'ello, me lady

So, we went to the Renaissance Festival and it's safe to say that I totally underestimated the beast in terms of traffic, parking, sheer size, bawdy humor, number of crazy-in-your-face bosoms, and the boldness of oversized people in undersized fairy tutus. And it was hot. We spent $25 collectively on water and did not have to pee, if that tells you anything.

It was fun. But, when we got in the car, I said, "I don't think I want to do that again next year," and Casey said, "Uh, or ever?"  We agreed that now that we've been there, we don't need to go there again, ha! I got some fun pics, though :)

We were on team Roderick. That's him in the black. Mom and I agreed he was the cutest one ;)

Those two extra kiddos are my niece and nephew, in case you were wondering :)

Men and their swords...

Casey and his bro. I took this for their mama :)

Fair thee well.

June Cleaver

One of the prizes from the Spring Top contest was two Lisette patterns of my choice.  I've been itching to make this one ever since!  I had some pretty white eyelet (also a Spring Top prize!), but didn't really want an entire dress out of it. So, I picked up some really pretty swiss dot at JoAnn while it was half off and put my dress together.
Here's how it turned out...

Casey really likes this one; he said I look polished, like June Cleaver, ha! He meant that in a good way :)  You can read my review of this pattern here.

I lined this whole dress using this awesome tutorial on lining a sleeveless bodice without hand sewing and it is pure magic! So, I just had to share :)

I plan on making the jacket on this pattern too. I never would have given it a second glance going by the pattern envelope, but I saw this version on Flickr and could envision it all kinds of ways! I already found the perfect fabric too :) Maybe I'm just barely starting to be ready for Fall, but it can hold off for quite awhile longer, if you ask me!

Catching Up!

I have taken lots of pictures of random goings on this week! I recently started a little list of things I want to blog about, but I realize now that just picking one of those things per post will put me behind pretty quickly. Sooo, I'm going to share a whole week with you, ha! 

For starters, check out my first Dahlia! It was well worth the wait and there are several more big ol' buds waiting to bloom. Wowzers, it is huge and so beautiful!!!!

 

I think I jumped the gun on sharing my couch makeover because the very next day, I turned some embroidered tea towels, of which I only had Sunday and Monday, into some quilted pillows. The vintage ball fringe is something I got at a yard sale several years ago and have been waiting for the right project to come around. Turns out, this was it :)

I got my carpet, rug and couches cleaned this week and boy do they look better! If I had taken this picture on Monday, I would have been too embarrassed of the yucky carpet to post it, but not today...

This is my boy trying on some of the girls' stuff. Don't tell Daddy :)

Gotta love that cute little plumber's crack, right?

Last night we had a movie night! Some friends of ours found The Lion King on VHS and they brought it over (along with their VHS player because we're losers and don't have one) and we cuddled up to watch. Granny came...

Love that pic! :)

For dinner, I made some pizza bites. I found these on Pinterest and I must link the recipe because they are FABULOUS! You bake them in muffin tins and dip them in pizza sauce. I've made them twice now and they are my new/easier version of pizza and movie night. So much fun. You can find the recipe here. Instead of chopping pepperoni, I use the new mini pepperonis which make it even easier. Yum. Double it because they go fast :)

I have lots more good recipes waiting to be tried on my Pinterest "Yum" board! 

Tomorrow we are going to the Renassaince Festival! We have never been before so we are super excited. I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to share :)

I made over my couch!

We bought this little couch long before we had kids. It wasn't the wisest, most forward-thinking fabric choice. Not only does is stain easily, the kids wallered the cushions until they were lumpy and squat and it was becoming less and less comfortable. Sooooo, I recently brainstormed for a solution. Here's what it looked like before:

I found a four yard chunk of this beautiful fabric in the Hobby Lobby remnant bin for only ten dollars and after another ten dollars for batting and a few afternoons' work, I had this...

You can't see the quilting in the picture, but I did use batting behind the fabric and quilted some basic diagonal lines. The quilting gives them more structure and avoids the lumpiness that happens when you make pillows out of cotton like this. I reused the stuffing from the previous cushions, so this makeover (unless you count what I paid to have the couch cleaned and Scotch Guarded today) was very inexpensive!

The fabric wasn't enough for all the backs, so I mixed and matched some fabrics from my stash. It looks pretty from the back :)

Casey was thrilled at how much more comfy it is now. He said, "Aw, you saved the couch!" Haha.

Quick change of subject, but I thought you might like to know that a spider had babies in my sewing room. Dreams of spiders kept me up all night and I felt itchy everywhere, like they were crawling all over me. EW! Our Terminix guy is coming tomorrow.

In the mean time, my sewing has migrated to the dining room, where I managed to remedy this little mess...

...into this...

Much better :)

The best kiddie pool ever!

My friend Angela invited us to her community pool and it has an awesome kiddie pool. We stayed for three hours, it was SO much fun!

Snack time. Kelby may or may not have spit out a mouthful of pepperoni into the pool. I'll never tell. If he did do that, though, and if I did have to pick it up and put it in the trash...it was a little gross.

Aw. These two have always had a special bond :)

This is Carsten. He's a cool dude.

This is not my kid, obviously, but we had a good laugh over him standing over the little fountain like he was peeing--for at least 15 minutes. Soooooo funny!

There were also lots of mamas in itty bitty bikinis, stretch marks and all. Oh, and one Dad with a very feminine tattoo, hahaha! People watching at the kiddie pool is rather fun, it turns out :)

So, I am going to sign all the kids up for swim lessons in August. Hopefully whatever they learn there sticks until next Summer.

Big finish

The monster nine patch is done!!!!

What I love about scrap quilts is the memories that all the various fabric hold! In this quilt I can see things I made for my babies, gifts I made for friends, projects made in Georgia while my husband was deployed, in my friend Jenn's living room watching the Disney Channel and cracking up over homemade pizza dough. Good times :) Scrap quilts are so personal, which is what makes them great!

The inspiration for this quilt is here. A few years ago there was a related sew-along. Obviously, I got behind, ha! I left off the border because I was using 3" squares instead of 2.5" ones and so it was quite large already. I decided on a white border so that the scraps and squares themselves would remain the focus. The white looks quite striking on the back, though, of which I did not take a picture. Sorry.

The next quilt on my to-do list is this Cog and Wheel one by Denise Schmidt:

I've had this pattern for awhile and I have also had a little pile of car fabrics for awhile. I'm going to make this for the little guy because he'll be in a big boy bed soon. It's a full size bed, though, so this one might be a doozy! I can handle it. Right?...Right???

Kid Stuff

I have a "kid stuff" board on Pinterest and in the last few weeks, I've put some of the good ideas I've pinned there to use!

A few weeks ago, I invited my play group gals over to paint my driveway with sidewalk chalk paint and it was super fun and my house was so colorful until Casey cleaned it off a few days later :)

Here's what you do: Mix equal parts water and corn starch in muffin tins and add food coloring. That's all! Foam brushes work the best, but even still, it takes a minute for it to dry a bit and show up on the sidewalk. My kids requested more and more after all the fun they had that day.

The moms wasted no time in picking through the beautiful hair bows made by my friend Jennica of Bow-Crazy Hair Bows, which you can find here.

At our July 4th party, I put together some mega bubble wand things that I found in Family Fun magazine. After two different brands of store-bought bubble solution, though, we still had no luck. But then I found a recipe for homemade giant bubble solution and tried again for a party we hosted yesterday and it worked and it was AWESOME!! It was so much fun for the kids...and for me, I couldn't seem to stay away, haha :)

Here's the recipe:

(Source)

I would highly recommend trying this--it's fun for all ages. 

It took some practice for the kids, but they all got the hang of it after a few tries. 

We also tried some pipe cleaner wands like these (also courtesy of Pinterest). 

(Source)

The parents at yesterday's party got pretty creative with these; I'm pretty sure I saw a pipe cleaner super hero wandering around :)

Next up, I would really love to make a few of these super hero peg dolls for Kelby's birthday. I'm hoping Casey will help me 'cause he's artsy fartsy and all:

(Source)

Speaking of super heroes, I love this photo of my friend's son Ethan. He wore the cape I made him for his birthday to our sidewalk painting party :)

This is why I love sewing for the little ones in my life! 

You can find/follow my "Kid Stuff" board on Pinterest here. 

I Support the Tea Party...

of this variety, of course:

Sometimes a guy just wants to have some water...out of a Princess tea cup...with a spoon...

Does anyone else still have one of these?

Yep, a Light Bright. It was Casey's. His mom keeps stuff :) We have all the black papers too. One of them says "Fraggle Rock", hahaha!

Speaking of Light Brights, have you seen this??

Cool, right!?

As promised, I posted a review for my July 4th dress on patternreview.com and you can find it here. From now on, you can click on the little sidebar widget to read all my reviews! I'm not planning on going back and reviewing all the stuff I've made up until now, but those are all here on my blog anyway :)

Cheers!

Patriotic and Proud

Independence Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. There is a spirit of camaraderie in the air on July 4th, don't you think? I have read a few blog posts recently on Christians and patriotism. Should we celebrate America when God shows no partiality? One pastor whose blog I read believes that patriotism in the form of hymns and such should be kept completely out of the church. I disagree!! Consider these lyrics:

America, America, God shed His grace on Thee!

God Bless America! Stand beside her and guide her...

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat, 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgement seat.
Oh, be swift my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet, 
Our God is marching on.

And my favorite perhaps:
In the beauty of the lillies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, 
While God is marching on!

Why should we not praise God for this mighty blessing of being American and even more, of being free. Don't we as Christians have more freedom to celebrate than anyone else? We have freedom in Christ! So, let's celebrate!!!

I come from a strong military history, so this may be where my strong patriotism gets it's roots. My husband is celebrating 11 years in the Army, my Dad was a marine, both my grandpas and both of Casey's were in the military too and his dad is a Vietnam War veteran. My mom's dad was a World War II vet. My husband is an Iraq War vet. We know what freedom costs and we're a proud bunch. Let us all try to imagine what a lack of freedom looks like whenever we start to feel less than proud to be an American, shall we?

Anyway, moving on :)

We had such a wonderful holiday weekend. We had a potluck after church on Sunday, true to Baptist form :) I had made the girls some skirts and appliqued some t-shirts to match. I made myself a festive dress after finding some perfect fabric at Denver Fabrics recently.

I scored the red belt at a thrift store and the lovely pearls were a gift from a precious friend when her grandmother passed away and she inherited more jewelry than she knew what to do with :) I cherish them, Jenn, thank you!

I have decided to start recording my pattern reviews on patternreview.com so those interested can read them and those who don't care don't have to, ha! I'll post a link to this dress review when I get that going!

Yesterday (July 4th) was a full day, but so much fun, from beginning to end. We started out at a park, while a bunch of guys from our church and some other churches got together to play baseball. Casey's been wanting to do this for awhile, so he was very excited. It was HOT, but really fun. (I didn't play, I'm sports-impaired, but I did play blob-tag, freeze-tag, London Bridges and ran races with all the kiddos :)

Later we had some people over and look what the girls and I made!

I found this idea on Pinterest and you can find the simple instructions here. Ours aren't nearly as tidy as the ones in the picture, but we had a lot of messy fun making them :)

There are lots of dessert-in-a-jar recipes around the ol' Internet these days and I can now speak from experience that they are great crowd-pleasers!

The kids watched as the men shot off some fireworks. Fire makes me a nervous wreck, so when they moved to the front yard, I did not follow and observe. I told myself that a bunch of military men know what they are doing with dangerous things like that, haha.

After that, we played Sequence. What a fun game, I guess I had forgotten! This version is now on my wish list, as I was told it is also super fun (and educational).

We are lucky enough to live very close to where they shoot off the fireworks for the huge Firework Spectacular in our city, so a huge group took off to the Highline Canal trail about a block away to get a good view. Kelby was asleep, so my friend Liz and I watched the show through a clearing in the trees from my neighbor's driveway.

It was beautiful :) God, bless America!