Oh Me Oh My! **edited****again**

First off, thank you all for your suggestions for our weekend getaway :) We're still tossing a few things around and working on a babysitter but I will update sooooon!



Now, onto the purpose of this post. I just had to share something I found today. If I can get my act together (I have so much going on right now it's not even funny), I am SOOOO going to make these for my kids teachers. They are too cute not too! They look really simple to make as well.

More details AND instructions with step by step pictures can be found over on the You Can Make This blog. They have so many great crafty ideas on this site! Enjoy!

**Ya know, after reading through their directions, I think I am going to go a more edible (and less messy route) by using toothpicks to attach the taffy instead of hot glue.**

***I CAN'T FIND TAFFY ANYWHERE! HELP!!!!***

Homemade Christmas

It was one of my goals this year to MAKE most of the gifts that we gave out this year. I was actually a good girl and got started way back in October :) But to be quite honest most of the gifts were completed in the last few days before Christmas and several were cancelled all together.

As excited as I was about this idea of mine, I also had quite a few doubts. Doubts of my skills as a VERY new sewer person, and doubts that the people we are giving the gifts to would be happy with JUST a gift I put together. These doubts led to purchasing gifts so that most people got something home made and something bought. And some people just got something bought.

In the end I became more confident in my skills as a crafty gal and the people that received our homemade goodness were very appreciative.

I have been dying to share pics of all of my creations with you guys for the past few months. But couldn't because I'm still not exactly sure who reads my blog and who doesn't (mostly because no one comments uhem). Oh and I didn't get pics of everything but without further adieu:

Altered clipboards for my kids teachers

A lil taggie lovie for my aunt's baby

A big fleecey flannel Nebraska Husker blanket for my stepdad. GO BIG RED!

My Nana collects nativity scenes so I had the kids draw some for her and then framed them.

These are the images I used in my snapfish calendars, digitally scrapbooked.

Not pictured: mini brag books for my brother, Dad & Stepmom, BIL & his wife, and my inlaws. The kids also drew pictures of whatever they wanted for my inlaws and they put stickers on the gifts they gave Auntie and Isabelle. Also, I used wordle.net for my mom & Nana, printed them up from home and put them in a nice frame.

Oh and I also "made" this. The kids got wii toys in their happy meals one day and this one was just screaming for some hot glue & ribbon. Voila a Wii Christmas ornament!!!

It's Christmas time!!!!

Thankgiving has successfully come and gone (pictures coming soon!). I (pretty much) fulfilled my quest to respect the turkey! Now we can move on to... CHRISTMAS!!!! Do you love the new bloggy decor? We pulled out the tubs full of decorations today, and we're getting our tree tomorrow! I can't wait :) This will be the earliest we've ever gotten a tree. It's a necessary thing because of my husband's basketball & work schedule, an out of town bday party, and myself hosting a cookie exchange in successive order! I'm ready for it though!
One thing that I've strived for all year is a mostly-homemade Christmas in regards to our family members that we give to. I don't know that it is really a money saver so that's not the point. The point for me is taking the time to decide what to make, taking even more time to actually make it, and then giving it to the people that I love, a token of that love. My husband's contribution to these gifts is the $$ (haha) and my kids' will be helping me make some of the gifts. I'm really excited about and I've already completed a few - our family calendars and my kids' teacher's gifts. Now that my class is just about finished (I'll submit my final on December 9th woohoo!) I will be devoting the majority of my time to completing these gifts. It's killing me not to be able to post finished projects on here but, although they RARELY leave comments, my family does read this blog. So I don't want them to see their presents until Christmas!
Just for funsies, here's the list of things that I still need to create:

1. our family christmas cards/letter


2. a blanket


3. photo books


4. ornaments


5. crayon rolls


6. an apron


7. a few tote bags


8. sewing machine accessories


9. ipod accessories

I don't think I'm forgetting anything but who knows. Then all of this will need to be wrapped of course :) In addition to my kids' gifts :) I'm really looking forward to setting up my lil workshop and also looking forward to my friends and family opening these labours of love.
Are you making any of your gifts this year?

Gettin' Crafty! FINALLY!

I have been SO busy lately with home, schoolwork, volunteering, and LFR that I haven't had any time to get crafty! A few weeks ago I did go to a crop with some friends but even then I worked on Christmas presents!

Have you ever had an idea in your head for a project and it won't go away until you DO said project? This has been happening to me lately. I have had 2 ideas for scrapbooking layouts that I want to do about Colby and they have just been nagging me and nagging me. It gets to the point where I feel like I can't do anything else until I DO what is on my mind! I sound crazy I know!

Anyway tonight I finally had the time to do a lil scrapbooking! With the kids on the floor in the background doing their scrapbooking (so cute! I really should get some pictures of that), I sat at my desk and busted out this page:

The journaling says " One day Mommy asked you if you were CUTE and you said "No Mommy I'm not cute I'm COOL"

I had a lot of fun with this page. The background is a metallic silver and I used some embellishments that I've had on hand FOREVER! Oh and I also did some photo editing with my new picasa program. Can you tell? :)

After baths and bedtime for the kiddos, I was still in a crafty mood, but not so much in a scrapbooking mood anymore. So I decided to tackle another project that had been on the backburner.

This lil guy (gal?) is going to be hard to say goodbye to! It has a twin, and they will both be filled with treats and given to my kids' teachers for Halloween. I saw it in last month's issue of Scrapbooks etc. but I did some tweaking to the general idea with size and such. Isn't it darling!?

I wonder what I'll get a chance to work on tomorrow! I still have 1 more Colby layout in my head, need to finish the other lil frankenstein box, I have a baby blanket & taggie already cut and ready to be sewn, blogs to write, hmmmm...Stay tuned!

A Baby Gift

I recently busted my hiney to put together a baby shower gift for a sweet gal pal of mine. I am really proud of the outcome but boy was I cursing myself for not just getting a dang Target gift card! LOL Jk I really am proud of it and am glad that she will have something special and handmade to use with her new sweet lil guy.

So here are pics of the taggie (my first ever!), a lil lap blanket, a dipee & wipee case (also a first!) and a couple of burpclothes (decorated cloth diapers). The blanket and taggie are backed with navy blue flannel. I had plans to sew an additional burpcloth and a bib to go with this set as well but it just didn't happen! :(

I have another baby shower coming up in a month! Better get sewing :)

My New Project

One of the many reasons I will be postponing further sewing adventures

It won't be this big, but the given measurements are almost 10" x 12"!!!!

Yah this one lil line took me about 30 minutes LOL

More Sewing

Last week I went to Joann's 3 times! My husband and kids weren't too thrilled but I was! :)

Trip #1 begat my very own sewing machine thanks to my darling husband! And of course some fabric.

Trip #2 They were having a fatty sale so I went back to get a bit more fabric

Trip #3 The sale was still going on so I got some MORE fabric - it's an addiction I tell you!

Some of the results of all this fabulous fabric was a baby blanket and a dress for Lacie. Both of which I am pretty durn proud of!

I'm taking a break from sewing for awhile for a few reasons. I want to work on my latest project (more on that to come), and dive into the 6 books I brought home from the library yesterday. And on top of all that we have Lacie's birthday, the big 4th of July bash, and getting invites made and mailed out for the kids combo party next month! But I am dying to tackle another baby blanket and a matching dipees & wipees case for a gf that's expecting. Luckily she's not due tell the latter part of the year! :)

**ps** I had to upload these pictures ONE at a time! Durn blogger!

Look What I Did!!!

I didn't have any more fabric to make blankets out of so I went digging through my stack of stuff to be hemmed and found this skirt that had been handed down to Lacie but that she had never worn because it was just way too short (holy run on sentence batman!) then I pulled out some zebra fabric that I had used as a table runner for a baby shower a few months ago, added some ribbon and voila!
I'm so impressed with myself!!!!

Ignore the crazy hair and mismatched shirt, it was just a quick model so I could get these pictures posted :)

Sew Crazy

After the costume making extravaganza my mom left her sewing machine here. I had overcome my sewing angst and remembered that I had bought some fabric a few years ago that I had never used. So I thought I'd try my hand at a couple of blankets for the kids. It wasn't so hard! Well I did hit a few stumbling blocks and these puppies are no where NEAR gift appropriate but I am learning and getting braver by the day.

And now,

I'm addicted!!!!

These are pics of the kids and their blankets. One side is cotton and the back is a flannel.

I am working on a really cute project right now that I'll hopefully finish this weekend and be able to post those pictures. Eek I love it!

Mammie to the Rescue!!!

David and Lacie signed up to do the Daddy-Daughter dance number at her recital this year. We knew this would entail a few extra practices and additionaly costumes. What we didn't know, was that we were expected to MAKE Lacie's costume. As in buy the patterns, fabric, and SEW it all together.

Crazy dance teachers say what?

Yah, Mommy doesn't OWN a sewing maching because Mommy DOESN'T sew!

Oh and by the way, we found this out just 2 weeks before the DRESS rehearsal! EEK!

So, even though I'm 27 years old I STILL call MY Mommy when I'm in a crisis :)
And true to form, she came to the rescue!!!

I picked up the materials and she brought her sewing machine over and we had a family sewing party.

She said she wanted to teach me but I was not learning very well. It was actually quite comical! Luckily my SIL was there to help Mom out where I couldn't.

At one point when I was being "taught", mom even said "Don't make me go get Isabelle!" - You know, my 5 year old sister? Yah she knows how to sew better than me!

After it all was said and done, we had an ADORABLE Lil Miss Muffet costume for Lacie to wear.

We have been jokingly telling her that she is GOING to be Lil Miss Muffet for Halloween!

Latest Obsession

Oh My Gah!
Thanks to the amazingly talented Ali Edwards I have become obsessed with finding one of these:

It is a vintage print type tray!!!!

And I need one, so that I can do this, like she did:

I repeat Oh My Gah!

I SIMPLY HAVE TO HAVE ONE!!!!!!

Sucked In

I've gotten sucked into the world of Digitial Scrapbooking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I still don't have a clue how to use Photoshop Elements and that program takes ALOT of space on our computer. But I have figured out how to make fun things in my ever faithful Microsoft Publisher program that I have been using for about 8 years now. I am so proud of myself! As if I needed another excuse to play on the computer?! So what do you think of my new header???? And then this is a lil ruff invite I threw together last night for funsies :)

Gettin Crafty w/ the Diva

My daughter, Queenie - because she is a Drama Queen remember? - tells me a few months ago as I am putting away her laundry that she does not like to wear the PLAIN shirts. She only likes to wear her shirts that have stuff decorating them. Hmmm I should NOT be surprised by this! So being the crafty mama that I am - thanks to MY crafty mama - I pull all the dreaded plainies out and tuck them away for some magical action later on in my so not busy life. (hahaha) But finally last week - or maybe it was the week before? - I busted out some iron ons that I had picked up at Michael's on clearance. I think they turned out "OK", the bling ones are my favies! But what matters most is that my daughter LOVES them! And now we are getting a few more wears out of these shirts that would have otherwise gone to Goodwill (not that that's a bad thing!). Oh and we also made one for Brother so he wouldn't feel left out :)