stripes!

I started this stripey crochet bag some time last week when I needed something to do while watching Chuck on Hulu. Casey was gone for a week with his reserve unit and keeping my hands busy helps pass the time. I reallllly like this bag. It is a FREE pattern here!! You can make one too :)

Last night, I got these two little dresses out of my mending box. They are the same style and the girls loved them (because they were long and twirly) but Natalie's had a huge pizza grease stain on it and Layla's was too small. Sooooo....

I chopped them off and made skirts out of them. They both wore them today, so I guess they were a hit! Great way to re-purpose stained and too-small dresses.


Thanks for the encouraging comments after yesterday's post. Casey actually has a (5th!) interview with a particular company today, so maybe I'll have some good news on the job front to share with you soon. In the mean time, I will "do the next thing," (Elizabeth Elliot) and do it with joy!

Springtime in the Rockies

You have to love Colorado. One day we're at the park, playing our little hearts out...







...and a few days later we have over a foot of snow. Of course, it's melted by now and we're up to 80 degrees today! Woohoo! I'm ready for Springtime and soooo glad it's here.




We went down to Colorado City to visit Casey's family over the weekend and had such a great time there. Sometimes it's good to get out of the city and feel like you can breathe. It was a nice little mini-vacation for me. Back to reality, though and it's a tough reality for us lately. We have some decisions to make in the coming months and are excited to make those decisions, but are still in a holding pattern. We know that God has a perfect plan in mind and it will be better than what we've ever imagined for ourselves. But, how do I find contentment when I know what I have is temporary and how do I settle in to my current situation when I know it will just change again very soon? Thoughts??

Family Fun

Last month I bought the most recent issue of Disney's Family Fun magazine. I have never bought this magazine before, but after flipping through it and seeing several projects we could do together, I went ahead and bought it. It was SO much fun, I am thinking about subscribing now.

The first thing we attempted was the Curly Birds. After I measured the strips, Natalie did most of the cutting and both the girls did all the gluing. He's hanging from our chandelier now :)


Then, I already showed you these rainbow cupcakes I made for Natalie's party. These were pretty easy and a lot of fun for the kiddos. You can see that mine don't look as perfectly layered as the picture in the magazine. That's because that would have taken forever and my mom taught me that "done is better than perfect." It's become one of my life's mantras, hahaha :)



Also for Natalie's party, we made these little butterfly snack baggies as party favors. I loved this idea because I don't like buying a bunch of cheap favors that I know will get thrown away in a matter of days and I also don't like to give out a ton of sugar, so this was perfect! And cute :)


Then, we HAD to try these sock bunnies. I have a weird thing about using worn socks for craft projects, so I bought new, since the girls could use some socks anyway, but you could use socks you have around the house too. Stripey ones would be fun! Anyway, the girls really love these little bunnies, they've even been sleeping with them. However, I have had to reposition the neck ribbons a couple of times, since they tend to swing them around by the ears and the heads become really tiny :)





I've had so much I've wanted to blog about lately, but seem to lack the time! I have a like list on the back burner, though, as well as a like list, reader's edition, so hopefully I'll be able to post those soon. In the mean time, we're going down to Colorado City to visit my in-laws for the weekend. I'm very excited, it's like a mini-vacation for me when we go down there and a nice change of scenery for the kids, too. I bet I'll have some time to blog while we're there!

making progress

I finished Natalie's Easter dress!! This one turned out soooo cute, I really loved the pattern (the link is in my last post) and think this dress looks so boutiquey :) The bubble hem is everything I hoped it would be.


And I also finished Layla's hat!! It matches her dress and was not hard to make at all. This pattern is also linked to on my previous post, in case you're interested.


P.S. I received a lot of comments on my last post about my cute kids, but actually those pics are just the pattern covers to the patterns I'm using, so thanks! but I had to give credit where credit is due :)

Sew & Tell--Layla's Easter Dress

I have some Sew & Tell this week, unlike the past few :) Surprisingly, this is the first year I've actually made Easter dresses for my girls, I usually tend to run out of time and my lovely female family members offer to buy dresses. But, I had fabric and I had a pattern, so I decided to go ahead and make them.

I was determined to use fabric I already had and not spend anything, which is always a fun challenge. I love these fabrics on Layla's. I have some fabric in the same color family that I had planned on making myself something with, but decided to use for Natalie's Easter dress. For Layla's I used McCall's 5835, which was great, but the yolk ended up being way to low (surprise, surprise) so I added that little panel with the ruffle behind it and I think it looks even cuter :)

So, for Natalie's dress, I was not feeling any of the patterns I had on hand (a lot of them end at size 4 and she's a 5 now!) so I went on to Etsy and could not believe all the awesome pdf patterns that are available there!!! I went with this one....

It's the Miss Lily Dress from Little Dresses. Adorable. I wanted a bubble hem dress and this one's perfect, since there's no zipper :) I also really love the patterns at KustomKidsBoutique. Really amazing things.

Then, what I'm especially excited about is this crazy-cute hat pattern I ordered from Clotilde recently. I'd been looking for a newsboy hat pattern for Kelby and this one has boy and girl hats from age newborn to adult, so I know I'll get a ton of use out of it. I'm making hats to match each of the girls' dresses and I have some orange tweed in my stash that I want to make Kelby a hat and bow tie out of. I can't wait! Now I want to finish this post and get to sewing :) It's a good day for it here in Colorado, since it's blowing snow after a week of realllly nice weather. *sigh*

lots and lots of applique

I have made some great progress on Layla's quilt in the last weeks! I'm so excited to see it come together. I finished all the big applique blocks and have 5 out of 10 of the smaller flower blocks left to make. After that, the top should go together pretty fast. I'll be taking a break to make some Easter things, though.

time for tea

Have you seen the new Liberty of London things at Target????? Beautiful. But they would be, since it's Liberty of London after all. I was there yesterday and loved so many things throughout the store, but when I came upon this tea pot and it was the only one, I said, "I'm buying this." And I did :) Isn't is so pretty?? We love our tea set from China, but this will add some pretty variety to our Sunday afternoon tea parties.


So then, we went out yesterday and stopped into a kitchen store (because Casey has a crazy fetish for kitchen gadgets) and he spotted this bamboo tea holder. He said, "I'm getting this for you so you can get that mess of tea boxes out of the pantry." I was happy to let him do that :) It fits all my tea except for Celestial Seasonings because they don't come wrapped, just a bunch of tea bags in a box. (Ahem, maybe they could change that?? It would be convenient for me.)

While we're on the subject, I have a new favorite tea. I went to Barnes and Noble and ordered the Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon Spice tea and realllly liked it. I don't actually own any yet (because it's like $10 a tin) but I hope to sometime soon.

meet Patty

Natalie has a Groovy Girl doll that my friend Jenn gave her when she turned 3. She realllly loves this doll. She named her Patty a long time ago. I don't know why :) Clothes for these dolls are kinda expensive (like $10 or more for one outfit!) so I really wanted to make her some clothes for her birthday this year. I started looking around online and it turns out that Simplicity used to make patterns for Dizzy Dolls and tons of clothes. These dolls and clothes are the same size as Groovy Girlz, so the same friend Jenn managed to score some patterns on Ebay! Nice!


Here are all the outfits I made. Check out the shoes, that's my favorite part, they're so cute.

So after they were done, I made this little purse for them to go in. It was really easy, maybe I'll make a tutorial for it if anyone would like to try one.

Natalie really like this gift, it was the first one she played with after opening gifts on her birthday, which made me happy :)

the birthday

My oldest child turned 5 on Tuesday! Hard to believe. Natalie's baby and toddler years were pretty challenging, but I'm so proud of who she is becoming. She's really turned into such a great little person. We had an Alice in Wonderland birthday tea party for her yesterday. There were lots of little girls there and one great sport of a little boy (besides Kelby, of course.)


Last week at Barnes & Noble, I bought the newest Family Fun magazine. Actually this is the first one I've ever bought, but just flipping through it, everything looked so cool and actually doable! These rainbow cupcakes were in the very back. You just get a white cake mix, separate it into 6 bowls, dye each a different color and spoon them in one at a time! They turned out pretty cool.




We have been busy around here. Casey was gone with the military for a week and we have some friends in town visiting too, so I could say that I'll be back tomorrow with more from the birthday and from this awesome magazine, but realistically, it may be a few days :) Bear with me, though, I've been storing up some great posts!