More presents

The good thing about visiting family for Christmas over New Years is that it gives me some extra time to get things done, and relieves a little bit of stress!

Our nieces on Dan's side are all little girls. Five little girls, all about six months apart in stair steps (although Draya is the baby, being two years younger than the next girl). They are hysterical together. But I know these girls are like mine, and don't want for anything. So for Christmas, I always try to come up with something unique. This year, I found great big huge coloring books, and made them each a personalized bag to keep them in:




To complete the set, I also made a matching crayon roll (loosely based on this tutorial). There is a pocket in each bag to keep the crayon roll neat and tidy.

I really had a lot of fun making these, and they just turned out so cute!

Next project for the weekend was to work on some clothes for my youngest, who is in between sizes, and just tall and chunky. She's sort of hard to fit (although, as I keep telling her, she would be easier to fit if she would choose to use the potty instead of being stubborn about being the baby and staying in diapers, but that's another story....). So today I made her a shirt from an overrun of mad sky chickadees, and some dark brown no wale cord pants, with a simple embroidery to match:


The pants are big, but not enourmous, and will give her some much needed growing room. I just love that chickadee print, it really makes me smile to see it on her.

Merry Christmas!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Ours was fantastic, with good presents, good food, and wonderful times together as a family.

The girls in their matching Christmas Nightgowns:

With me in my matching pajama pants:


For a present, I made them each a fleece vest, with a coordinating embroidered white tee (if you want to see the embroideries up close, Draya's is here, and Abby's is here)


Merry Christmas! I hope that yours was a blessed and wonderful as ours!

Bumblebees and a busy month!

I am not sure if I have mentioned this here or not, but my mother in law wrote a children's book, The Bumblebee book. It's pretty cute, and the best part of it is that she had her grandchildren (my daughter Abby and her cousin Samantha), illustrate it! It is so neat.

They had a book signing at her local Borders, and it was a lot of fun. She had stamps made for the girls that were their exact signatures, just in case they got tired of signing. But those little troopers signed every book sold that day, and stamped them too! It was pretty cute at the end, Abby was becoming quite the diva, and every signature also included a smiley face, heart and star :)

Once we found out about the book signing, I was on a mission to make the girls matching bumblebee outfits. Now, bumblebee fabric seems like something that would be readily available, but it's not! I finally found a bit on ebay, and had to squeeze two skirts out of what I had:


We also went crazy and made bumbleebee korker bows to match. It was too much fun!

And here are the girls signing books with Grandma Juli:



It really was a lot of fun. The girls were pretty worn out at the end, but they were so good, and such little troopers!

I have been plowing through orders, and have a stack to get done before Christmas (which I hope to make huge progress on this weekend). It's been busy!

Catching Up

It's been a busy few weeks around here!

Dan carved the other pumpkins, of course (the ballerina is for Abby, and the cow for Draya, naturally):

Abby opening her birthday present from us on her birthday morning (the 28th)

A new Dolly!

The girls were ballerinas for Halloween, they were so cute

And here they are enjoying their rewards of the day/evening:

Just for fun, Abby has been wanting an outfit to match her dolly. I made her a hoodie/leggings set awhile back (you can see it here), so I made her dolly one to match:

They are so cute!


And Draya, being a little nut!

The birthday party and the Pumpkin Man!

Lots of things going on for us this time of year!

Abby had her birthday party on Sunday, it was lots of fun!

This is the birthday shirt she designed, you'll probably see another pic soon for her official five year old birthday picture tomorrow:

Then, on to the fun! We had the party at the local pizza place with a big playroom for the wild monkeys to run around in, they all had so much fun. Their party room is so bright, there are no curtains, it was really hard to get any decent pictures. But the kids had a blast, that's all that matters! I should really find some pizza fabric and make them some curtains.

Opening presents:



The cake:


Blowing out the candles!



She got them all!

The little sister:

She was really happy so many of her little friends came to play. The kiddos were exhausted, it was perfect :)


Now, on to the pumpkin man. Dan has taken pumpkin carving to a new level! A couple years ago, he carved a very cool Dora face into a pumpkin for Abby (when she was going through her Dora obsession). He always does something pretty cool, but his pumpkin this year is just beautiful:

He is working on the girl's pumpkins tonight. I don't want to give away the surprise, but I will be sure to post when they are complete! The sad part is, my pumpkin rotted! I was so annoyed!

Pumpkin Patch!

Daddy didn't have to work on Friday, so we headed over to the pumpkin patch, a fun outing every year. It was warm this year, last year the girls were all bundled up, but this year it was sunny and very nice!


I think I want this one:

TOO HEAVY!
Trying...


Abby found a good one!

Draya picking out one for her class at school:


Abby found a good one for her class at school!

The girls with our haul. :) I was shocked at prices, but we also got some squash to eat (although after having it for dinner last night, the girls were less than impressed), and a couple pumpkins to take to the preschool for fun!

Just one more

I realized early this morning that the Supergirl knit I have been hoarding would be great for the fantasy theme for Necessitae! So I whipped this up this afternoon before getting down to more serious sewing.

I love the funky look to this shirt, so does Abby. She hopes it doesn't sell, but has been promised a new one if it does :). And I did a reverse coverstitch on the neckline, sleeves and hem to add to the funky look. I love how this turned out!

Fantasy

I am so honored to be guesting at Necessitae on October 15! The theme I was told was Fantasy, so I came up with some items to work within that!

A dragon hoodie, with a very cool dragon embroidered on the chest. The hood is lined with a Knights of the Roundtable Knit, which has knights and dragons and castles:

And what else? Some matching boxers:

This has been Abby's very favorite shirt, and I thought a custom of it was in order for this theme. It's a perfect princess from Farbnemix, on this fabulous purple sparkle cotton lycra. Can you get any more girly than that?

And this hoodie dress is Draya's, but I am offering a custom:

I adore that dark haired fairy and fairy kitty fabric. It's so vibrant and pretty!

So those are my creations for my guest stocking :) It all goes live on the 15th at 9pm eastern. I am just so honored to be asked, I love guesting!

Sixth Picture Challenge!

Sarah took the sixth picture challenge, and I decided to play along! This is the sixth picture from the sixth file in my pictures folder:

We just got a new computer this summer, so it's very recent - Draya kissing her horsey, that Grandma Juli and Grandpa Ed made. :)

If you want to play, do your post and leave me a comment with the link! I would love to see :)

Looky Looky!

I am quite excited for my stocking at Hyena Cart on October 7!

Stacy of Nurturing Threads dyed up some brand new colorways to match my fabric, and then turned out better than I even imagined!

Fairy Petals with matching Pretty Posies fabric:


Pixie with matching Lollipop Trees:


I can't wait! I really can't wait to see what sort of custom shirts customers design with these fabrics to match the beautiful yarn!

Ready for the pumpkin patch!

We are hoping to get over to the pumpkin patch this weekend or next, so tonight I whipped up our annual pumpkin shirts. I really like this years! I snapped up this great jack o' lantern cotton lycra about four months ago in anticipation of using it for these shirts. I found really cute embroideries that match pretty well, and I was so happy!

Here are the girls:


And apparently here Abby is showing off her crazy eyes LOL:

So we are all ready to go and get pumpkins!!

Supergirls!

The girls love to run around with a playsilk tied around their necks, yelling, "SUPERGIRLS!!!" and jumping all around. It cracks me up!

Awhile back, I ran across a seller who makes pretend capes. I filed her away in my etsy favorites, and decided to finally splurge and just order them. The seller is fabulous, and I received these custom capes very quickly! I highly recommend Superfly Kidz! Of course, it was easy to decide that they would most definitely love the princess capes!




Aren't they just cute? The capes are very well made, I was very happy. The crowns on the back are so perfect, and I love how the two capes are reversed :) And they were thrilled when we got them in the mail!

Andraya has finally adopted a favorite toy. I was really wondering if she was just going to be one of those kids that never did that! Abby goes through phases of what is her favorite, but ever since she was about 1, she has had one favorite toy or another that she drug everywhere with her (the most consistent being Normal Baby - her name for a dolly she has). But Draya never did that. Until now.

She got the cutest little dolly, that is a princess doll with hair. It's just a cheaper Little Mommy Doll, even though I had tried to provide her with a favorite doll in her Bitty Baby and Chou Chou dolls, she was having none of that. What is ironic is Normal Baby is a Little Mommy Doll with no hair. I just think those dolls are so perfectly loveable.

Here she is, their first official photo together:


And a lot of times I will catch her just sitting there loving on this baby. It's so cute!


I made a huge mistake the first night we had this baby though! I was holding it (babysitting it), and I picked up a brush and just starting brushing her hair, it was a little tousled. Draya came flying in and just started yelling at me! "NO COMB BABY HAIR MOMMY! NO COMB BABY HAIR!!" Apparently that was NOT allowed :) She was soo disgruntled, she grabbed her baby from me, and made a big show of rubbing her hands over her head and messing the hair back up to undo the damage I had done. It took all I had to not bust out laughing, but she was so serious, I knew that would just make it worse! Now the poor dolly is just destined to have messy hair forever.

When Big Sister decides she is a hairdresser

Now that is a fashion statement! I can't believe she sat still long enough for Abby to do that! :)