Dressing Heidi Sage

Activity Advent

2011-11-29T23:29:00.002-06:00

Advent is different to different people. It's different between families. Different between denominations. And maybe even different between family members. I still have a very basic, "Sunday School" education of the religious advent experience so I am not here to elaborate on that (although I will probably be diving into that for my own personal benefit).

This year I wanted to do an Advent Calendar for my kids. I didn't want to give them candy everyday, because quite frankly we're still trying to get through that mess from Halloween. I couldn't give them a gift everyday because that's expensive. So, I decided to go with the idea of an activity advent. This is not an original idea, but I did make up my own list.

There are a number of ways you could set yours up. Martha has some great ideas that you could use and easily incorporate a written note with an activity. I personally will be going with some simple, but cute envelopes. That's just all I have time for right now, and it will be enough for my 1, 2, and 4 year olds.

We have made a real concerted effort this year to talk less about Santa and more about "Jesus' Birthday". I don't mind sharing the spirit of Santa with my kids, but I don't want the real meaning of Christmas to be lost either. We've been talking a lot about Jesus' Birthday and how we're going to have a party for Him on Christmas. I have plans of decorations, cupcakes, etc.

So my list is more geared in this direction, with exceptions. We have a few that are about doing for others (but we'll incorporate conversation about how Jesus did for others) and a few that are just about some of the fun things to do at Christmas. Here is the list I came up with. Feel free to make changes that suit your family. AND FEEL FREE TO SHARE SOME OF YOUR ACTIVITY IDEAS. We'd love to hear other things, too.

Using your nativity set, share the story of Jesus' birth day with Daddy. Then let Daddy read the story back to you from your Bible. (I'm going to be on a short girl's trip the first 3 days, so I had to make ones Daddy could do.)
SCAVENGER HUNT (I have a Hallmark series started for each of the kids from their birth year. I've bought these for this year, wrapped them, and hidden them. They'll get to do a scavenger hunt for them, open them, and hang them on the tree.)
Using our new nativity stamps (found these at Joann's; the foam ones you use with paint), paint a picture of Jesus' birth day to hang on the mantle for His party.
Take a drive or walk tonight just to look at Christmas lights. Don't forget to ask mommy and daddy for some hot chocolate!
As we get ready for Jesus' Birthday Party, we will surely need some party garland. Let's make lots of paper garland to string around the house. (You know the kind. Just strips of paper glued into circles interlocking with the next. I got a book of Christmas paper at Hobby Lobby.)
Just as each of your have for your Birthday Party, let's make Jesus a banner for his. It should read, "Happy Birthday, Jesus". (Much like this, but not in a pirate theme.)
With help from mommy or daddy, come up with a Christmas prayer to pray each night. Think of all the Christmas things you want to thank God for, and all the different people you want to pray for during this time of year. Mommy or daddy will write it down and we can read it together every night.
Make a special Christmas treat to deliver to a friend. (Think simple. Chocolate covered pretzels. Chocolate covered marshmallows. Etc.)
Make a special Christmas card to mail to a friend. Ask mommy to help you address it and stamp it, then put it in the mailbox outside.
Make a special Christmas treat to take to your teachers.
With mommy and daddy, make brown bag dinners to take and deliver to homeless people. You may even have to go to the grocery store and help mommy shop!
Make a birthday card for Jesus. We'll put it in a special place for his birthday party!
Make a Christmas card to send to a special family member.
Tonight's the big night! We're all going to Clinton's Christmas Concert at church! (Clearly, this is very specific to us. Clinton was old enough this year to join the Angel Choir at our church...we can't wait to see him perform!)
Make special gifts for your friends at school. (We may do the same as last year, or we may come up with something different...like this adorableness.)
Make a special doggy treat for Gracie. Even dogs should get to celebrate Christmas with something yummy!
Put on a Christmas play for mommy and daddy. (Ha! We'll see how this goes!)
Make a gingerbread nativity. (I thought this was a great alternative to a Christmas classic. There's no tutorial here, but it didn't look like rocket science. I'll post my own tutorial once we do ours.)
Decorate gifts. (Have I ever mentioned my love for wrapping everything in brown craft paper? I'm going to let the kids paint with their nativity stamps. Add old cards. Add jingle bells. Etc. More to come on this.)
Gather all the change you can find around the house. Then mommy is going to drive you around until you find a red bucket with a bell ringer. They are collecting money for kids and we're going to give them everything we found!
Go see a movie! ...at the big movie theater! ...with POPCORN! ...and SPRITE! (Probably Happy Feet 2. Not a Christmas movie. But we're all psyched about it and it will be a nice treat.)
Make reindeer food for Santa's reindeer. We want to make sure they find our yard and get a good snack! (There are umpteen variations of this. Here's just one.)
Make cookies for Santa. Mommy has all the special ingredients to make Santa's favorite cookies. Let them get good and cool because tomorrow we'll be adding to them. (BTW--if anyone has a wheat free sugar cookie recipe they'd like share, I'm in need!)
Decorate Santa's cookies. Mommy has lots of special supplies ready for you to make Santa's cookies extra special. (This will include icings, sprinkles, gum drops, jelly beans, etc. Things that will make their eyes light up.)
Now today is such a special day because it is Jesus' birthday! Before you open up this gifts for you, let's sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and remember he is the reason for Christmas!

*Notice to all readers. Items on this list could change at any time without prior notification. Items on this list may not work for everyone, so feel free make changes. ;-)

Hope this gets you thinking about how to get your kids in the spirit! I know I'm hoping to get Clinton talking about something other than NEW TOYS! :-D

Let the Season Begin,

My Upcoming Gallery Show!

2011-11-07T13:55:00.000-06:00

I have been locked in my sweatshop slaving away getting prepared for my upcoming gallery show on December 1. I just got my pictures and gallery cards back and am very excited to share them with you! The show will have 14 looks that I designed and made. Each garment includes some kind of metal detail that I also created. I don't have pictures of every garment yet as I'm still finishing up, but I wanted to share with you what I have completed! My photographer is the very awesome Laurie Ruth Photography here in Dallas. She is wonderful if you are looking for a Dallas area photographer. She also created the cute gallery cards.

If you're in Dallas on December 1 come join the girls of Dressing Heidi Sage at Fashion on Main in Dallas. The gallery is located at 1901 Main Street (inside the UNT University Center) and the reception will be from 5:30-7:30pm.

Enjoy,

Pumpkin Dress

2011-10-12T22:31:00.001-05:00

So yesterday we staked our claim as a low volume blog. And then today we've got another post up. This is because it is time sensitive. It's Halloween adorableness and we wanted to get it passed along.

Found this pattern at City Craft. It is modkid sewing patterns by Patty Young, http://www.modkidboutique.com/. The pattern has great directions and how to pictures, so this post is less of an actual tutorial...and more of a "Look What I Did." :-)

My mom (known to Courtney and Chelsea as Grammy) and I made this dress together at her house. We dug thru her cabinets of fabric and found some good Halloween options. I should mention she has years and years and years worth of saved fabrics. Options are plentiful. We used the pumpkins for the top and 2 of the panels of the skirt.

To make the skirt the pattern calls for 6 strips of fabric 9" wide X 14" long. I decide to use 8 strips cut smaller...if you're a beginner, you might just want to stick to the pattern.

This is the skirt sewed together. We used 2 types of pumpkin fabrics and two black and white prints. If you're looking at it wondering how this is going to end up cute...just wait for it. It all comes together.

We sewed the shoulder seams together.

Next we added the sleeves. These sleeves are so adorable on little girls.

Bias trim around the neck. This is left over from the pink dress, but we had enough and it looked great with what we were doing.

Attach the skirt to the top.

Add bias trim to sleeve.

Bias trim for the bottom of the dress.

Make the obi (belt). The pattern has very good instructions for this. We didn't have ribbon for the ends so we used fabric.

Dress is ready to send to Heidi Sage to wear for the month of October.

And she looks adorable. And, yes, we're totally biased...but certain your little sassy britches will look just as cute.

Love my lil' "punkin",

Halloween Can Be Pink!

2011-10-11T23:27:00.002-05:00

Have you missed us?? Sorry about just falling of the face of the Earth. We all got a little swept up in our lives for a while. I'm sure you can relate. In order to continue with our blog, but not overwhelm ourselves, we've decided this blog is going to be a low volume blog for a while. We'll post ideas when we have them, and give you time to peruse other sites when we don't. Just as we can't get 5 posts up a week, we figure you probably can't get 5 projects done in a week. :-)

I truly underestimated the amount of work 3 small kids and a house on the market would be. And Chelsea is finishing up her last semester on her MFA and getting ready for her final show. And Deborah just started a new job. So we're busy, no doubt...and looking forward to when the day comes that we have more time to blog!

Now see below, as Deborah has a great post about an adorable dress she made for Miss Heidi Sage.

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Not sure if you remember, but Heidi Sage had quite the Halloween wardrobe last year. And last year we went with the typical black/orange/white color combo. But THIS year, we decided to mix it up a bit and got with pink and black....she is a girl, after all.

Chelsea found this fabric at City Craft and the pattern at Poppy Patterns. I have used this pattern several times for Heidi Sage. The pattern has three different sleeves. For Heidi Sage I used the Bell Sleeve and for Emery (who also got a tiny version of this dress) I used the Short Puffed Sleeve. My mom also helped me make these dresses.

This is a very simple to dress to make. Very good for the novoice sewer. Hint Hint, Courtney. Chelsea chose three fabrics. The main part of the dress will be gray, the sleeves are pink and all the bias strips will be black.

We made several different sizes of bias strips.

The front/back dress is one pattern piece.

The sleeve makes the second pattern piece.

Pin the sleeves to the front and back of the dress and sew together. This pattern comes with well written instructions for construction...no reason for me to go recreating the wheel, so to speak.

Sew the side seams.

This is the bias piece for the sleeve that makes the bell.

Top stitch to sleeve and add the elastic. The pattern does not show this version. I added this for decoration. The pattern gives you measurements for the elastic lengths.

Also added bias to bottom for decoration.

I also added bias to the neck. The pattern shows how to make a casing by folding the fabric to the inside.

This is a picture of the finished hem.

Added some sparkles to the front of the dress using my Candy Cane.

Ready for Heidi Sage.

This is little Emery's dress.

Happily Haunting!

Linking to...

Homemade Cereal Bars

2011-06-21T19:33:00.001-05:00

My little Heidi Sage has a favorite food...well lots of favorite foods. But one that I buy a lot of is cereal bars. In fact, the general rule at our house is that if you go to the store, you always get some milk and cereal bars...no. matter. what. If we're not out yet, we will be soon enough.

In an effort to feel as if I were providing her a healthier option, I decided I needed to start making them myself so I would know exactly what was going into them...and see if I could save some money.

The recipe I finally came up with was one I got from my friend Heather. She had gotten it from allrecipes.com and had already done about a dozen trial runs tweaking the recipe each time. I took her version and tweaked it a bit more to my kids' tastes. Feel free to use as is...or tweak some more! :-)

Homemade Cereal Bars

4 cups rolled oats

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons flax seed meal

2 tablespoons cinnamon

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

2 sticks butter (melted)

1/2 c. amber agave nectar (see picture below, could also use Honey)

1/2 c. peanut butter (or almond butter)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Spreadable fruit (see picture below)

Preheat oven to 325.

First thing I did was the pulse the rolled oats 2 cups at a time through my food processor. My kids like a smoother texture.

When I was done it looked about like this.

We then added all the remaining dry ingredients: 1 c. wheat flour, 1 t. baking soda, 2 T. flax seed meal, 2 T. cinnamon, and 1/4 c. dark brown sugar. Mix it all together good, then add all the wet ingredients, 2 sticks melted butter, 1/2 c. agave, 1 c. applesauce, 1 t. vanilla, and 1/2 c. peanut butter.

I then lined a 9x13 pan and an 8x8 pan (not pictured) with parchment paper to allow easy removal after cooking. I took 1 3/4 cups of the dough and mashed it flat into the 9x13 pan (the 8x8 pan takes 1 c. of dough). This is quite a thin layer. It will puff up some during cooking, but I was trying to mimic the thinness of a store bought cereal bar. To keep the dough from sticking to your hands, pour about a 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of cooking oil (I used canola) and coat your hands with it.

Cook for 20-25 minutes.

Remove from oven and spread a thin layer of spreadable fruit all over the hot oat mixture.

You will use another 1 3/4 cups of the dough to create the top layer for the 9x13 pan (and 1 c. for the 8x8 pan). I took a fistful at a time, mashed it flat in my hands and then pieced it together across the top of the spreadable fruit. Trying to mash it down on the fruit makes it spread and squish everywhere. Place back in the over for another 20-25 minutes.

Once it is done baking, let them cool for about 15 minutes in the pan then remove and continue cooling on the counter.

Once completely cooled, use a pizza roller to cut the bars into your desired serving size.

I made both strawberry and blackberry bars. My kids and I gobbled them up quickly and have already made more batches.

I hope you find yourself in the kitchen whipping these up soon!

Yum,

Sno Cones! (Minus the Syrup)

2011-06-13T08:13:00.002-05:00

When I think back on my childhood, one of the summer memories that jumps to the front of my mind is gathering up a couple of bucks, heading down to Main Street, and getting a Sno Cone from Ms. RuthAnn. On one of those scorching Texas summer days, it was a sweet relief with all its cold sugary goodness. Just thinking about it makes me want a blue coconut, strawberry one. Mmm-mmmm...

And I would love to share that past time with my kids. HOWEVER, when I think of getting one for my kids all I can see is a cup of colored sugar that will bring me grief for the next 4 to 6 hours as my kids bounce off of the walls in a crazed sugar-filled hysteria. No, thank you.

But never one to deprive my kids of summer happiness, I've come up with my own solution. This is just as tasty, just as loved, possibly cheaper, and made at home...

To make it all you need is a liter of Club Soda and a container of 100% juice frozen concentrate. I love this Old Orchard brand. We made the Blueberry Pomegranate last night, which my kids LOVED, and in the freezer I still have Cranberry Raspberry and Apple Passion Mango. And for a yummy treat at breakfast offer your kids the Pineapple Orange. Yum.

Now, the club soda is the magic ingredient here. If you've ever frozen fruit juice you know it comes out hard as a rock. With the carbonation in the club soda, it freezes differently. Softer, if you will. Possibly a bit airy. Whatever you want to call it, it's the secret to a good homemade Sno Cone.

Slowly mix the club soda and the thawed juice concentrate. Slowly is the key...and in a container big enough to hold both. Otherwise you'll have a bubbly mess overflowing everywhere. Trust me.

Next, pour it into containers that it can freeze in smaller portions. I used a silicon muffin tin and plastic ice cube trays. Either works fine.

After they freeze, pop out the desired amount (we used three "muffins" per drink) and pulse them through the food processor. I believe a blender would work just as well, though you may have to add a little liquid to get it going.

Pulsing...

Pulsing.... He can already taste it. He's been dreaming about this ever since I put it in the freezer six hours before.

All ready for the gobbling.

...and it's gobbled.

I love these because they're yummy, cold, cheap, and NO ADDED SUGAR...just the natural sugars from the fruit juice. Let me know if you try them...you can even post a pic on our FaceBook wall of your little ones gobbling them up!

Now, for my next experiment...frozen margaritas...

Happy cooling off,

Linking to...

Simply Entertained

2011-06-07T21:17:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed things have been a bit slow over here. Maybe it seems we've gotten lazy. Maybe it seems we're dropping the ball. The reality, however, is that we're super busy.

Deborah just started a new job, so her blog time has been minimal. She has been working on her garden, though. And even has some guest projects from her mother, our Grammy. Those should be posted shortly.

Chelsea is in Europe. She's been attending fashion shows, meeting designers, and other dreamy things. She'll be back in the states in July, so it may be a while before we hear from her. Hopefully, she'll have some amazing things to share with us when she gets back. I enjoy living vicariously through her.

And I have my house on the market. UGH!!! Cleaning house has never been my strong suit, but it's especially hard when the expectations are for it to be spotless....while tending to three children under five. And I have about decided my kids have it out for me. While I'm in one room cleaning up one mess, they're usually in another room making another one. It's a vicious cycle...and I may surely lose my mind.

The past couple of days I have dared to make a bit of a mess here and there, but only ones I could clean up very quickly should someone call for a showing.

Yesterday we painted rocks for our pumpkin patch. Painting rocks is one of Clinton's favorite things to do. And all was going well until Heidi Sage decided to start painting the patio furniture, the chair cushions, and the deck. Oh well...at least she's cute...

Today we made cupcakes. To simplify and keep it easy we used a box mix and canned frosting. They don't taste quite the same to a distinguished palette, but the kids do not care one teeny tiny bit. To make them extra special, I got out my super fancy Ziploc sandwich bags, filled them with icing, cut off a tiny corner, and swirled the icing. I let the kiddos take care of the sprinkles...

Hope you're keeping busy this RIDICULOUSLY hot summer!

I Scream, You Scream...

2011-05-23T21:33:00.000-05:00

...and Everyone adores this Ice Cream Bubble Outfit...at least that's the feedback I've gotten from Courtney.

As part of the summer wear I put together for Heidi Sage, I made this Ice Cream Bubble. Courtney loves one piece outfits because they're easy to throw on, and hard for Heidi Sage to take off...and our sweet girl has found a love for her birthday suit! :-)

Once again I am using an old, old pattern. I am sure you can find something simular. This was something I thought would make a cute summer play outfit. I used the dress version last summer and thought I would try the bloomers for this summer. This is a pretty simple pattern as there are no zippers or buttons. The outfit only ties at the top. I'm not sure Courtney could make it, but a fairly novice seamstress should be able to put this together.

As you can see it's not only adorable, but perfect for play!

Summer Sweetness,

The Ride-On Birthday Party

2011-05-15T20:45:00.002-05:00

If you're like me with lots of little ones in tow, then there's a good chance you've seen your fair share of birthday parties. And if you're like me with several of those parties to throw yourself, then you know they can get expensive....FAST!

Last fall Clinton's friends, Charlotte and Schaefer, had their 3rd Birthday and invited us for the celebration. Their mother threw the cutest party and my kids LOVED it.

The idea is that everyone brings their own ride on toy, as indicated on the invitation; and the kids spend the whole party just riding around. And do you know what two hours of outdoor busyness equates to....A NAP! Best. Party. EVER! :-D

First things first, a circle drive works best. This one was at one of our local country clubs.

Next, is setting up little stations for the kids to stop at...

Here was a bucket of toy tools. The kids loved stopping to fix their bikes!

Here there were streamers and ribbons for the kids to decorate the rides with.

Another idea for a station is a car wash. I think there are two ways you could go here. Simple--grab 10 or so spray bottles at the dollar store, fill them water, and set them out with rags for the kids to wash their rides. A little more difficult-- build an archway out of PVC with some blue fabric streamers hanging down. Accompany it with a bubble machine and the kids will feel like they're riding through a car wash!

Any other ideas you have add to our comment section....we'd love to hear them!

There were also a few road signs along the way...

My kids truly had a blast! The best part was there's no activity planning, or schedule to keep, or worrying if this kid or that wants to play this game or that. Everyone brings what they like to ride on....and they ride!

After lots and lots of riding around, we went into the club house for some cupcakes and milk. Heidi Sage had no problems partaking in this particular activity.

In addition to the above mentioned ideas, all you need are some balloons and bottles of water for your guests (it can get pretty toasty in the really warm months...hydration is good!).

I love this idea because you can make it as simple or overboard as you want, it can be very budget friendly, and it keeps the kids busy....and makes them tired. If only I had a warm-weather birthday baby...sigh.

I'll be keeping my eye out for other awesome birthday party ideas as we make our way from party to party this year.

Linking to...

Boys' Outfits

2011-05-10T00:07:00.000-05:00

I know it probably seems like Heidi Sage is always decked out in the latest and greatest and the boys get the short end. Not to worry, they're not completely left out....I'm not saying things are even...but they're not left out. :-D

We have been cleaning out my mother-in-law's house and I have found several treasures. In a box of her sewing items I found 2 demin iron on patches with a bullrider. I decided since my husband Clint was a bull rider, she probably had bought those for me when I was pregnant thinking that we might have a boy...but that didn't happen. We didn't even get a Tom-Boy. We got two prissy britches....that we dearly love. Anyway...

Not wanting them to go to waste, I decided to use them for my grandsons, Clinton and Rex.

I ironed each patch on a shirt and used a close zig zag stitch around the outside. Super simple. I know you can by these types of patches at your local fabric/crafts stores. Rex got his sewn on a white onesie.

Clinton got his sewn onto a red shirt down in the bottom corner...since he refuses to tuck in anything! Found the demin shorts at Target.

I also decided to try Chelsea's freezer paper idea to make Clinton a shirt. Clinton loves the Texas Longhorns (which I'm sure has nothing to do with his mother brainwashing him), so I traced a longhorn onto my freezer paper and cut out my design. With the shiny side down I ironed it to the shirt and got out my fabric paint. When using a dark shirt you should also use a dark paint.

I had a few problems but seem to make it work anyway. Note to self-- If using a paint brush to apply your paint you should never spread the paint from the inside toward your pattern edges because the paint will seep under the edges. Always paint in! I found the camo shorts at Target.

Crazy 'bout our boys,

Pretty In Paisley

2011-05-02T00:35:00.002-05:00

When Heidi Sage turned 2 a few weeks ago I knew the perfect gift for her was some cute new outfits. Even at 2, she already loves clothes. Some may say we've created a monster, but I think she's pretty cute! This paisley dress was one of the outfits she received in her birthday package from me (Aunt Zsazsie) and Uncle Brian.

I bought the paisley fabric a long time ago and I cut out a dress for me that I never ended up sewing. I then gave the leftover fabric to my mom and she made Courtney a skirt. I came across my unfinished dress and decided to make something for Heidi Sage. I had to use the skirt portion of my unfinished dress to cut out the main part of the dress. I then found some red contrast fabric and also used the leftover pink contrast fabric used for the dog outfits.

For the dress I used Butterick 3477. I shortened the dress and added an additional band at the bottom to display both of my contrast fabrics

Her outfit is completed with her cute hair flower. It got a little out of hand when I was making it, and it became more of a hat than a bow:) But after a Royal Wedding Weekend, I'm ready to bring hats back anyway...or should I say "fascinator"?

Linking to...

Simply Playful

2011-04-26T21:44:00.001-05:00

I wanted to make Heidi Sage some dresses to play in for the summer. For this dress I used McCall's 2213. The exlarge size is about the same size as a 2. I found this fabric at City Craft in Dallas and they also had the premade bias trim by the yard in several colors. Butterick 3846 also has a top very similar to this dress.

Remember back in the fall when I had purchased all those different color leggings? Well, they have been handy. It was chilly this particular morning so we added the leggings for some warmth, just as cute with or without the leggings.

Get your summer cute on,

Linking to...

Egg Grams

2011-04-20T20:48:00.000-05:00

The other day I saw an update on my FB page from a blog I like to check out from time to time. They were featuring THIS blog and their idea of what I like to call Egg Grams.

Seeing as I'm a mother of young children with an endless supply of craft items and a small Target addiction, I had all the supplies I needed...except the stamps.

We had a big bag of Skittles, some small pill ziploc bags, stickers, a few hair clips for some of the girl eggs, and some pink paper for little notes.

We packaged up the skittles, put together a few stickers, folded up our notes, and put our little packages together.

Once the eggs were packed, I taped around the seams with Scotch tape. I made small address labels to put on the egg out of white sticker labels. And I adhered a 98 cent stamp and a Forever stamp for shipping.

Clinton dropped them in the big blue mail box at the Post Office.

He thought it was awesome.

Once we got home, he decided he also wanted to send some to his Bebe and Hop (my parents). He picked out special items for their eggs. Hop got Skittles and a Matchbox race car out of his highly coveted car collection. Bebe got Strawberry Shortcake stickers and a Dora Matchbox Jeep. Clinton's been trying to get rid of that "girl" car ever since it found its way into our house. :-) I put extra postage on those...hopefully they'll make it!

Feel free to check out the original post I found to see more ideas of things you could put in your eggs.

Hoppy Mailings,

Beach Towel

2011-04-19T23:23:00.002-05:00

Each year Rodney and Courtney take a trip to the beach with his family. Each time they have a new child that needs his or hers own personal beach towel.

This year Rodney and Courtney decided to take a spring break beach trip so I decided to jump in for the fun filled adventure. But first... we have a new baby who will need a beach towel.

I found a plain beach towel and used knit applique. I first cut out my dinosaur pattern. Then I cut out my sail boat to fit the dinosaur. I added his name before attaching to the towel. I did not get one picture of him laying on his towel but did get some cute pictures of him at the beach.

Linking to...

Beach Bubbles

2011-04-13T22:46:00.003-05:00

For Spring Break I went with Courtney and her family to Destin. Courtney had found some vintage-styled boutique swimsuits she loved that she wanted to buy for Heidi Sage for the trip, but at $70 each, she had to show some self-restraint. And don't be fooled...it took me and Chelsea to talk her out of it...more than once. As her father will tell you, "She's a hard head."

In an effort to keep her on track, I came up with an idea for something I could make for Heidi Sage that would give us the same effect...without an uproar from Courtney's "Budget Committee"...aka Rodney. :-)

I bought this pattern years ago and never used it for my girls so I am using it for Heidi Sage.

I thought this would be the perfect pattern to use to make HS some beach attire. The fabric was from one of Chelsea's projects and she gave me the left overs.

The fabric for this outfit was scraps from an outfit I made for Julianne when she was little. I hope Julianne doesn't mind that I used her scraps. Julianne is a special friend to our family. When she was a little girl Chelsea and I would make her Halloween Costumes every year and we also made her dress up clothes. As well as some other outfits. When I was sewing for Julianne the girls were in high and college and no longer needing me to make them outfits. Courtney was always worried that I would run out of ideas before she had her children....looks like she was wrong. Just sayin'.

In this photo HS's big brother Clinton digging in a big sand hole.

Since you probably can't buy the first pattern (shown above) I used these two patterns and got the same results. For the bloomers I used Simplicity 9784 and I shortened the Poppy Patterns dress into a short top.

Feelin' Bubbly,

Linking to...

Our Big Boo Boo

2011-04-11T21:27:00.000-05:00

Courtney, here. A couple of months ago we were featured on another blog called Today's Top 20. Amanda was sweet enough to share our Fuzzy Blanket Tutorial. I should have linked back to her then, but it seems a big pirate party, followed by a stomach bug, followed by 2 sinus infections, and a case of RSV led me to a brain fart.

Amanda has a tear-jerking story that she is making peace with by making a difference. I love people like that. You can read her story here.

Gabe's Gift is something everyone can help with. A great way to practice your sewing skills and do something for others. I don't know about you, but I love multi-tasking. :-D

I have already committed myself to one blanket...which I need to get started on. I'm taking suggestions for a "theme" for my blanket. What sounds fun to you???

Daisy Crazy

2011-04-10T22:29:00.003-05:00

Chelsea sent me a box with 2 daisy prints and some checked gingham for me to make Heidi Sage something for spring. I decided she would need an outfit to take on our spring break trip so I changed up the fabric combinations for the spring and will soon be adding a different top for the summer.

I found the knit jacket at Wal-mart. I decided to use one of Chelsea's ideas from one of her previous posts. I added a knit flower to the jacket and used embroidery thread to stitch around the flower and added a button for the center of the flower. I got my mom (Jean Zimmer/Grammy) to help out. She did the stitching around the flower while I worked on some other project.

For the pants I took a plain elastic pant and cut the pattern shorter and added a ruffle. The ruffle is 45" long for each leg. I cut some bias strips to sew above the ruffle and added some rick rack.

For the bow I used gray and white dot ribbon with a smaller yellow bow on top with a small daisy made out of knit topped with a yellow button.

I decided to also make Courtney a coorinating shirt to wear when Heidi Sage is wearing her Daisy Outfit. So I got my mom busy stitching around the two flowers we put on Courtney's Shirt. I found this shirt at Academy. They come in lots of colors for around 6 bucks. Nice and heavy also.

Courtney is a HUGE fan of big ruffles on the bottoms of pants for little girls. I wasn't so sure, but don't you know we got stopped over and over while in Destin so that people could tell us how cute her outfit was. I guess Courtney does know a thing or two...now and then. :-)

Ruffled Up,

Linking to...

Pretty Puppies

2011-04-08T22:41:00.002-05:00

Heidi Sage's birthday package also included a puppy dog outfit very similar to Miss A's. This time, however, I created look A on Sew & Sew B5199. This version is a halter top with capri pants. Heidi Sage suffers from having no "play clothes" because everything is too fancy. I was trying to make this outfit "play clothes" worthy but it turned out too cute!

I used the cute dog print for the top and the contrast pink print for the pants and ruffle.

Linking to...

Birthday Present for Miss A

2011-04-05T21:54:00.003-05:00

My friend Jill's daughter, Miss A, is about to turn 3. She is adorable and she LOVES to wear dresses (and only dresses, pants just won't do it) and pink!!! We're still trying to figure out how that happened because Jill only wears dresses when she's going somewhere special and she is NOT a pink girl!

Jill, her husband, and Miss A are all dog lovers, in fact, they have their very own herd of sweet, gigantic dogs at home. Three German Shephards and a Golden Retriever to be exact.

When I saw this adorable dog fabric, I knew I had to make Miss A something. Fortunately, her birthday is just around the corner.

I used See & Sew Pattern B5199. I love this pattern! It's cute, it's fast, and it's easy! I made dress B but I shortened it slightly and added a ruffled band to the bottom with a cotton ric-rac trim. I highly recommend this pattern, even for beginners (hint, hint, Courtney)!

I also added a bow made with the pink contrast fabric. A bow tip: when you get your bow tied perfect, place it on the dress and sew through the center so that it can't come untied in the wash.

Miss A in her dress! She is such a cutie and funny to boot!

Happy sewing,

Linking to...

Broadening Our Horizons

2011-03-31T12:25:00.000-05:00

Have you noticed how some weeks we have a lot going on and others we seem to be slackers? Yep, we've noticed, too. HOWEVER, we're not actually being slackers.

The truth is making outfits for Heidi Sage (and company) is not the only thing we do! Gasp! Turns out we do a whole lot of other things...and we've decided to start sharing those with you, too.

For example, Chelsea is often working on garments that are not just for kids. And Deborah likes to garden. And I have a tendency to throw a few meals on the table each week.

We hope you'll enjoy some of the new things that will start appearing here....but don't worry! There will still be plenty of child-friendly projects and crafts!

To get us started, I decided to pull an old post from an old blog I used to write...but now avoid. :-) I was reminded of this post a few weeks ago as I sat in a committee meeting and tried volunteering myself to make 600 cake balls for a charity event. Turns out my fellow committee members were more aware of my insanity than I was. They decided to take another route since I had three kids to tend to.

After I got home, I went back and read this post about when I had made 600 cake balls for Chelsea's wedding. Really glad I'm not making 600 this week...

*******************************************

Have you ever agreed to a project that you were very excited about, but found out about halfway through that maybe you would have rather agreed to poke your eyes out with a fork??

Me, too.

About a year or so ago, we ALL started planning a wedding. My sister Chelsea's wedding. During some discussions it was brought up that Brian's favorite kind of cake was not really cake, but cake balls. And somewhere in that discussion it was decided that the groom's cake should be made of cake balls. And somewhere else in that discussion we came up with a figure that would be needed based on how many cake balls Chelsea can eat in one sitting. And from that point we moved forward to see what it would cost to order each guest the number of cake balls that CHELSEA can eat in one sitting. And through that calculation we came up with a cost of approximately $4,000. Gasp.

First mistake--don't ever base anyone else's eating capabilities on what Chelsea can do. She eats like horse and looks like a freakin' bean pole. You see, Chelsea can eat 8 cake balls in one sitting....yes, EIGHT. And when you break it down, that's 1/3 of a cake. No one....and I mean NO ONE eats 1/3 of a cake at a wedding....so our calculations were a bit off. But it was too late....we had run with them...

So, anyway....somewhere in all those discussions, I agreed to make these 600 cake balls. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

But you see, Bakerella had made it look so easy. You just bake...then shred....then mix....then roll....then freeze....then dip. Easy peasy pumpkin pie, right?

So, for the past year every event I have gone to where I have been asked to bring something, I have taken cake balls. I've made cream cheese cake balls, red velvet cake balls, chocolate-chocolate cake balls....you get the picture. But making one batch of cake balls is much different than making 600.

Here's what 616 (plus the dozen or so eaten by bystanders) cake balls look like prior to a careful, artful creation. The amount of ingredients alone should have been a huge red flag....but I was still in that, "I'm so happy to do this for my baby sister and her hubby-to-be" state of mind.

I spent two straight days of baking 16 cake mixes...in a kitchen that's under construction, no less. Not sure I'll ever bake another cake again...maybe just pies from here on out. :-)

During those two days, I also shredded each of the cakes and mixed them with the appropriate flavor of icing. We had Chocolate-Peanut Butter and German Chocolate...the groom's two favorite flavors. Happy to oblige, I was.

I spent a whole third day doing nothing but dipping and topping my little prizes.

To be honest I only dipped about 550 of them, because we didn't have enough boxes to pack them in...but I still like the ring of 600, so I tell that story.

After carefully packing each of the hand rolled, hand dipped treasures into their boxes, we packed them in coolers so they could stay unmelted during the 400 mile trek from my parents' house to Austin. I was just glad I didn't make those in Nashville and try to board a plane with 600 cake balls and two toddlers...can you imagine the crazy that would have come out of my eyes?

Anyway....I was feeling really good about myself for having finished such a big project and being able to contribute such an important piece to the reception. I realize it wasn't "THE Wedding Cake", but it was the Groom's Cake....so it was almost as important.

But I'll have to admit I was a bit taken aback when I saw the presentation of the cake balls. Actually, I'll be honest...I lost my breath for a moment. I had been informed that the cake balls would be resting beautifully on a tiered platter. I had imagined 200-300 of those sweet puppies being displayed at once....oh, what a grand presentation that would be.

I walked in looking for this tower of perfection. I looked left. I looked right. I looked around the room about five times and there was not a single grand tower of chocolate anywhere. And then over in the corner, barely peeking up off the table, I saw it. A small tiered platter that held no more than 37-39 cake balls at a time. A sad little tear trickled down my cheek... could this really be? Did I slave for three days hunched over an endless supply of cake balls for such a small display that was so easy to miss?

Indeed, I had. I wiped my tear. Remembered this day was not about me. And headed upstairs to help the bride button 427 buttons down the back of her dress.

I will say, the compliments about the cake balls throughout the night were endless, and greatly appreciated. We, of course, over estimated our audience's cake ball consumption by about 450, but the cake balls were passed on to others and joy was spread beyond the walls of just our celebration....

And isn't that what life is really about? Sharing the love... Indeed it is.

Cheers,

Head Band with Bow

2011-03-17T20:57:00.002-05:00

Soooo...you may have noticed Heidi Sage hasn't gone a day in her life without a bow. Seriously. Ever.

And maybe you're thinking, but my baby doesn't have hair...how do I get her to wear a bow? That's where the magic of a headband comes in. And with just the right adjustment, a headband can be made for interchangeable bows.

Sometimes I can't find headbands small enough for a baby head so I will purchase a regular headband and make it smaller. I cut the headband at the seam.

Cut off the extra based on the baby's head measurement.

On this one I decided to add a name. When adding a name you will want to move the seam from the center to the edge, creating a flat front and back. This one was for my great-niece, Canyon.

When sewing the headband back together I make the seam to the outside.

Then I lay the seam flat, pull the outer edges together on the outside of the headband, and hand stitch together.

This makes a place to insert a hair clip/hair bow.

I made a hair bow to match the headband. I used my bear to do the modeling because Canyon was not available.

And it's really great for the church nursery or preschool....because their name is literally written on their head! Ha!

I Heart Headbands,

Baby Shower Gifts for Jill

2011-03-15T22:43:00.001-05:00

My friend Jill is getting ready to have baby girl #2. She already has Miss A, who's about to turn 3 and in just a few short weeks she'll be welcoming baby girl. My mom was in town visiting me on the weekend of the baby shower, so we put together some cute gifts for baby girl and a little surprise for Miss A.

I made baby girl some onesies that went with knit pants and made matching hairbows.

Daisy knit applique onesie with cute hat and bow. I made the bow with an alligator clip so that it can also be worn without the hat. Check out a previous tutorial to learn the process of knit applique. You can attach the applique to the shirt by machine stitching as the tutorial shows, or you can attach it by handsewing it with embroidery floss as I did on the daisy.

Reverse appliqe heart applique ones with leopard bow. Check out a previous tutorial to learn about reverse applique.

Bow onesie and matching hairbow. Check out a previous tutorial to learn how to make the bow onesie.

Knit applique flower onesie with crocheted lace accent. To learn how to make the adorable matching hairbows, visit Deborah's hairbow tutorial.

Deborah made this precious bib with baby girl's first initial.

Deborah also made these adorable little matching dresses for the girls to wear this summer. They were a big hit at the baby shower!

Staying busy,

Linking to...

Lady Bug Onesie and Flower Onesie

2011-03-09T07:15:00.002-06:00

You'll probably be shocked to find out that I actually made a girl outfit (or four) that are NOT for Heidi Sage. Gasp...I know! These little numbers were for my newest great-nieces, Canyon and Emery.

I started with these onesies I found at Wal-mart. On the pink onesies I put flowers and on the purple onesies I used a ladybug.

To make the ladybug it takes alot of circles and ovals. I traced my circles and ovals.

Cut out my pieces.

I started with the center of the body first. Ironed it to the onesies and stitched it down.

Ironed on all the dots and stitched them on by hand with embroidery thread.

Ironed the wings down and stitched around them.

Then I added the head.

Stitched on some antennas with embroidery thread. Added some pants.

Next I did the pink onesies. I gathered my supplies; pattern, knit fabric, wonder under and thread.

Traced my pattern and cut out my pieces.

Next I ironed on the leaf and stitched around the outside.

Ironed on the center of the flower and stitched it down before ironing the flower to the onesies. After ironing the flower down it stitched around the flower.

Bought some matching pants.

Hope Heidi Sage isn't jealous,

Linking to...

Tweet, Tweet!

2011-03-07T02:03:00.003-06:00

I love working with knits! It's completely different than working with wovens, and to be honest, it's a little scary until you have some experience. This is because you use completely different methods with knits than with wovens. I just got interested in working in knit about a year ago and now I'm in the middle of creating my MFA thesis show, which is ALL knit garments. Sometimes, though, I need a break from the complexity of what I do for professional work and I make things for little Miss Heidi Sage. I found these cute knits and made her some adorable little dresses to wear with her leggings. Heidi Sage really likes animals, so she has a good time telling people about the little birdies on these dresses.

For the dress I used the Go To Dress pattern from Andrea at The Train to Crazy. You should check her out, she has great ideas and some free patterns! While I didn't use the pattern exactly as she created it, I did start with her pattern and wanted to give her credit for her great idea.

This dress is very similar to Andrea's pattern, I simply removed the empire elastic casing and added a cute little pocket for Heidi Sage to carry around her treasures.

On this dress I also started with Andrea's pattern but I eliminated the gathers at the neckline to make the dress more fitted. I also eliminated the shoulder ruffle and added contrast bands at the sleeve opening and the hem. I also added a little kangaroo patch pocket.

I really like making kids clothes because you can get really cute results without reinventing the wheel. I typically don't take the time to create complete new patterns for kids, I simply start with a stock pattern and make some simple modifications to get a new look! Make sure you check out Andrea at The Train to Crazy and get your own copy of the Go To Dress pattern.

Linking to...

Bull Winner!

2011-03-06T21:20:00.001-06:00

Congratulations to our winner, Michelle Butler! She's our latest winner and will be the recipient of the Bull Onesie.

You have until tomorrow night at 9pm to email us your address at dressingheidisage@gmail.com! If we don't hear from Michelle, we'll pick a new winner.

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:2Powered by RANDOM.ORG

Celebrating Milestones

2011-03-02T21:32:00.001-06:00

We recently reached a milestone here at DHS. We now have 100 GFC Followers (this is separate from FaceBook followers). To celebrate we decided we'd give something away!!!

In case you missed our last post, we shared with you how uber excited Rex was to be wearing his Bull onesie. We thought to ourselves, "I bet someone else would like to have this to get their little one this excited." :-)

So, we're giving away a Bull Onesie, size 12 mo. Maybe you have a son, grandson, friend's son, or know a little boy (or girl) who would look way too cute in this. (If a girl wins, we might just have to tack a little bow on the "cow's" head.)

Here are the rules. You get ONE entry. To enter, leave ONE comment telling us anything you think we need to know. We will draw ONE winner on Sunday evening, March 6.

**THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED**

That's No Bull (well, except the one we're giving away),

Boy Inspired Onesies

2011-02-28T22:31:00.007-06:00

When you go shopping for onesies do you ever feel like your seeing the same puppy dog and sports-themed gear in every. single. store? It's not too hard to customize your own onesies for your little guy. Or, of course, to show up to the next baby shower with a gift that NO ONE else will have.

Here's a few boy onesies I've been working on lately for my newest grandson, Rex, and my newest great nephew, Tyson.

Items needed:

Pattern (I used McCalls 3171)

Knit fabric (in colors of your liking)

Wonder under

Thread (to coordinate with your fabric)

Onesies*

Trace your patterns. Cut your pieces out and peel off the paper from the backside. Be sure when peeling that the sticky part of the wonder under stays attached to the fabric.

I ironed the back fin on first and stitched it down.

Next I ironed on the body and stitched it down.

Then ironed on the legs and stitched them to the onesies.

Added a wiggly eye and some pants.

Items Needed for Bull & Cement Truck Onesies:

Onesie*

Knit (in desired colors)

Wonder Under

Pattern (pieced mine together from an online clip art)

Thread (to coordinate with your fabric)

Trace pattern.

Cut out pieces. Iron the face, eyes, mouth and nostrils together. Stitch around the nostrils with pink and around the eyes and with brown.

Iron horns on onsies and stitch around them.

Iron face to onesie and stitch around the face and nose with brown.

Add some wiggly eyes and some matching pants.

And here's my little Rex sporting his new Bull Onesie at the zoo. Doesn't he looked thrilled???

As mentioned above for the cement truck onesie you need the same materials and follow the pictures for the steps.

*All the onesies were purchased at Wal-mart.

**UPDATED: Looks like we'll be GIVING ONE AWAY.**

Happy Appliqueing,

Linking to...

The $2.99 Canvas

2011-02-22T23:05:00.003-06:00

In case you've missed the memo about my love affair with brown craft paper, here's another post about its absolute usefulness and versatility. I get mine at Hobby Lobby.

As I've said before, I use the brown craft paper to wrap all of my gifts. It makes for a neutral background that I can then pretty up with some graphic ribbons or theme stickers.

Another use for it is as a "canvas". I tend to get overwhelmed with the constant making of crafts that A.) serve no real purpose; and B.) need to find a home in my house because I feel too guilty about throwing a "project" away.

So I decided to find something creative my kids could do that I didn't feel guilty about trashing, BUT it took up time AND allowed them to be creative.

I took my said roll of craft paper, rolled it out, covered my dining room table, and taped it down. **We have a hand-me-down table with some kind of survive-all surface, so if you have a nice table you might want to do a double layer of paper.**

The first day, we got out markers and I just let the kids color all over the table. I sat with them and drew pictures upon request. I also drew shapes for Heidi Sage to name, and wrote Clinton's name in block letters for him to fill in as he is learning to write his name. To my surprise, Clinton made his very first attempt at drawing our family! I, of course, could not throw this away...so I cut this part off and intend to find a way to display it in our house.

We let the marker drawings sit for a couple of days. When the kids began to act interested again, we got out paints. I just let them paint all over the top of what they had colored. Clearly, I am not a Type A person.

And after a few days of admiring their paint job, the kids got interested again. So yesterday we ventured in glue. I dumped some Mod Podge in a container and gave them each a paint brush for application along with fun stuff for gluing...buttons, pom poms, sequins, glitter, etc.

And then today, I pulled what pieces of their creative activities I wanted to keep. I put away all the supplies. And I took our big piece of paper, wadded it up, and threw it in the trash. And it felt good.

All in all, I give the project two thumbs up. There was no TV involved. My kids were being creative. And I didn't feel bad about throwing out most of the project.

**UPDATE** As you may notice in the comments, Samantha had a great idea! Instead of wadding up the paper and throwing it out, use it as wrapping paper! Brilliant!

Colored, painted, and glued,

Story Time with a Twist

2011-02-20T23:38:00.002-06:00

I have a confession to make. I don't read to my kids as often as I should. Yes, we read. But it probably doesn't meet whatever the current guidelines are for daily readings.

Part of this is because we're so busy I sometimes just forget. Part of this is because Clinton gets burned out quickly. And part of this is because the kids and I can't always agree on what we're going to read.

Heidi Sage likes anything with ducks, ladybugs, butterflies, or monkeys. Clinton likes only things to do with heavy machinery or fire trucks. And I like the books that have a rhythm and rhyme.

One thing Clinton and I both enjoy is making up stories. But this can often get stagnant as the same story gets told over and over, and Heidi Sage doesn't like it because there are no pictures. So, I started thinking...

What's an easy way to still make up stories but also provide a visual? Umm...Shadow puppets!

To make these all I did was think of a few initial characters as you can see below. I went to Google and typed in, for example, "Elephant Silhouette". Then I selected one under images, dragged it to a Word file, and printed it on card stock.

I then cut them out and taped lollipop sticks to the back. You could also use crayons, pencils, popsicle sticks, or whatever else you might have on hand. (But I will say, the lollipop sticks worked perfectly.)

Then we got out a flashlight. We started out by practicing projecting the images on the wall. I showed Clinton how to make them bigger and smaller by moving them closer and further from the light. We talked about how it has to be in the path of the light. And we discussed why things even have a shadow in the first place.

Once we had our projecting down, we started using them to tell stories. Heidi Sage loved naming all the characters/images as they hit the wall. Clinton enjoyed making up sentences to go along with whatever images we put up. The best part is I can add or rotate through new images to keep the stories new and fresh. I look forward to seeing what adventures we will have...

Now for a little catch up. THANK YOU to all of you who voted for Chelsea's wedding dress. She won the Knock-it-Off contest at 733blog.blogspot.com by 3 votes!

We realize we've been a bit absent this week, but we've all been busy. Chelsea was in Vegas for some type of fashion convention. I was...well...uh...I have three small children for Pete's sake...I'm always busy! :-) And Deborah was working on some super cute new duds for the littlest of our fans...

Coming Soon... lots of new onesies tutorials!

Welcome back to Monday!

Linking to...

Chelsea's A Finalist!!!!

2011-02-12T18:06:00.000-06:00

Last April Chelsea got married and of course made her UH-mazing dress. There's more detail and pictures on her site HERE, but better yet...head over to 733 Blog and vote for her! She entered in a knock it off contest and has made the top 10.

Let's show her some love!

Operation Pirate Party (OPP)

2011-02-11T07:49:00.003-06:00

This week my little man turned 4....FOUR! I still can't believe it. Last year I was a bit lazy when it came to his birthday, so I decided to make sure to give it 100% this year. And a pirate party was just the thing.

My house has the open floor plan concept. So when we throw a party, I like to rearrange all the furniture. I move the living room furniture into the dining room. I move the kitchen and dining tables into the living room. And I move the dining "buffet" into the breakfast area of the kitchen. It seems to be conducive to large groups...and is just a fun way to change things up.

For our decor, we started with a birthday banner. Clinton has been learning all his letters and sounds, so he had fun watching me put this together. He made sure to tell me each letter and it's sound....for several days, as we let the banner hang around for a while. (Click HERE to see a tutorial for this banner.)

In the living room we had some Pirate Ships for the guests to sit at. All the kids thought these were so cool. (Click HERE to see a tutorial for these Pirate Ship tables.)

I Googled "famous pirates", came up with a few names, and Googled those in Google Images. I printed several of them out and framed them to put around the house.

Our guests got their party favors when they arrived. In each pirate bag (JoAnn's) we had a bandana to wear as a pirate would, a mardi gras necklace (JoAnn's), a pirate eye patch (JoAnn's), a pirate earring (JoAnn's), a pirate tattoo, and some pirate coins for their pocket. It took a little while for the kids to warm up, but it wasn't long before the kids started putting on their "costumes".

At the front door we had a "treasure chest" to greet our guests. This was a wicker basket that was shaped much like a treasure chest. My Aunt Cathy had it and spray painted it black and added some gold embellishments. She found a cardboard box that fit inside and sat it into the chest. She then glued some gold fabric on the top and started filling it with treasures to give it the appearance of overflowing with treasures. We filled it with mardi gras beads, pirate coins, sea shells, an old net, a wooden parrot, a foam sword, a plastic pirate hook, some eye patches, a picture of a real pirate, and "treasure map" (a sheet of scrapbook paper with the Old World Map print). She also took about $3 worth of pennies and spray painted them gold.

I did some research about what real pirates ate. Seeing as they were at sea for prolonged periods, their diets were less than desirable. They tried to keep as many things on board as they could that had a long shelf life...in those days that included cured meats, crackers (or hard biscuits), and sauerkraut. I laid these out for the kids to try....they didn't. It smelled so bad, I had to light candles and cover up the salami with plastic wrap. I did notice a few of the adults snacking on it. I tried it...not terrible, not something I would actually serve.

I sat out a pirate puzzle for the kids to play.

And I laid out a pirate memory game for the kids to play.

And what pirate party would be complete without a pirate cake? This was time consuming to make, but the kids and guests loved it...and appreciated the effort. (Click HERE to see the cake tutorial.)

For a simpler pirate sweet treat, you could also make the cupcakes we sent to school for his birthday. (Click HERE to see the tutorial for those.)

And here's my happy pirate wearing his pirate shirt. Deborah had made him a full pirate costume, but he was too shy to wear it. We had bought this shirt for his school party, so we got it out and let him wear it for his real party.

Arrrghed out,

Linking to...

OPP: Birthday Banner Tutorial

2011-02-11T07:46:00.002-06:00

To make this banner you will need:

Colored card stock (as many pieces as you have letters, I had 20)
12x12 Scrabpbook Paper (half as many pieces as you have letters)
Glue (I used ModPodge)
Lighter
Yarn, string, or ribbon

I first found a font I liked on my computer. I typed out my banner, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLINTON" making my font big enough to have only one letter per page.

I pulled 20 pieces of my colored card stock, and put the paper in the order I wanted it.

I then printed out my banner.

Using a heavy book as my "letter protector", I began tearing around each letter. I didn't have to have my tears straight, I used the book just to keep from tearing into or through a letter.

I then took my scrapbook paper and it in half lengthwise.

I then used my lighter to carefully burn around the edges of each letter. While it's a little smokey, it's better to do this indoors. When outside your paper will quickly catch fire and burn up. Make sure to keep your lighter on the side of the paper you can see. I burned my fingers a couple of times trying to move my lighter around to the back side of the paper. Once you've burned each letter, make sure to set it on a safe surface away from other pieces of paper until it is completely cooled off.

Nest, I laid out the letters on the scrapbook paper and glued them down.

I used some yarn and strung it in my window tying it onto the blinds. I folded back 1" at the top of each paper and hung it on the yarn. You could use staples to stabilize these, if needed.

OPP: Pirate Ship Cake Tutorial

2011-02-11T07:46:00.001-06:00

To make this cake you will need:

3 - 9"x13" cakes, any flavor is fine
Brown frosting, I used 3 batches of Wilton Chocolate Buttercream Icing
2 tubes of Wilton Black Decorating Icing, with separately sold tips
1 - 3' x 1/4" dowel rod
scrap of white fabric
small skull and cross bones iron on
Pirate toppers (I found these toys to use)

I didn't have a cake plate big enough for my cake, but wanted it elevated. So, I found a box top from a package my mom had sent that week. I wrapped it in foil.

To make sure it was strong and stable and wouldn't sink, I put a couple of juice glasses underneath.

I took my three cakes and made sure they were more or less flat by cutting any excessive curvature off of the top.

I then stacked my cakes adding 1/2 - 3/4 C. of icing between each layer.

To carve out the cake I began by cutting a section of the top layer on one end...

...and flipping it around to stack on the other end. I did this to create the high back end of the ship. Because I would not be carving on this end, I wanted the curves to match up on the corners.

In order to create an elevated level on the front of my ship, I cut another section of my top layer and moved it forward. I then cut off any excess making the two top layers on the back the same size.

Using a paper stencil I made, I cut the front of the ship.

I don't have a fancy icing piper (if that's what it's even called), so I relied on my handy dandy plastic sandwich bags. I just filled it with icing, sealed the top and cut the tip off of one bottom corner.

I then opted to pipe the brown icing onto the entirety of the cake, excluding the tops of the front and back (I later filled these in with black just for some added depth/contrast).

Using my spatula knife continually dipped in warm water, I began smoothing out the piped icing. By piping it on first and then smoothing, there is a lot less trouble with crumbs and tearing cake. (And a lot less screaming and swearing!)

I then used some black decorating icing for some detail work. Using the tip that is attached in this picture, I filled in the floors on the front and back sections of the boat. I later used the top tip to "outline" the boat and add a few windows, and used the star tip for a few decorative medallion looking things.

I made a sail using a thin 3' dowel rod. I cut it to some guesstimated lengths, glued the fabric on with a hot glue gun, ironed on the applique, and then glued all the rods together.

I added my pirate figures and some flags leftover from a cupcake topper package.

OPP: Pirate Ship Table Tutorial

2011-02-11T07:45:00.001-06:00

For this project I used the following supplies for each table:

1 dining table
1 brown table cloth
1 patio umbrella stand
1 6' x 1 1/2" wooden rod (found at Lowe's) (MAKE SURE YOUR CEILINGS ARE TALL ENOUGH TO ACCOMMODATE YOUR TABLE AND A 6' POLE, mine are 14' but if yours are lower you may need to adjust the height of your sails)
A small table leg (mine was about 3 1/2") (found at Lowe's)
2 3' x 1/2" dowel rods (found at JoAnn's)
Pack of 4 wooden balls with 1/2" hole (see below for picture of package) (found at JoAnn's)
An old sheet (a 3' x 4' section)
Scissors (preferably fabric scissors)
A skull and crossbones iron on applique
An iron
White thread and sewing machine (could also be done with a hot glue gun or fabric glue)
Wood screws (see below for picture of packaging with exact details)
A drill and drill bits

While the list may seem lengthy, these were actually quite easy to make. I started by laying out my old white sheet.

I cut it to 3' wide x 4' long. I made sure to utilize the hem at top of the sheet. I made this the top of my sail, meaning 1 casing was already made for me.

Next, I asked my helper if he was excited about his party. He was. So we continued.

I then ironed my sail in its entirety. I also ironed the hems for the sides of the sail. There is no exact measurement for this, just do what looks right.

Ironing it in place makes sewing much easier. If you don't have a sewing machine, you could either leave it pressed as is or lay it down with some fabric glue.

This is me sewing on my machine. I show this picture just for those who don't believe that I can use a sewing machine.

When sewing up the side hems you will end up sewing the top casing closed. I stopped my machine, pulled the fabric through a bit and then continued sewing the last few stitches to the top. This way I just had to cut a small hole in the fabric on the ends and didn't have to worry about ripping stitches.

After I had ironed and sewed both side hems, I did the same for the bottom, creating a casing for the bottom dowel rod. While I don't have an exact measurement for it, just make sure it's big enough for the dowel rod. It's better for the casing to be too big than too small.

Next, I ironed on my applique. Make sure to follow the directions on your applique. If it asks for a hard surface, make sure you have a hard surface. I laid a towel on my ceramic bathroom floor and ironed it there.

These are my 6' rods.

These are my table legs. Those table legs have screws already built into them where the white tag is.

I found a drill bit that matched the size of the built in screw in the table leg and used it to drill a hole in the end of my 6' rod.

I then screwed the table leg into it.

I then put the rod in the patio umbrella stand. I used one off of my patio, then borrowed another from a neighbor.

These are my wood screws. I found a drill bit that looked to be about the same size as these. You don't want it to be bigger than your screws, so err on the side of too small if you're unsure.

I took my 3' dowel rods and marked the center lengthwise. I then pre drilled holes all the way through.

Using the same drill bit, I also pre drilled a hole near the top of my 6' rod. This time only going about 3/4 of the way in...not all the way through.

Next I took my sail, marked the center point across the top and the bottom of the sail. I cut a slit at each mark and then slid a 3' dowel rod through the top casing and one through the bottom casing.

Using a screwdriver, I ran a screw through the top dowel rod until it was peeking out the other side. I matched it up with the pre drilled hole in the top of the 6' rod and then screwed it the rest of the way in. I didn't want it to come through the other side, so I didn't screw it quite all the way in.

Once the top dowel rod was in place, I marked where I wanted the bottom one to be and repeated the same steps for pre drilling the hole into the 6' rod and then screwing them together.

Once everything was in place I used some super glue to glue on the wood balls to the end of the 3' dowel rods.

To put it all together, I placed a brown table cloth on each table and centered my sail on each table. For decoration, I added some small wooded treasure chests (found at JoAnn's for about $1 each) and filled them with chocolate.

For place mats I used sheets of 12x12 scrap book paper that had a print of an old world map.

More Fancy Flowers

2011-02-07T07:37:00.005-06:00

Since it seems you enjoyed the silk flowers tutorial, I thought I'd share with you two other flower making methods that are much easier but are still very cute. I really love making flowers because they're so diverse. You can put them on a clip or headband and wear them in your hair, you can pin them to your jacket or purse and look fabulous and you can even sew them on garments for a little extra pizazz!

For these flowers you will need:
-1/8 yard polyester satin (it must be polyester)
-1/8 yard polyester organza (it must be polyester)
-felt
-a candle
-needle and thread
-buttons or other decorative element for centers of flowers
-hair clips, headbands, or pins

The first flower is made by stacking graduated circles on top of one another. I started with a circle that was roughly 3 1/2" and I cut one circle out of the satin and one circle out of the organza. I did this for each size. I started with the largest and cut to the smallest size. There are 9 layers of circle sizes which means that there are 18 circles, half satin and half organza. There is no need to make these perfect circles because the next step will change their shape.

I then very carefully sealed the raw edges on each circle all the way around. I did this by very carefully placing the edge of the circle near the flame of the candle. Make sure not to get the material in the flame, or it will catch on FIRE. Since the circles are made of polyester this method of finishing melts or seals the edges. It also turns the edges up slightly creating a nice cupped effect and gives the flowers a more natural edge. If your circle is too close to the flame, it will turn your fabric black. You may want to try a couple of practice pieces before you start your flower.

The sealed circles stacked on top of each other. Notice how the edges are slightly curled. That's why it doesn't matter if you have perfect circles, they are going to change shape during the sealing stage anyway.

Then sew the flower together by stitching through all the layers in the center. I sewed several stitches through the center of the flower to make sure it was secure because a 22-month old tornado named Heidi Sage is going to be wearing this:)

Then I added a decorative element to the center to finish it off and give it a little glitz. Someone gave me a bunch of old rhinestone buttons and jewelry pieces this week so I thought I'd put them to good use. Once you've gotten here you're almost finished. All you have to do now is attach your flower to a hairclip, headband or pin.

The next flower also uses the same materials. You will need the same polyester satin and polyester organza plus a circle of felt. I couldn't find an exact match on felt so I got the closest one I could find. I started by cutting a circle of felt to build my flower on. Then I cut 12 circles from satin and 8 circles from organza. These do not have to be perfect circles just roughly circles. Depending on how large you want your flower to be you may need more or less circles.

After the circles are sealed, you're ready to start constructing your flower. Each circle is a petal on your flower. You want to take each petal and pinch a small pleat in it. This gives the petal some dimensionality.

Then sew the petal with the pleat to the edge of the felt. Start on the outside and work toward the center of the felt circle.

You will sew the petals on one by one making sure to overlap each petal with the previous petal.

The first row sewn on. I used 7 petals but you could use more or less depending on preferred scale and fullness.

I then began sewing on the organza petals. I sewed them just inside the row of satin petals. I made sure to pleat each petal and sew it in place and to overlap each petal with the previous petal.

The organza row completed. I used six petals for this row.

I then sewed another row of satin flowers to the inside. I used five petals for this row.

I then took my last two organza circles and sewed them together through the center.

I sewed in two directions on the center to give it a little fluff.

The "fluff"

I then sewed this to the center of the flower.

Then for extra decoration I added a rhinestone button. Now all you need to do is add your hairclip, headband, or pin, and you're finished. Easy as that!

Winter gardening,

Linking to...

Steelers Jacket for Turtle

2011-02-05T21:34:00.001-06:00

This is Turtle my granddog. He belongs to Chelsea and Brian. Turtle's dad is a Steelers Fan.

This is Turtle's dad. He's one proud Poppa!

Brian was less than enthused with the Steeler spirit in our house. So he sent Clint and I "The Terrible Towel" to use when cheering for the Steelers. I decided that Clint did not need his towel, so I thought it would be fun to make Turtle a jacket out of it to wear during the Super Bowl.

I went to my pattern drawer to find a pattern. They make all different styles and sizes for just about any dog. I used the Simplicity "Sewing Patterns for Dummies". I had used this pattern for Turtle last year (as seen in the picture above) and I had already altered the pattern to fit his body.

I used some black fleece for the lining.

I centered the pattern over the wording for the jacket part and used the bottom section for the belly belt.

After cutting the fleece and the towel I laid the pieces on top of each other.

I made some bias tape. (Read THIS post to see how to make your own bias tape....you can also buy pre-made.)

Sewed the bias tape all around the outside of the jacket.

Next I sewed the belly belt tabs together.

Trimmed the corners and turned them inside out.

Sew the belly belt tabs to the side.

Added some velcro as a fastening device. Now Turtle has the perfect Jacket for Game Day. Go Steelers!!

Look how cute Turtle looks in his Jacket. He's ready to cheer the Steelers to victory!

After the photo shoot Chelsea found Turtle sleeping in the pillows, his favorite place to hide:)

Steelers fan?

OPP: Pirate Cupcakes

2011-02-03T06:36:00.002-06:00

Operation Pirate Party (OPP) is in full swing and I'm up to my neck in pirate projects. You may have seen on our FaceBook wall yesterday that I even had my sewing machine out! Gasp.

Anyhow, today is the day that Clinton celebrates his birthday at school with his friends. The parents are asked to bring in a treat. Since we are all about pirates at the moment, I made pirate cupcakes.

These are not an original idea. I found them on another blog, and I believe when it's cute it's cute...no reason to go reinventing the wheel.

So, for the full tutorial go visit Scissors and Spatulas and see how she made these adorable treats.

They truly are SOOOOOOO EASY. The only step that I did different was how the white icing was applied. I don't have that fancy dispenser she has, so I just glopped some in a plastic sandwich bag and cut a teeny tiny hole in the corner and squeezed. Just a little something Martha taught me how to do...

Off to find me treasure,

Valentine Shirt

2011-02-01T22:16:00.003-06:00

Valentine's is just around the corner and I've been working overtime to get this little number put together for Heidi Sage.

I used knit appliques on the shirt. To start, you'll want to have several different colors of knit and you'll need an array of heart patterns. You can find these online or you can also use cookie cutters for patterns.

Iron your Wonder Under to your fabric. Remember the rough side faces your fabric.

Trace your patterns onto the Wonder Under.

Cut out your hearts and peel the paper off the back of the hearts. Be sure when peeling the paper from the back that the sticky part of the wonder under stays on your cut outs.

Lay your hearts out to make your design and start ironing on your hearts. On the over lapping hearts I just iron enough to make the cut out stick. On the top red heart I ironed it after sewing on the white hearts.

When sewing the appliques down I use a lose zig zag and do the stitching close to the edges. This make the edges look scalloped.

This is a phone picture. Sorry. I laid out some stones for some sparkle. Heidi Sage loves sparkles.

Next we need a hair bow. First I made a black bow. Then I traced some small hearts out of the knit fabric.

After peeling the paper from the back of the hearts I ironed the hearts together. I put paper on each side because my hearts did not line up perfectly and I did not want them to stick to the iron or the ironing board. Then I trimmed the edges.

I sewed the edges with a zig zag. Added some sparkles. Decided not to use the white heart.

I sewed the hearts together. I cut a 5" X 12" piece of tulle and gathered down the center. I cut some pink satin ribbon 7" long and stitched them to together in the center.

I stacked them them together and glued them to a hair clip.

Heidi Sage is ready for Valentine's...but I wonder if she has one. I'm sure her Daddy might have something to say about that...

I {Heart} Hearts,

Linking to...

Peanut Butter Banana Pizza

2011-01-31T20:44:00.002-06:00

My little Clinton loves Peanut Butter. He asks for a Peanut Butter sandwich for breakfast. He asks for one his lunch box for school. And he usually requests one at bedtime. He's only been eating Peanut Butter for about a year and I'm glad he finally is because it's one of the few forms of protein he'll consume (although he is getting better).

However, I tire of making the same old PB sandwich day after day. So today I decided to mix it up a bit. While we were in the midst of one of those horrific trips to the grocery where you have to go even though you have all three kids but you are out of everything in your house you need, I picked up a pack of whole wheat pitas.

I started by heating my oven to 400. I threw the pita in for a few minutes just to firm/crisp it up a bit.

After it reached the texture I thought Clinton would like, I let it cool for a few. I then spread a nice layer of Peanut Butter on it.

I sliced up some bananas to resemble pepperonis and spread them around.

I then sprinkled on a few semi-sweet chocolate morsels just to make sure he would eat it.

I finished it off by taking my pizza cutter and slicing her up just like a pizza.

And I had one happy customer on my hands! And just like a real pizza, he at everything but the outer crust. Score one for the mommy girl.

Now if your child will eat coconut that would be a good addition...looks a little like the cheese on a real pizza. I'm sure you could think of other wonderful things your child might find exciting...but try to keep it semi-healthy! ;-)

Mmm-mmm,

Made With Love

2011-01-28T08:53:00.009-06:00

Looking back on my childhood, one of the things I really appreciate about all of my mother's craftiness is that all the cool things Chelsea and I had didn't feel like someone was buying our love. It was a beautiful Labor of Love. She put a lot of time into making things for us...something I'm learning to do for my kids, as well...even though Pottery Barn Kids and The Land of Nod often make me wish I could just buy their love. ;-)

Heidi Sage was born in March of 2009. By that December I had already been working on an idea for her First Birthday present. I was very sure I knew exactly. what. I. wanted.

Isn't it beautiful? I had envisioned hours of me and Heidi Sage playing kitchen. It was adorable. It was timeless. It was RED. Oh, I was in love....you know, for Heidi Sage.

Anyway, after I calculated a purchase plus tax plus delivery total of over $800, my budget committee informed me I was living in "La La Land". Sigh.

So I started hunting. I was keeping an eye on Craig's List, checking out all my favorite junk/antique stores, and even hoping for some kind of miracle sale at PBK. Nothing was turning up...especially that miracle sale.

One day I was out with some girlfriends and we stopped in at one of my favorite antique stores. We were actually shopping for one of the other girls a desk, but my jaw dropped when I turned the corner and saw this piece. It wasn't Pottery Barn. It wasn't even red. But it was PERRRRRRRR-fect. It was hand made. It was solid wood. And it was in need of a new paint job (and a little smarter configuration on the doors). They had it marked at $86 and I talked them down to $68.

So I took it apart, sanded it down, filled in holes I wouldn't be using anymore and primed it. (And cursed myself a few times for buying such a huge project!) There was some kind of awful, gummy paint on it that took hours and hours to sand off.

Then I repainted and reassembled it, moving the hinges and knobs on the upper cabinets.

Now, her birthday was in March....but she didn't receive this until August...but she's one and did not know...nor did she care. However, once it made it's way up to the play room both Clinton and Heidi Sage loved it. We played and played and played with it.

By September I had decided we were going to need a refrigerator. I wanted one I could paint to match her other piece. And I found this one at The Land of Nod. Isn't it beautiful?

It was pretty close to the same style. It was a natural finish I could paint. And it was only $249...plus tax...plus shipping. This time my budget committee looked at me like I had lost my marbles. Boo.

So I went hunting. I spent two whole school days (those very valuable days when the bambinos are in someone else's care and I can do the things I can't do with them because they can't behave) at 9 months pregnant going from store to store to store...when I came across this. At the time it seemed perfect. While it was an antique steamer/canner, I thought I could just paint it white and it would look like an adorable refrigerator. I called Deborah...texted her pictures....hemmed and hawed...ignored her when she said "Don't but it today! Go home and think about it and get some measurements"...and then...

I know what you're thinking..."You didn't REALLY buy that did you?" Actually, yes I did. It was a hormonal decision made on a time crunch...with some serious buyer's remorse. Especially once I got home and realized it was ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY the wrong scale. I was sick. I had spent $67 on something I was going to have to try to hide from my husband. As soon as I realized what I had done, I hauled it up to the attic until I could come up with a plan.

That's where Deborah comes in...again. Luckily my mother is always just a call away and can solve just about any problem. I started texting her more pictures. Giving her dimensions. And pleading with her to come up with something.

A day or two later she called me with a plan. She had some scrap wood and she thought we could build a base. So, when she came up for Rex's birth she brought in her suitcase on the airplane the wood cut to size and her nail gun. Ummm...have you ever packed a nail gun in your suitcase???? It's a sure fire way to get security to go through your things.

Once we got the base together and realized it was going to work, I let out a HUGE sigh of relief and began sanding the rust off of my clunker turned treasure. I then sprayed it with a white Rustoleum primer followed with a white top coat. I also painted the base to match the red in her original kitchen piece. Deborah traced the legs on the original kitchen piece, returned home to Texas, cut them out in her workshop, and brought them back at Christmas. Deborah, along with my Dad, put all the final bolts and screws in to make sure it was sturdy.

The kids and I LOVE it!! I mean, LOVE it! And everyone we've had over to play LOVES it! Heidi Sage got lots of Melissa & Doug play food for Christmas. To finish out the kitchen is a table and chair set that was my grandmother's when she was little, then it Deborah's when she was little, then Chelsea and I had it when we were little, and now my kids are enjoying it! The table cloth is a red and white check summer blanket Deborah had made for Clinton when he was a baby. I pulled an old coffee table out of the attic for some added counter space and storage (one day Rodney's going to give in and let me paint it...or he'll take an extended work trip and I'll just do it anyway). And do you recognize that apron???

And to round out the Dream Kitchen is the adorable Grill I had my parents buy Clinton for Christmas. And, of course, the Melissa and Doug shopping cart is a nice touch from the kids' Nana. Not to mention Clinton's artwork from school that I framed...he loves showing it to everyone who comes in.

But wait...it's still not finished. Deborah's adding one more piece for Heidi Sage's 2nd Birthday. So, be on the lookout for that towards the end of March. And then that should make it complete... If it gets any bigger than that we'll have to get Heidi Sage her own HOUSE! Ha!

Cooking up memories,

Linking to...

The Birthday Dress

2011-01-26T15:39:00.001-06:00

Soooo...the last post we made was about our Pretty Posies...and pretty they were. So pretty, in fact, we tied for the most viewed link over at Sugar Bee. We're so excited people are liking our tutorials!!

Then we got to thinking...you saw the Pretty Posies...and you saw Heidi Sage wearing one, but not the ones made in the tutorial...did you happen to wonder what those particular flowers were for?

Well, below is Chelsea's post from her personal blog about those mysterious flowers. Normally we only post kid things here, but since yesterday was Chelsea's birthday and the flowers had something to with her birthday, we thought we'd shake things up a bit. So without further ado...heeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrreeeeee's Chelsea...

*****************************************

It's been two months and I haven't had time to post ANYTHING!!! Don't worry, I'm still here. Lately I've been spending a lot of time working on design projects for school and creating cute little things for Dressing Heidi Sage.

On my birthday I usually like to make a cute little dress to wear out and celebrate. Unfortunately school has restricted my time so much I decided I had no choice but to buy some off the rack. Gasp!!!!! Well, as many of you know there are NO clothes in stores in January. Retailers and designers know that nobody shops in January because they're recovering from Christmas so there is very little new merchandise hitting the floors. This means that there are never any party dresses for my birthday, which is how I got started making my birthday dress every year in the first place. This year since I knew I wasn't starting from scratch I decided to shop early. I shopped online after Christmas and New Years when all the holiday dresses were marked down. That's right, I like a good sale;)

I found this cute Tracy Reese dress on sale at Dillard's. I'm usually a good judge of online purchasing based on my experiences with fashion and my knowledge of fabrics. This looked cute in the close-ups, I liked the fiber content, I liked the vintage look, and I liked the chiffon edge but I wasn't sure if I was going to like the little appliques on the chest.

The dress looked a little different when I received it than I expected. The neckline was higher (clearly it had been opened for the photoshoot) and the chiffon edging was out of control long around the neck and arms (also clearly altered for the photoshoot). The dress, however, fit cute and it was different than the usual cocktail attire that you can find during the winter months. I liked velvet because it made it feel wintery and I liked the vintage vibe that the dress was giving off.

The decorative appliques weren't doing it for me however. They looked cheap in comparison to the dress fabric and they didn't seem significant enough for the lovely velvet. I did, however, like some of the beads and stones on the appliques so I very carefully took them apart and saved all of the beads.

I know this makes me look and sound like a crazy person, but I liked the elements so I wanted to reuse them rather than just trashing them.

The first thing I did was open the neckline so it looked like the photoshoot picture. Then I trimmed the chiffon trim around the arms and neckline. It was starting to look more like the original picture but it still wasn't exactly what I wanted.

So I made some flowers and I used the beads that came on the dress as the flower centers.

This is much better than those wimpy appliques!

Then I sewed the flowers on the dress! I know I'll have to remove them for dry cleaning so I made them separate units and simply tacked them onto the dress. I also switched the flowers to the opposite side as the original dress because I like to carry my purse on my right shoulder and I don't want to mess up my flowers.

The pretty posies!

To complete my vintage, wintery look I found these great pantyhose at ModCloth.

And I found these fabulous shoes at Kate Spade. I love Kate Spade merchandise and I LOVE the Kate Spade store in North Park even more. It's the happiest store in the whole mall. You can't walk by or go in without smiling! I was very patient and waited the shoes out until the second markdown. Actually, I was going to buy them online but was a little bummed about the price, even though Brian said it wasn't a big deal. The next day I decided I would go see them at the mall in person to make sure I really loved them. I went to the Kate Spade store and I loved them, but they didn't have my size:( That night I went back home and got on the website because I knew that they had my size online and they had dropped the price $70 in one day! AWESOME! I will get them on Tuesday, my actual birthday! I'm so excited!

Brian and I will be celebrating my birthday on Saturday night, so I'll be wearing my cute new outfit! I only wonder if my sister will think a sleeveless, crimson velvet dress is season appropriate?

Happy birthday to me,

Pretty Posies

2011-01-24T08:12:00.005-06:00

Every girl loves pretty flowers. Heidi Sage has quite an assortment of pretty posies to wear in her hair. I'm going to show you how to make one type of flower that Heidi Sage loves to wear in her hair. I plan on writing tutorials for several different types of flowers but I thought I'd start with the hardest ones first. This is partly because I needed to make some anyway and partly because these are my personal favorite. This is a simplified version of a technique that I learned from a milliner in Chicago.

For these flowers you will need:

1. 1/8 - 1/4 yard Dupioni Silk (some other natural fibers will also work, but dupioni creates the most beautiful flowers) DO NOT use polyester.....it WILL NOT work! It must be silk!
2. Aleene's Stiffen-Quik
3. French netting or tulle (optional)
4. felt
5. buttons, beads, or baubles for the center decoration

Now let's get started! Cut the dupioni silk into 4" x 4" squares. You will need 5. You will also need 5 squares that are 3.5" x 3.5".
You will need Aleene's Stiffen-Quik. There are other fabric stiffeners on the market but I have not used them so I cannot vouch for their effectiveness. I know this fabric stiffener works quite well.

Cut each square into an organic petal shape. You want each petal to be a little different much like on a real flower. Make sure you leave the bottom of the petal straight across. Also make sure that the lines in the dupioni run the length of the petal.

The 10 petals cut out. Five petals are 4" x 4" and five petals are 3.5" x 3.5".

You want the two sizes to be about 1/2" to 3/4" different in size as you will stack them later.

Spray each petal with Stiffen-Quik making sure it is thoroughly coated. Don't worry about using too much, there's no such thing!

After you soak the petal use your fingers to scrunch of the petals creating tiny ridges that go the same direction as the ridges in the dupioni.

The scrunched petal.

Once you have all the petals scrunched you can blot them off with a paper towel. This will make them dry quicker.

After blotting, place them in the microwave. Heat them 30 seconds at a time turning them over between increments. It takes about 7-8 thirty second intervals to dry the petals. You MUST supervise these while in the microwave. Silk can catch on fire!

When you pull them out of the microwave they will be stiff little sticks.

Next, spread the petal over a metal spoon.

Once it is over the spoon, steam the petal. This creates the shape of a real flower petal. Make sure not to burn your fingers. You can use a clothes steamer to do this or a steam iron, both methods are very effective.

Once all of your petals are steamed open, you are ready to construct your flower.

Start with all of the big petals. String the petals onto a needle and thread as shown.

String all five big petals onto the same string making sure that your have all of the petal cups turned the same direction.

Once all five petals are strung together you will create a circle with the thread linking the petals together. Pull the thread tight bring the petals close to one another in the center.

Tie off thread and clip.

Now you are going to sew the petals together to make the flower fuller. Do this on the back side about 1/3 5o 1/2 way up the flower petal. Don't go too far or the petal separation won't look natural.

All of the petals are sewed to the petal next to them. This helps fill out the shape of the petal. Now repeat the above steps to create a circle of petals from your small petals. Later your will stack the two layers together to have a 10 petal flower.

Before you stack your two groups of 5 together you need to work out your center decorations. I am using french netting but you could also use tulle, net, or russian netting. I cut a strip that is about 2.5" wide and 12" long. You gather the strip onto the needle and sew it into a circle like you did with the flower petals.

The circle is complete and the thread has been tied off and clipped.

Next stack your two layers of petals, your net, and apply a felt circle to the top of the net and underneath the petals on the bottom of the flower.

The bottom of the flower. Sew through all layers to secure the flower.

Then add your buttons or decorative elements to put a little pizazz into the center of your flower.

Center details. Once you've done this, all you need to do is attach a hair clip to the back and you've got a great bow! The finished measurement of this flower is about 5.5" in diameter. I also love these on a GRAND scale as a hat! Those are cute for little girls and big girls alike!

Here's Heidi Sage sporting one of hers. Now if we could just get that girl some cute clothes to wear! ;-)

Happy gardening,

Linking to...

Fleece Top and Leggings

2011-01-22T06:45:00.001-06:00

When Rex was born I flew up to Tennessee to take care of Clinton and Heidi Sage and help Courtney out for a week. As I would get the kids dressed each morning I couldn't help but notice that Heidi Sage didn't really have play clothes. All she had were outfits. School outfits. Church outfits. And social function outfits. No real play clothes to speak of.

During the warmer months this doesn't matter so much because Courtney lets her kids run around in just their diapers, underwear, or swimsuits. I'm sure she's the talk of the 'burbs. :-) But when it's freezing cold, something warm and cozy is a definite must.

I purchased Heidi Sage a pair of leggings. Have you noticed I purchased a BUNCH of leggings this year? And why not? They're cheap to buy, they come in every color and it leaves you more time to focus on the top.

I found some purple fleece in my scrap box along with the pink and turquoise knit. For the top, it needed to be simple because fleece is a little bulky. When digging through my old patterns I found a very simple shirt pattern. It was a short sleeve shirt pattern so I laid a long sleeve pattern over the top to lengthen the sleeve. When doing this you need to not change the shape of the top of the sleeve of your original pattern so it will sew nicely into the arm opening.

Next, I lengthened the top and added a little fullnes for her hips (diaper) because the pattern was made to just come to the waist. I wish I had lengthened it a little more so it was more like dress length. Maybe next time...I'm sure her mother will allow me plenty more opportunities.

I used a bias strip around the neck and a button for the neck closure. I added a knit flower applique and Heidi Sage is ready to go. After each washing Courtney said the top gets softer and softer.

Courtney said Heidi Sage is losing interest in her photo shoots. :-) So these were the best pictures we could get. Not great...but you get the idea!

Making life cute and cozy,

Our First Contest!

2011-01-19T06:17:00.001-06:00

***THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED***

In Texas everything is said to be bigger. True, my kids and I don't live in Texas...but they don't know that. I overheard my husband telling Clinton the other night that we live in Tennessee, to which Clinton replied, "Nuh-uh, Daddy. I don't live in Tennessee. I live in Texas!"

I guess my "roots" show a little more than I thought! Even one of Clinton's besties, Dalby, has gotten in on it. Her mother often asks her what she's doing and she replies, "Going to Texas!" And they're Michigan natives...oopsie.

Anyhow...the "everything is bigger in Texas" and "bigger is better" mottos were never truer for Chelsea and I than when it came to our hair bows! Take, for example, Chelsea in her 1st grade picture...

And things have been no different for our little Heidi Sage. She has been known to sport bows of many shades and sizes. But we know she's not alone! So, we're having a contest to see what you've got! Details, you say? Keep reading...

Post a picture of your little sweetie in her adorable head gear on our FaceBook Wall by Tuesday, January 25th (Chelsea's Birthday!)...and we'll be giving a prize to the best bow (selected by an outside party!). What kind of prize, you say? Keep reading...

Our winner will receive a set of the COLD WEATHER BOWS. Soooooo...get to posting! See you over on FaceBook! (Feel free to "Like" us while you're over there!)

Big on Bows,

Cold Weather Bows

2011-01-18T16:16:00.004-06:00

A girl has to sport a fabulous bow, even in cold weather.

I was standing in line at JoAnn's one day and found this great toddler headband and mitten set in the dollar bin. I decided with a roll of ribbon I could make this pretty cute.

First I created a place to clip a hairbow on the headband. I didn't want to sew the bow to the headband because I wanted Heidi to be able to wear it later without the headband. To create the loop for the bow matched the two edge of the headband and sewed along the edges for about 3/4". Make sure to match your thread to your headband so that your stitches don't show.

The loop is sewn and ready to slide the bow into the slot.

I then used Deborah's hairbow tutorial to create this bow and clipped into the loop.

To create the matching gloves I cut two 8" pieces of ribbon and used fray-check to seal the ends. My ribbon is 1 1/2" wide.

I then made the bows for the gloves. To start the bow I took an 8" piece of ribbon and made it into a loop slightly overlapping the ends.

Then I sewed the loop closed.

Then flattened the loop in half and sewed a running stitch through the center of the loop through both layers of ribbon all the way across.

I then pulled the running stitch and gathered the bow in the center. Then I secured the shape by stitching the gathered section into place.

Both bows gathered in the center. Now all I need is a center ribbon.

I used a short 1/4" piece of black ribbon for the center of the bows. To get my measurement I wrapped the black ribbon around the center of the bow and then added a little extra so that the ribbon would overlap on the back. Once the length was determined I fray-checked the ends of the ribbon to prevent fraying. I then stitched one end of the ribbon to the back side of the bow.

I then wrapped the ribbon around center of the bow and stitched it in place on the back of the bow.

The finished bows.

Then I stitched the bows to the mittens.

The finished mittens.

The complete matching set!!!

Love these? Click over here to read about our contest where you can win a finished set for your little one!

Stay warm,

Linking to...

Monsters Are For Girls TOO!

2011-01-17T09:43:00.001-06:00

I've been trying to get caught up on baby gifts and I'm almost there. There were a crop of adorable baby girls born in November and December and I thought they needed some cute onesies and bows to get them started!

Miss Emery Rose got these cute little onesies and matching bows. I found the knit pants at Target then whipped up some hairbows and made some onesies to match!

I know Emery is going to be a little monster if she acts anything like her momma, and I hope she does :) That's right, monsters are for girls too, all they need is a little hairbow.

Emery's mom loves orange so I had to work that into her reverse applique heart onesie.

Miss Canyon got these cute little onesies and hairbows! I know that Canyon's mom appreciates a BIG hairbow, so I did my best!

Linking to...

The Perfect Little Package

2011-01-10T09:38:00.005-06:00

Heidi Sage is similar to me, in that she likes sparkly stuff. I knew when I saw this little shirt at Target with the metallic thread running through it, she'd love it! I liked the shirt and thought the flowers were cute, but I didn't think they looked quite right on the shirt, so I decided to do something else with this little shirt.

For this project you will need:

1. 1 t-shirt (prewash and dry)

2. thread

3. knit fabric (prewash and dry)

I very carefully removed the flowers, making sure not to damage them or the shirt. I saved the flowers because I'm sure I'll find something to do with them later. Then I washed and dried the shirt, ironed it, and there were no traces of any stitching marks.

I then took some gold sweater knit that I found at my local fabric store and cut it into a strip. I serged (you could also use a lightning stitch or a narrow zig-zag) the edge of the strip, turned it inside out and made a tube.

I took the tube and serged the ends together creating a circular piece.

The circular piece will soon become a cute little bow. Don't worry about the serged line, it will get covered in the upcoming steps.

I laid the circular piece flat (with the seam in the center) and centered it across the chest of the t-shirt. I then pinned it in place.

The circular piece is ready to be sewed in place.

Using the machine I very carefully sewed the circular piece in place. I sewed at the far edges so that when the bow was complete it wouldn't flop away from the shirt. Sew carefully making sure to only sew through one layer of the bow circle and one layer of the t-shirt.

Once I sewed the circle in place, I scrunched the middle of the piece to create the bow shape.

I then sewed the pinch in the center to hold it in place.

The pinch sewed in the center of the bow.

I then created the center of the bow. I cut a small rectangular piece of knit.

I folded the edges of the rectangle to create a tube, so that the raw edges wouldn't show.

The tube is made. The seam on the back with be enclosed around the bow center.

I then folded the end under to make sure the raw edges would end up being covered. Once I had everything in place, I sewed the end to the back side of the bow pinch.

I then wrapped the tube around, making sure to cover all the raw edges. If needed, cut off the extra length from your tube, making sure to leave enough fabric to turn under the raw edges. Sew in place.

The bow is sewn.

For extra security, I made sure to add a few hand stitches around the knot in the center of the bow. This makes sure the bow stays in place and doesn't fall away from the shirt. It can also help to make sure your pinch looks the same on both sides.

The finished shirt.

A few short steps made this cute little shirt the perfect sparkly wrapping for cute little Heidi Sage!

Happy Wrapping,

Linking to...