Space Craft and Milk Bag

All kinds of fun going on here at my house. This craft for one. I wish wish wish I could post the link to the site where I first saw this. But I forgot it and can't find it anywhere. In my head it's associated with Celebrate the Boy but it doesn't seem to be one of their official links. Argh.James and I dismantled as many broken toys and stuff as we could find and kept all the outside plastic pieces. Then, we went to Home Depot and got some adhesive (and two cans of spray paint). We used an epoxy that came in two tubes that squirt as one. Pretty Cool. Thanks also to Robert for the advice on epoxy!
Then when his sleepover friend arrived - they played Wii. Finally I couldn't take it any more so I made them build space ships. Yes, I was more excited than they. But they were jazzed about the results.

I have also wanted to make this reusable grocery bag set. Especially the milk and meat ones. Here is my attempt. Note to self: actually follow directions next time instead of looking at the picture and thinking: "okay that looks pretty simple/easy/fun." I mean honestly how many times has that thought gotten me in to trouble? I'm pretty sure getting various body parts stuck in things, mangling clothes to make them "better" and at least one son - all had that in common.
But anyway, I'm happy with it.
I'll do better with the meat bag.
And I think it's super cool that I made the plastic fabric out of melted grocery bags!

Happy Cinco De Mayo Everyone! I have to go make a breezy beach skirt for the:

Summer of No Pants

at which I will be a guest blogger!

Fairest and Fair

Here is our "Eastivity Scene!" Starting on Sunday, Jesus entered the city riding on a donkey. Our figurine wouldn't ride his donkey. The people laid down palms and their coats for Jesus. He went to the Temple. You can see the people ready to sell sheep and stuff. And he cleaned it out!
The next day he cursed the fruitless fig tree as a symbol of the Temple empty of prayer and praise. So the last picture is Jesus happy because we filled up the temple with fruit: things we praise God for! I didn't take pictures of it, but the boys also decorated the two greatest commandments (the Diamond Rule, and the Golden Rule) because Jesus quoted them during this visit to the Temple.

We took a sort of break on the Holy Week Activities on Tuesday because Jesus was teaching end-times things in the temple. Just a little over our heads this year. We will start back up
on Wednesday with Judas going to the Pharisees, and anything else that happened on Wednesday.

And finally, here are some pictures of the Boyscout Fair! You can see pictures of James learning to fold The Flag, crossing a log bridge, climbing a rockwall, making rope, and driving a Lego Robot. Peter got to twist James' rope a little, they ate lunch under a makeshift stroller/chair/blankey tent, got to shoot rubber band guns, and make a 2x4 trail through a "jungle." My Cub Scout had a great time, and Pete and Phillip did well too!

Hello my nearly a dozen followers! I thought I'd post a picture of a quilt I'm "working" on for Phillip. By "working" I mean it's about half quilted and has been sitting in it's hoop under the table by my nursing chair for about two months. But now that I've made two shirts (almost) and two pairs of underwear and a skirt (still needs hemming) maybe I can get back in the mood to hand quilt.

The color of the green is really hard to capture. The embroidered square in the first photo can be seen in the upper RH corner of the second photo. It is of the same fabric I used for Phillip's little coming home pinafore - in the third photo (there's a tiny appliqued brown bear on that).

The blue in the quilt is really a tiny gingham, oh yes it was used as the edging for Rosie's dress which I just realized I never blogged! The darkest red is really a calico that I used on Mom's oven mitt for Christmas. The green baby-buggy fabric was a gift at my baby shower (where it was also the table cloth!). As you can see, there's not a single solid in there. Two kinds of polka dots, YES! No florals, three plaids, and my favorite, the circus fabric. I tried to fussy cut the circus fabric but it was just the wrong size square to look it's best that way. A little bigger, or a little smaller would've been better. The size of the square was decided by the smallest scrap that I really wanted to use and I hate sewing really tiny squares so - oh well. I love it. It came out looking way more sophisticated, random, and homey than my quilts seem to do.

So I really like it. Now to finish that hand-quilting!

Ice Cream and Dinosaurs

Good morning friends!

I’ve been working on a shirt for Peter this week. Sewing on the sewing machine is so soothing to me. It helped me slide into this week. Last week I had so much fun with my sister and mom in town for Spring Break. We did so much! Monday however, I spent half the day in my pajamas working on this shirt for Peter.

I saw that I Am Momma was having a boy shirt contest but I thought I remembered it ending on Monday. So when I checked her site I was pleasantly surprised to see it didn’t end until Friday! So I gave it a shot.

I didn’t have anything very creative to do so I tried to just do my best on the quality and details.

I used Simplicity 7994.

Started with:

1 yard of fabric from Hobby Lobby ($3 a yard on sale!)

A brown thread that I already had and sort of coordinated

Bag of buttons from Wal-Mart ($1.50?)

And then at the end I decided to do a little hand embroidery for it – you’ll see!

I’m really proud of the sleeves this time around. I actually stitched the gathering inseam thread so I could ease it in. An elderly friend in Hillsboro had emphasized that this step keeps you from getting ugly little gathers in the sleeve or shirt body.

Dun TaDa DUN!

No ugly little gathers in anything!

And look at my cute buttons with three different color threads.

The next thing I’m rather pleased about is the button holes. My button holes always look like horrible gashes in the fabric of time. Well. Maybe that was a little dramatic, but they look bad.

But not this time!

I finally figured out the button hole feature on my machine. Woohoo!

I’m also really proud that I didn’t have to rip out a single seam. I wait for them on every project: the moment when I realize I sewed a wrong side to a right side (that’s a real duh moment too), the moment I break a needle, and the moment I realize my bobbin ran out of thread way at the beginning of the seam.

None of that happened this time!

HA!

Here’s Pete mugging for the camera. Isn’t he beautiful?

And here’s the baby I was holding in my lap while I took pictures. Not his best moment, but he was very good and happy the whole time.

Now as a reward, I'm going to go buy some BlueBell Homemade Vanilla!

P.S. See all the other great shirt entries at I Am Momma Hear Me Roar!

Happy St. Valentine's Day Matey!

Well, here's what James and I did last night. Why didn't I get a picture of him doing it? Because I was cutting hearts and taping little black strips like a fiend.

It started out as a pirate flag valentine, but morphed into just a skull. My friend Micah H. assures me that it still says "pirate" not "creepy Satanic ritual."

What do pirates have to do with St. Valentine's Day? ...er...

(lightbulb!)

That's your discussion question for the day:

What do pirates have to do with St. Valentine's Day? (50 words or more)

Date Night Blouse

I've hit my annual new year Sewing-Fever. So I went to my stash and found this great polka dot fabric. I always have turquoise/aqua on hand because it's my favorite color to wear. This is the 4th top I've made using my standby NewLook pattern, but its the first time I've done it without sleeves.Peter snuck in for the end of my photo shoot in the bathroom. So tried to take picture of him in his new haircut....there he goes!

So anyway, I barely had enough fabric for the thing so the yoke sags a little (no lining), and the inside has some rough edges.

But on the whole I'm pleased.

I like it best with the sweater.

After the "'shoot", Pete had an idea for a recipe. While I was downloading pics he got out the ingredients - scaring me to death...but the result was ok.

Ingredients:

popcorn

raisins

gummy snacks

baby carrots

He ate it all up!

More Christmas Stuff

These are the felt cupcakes I made my nephew and niece for Christmas. There are about a billion cupcake tutorials out there, like here, and a really sophisticated one here and did I use any of them? No, I didn't because I don't have a printer to print up anything. So as a result they have sort of drunken sailor early in the morning look about them. The thing that I did that's new, that I haven't seen before is simple - I didn't! No I haven't just gone crazy...I DIDN'T do something that I've seen everyone else do as the finishing touch - sew on the decorations. I cut out circles, squares, stars, spirals and one "drizzle glaze" splotch, and then put them in a baggie. Now they can be rearranged in different combinations. As an added bonus, they can be scattered all over my sister's living room floor for a post-ticker-tape parade effect! Go check out these adorable sister and my so talented sister here!

Stitchin' Time

This is an embroidery I made up to go with some chinese food I delivered to a friend with a new baby. I said that I was bringing egg rolls and we got to talking about chinese food we love. Then she mentioned that her husband loves crab rangoons. It was super easy to do, all backstitch with a couple of french knots. I did it on a flour-sack towel. I was inspired by the Pleasant Kitchen Towels on Posie Gets Cozy (they can be downloaded from a sidebar). I'm making those too! Here's Sunday:

We had a ton-ton of fun!

Annoyingly I've just realized that I didn't take pictures of most of the things I made for Christmas! I'm going to have to get my sisters and mom to take pictures of themselves with their stuff so I can post it.
And post it I will because I'm superproud to have done all this AND given birth in 2010
Fortunately my absolute FAVORITE gift is the one I did take pictures of. The idea came from a conversation between myself, my dad, and my 8-yr old son about the amazing bantha craft and the adorable jawa doll softie.
We were trying to think of a worthy addition to the world of do-it-yourself geekery.
So without further ado....
Here are two of the ton-tons I made for my dad and two brothers-in-law. I'm planning on posting the ton-tons as either a downloadable pdf or maybe even a pattern you purchase on etsy as soon as I can. As you can see from the pictures, their guts are spilling out as they did in "Empire Strikes Back" when Han Solo cuts one open to save Luke from hypothermia. There is a pocket within the "guts" so you can hide Luke in there. Or if you can't find the right Luke, just hide candy! (That's what we did) The legs and tail are weighted so they can stand up next to your computer or your linux penquin or whatever.

A Special Treat

Today Peter told me he wanted to make a "special treat" using the following ingredients:
a gummy worm
chocolate powder
some oil




So we did! There are our ingredients! (We did 3 squirts of spray oil)
We stirred them around.

The chocolate powder (we used Nestle's Quick) stuck to the oil, and the oil stuck to the gummy worm.

I took a bite. Peter took a bite. It wasn't that bad. Chocolatey, then fruity. I asked Peter what he thought it looked like. He said dirt. I think it looks like something unmentionable. I might have a lot of fun with this on April Fool's day. Hmmm....