Brief Thoughts

Today I plan to start, maybe even finish a dress for a baby girl.  I'm very excited about the material I found because I think it will look so beautiful on her!  This is Lexi modeling a couple of dresses I made for her last month...  The new material in the new style of dress will look great on her don't you think??

I can't wait to have pictures of her in the new dress!

Three Cheers for Inspiration

I was so excited today to figure out how to make a dress, just by looking at a picture.  Who would have ever thought I could do something like that? 

I had some left over material from Briana's costume and a dress I made for her, so I pieced together what I had to make that dress from yesterday's post.  It isn't perfect, but I didn't even look at the picture when I was making it, so {whoops} on my part!

This is the inspiration dress...



And after 2 hours of cutting and sewing, here is my dress...

 

Okay, so it's not perfect.  But I imagine the seamstress that makes those dresses has made hundreds of that one, and this was only my first.  The material I used wasn't exactly what I should have either.  But I'm still pretty proud and Briana loves it!

She had fun modeling...



I'm excited to try making it more too.  I've decided to get some really pretty Laura Gunn material for an Easter dress for Briana...

And for the boys I imagine I will make tie tees (of course!), here is the fabric I've chosen by Riley Blake...



I think I will stick with trying to make things without patterns.  I end up much happier and less stressed!

Thoughts of New Projects

So I was looking at my lil sewing space I've taken over in the basement and thought I could do better.  So I went on Amazon to see if I could find anything I liked.  Well I did!!  Bad side, its $600.  So I showed the pic to my dad and we think we can recreate it, but more specifically what I'm looking for!

So I was thinking instead of the top being a hard top, I'd like it to be padded and covered, so that I can press the material on, as well as use it as a table to sew on! 

I'm thinking about just getting some cubes and a large table top sized piece of plywood (or something) to pad...

...If it all works out, I will post what it looks like!

Also, tonight, killing time before the hubby gets home from work, I saw this dress on Etsy and fell in love!  I think I will try to mimic it because I love it so much!!!

I have a bunch of left over material from previous dresses, so maybe tomorrow I can try and make one like this!  OMG, I would be so happy if I could figure it out in one try!  I wish I could find the fabric too because it is beautiful!



Yay for Cupcakes!

Dan started his new job today (hooray!), so the kids and I decided to make cupcakes to celebrate. 

We started off the day learning about my new cricut and playing around with some shapes.

fun colors for the gum paste

my cricut cutting out a flower



shapes and colors briana picked



Then later, I made the batter for the cupcakes, baked and cooled.  Ordered Chinese for dinner, because with all this running around today I forgot to thaw out meat!  Then made some homemade Chocolate buttercream.

Want the recipe for the buttercream?  Its so easy, and so much better than tubs of frosting!! 

one stick of butter, softened

3 cups of powdered sugar

1 tsp maple

2 squares unsweetened bakers chocolate

1-3 Tbl milk

melt the chocolate in the microwave, very carefully, 30 seconds at a time at first, then 10 seconds at a time.  stirring, so you don't burn it!  then put all the ingredients except the milk in your mixer and let that blend, then add the milk a little at a time until you've reached the consistency you like.  voila!

i like to pipe the frosting on



It was a delicious dessert!!

Leg Warmers

When we were at Target I found some knee high socks on clearance...yippee!  I bought two pairs to make leggings for Briana's St Patrick's Day outfit and baby legs for Charlie's 4 month pictures. 

If you haven't seen a tutorial on these before I figured I would post how I did it.  I searched for a tutorial myself and found one on eHow, but I didn't do mine exactly as they suggested.

First I laid out the socks and snipped with my sewing shears.  One cut above the ankle all the way across, one cut under the heel, and then cut off the toe spot of the sock. 



You can see where you should cut here



What they look like after the first step



Next, take the foot part and turn it inside out...



Take the inside out foot part and match the two unfinished ends together.  You will see the "right" side of the material, and match it up to the long tube so all three unfinished ends are together now.



all three unfinished sides together



I didn't use pins to keep them together, but you do want to make sure you stretch the material as you go, so you don't lose where the end of the curling fabric is.  Use your sewing machine (all I did was straight stitch) all the way around. 

This took all of 5 minutes!

Love them on Charlie!

I finished Briana's first, before I thought to take pictures as I went along, but this is how they turned out.  I think I have to shorten her dress now so you can see more of the cute leggings!

I love the shamrock leggings! 

Drum Roll Please.....

It was a success!  The pizza making couldn't have gone any better.  Well, I take that back.  Brayden was cranky after a late afternoon snooze and I forgot to get the sausage out in time to thaw, so while we were tossing the pizza up in the air, I was also at the stove cooking that.  But no major issues and it was so yummy! 

I let Brayden do the first one...I was trying to cheer him up.  He just wanted me to do it all...

I used my homemade marinara, because I always have that on hand!  The kids just like cheese, so that was a no brainer.  I'm a veggie gal myself, and mom, dad and Dan are sausage people.  So we had a lot of pizza to make. 

miss Briana doing her thing



rare footage of Dan

We also made cheesy breadsticks out of the left over dough.  I think a double recipe was perfect for our big family because we have leftovers for lunch tomorrow!



Briana's mini pizza



It was a ton of family fun and everyone took part in making our meal.  I would suggest this to anyone!

Briana's mini pizza

Dan's won the best "za" of the night award!

Brayden and I tag teamed this one...

After clean up, we all thought we deserved hot fudge sundae's.  Hooray for family fun!

Pizza Amore

Ahhhh, pizza love.  Or as we call it in our house, "za".  You know, I have never *at least in my adult life* made home made pizza crust.  Dan and I were trying to figure out a way to have the family do something special before he starts his new job, and he came up with it.  I really hope it turns out well!

I pretty much just googled "pizza dough" and chose the first site listed.  It DOES say it's the best pizza dough EVER.  It has to be good.  Right? 

It was very simple to make, and the kids had a good time out of it.  The recipe didn't say how many it feeds, so I set out two sets of ingredients...figured to feed all 7 of us we would need a double recipe anyway.  (and this way Briana and Brayden didn't have to fight about what they were putting in!)

Here are a few pictures of the night...  We will finish the "project" tomorrow!

posing as the mixer does all the hard work

he is adding water to his dough

he is "teaching" Briana how to do it...since he went first he is now an expert!

putting the flour in the mixing bowl (and all over my pants!)

watching it knead in the mixer

We will know tomorrow now if this is a good recipe! 

Shamrock

My sister, Beth, has an awesome blog.  The other day she had her girls valentine's day shirts featured.  I thought it would be cute to embellish Briana's St. Patrick's day dress with a shamrock made the same way!!

This is the before picture of the dress I had already made

 

First I cut out the shape of a shamrock onto white felt.

Next I cut out about a zillion circles of the shamrock fabric left over from her dress.

as you can see, they didn't need to be perfect circles

Then I took a pencil, put the middle of the circle fabric around the end of the pencil, and dabbed a bit of hot glue on the end of the fabric. 

I then put the glue side down on the felt shamrock.

its hard to see, but I'm holding the pencil in my hand as well, to place the fabric on the shamrock

So simple!! 

finished shamrock

Briana was up to modeling the new and improved dress with her new headband.

I place the shamrock on the bottom half of the dress by a
safety pin...I might change my mind on placement...

Thanks Beth for the inspiration!!!

Burp Cloths and Star Wars

A good friend of mine asked me to make a gender neutral baby shower gift for her friend.  So after a little thought, I decided to check out the fabric store to see if I could find some flannel to make a soft burp cloth from a cloth diaper.  I {LOVE} my flannel burp cloths, so why not! 

I found a section of greyish blue's that were semi-floral.  Seemed perfect to me!

After a small fight with my sewing machine [man I REALLY need a new one] I have three beautiful, baby shower ready burp cloths!

Stacked

Stacked on an angle

Mod Flowers

Delicate pattern

Lots of leaves

All three

So on to the Star Wars part of today's entry.  One of my best friend's son just ADORES Star Wars.  And since his birthday is coming up, I wanted to give him something with that theme in mind.  Too bad I can't find Star Wars patterned fabric ANYWHERE!!!!  But I did find a onesie at Old Navy with Yoda on it.  I carefully cut out the picture, secured it on a canvas tote and zigzag stitched.  Unfortunately, it was a teeny onesie, so I couldn't get it to form a perfect circle.  I think it looks VERY homemade, so I might tinker with it again later.  Then again, it is a library bag for a 6 year old, so it doesn't have to be perfect...as long as I get him another super cool gift!  

Hooray for a productive day!  Maybe tomorrow I will be able to mess around with my new Cricut Cake....