All Patched Up

Holes, holes, everywhere!  I guess it's the curse of having active children, right?  Usually mine are pretty good about not destroying their clothing.  But a few weeks ago it seemed like every single pair of Tyler's jeans was suddenly sprouting holes in the knees - not good!  So I took stock of the problem.  Yep!  4 pairs of Tyler's jeans had at least one hole and 4 pairs of Kaitlyn's jeans too.  EIGHT PAIRS!  Plus a couple of shirts that the puppy snagged with her teeth.

 

It's April and the kids have less than two months left of school.  ou know all of their current pants are going to be too short by the end of the summer so I really didn't want tYo replace any of them right now.  What was I to do, but turn to Pinterest for inspiration? LOL 
It didn't take long to find quite a few fun and easy options.

Tyler's got some "monster knees" (the camo ones got this treatment too and are even cuter, but he grabbed them and wore them before I had a chance to take photos and I've forgotten to snap a pic when he has them on)

I also did a little reverse applique (on the left) and experimented with the fabric glue when I got sick of picking apart the inside seams in order to fit the pants in the sewing machine.  So far the ones with the fabric glue are wearing just as well as the other ones - yay!  (Good to know because using fabric glue is so much easier and faster than sewing!)

 

Kaitlyn wanted to go with hearts and butterflies, so I did a variety of applique, reverse applique, and fabric glue on hers.

All those fabric scraps from other projects really do come in handy, as does saving a few pairs of old jeans.

So now we're all Patched Up.  The days are mostly warm now so I'm pretty confidant that the next mending session won't involve patches but possibly turning old jeans into cut-offs for the summer.

Working on the Master

I've been slowly working my way through the house, taking my time making it all pretty.   Now I have finally turned my focus to the Master Bedroom.  Trust me - it needed it!  In fact, when I think about it, I don't think our bedroom has been completely "put together" during our entire marriage.  There is always something else to spend the time and money on. 

When we first moved in we painted the walls and that was pretty much it.  We had always used my old bedroom set from high school, which was basically a queen size headboard, a dresser with a mirror on top, and a single nightstand.  When we replaced our mattresses and upgraded to a king size, the headboard of course never fit and we've been living without one for 8 years.  I used to use an old desk as the nightstand on my side of the bed but we got rid of that a while ago and since we've moved I have just had a big 'ole black spot in the space beside my side of the bed.  And being near-sighted that means I can't see the alarm clock in the middle of the night - not fun. 

We had decided we wanted a sleigh bed and when one because available (for cheap!) we did get one about a year ago.  This past Christmas I told my husband our gift to ourselves was a new set of nightstands.  It took me until February to find the ones I wanted, then another 6-8 weeks for them to arrive since, of course, they had been out of stock.  In the meantime, I had pinned quite a few decor ideas and I now have a pretty clear concept of how I want the room to look eventually.  The first step was new bedding.  I had fallen in love with this Anthro-inspired bedding (inspiration link here) and decided I would take the leap (all white bedding is SCARY isn't it??) and try to make it myself.  I lucked into finding a fantastic deal on sheet sets online ($25 for a king set!), bought two of them, and used them as fabric to make a duvet cover (figuring that is SO much easier to wash than a comforter if the white ever gets stained).  I alternated ruffled strips and solid strips until I had the size of the down comforter we had picked up at Ikea when we were in Charlotte.  Once I got it on the bed, I decided it didn't cover the bottom of the mattress well enough, so I un-picked the side seams and added in a ruffle. 

Much better.  I used the leftover fitted sheet from the second sheet set as a mattress cover for the box springs.  Then picked apart the pillow cases to make king size shams.

For colors, I've been really drawn to high contrast color schemes, especially black and white and I've been excited about building on that idea.  The walls in the room are blue, so I added in a few touches of blue on the pillows to bring it together.

This black and white chevron pillow is my favorite.  Makes me feel like I'm in on the trends, as chevron patterns are still pretty popular :)

Sewing isn't my craft of choice, and the duvet was pretty labor intensive.  The sewing projects took over the sunroom for probably a good 3-4 weeks LOL.  But it was worth it.  I love my new bedding!
Next up - accessories!  And some sort of console table under the flat screen TV the husband talked me into last weekend (it was on the best sale we'd seen, plus he hadn't decided on what he wanted for his "big" gift for Father's Day and our anniversary).  :) Linking to:

Hello Baby

Babies, babies everywhere! (none of which belong to me!haha) This morning I was at the pool with a small group of ladies from the neighborhood, three of which are pregnant - THREE! I'm positively surrounded, I tell you. Not the first time this has happened, but it still amazes me how these things seem to go in cycles.

My next door neighbor just welcomed her new addition home last week and I finally had the chance to meet him in person yesterday. Aww, babies are SO sweet and tiny! I didn't want to go over there empty-handed so I whipped up a set of onesies. You like? I've done these before (previous post here) and always like how quickly and easily they come together.
The rocket ship one is made with scraps from my latest car seat tent for the shop and I am in love with that argyle fabric. As in wanting to rush back to the store and get more THEN think of some sort of project for Tyler using it because I really really want to keep some for myself! :) But what would I make...?
Linking to:

Sumo's Sweet Stuff

Quick Sewing Projects

Since we did finally manage to get my sewing machine up and running (thank goodness for handy husbands!), I thought I'd share some of the small projects I was able to finish. First up, and really the whole reason I drug out all the sewing stuff was a car seat tent/nursing cover for my cousin. She's due in a couple weeks with her first baby and I wanted to get this in the mail to her before the little one arrived. Don't you just love that fabric?! I could very easily become a fabric junkie. It's a good thing I have very little reason to enter the fabric section very often or I'd have a whole stack of fabric with no real purpose, just because I loved the colors.

After I finished the baby gift I set to work turning these trift store sweaters into pillows for the living room sofa. I saw this idea a few months ago here and have been waiting for the chance to whip them up.

The finished product. Don't mind the lighting - it was a nasty rainy day yesterday and the colors are a bit off. The red is much prettier in person. And those pillows are oh so soft.

I also took the time to hem some of Kaitlyn's jeans, alter the top of her new swimming suit so it won't fall off her in the pool, reattach the binding to a blanket (that really should be replaced here soon - it's the one that we use in the living room and it's obviously seen better days), and glued the clips to the flower rosettes I made when I went to visit my friend Audrey 2 months ago - yikes! Now Kaitlyn has some pretty new hairbows for spring. And I can happily cross a whole bunch of little things off my To Do List!

Car Seat Tents

My new favorite baby gift are these cute car seat tents. I've been seeing them on all kinds of blogs lately and think I would have loved one when my little ones were tiny. And since we needed 3 (yes THREE!) gifts for this week's baby shower/card night, my friend, Dari and I whipped up our own version.

I had originally been trying to decide between these and those great nursing covers. But thought maybe just the nursing cover wasn't such a good idea - too personal, assumed that they were going to breast feed, etc. So my solution was to combine the two ideas. We made these little straps with the clips on the ends (found the clips at JoAnne's, near the buttons) that can go around your neck and hold the blanket up when you nurse. And since the blanket is already attached to the car seat, there's very little chance you'll end up out in public with nothing to cover up with. Genious, no?! ;) I love them!

And here they are all ready to go!

*Update: I didn't want to include a tutorial because there are so many great ones out there for the tents already. However since some of you wanted details I will give you a few.
-I bought 2 yards of fabric for each tent, then cut 4" off the edge. I used the 4" for the straps (one fabric for the straps on the handle, one fabric for the neck strap) and sewed the larger pieces together for the tent itself (pillow style - sew around most of 4 edges, turn it inside out then topstitch around all the edges) so the finished tent is roughly 32" x 43"
-yes, I did use velcro on the straps over the handle. The buttons are just for looks :)
-placement of the straps over the handle: I drew an imaginary line about 4" to one side of the center of the tent (because the part that goes over the feet needs to be a bit longer than the part that covers the head), then placed the straps about 6" (sorry I can't remember exactly, it's been a few weeks since I made these) apart in the center of that imaginary line.

Linking to:

Dance Costumes and Teacher Appreciation

The school year is definitely winding down. How do I know? Because I've spent bits and pieces of the last 3 or 4 weeks working on dance costumes for the recital! :)

My mom is teaching 3 classes this year - one for Kaitlyn, one for Tyler, and one extra because she ended up with that many when we started to fill Ty's class. Lucky for me, one of the other moms took over the costumes for the younger class(es) and I only had to make the 5 for Kaitlyn's class. We went with a really simple design this year too - it's called Buying the Skirt lol. Seriously, the past 2 years I don't know how many hours we spent making skirts. But this year Mom stumbled across a fabulous deal on the petti-skirt type she'd had in mind anyway so we got those and dressed them up. We started with a black leotard, and the pink skirt. I grabbed some zebra print for the sash and whipped out 25 fabric flowers (3 for the top, one for the waistband, and one for the hairbow x 5 girls). The flowers still managed to take me longer than I thought they would (isn't that always the way with crafts?) but I didn't mind that since I had the time. And look how cute it all is together!

My mother-in-law was nice enough to make the vest for Ty's costume. Photos of that one later. I'm taking all the portraits on Friday.

What else goes along with the end of the school year? Teacher Appreciation. I'm not sure when it is at Katy's school, but here in blogland everyone is talking about it. I had been on the fence about if I was going to do something for it or just some kind of end of the year token. But then I found these adorable FREE printables at http://www.dimpleprints.com/ this morning and HAD to make something.
This is the result:

*those are bath fizzies I found in the dollar section during Christmas, I think and had a couple boxes left over. I love having a few things on hand when I need something quick.

Is anyone else doing something fun for Teacher Appreciation?

Tyler's Quilt

I did it! I finished his quilt! It took me one, maybe two WEEKS longer than I had hoped - because these things always take longer than I plan for. And because I got sick of the hand sewing part and procrastinated getting it finished - but it's done.

I pretty much just drew my inspiration from these great fabrics. I knew I wanted something bright, fun, and simple so I finally decided to go with strips and let the fabrics speak for themselves. I didn't want it to have a theme, but the cars are SO Ty. I think the combo of colors and patterns keeps it from looking too theme-y and more in line with what I had intended.

Then I spotted the oversized ric rac and HAD to add a few strips to it for dimension. Turns out, it's my favorite part.

My mom helped me with the sewing part. We split the duties - she runs it through the machine and I handle the cutting, planning, pressing, and making sure everything is in the right order. Then I did the hand quilting and the binding on my own.

To finish it off, I whipped up a matching pillow case (see, there's another strip of ric rac - love it!) and TaDa! I'm pretty happy. Just ignore the fact that we don't have a headboard (and probably won't for a good long while) and that the white dust skirt does absolutely nothing to set off the quilt. (Do you know how hard it is to find a decent dust skirt? They just aren't available and the ones that are, are the complete wrong colors!) I'm happy. And Tyler's very happy (when we had the fabric pieces all laid out on the floor he said "for MEEEEE?!!!" and got so excited. It was cute).

Now I have some ideas on what I want to do to make the whole room look finished...but that's another project (or two, or five) for another month.

Cover it

This is what we found when we uncovered our swing this summer. Or at least that's what the smaller hole turned into as soon as someone sat on the swing. So of course I had to do something about it and it was obvious that patching it wasn't going to work. The swing is made in such a way that you can't get the cushions off without taking the whole thing apart. So I decided some sort of slipcover would be the best option. I had no idea what I was doing, but dived right into the project anyway. Thank goodness for Trading Spaces - their slipcover/uphostery technique worked like a charm. I cut and seamed the fabric so that it would roughly fit the size of the swing. Then put it over the swing upside down and pinned it anywhere it looked like it needed a seam. I sewed along the pinned lines, hemmed the unfinished edges, and added velcro to the edge of all the sides. And it actually worked!

Here is my swing now. The stripes are actually brown, tan, green, and cream but that's hard to see in the photo. As you can see, the only thing I need to do is figure out some way to tack that sagging bottom part under.

Now on to the next project! :)

Dora/Diego Backpacks

When Kaitlyn turned 4 she had a Dora birthday party. I made all the kids their own backpacks and maps. And Kaitlyn's set has resided in her dress up box ever since where she will pull it out periodically. Recently Katy got it into her head that Tyler needed a Diego backpack and a map and would not give up until I sewed one for him. I just finished up the face and the velcro this morning. And luckily I had a couple maps left over from the party so I didn't have to recreate one for Tyler. They are both wearing their backpacks around the house this morning :)

I got the original instructions here http://www.nickjr.com/parenting/activity_finder/games/dora/indoor_games/doras_backpack.jhtml but I used felt instead of craft foam and sewed it together so it would be more durable.