My to-do list

On my to do list...

• Start making Christmas gifts
• Get our website up and running
• Make a Christmas list - who is getting what, and what am I making???
• Get our website up and running
• Make stuff to put on the website
• Get rid of this wretched cold
• Is Christmas really coming??
• Did my sister and I really start a business together???
• Pray!!
• Clean this filthy house - or at least the filthy floors!
• Breathe
• Make Anthony a blanket, because he's jealous that I made blankets for the girls
• Get my car out of the shop...$1000 later...OUCH!
  
• Get to JoAnn's while the flannel and fleece is on sale
• Knit something - anything - get SOMETHING on my needles!
• Stop coughing
• Decide which fabrics of the new lines coming out I MUST have
• Hurry and sell some stuff so I have money to buy said fabrics
• Pray!
• Manage all of Mackenzie's Early Intervention and speech therapy and cleft team appointments.
  
• Get rid of this Darth Vader boot so I can sew with my right foot again
• Have surgery...don't ask where...you don't wanna know...trust me.
• Make more time for date nights - really, we had the BEST time Friday night!
• Figure out how to do all this and still slow down so that I don't get another cold the minute I get rid of this one.
• Pray some more.
• Thank God I don't have to do all of this alone!

What's on YOUR to-do list? How do you manage it all?

Birthday party bash

Pics from the birthday party we went to - this is for the little girl who was the recipient of the little twirl skirt. I just LOVE these little party skirts with the yoga tops that I got for the girls on clearance from The Children's Place a while back. They also have matching bolero cardigans, but it wasn't cool enough yet for them to wear them.

Our little friend Layla, so sweet in her dots. Her big sister had a matching dress!

The kids all lined up to do the limbo!

Makayla and her beloved binky.

The party girl, Sage, and her lovely mama, Heather.

Our little friend Abby - her daddy did NOT scrape the brightly colored icing off her cupcake, like I did off my girls' cupcakes, before giving it to her...obviously!!!

Children's Artist Tote

I've been wanting to figure out how to make an artist tote with carrying handles for a while now. I've seen a few online in various places that I liked, though none that were just exactly what I wanted. I saw one pattern for purchase, but didn't want to spend money on a pattern when I was pretty sure I could figure it out on my own if I just sat down and really thought about it for long enough. So I finally sat down at my desk with my notebook in hand, looking at a tutorial for a regular crayon roll, and eventually figured out what I needed to do.

This particular one was a birthday gift for one wild-animal loving little boy who turned 4 recently. We weren't able to make it to his party, thanks to my recent health issues, but I was glad to finally be able to give him his gift yesterday, and was relieved to see that he loved it and immediately started drawing! Hopefully he will continue to use the pencils only for drawing and not as a weapon against his toddler-sister!! Hee hee. (I wonder why I would ever think of such a thing...that would NEVER happen in my house!)

I made the pockets taller, for colored pencils, but it would be easy enough to adjust the pocket height to accommodate crayons instead of pencils. I used elastic and a covered button for the closure.

Twirl skirt

Now that this gift has been given to one sweet little very girly-girl, I can finally post pics!! This cute little girl's twirl skirt was made using Jona Giammalva's Edith Twirl Skirt pattern (from Fabritopia - LOVE this store, folks, and if you click on her name, it'll take you to her awesome blog!)

I found the main fabric - a SUPER girly fabric that says "When I Grow Up" all over it, with images of purses and high heeled shoes and pearls and such - at Mardens in Maine when I was on vacation visiting my sister in June...for $2.99/yard! It is just so cute, I can't even tell you - the pictures don't do it justice! I haven't found it online since - I don't even know who the manufacturer or designer are!

The contrast fabric is by Joel Dewberry from his Aviary line, and the bias tape (homemade again, NOT using the bias tape maker this time, thanks to GREAT instructions from Jona in the pattern), is fabric from the Andalucia line by Patty Young.

This was a fun skirt to make, and I can't wait to see it worn. I will say that it will be MUCH easier to make, though, now that I have my serger!! All that gathering took quite a bit of time on my regular sewing machine!! The great part is it's ALL straight lines - so if you can sew a straight line, YOU can make this skirt! The pattern is a PDF pattern, which means you get to download it immediately, and she includes measurements for sizes 2 - 6. So go ahead, give it a try!! You WON'T regret it!! And neither will the little girl who gets the pleasure of wearing such a special skirt!

An apple a day and a new serger

We're going apple-picking with my moms group in a week, and I wanted to have cute little apple dresses for the twins to wear...so, of course, I had to MAKE them! (Actually, I've only finished one so far, and I need to make a couple adjustments on the second one.)

I didn't have a pattern to follow, so it was a learning process. My mom blessed both my sister and me with a serger (to celebrate the fact that our business license came through - woo hoo!!), and this was my first chance to give it a test drive. I have to admit, I was more than a little intimidated when I took it out of the box. This is the serger -

But fortunately, it came with a very helpful DVD, which walked me through how to get started, and I had no troubles getting going.

I based the dress off a basic a-line jumper style pattern. All three fabrics are from Sandi Henderson's Farmer's Market line, which is one of my favorites. She's going to reveal her new line of fabrics on her blog on Monday - can't wait to see what she's got in store for us!! I made my own bias tape using the Clover bias tape maker - SO easy to use!! And I got the idea for making button holes and tying the knots in the straps from a dress I saw on Sandi's blog too.

I did learn from the first dress, after trying it on the girls, that I need to put the button holes all the way at the top of the dress - because as they are placed on this one, the top sort of flops over a bit. And it is HUGE on them right now - plenty of room for growing!!! It's light enough to be worn by itself as a dress, but roomy enough to be worn over a turtleneck and leggings when it is cold out. BUT I didn't make the straps long enough to grow with them for as long as the dress will fit...so I will make longer straps for the second dress - because it will continue to fit as a tunic top long after it is too short for a dress.

This is the bottom hem - also covered in bias tape.

This is the back.

I just LOVE this apple print, and am excited I still have almost a full yard of it left even after making the 2 dresses. Wonder what else I'll make?!