My girls have it made!

I made these dresses for the girls over the last few weeks and they turned out SO cute! They really love them, although Natalie wants the ruffles in the front next time ;) Someone gave me the brown polka dot fabric and I got the green and the floral dirt cheap at Denver Fabrics a long time ago, so these cost me next to nothin', which is the way we like it around here.
Natalie was a somewhat more cooperative model than Layla :)
And of course, the twirlability is irresistable.
AND, my blog buddy Belinda of Brown Dirt Cottage wrote me recently and offered to send me some little girl patterns that her grand kids had out grown and of course I said, "absolutely!" CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS???? Look how many she sent!!! The girls are at the table with me now, picking out what they want me to make for them first...and second and third :) Belinda, thank you SO much!!! Believe it or not, a college student's family doesn't have a lot of extra dough for patterns and fabric, so this is a major blessing. It looks like I have some serious thrift store fabric shopping to do :)

Oh, and guess what else??? LAYLA JUST WENT PEE-PEE ON THE POTTY!!!! I only started training her three days ago. If you've been following my blog for awhile, you may remember what an ongoing nightmare Natalie's potty-training was! This is shaping up to be a good day :)

Get outta town

We got out of here for the weekend and spent some time with Casey's family in Pueblo. Got some great pics, but this top one is my favorite. Everyone else had finished their cupcakes and were playing games--except our girls, who ate every last crumb before getting up from that table.
This is pretty much what Kelby did the entire party--sat and smiled :)

It was a big day...Casey was tired from a leisurely morning of golfing ;)
The next day we went to the Pueblo Zoo. It's not as big and intimidating to take little kids to as the Denver Zoo, so it was really fun. This is our cousin Jadon, seeing how far he can jump.
Even Gramma joined in on the action!
Hehehe.

Here are the girls with their cousin Jillian (the birthday girl.)

I love this picture! You can see Layla's smiling reflection in the glass!


Casey thinks this video is hilarious. The kids were totally wiped out after a few big days, but I am so glad we got to spend a few days together as a family. Casey has been SO busy this semester and to have him all to ourselves was a real treat.

I have some great things to blog about this week, so stay tuned!

Quilt Festival

So, with one day left, I could not resist entering the Bloggers Quilt Festival, especially after reading about all the FABULOUS prizes! And, of course, my wonky house quilt, my first one ever, is still my favorite. Making this quilt was somehow liberating--no measuring, no pre-cutting, not even really any planning. And, the fabrics in this quilt all hold lots of memories for me. It's backed with several pieces of flannel and one of them is Layla's blankie fabric. That's just one of many, many fabrics that get me all sentimental and sappy when using this quilt ;) Not to mention, of the half-dozen more quilts I have under my belt now, this is still the snuggiest by far.

From 7 to 23

Yep, I have 23 of these 9-patches now. Once I got going, I just couldn't stop! I ran out of scraps, though and I don't want repeats, so I'll have to work on it as I get some more. I just finished up a quilt last night (nope, can't share yet!), so I can make a few more now with the scraps from that.
I also finished knitting this hat for Kelby this week. As you can see by the way it fits Layla's head, it's way too big for him. That's okay, the cold weather is over for this year (knock-on-wood) so maybe it will fit fine next winter.
I really wanted to share this kid's book with you all. I got it from the library last week and what a great story with a great message!!! It's about a girl who wants to be known for something other that her beautiful hair, so she strives to be a kind person and be known for her kindness instead. Eventually she donates her hair to kids in need and at the end, her dad, when kissing her goodnight, instead of saying, "Goodnight, my Melissa of the beautiful, beautiful hair," as he always said before, he says, "Goodnight, my Melissa of the beautiful, beautiful heart." I don't know why that makes me tear up, I guess I'm a sap today :)
Here's a couple of pictures just for fun. Kelby loves to wander into the girls' room and they involve him in whatever they are doing. That's a Cheerio stuck to his tooshie, in case you are wondering.
And here he is sucking on his toes. He does this a lot and I think it's pretty funny :)

Lotsa

I was tired yesterday and my sinuses/allergies have been making things worse, so after a wearisome day, I sat down after the kids were in bed and did some therapeutic sewing. We have a lot of birthdays coming up, so it's been awhile since I sewed anything other than gifts, with a deadline! I have been admiring this quilt for awhile and got my scraps out to try and make something like it. I made 7 blocks, but I'll need about 70, so this will be an ongoing project. A great way to use my favorite scraps. I like the blue and red one in the middle the best so far.

This is too lovey not to share :) I left Casey this note after he left for work last night (he goes straight to school on Thursdays after coming home for a quick shower.)
And he left me this one this morning. If you know Casey and how he feels about Pepsi, you know this is a super-sweet thing for him to say :)
AND, have you seen this pattern????? It's new and you can bet I'll be investing in this one. LOVE it and can't wait to try it. Her others are great too.

Something else I want to make: Bunny Bowling! Hellooooo, awesome.

Friday's almost here! Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Easter goodies

Now that Easter has come and gone, I thought I'd share what I made for the kiddos. The girls have been into Matryoshka dolls lately, and I remembered a pattern for these Babushka dolls in my Sew Pretty Christmas Homestyle book. They love them. They took them with us to church yesterday and named them names out of our book, The Littlest Matryoshka.
Then, when I saw this fabric beach ball tutorial on The Purl Bee, I wanted to make one for Kelby. When I couldn't decide on a size, one became three :) I had lots of flannel strips leftover from baby blankets and so this was a great way to use those up. The martian one matches his blankie! Awe. So far, I think Casey's had the most fun with these, not Kelby. Last night he was pelting the girls with them. They think it's hilarious and I loove little girl belly laughs, so I made no efforts to stop the rough-housing :)

Here's a picture of us before heading off to church. (Except Casey, he was behind the camera.)

Happy Easter!

There's been a flurry of Easter activity around here this weekend. We decorated eggs last night. The girls had a lot of fun. Casey made these ones with all our names.


My mom and dad sent flowers! They're beautiful, the girls are enamored.
I gave the girls some plastic eggs and buckets and an empty egg carton this morning they have been playing with them all day long. Natalie even ventured outside to play, even though it was super windy. She thought it was funny to spill the eggs out and let the wind blow them all over so she could "rescue" them :)

Hope your Easter is wonderful!

P.S. Thanks for all the encouragement about my Easter skirt. I feel much better about it now and will be wearing it as is to church tomorrow :)

Honesty, Please

K, Heather Ross, I love your fabrics, and your designs are wonderful, but maybe you should leave the pattern writing to someone else!!!! I was so excited to try this Yard Sale Wrap Skirt and splurged on really nice fabric, only to find out that it was not going to fit me in the end! Everything about this pattern was wrong, from the amount of fabric required, to the lack of pattern markings, etc... but the most disappointing thing was the fit. This is supposed to wrap around my body at least one and a half times, but the ends don't even meet once. And I made the L/XL. (I'm a size 12) ANYWAY, that said, I think I found a way to make it work. I had to use a constrasting fabric for the tie (thankfully I had something on hand that matched) and I decided to make another skirt to go underneath out of some fabric Jenn gave me in a little swap we did several months ago. (I can't buy more fabric, since I'm already going to need to buy a shirt to go with it.)
Here is the result. BUT, I do NOT want this to look anything like a Daisy Kingdom skirt. (Those of you who have sewn for awhile may know what I mean by that and if you don't, the phrase speaks for itself, right?) So, I hope someone will be honest and let me know if this looks like a lamp shade (Jana ;)
The one thing I did like about the instructions, was that she recommended a hand-rolled hem. I have never tried this before, but I certainly don't like how machine hems look on large, round pieces like this, it's always so hard to make it look good. So, time-consuming, yes, but doesn't it look nice??

Doll Quilt

These doll quilts are so much fun! I made this one for a little friend who's turning two in a couple of weeks. I happen to know she loves baby dolls, so I hope this does its job and keeps hers warm :)
Here's the back. I free-motioned in a loopy pattern. I like the loopies better than stippling. I think stippling kinda looks like worms or amoebas or something. I know that's really weird. whatever.
And, I'm really excited about this fabric I got for my Easter skirt. I'm going to use the yard sale wrap skirt pattern in Heather Ross's book, Weekend Sewing. I really wanted a large scale print and I'm glad I managed to find one. And that I had a coupon for it :) I know, Easter's in a week, so I'd better get busy!

Silly Monster

Our little friend is having his first birthday party tomorrow so I wanted to make him something. I drew a pattern for this little monster based on some that I've seen around the web. He's pretty funny-lookin', but the girls seem to think he's cute and Kelby desperately wants to eat him, so I'm going to go ahead and give him to Ethan. Next time, I think I'll put a neck tie on him before I sew him all together, I think that would be a perfect touch, but I thought of that too late for this guy. Oh, well, he'll stay casual :)