Over the weekend we started a full room makeover in Zachary's room. I wish I were here to report that we were all done and show off some final photo's but no such luck. This is the first time we have ever done any kind of room redecorating in the 14 years we've been married. Being a military family that rented homes and moved every 3 or so years just didn't allow for this kind of thing. Needless to say, we are working out a lot of kinks with our first project. So, it's going a little slower than expected, but it's fun watching it come together.
This is the before:
This is during:
We let Zachary pick out the colors, new furniture and new linens. I think he did a great job on his selection. I was hoping to be finished painting by today so we could get his furniture back in his room tomorrow and he won't have to continue to sleep on the couch. We'll see if that happens.
The weather here has been yucky the past few days. It's been warmer than normal but also very cloudy and wet. It has me in a bit of a funk. Yesterday I was looking for a cute, fun, quick project to help lift my mood. This is what I came up with:
It's a modified version of the Oliver + S Swingset skirt. I love sewing skirts, they are quick and easy and Piper loves to wear them. In the mornings when I get her dressed I give her options, 9 times out of 10 she wants to wear a skirt. This skirt was no exception to quick and easy. I did modify it a bit.
I wanted the lining to hang out a bit at the bottom so I switched the top skirt and lining skirt pieces. Did that make sense? Essentially the lining is on top and the skirt is on the bottom according to the pattern pieces.
The pattern uses a drawstring at the waist. I didn't feel like making button holes and wanted something simple and easy to wear so I opted to eliminate the drawstring. At the waist, I sewed the lining and top skirt together opposite the directions, then turned them right sides out. I then top stitched the two. Then I sewed 3/8" from the top and 1 3/8" below (leaving a 2" opening for adding the elastic) to create a casing. This sort of gave the skirt a paper bag waist. You can kind of see here what I did:
For one final touch, I added a little bling.
I was able to almost finish the entire skirt from first cut to last stitch during nap time. Unfortunately someone in our house is taking shorter naps than she used to so I am getting less done during nap time.
Piper's been watching the Tinkerbell series of movies a lot lately so I was pretty excited when I found some Tinkerbell fabric at WalMart recently. Have you seen the Tinkerbell movies? I have to admit, when DH first brought one home I was a little annoyed. He knows my position on princess-culture. (I know what you are thinking, we had a Brave birthday party. Merida is different, she's strong and independent and gets dirty). Turns out the Tinkerbell movies are not so bad either. Tinkerbell is also a strong female character (a little hot headed) but she's a "tinker" fairy. More or less, Tinkerbell is an engineer of the fairy world. She builds things to solve every day problems the fairies have. I guess I can't complain about that.
Anyway, hopefully the weather will improve soon. If not, I've got plenty more fabric for sewing quick, cute skirts for Piper to wear. :)
Wednesday is my favorite day of the week. I get to go spend time in two of my all time favorite places on earth; the library and the coffee shop. I always say, if I win the lottery I want to open a children's bookstore / coffee shop / bakery. I'd be in my own personal heaven every single day if that were ever to happen. For now, I just have Wednesday's to look forward to.
This week's library theme was Winter. I didn't make Piper anything special because I had picked up the cutest fuzzy skirt at the end of last winter from Gymboree and knew she had to wear it today.
Sometimes it's hard to get a good picture because she can be such a goof, like this...
So, I didn't sew up a new outfit but I did make something for library. For some unknown reason every time we went to the library I thought it would be easier to balance a half dozen books in my hands and chase after a toddler than carry them neatly in a bag (that was said with oodles of sarcasm). I can't even begin to explain why it has taken me 2 years of story time to finally decide to make / bring a tote bag to carry our library books in. I've seen plenty of other mom's and dad's do it. Sometimes I can be a little slow on the draw.
Over the weekend I was just looking for a quick project to put together and it dawned on me that we needed a bag to carry our books in for library this week. I had the perfect fabric for it, Cat in the Hat, I just needed the perfect pattern. Where better to look than my favorite place on the internet for sewing, Oliver + S. That's right, in addition to the adorable children's clothes, Liesl also designs bags, quilts, and other great items. I used the Mother-Daughter Tote pattern that is free on the Oliver + S website and got to work.
If you know me at all, you know of my love and affection for all things Dr. Seuss. So the fabric for this tote was easy to select. I have been trying to come up with a good project for my stash of Seuss fabrics from Robert Kaufman and this was it. Of course the tote is quick and easy to put together. I did modify the pattern a bit. Instead of using 4 different fabrics, I used 3 making the middle stripe a bit wider. The inside of the tote is lined with a nondescript blue fabric I had in my stash. I don't really know where it came from or what it's made of, but it's nice and sturdy so it works well.
I think today's nap-time project will consist of making a second tote for Piper. She loves to carry many, many stuffed friends with her when we leave the house and we never seem to have a bag that fits her, they are either too small or the straps are too long. That isn't the case with this tote. I didn't measure mine, so I'm not sure what the dimensions are. You can see in the pictures above where she's standing next to it. It's not a huge tote, but it holds 8 library books without any problem. The straps aren't too long either, Piper can easily carry the bag (when it doesn't have 8 library books, then it was too heavy). I did get a Bedazzler for Christmas (Thanks Mom!), so you can be sure Piper's bag will have some bling on it. :)
Oh, and we did go get coffee after visiting the library...
So, December was an incredibly busy month at our house. I never intended to take a blogging break, I just never really got a chance to sit down at the computer for more than a few minutes here and there.
So much happened in December, it's all still a little blurry (good thing I have pictures)...
The beginning of December, Zachary had an audition for Tri-County Choir. I am pleased to announce that he was selected to both the Tri-County Choir and the State Choir (his audition for that was in November). The weeks ahead will be full of rehearsals here, there and everywhere but what an exciting time for him.
Then there was a piano recital:
We visited with Santa:
We attempted to get some birthday photos taken:
This was sort of the theme of the photo shoot.
A special little girl turned 3, and there was a party! Complete w/ princess dress:
A beautiful cake, the birthday girl helped to make:
A lot of fun was had by all!
At some point I must have hit my head because I also agreed to make not one, but two different wedding cakes for two different friends:
Somewhere in the midst of all this Christmas came and it was lovely!
So, in addition to ALL of this sometime in early December on the Oliver + S blog Liesl was asking if anyone would be interested in testing a new pattern. I volunteered and was sent a pre-released pattern to make this lovely:
The cape was just released this week in both an adult and child sized version. I will go into greater detail later this week, because there is a good story to go with it.
I have been sewing up a storm and feeding my fabric addiction quite a bit over the past month. I have a lot to show you in the coming weeks. Tomorrow we start back to library and I have a fun project to show you tomorrow in honor of story time. Check back to see what it might be...
Piper's birthday is in a few weeks. I told myself I wasn't going to make her a birthday dress, but we all know that was never going to happen. She is currently in love with Disney's Brave and will be having a Brave themed party. I decided to make her a dress "inspired" by one of Merida's dresses.
This is the dress for my inspiration:
Here's a sneak peak of the dress so far:
I'm pretty excited about the dress, as you can see by my inability to wait until it is finished to show it off. I've really had to step out of my comfort zone for it. I am working with fabric I have never worked with before (because I was a little afraid to, for fear the results would be disastrous) and I've installed my very first zipper in 8 years of sewing (which turned out not to be as hard as I thought).
I'm pushing to get this dressed finished by the weekend because I kind of want to make a dress inspired by this Merida dress as well (the fabric has already been purchased).
Here's one of the great things about little people. They make you slow down in life and enjoy the world around you. Like, for instance how much fun a rainy day can be...
Sadly, this will be our last Library Wednesday until January. This week's theme was of course, Thanksgiving.
The outfit Piper wore to library this week consisted of the Oliver + S Hopscotch Skirt I made this summer and a t-shirt I appliquéd with a turkey. I wish I could take credit for the turkey appliqué but I can't, I got the pattern for the turkey here and tweaked it to my liking. Believe it or not but I struggle with mixing fabrics. I love to see other people do it and I know what I like and what I don't, I just sometimes lack confidence to think what I have put together works well. As a result, I think the turkey had about a dozen different feathers in several different combinations until I settled on this one. I really like making the appliqués, I still need some practice but I'm getting better at it. I'm thinking over the next year I might be in the market for a new sewing machine, I'm starting to outgrow my current machine. I think one of the features on my wish list will be a machine that does some fancy appliqué type stitching.
Anyway, here is our adorable model in all her silliness...
Don't fret that I won't have anything to talk about until January. I have a big girl birthday party to throw in December and of course Christmas. Maybe we'll get some snow this year, just a little to make the holiday special!
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. What are you doing? Whatever it is I hope you have a wonderful, and filling day!
