malfoy costume.

Preschool Halloween Party:

7-year-old birthday party on Halloween Day:

We did crafts and snacks. I think they had fun. :-)

6 and 7-year-old's use a lot of mod podge!

This pic is of the mummy pizzas before they went into the oven.

And... Our dinner and dessert last night:

We made these Stuffed Pizza Rolls from The Best Bites blog. (see my last blog post about them.) We used our own homemade pizza dough recipe (I should have my husband post that here on my blog sometime...) This was SOOO yummy! A bit more work (just took a bit more time to assemble) but WELL worth it! Really, dipped in warm sauce, it's so much better than pizza! You've got to try it! We'd like to try this one next time.


And here is my family's first ever Pizookie! We all just grabbed spoons and ate it straight out of the pan together! And of course we LOVED it! (We don't usually have dessert after dinner - in fact it's really quite rare here.) We DO usually make cookies on Sunday evening, though, and last night we decided to bake it a little differently! Thanks to some awesome friends for introducing me to these yummy creations! (I live in a cave, apparently!)