A New Bag

Presidents day means a day off for my husband. We like to try to go do something fun on these days off but it was just too dang cold today and we are all to one degree or another getting over colds here so we didn't do much.

I made some homemade marshmallows, well attempted to I think they are going to get remelted for rice crispy treats as they seem to be a little too sticky this time around. I also made a big pot of spegetti sauce, this was all before 10 am.

We then made a run out to take my good sewing machine to the repair shop, again, the third time in 6 months :(.

Luckily I have a backup machine, not the greatest but it works. So when we got home from all the running I decided to do a little sewing for myself. I can't remember the last time I made something for me and not something for someone else or baby diapers. Well I made a diaper bag so it's not all for me.

I used this tutorial and adapted it to work with this old military blouse.
And made a nice bag that looks like this
And pockets on the back
and on the inside too
I'm going to give it a try, it's not quite as big as I was wanting it, I'm trying to go back to full time cloth diapering which means needing a pretty big bag to go out with. It was a nice simple and fun project to do on a relaxing "day off"

A crochet hat and four pairs of booties

I am having so much fun making things, I wish there were more hours in the day!

This is a hat I made, I wanted to make if for Olivia but it turned out to be too small, it's still supper cute though and will look cute on some little girl who is about 1 or 2.
And here are the booties, I'm addicted to making these the are so simple and quick to put together. I got the patteren from My Sweet Little on Etsy. I plan to make these for my shop in the near future.
Well off to do some more creative work:)

I couldn't wait to share

This will be Olivia's good coat this winter. I have had it cut out for awhile but just found the pieces after our move. It's not quite done yet, putting the lining in and button holes/buttons are next on the list. I just think it's too cute, made from a vintage McCall pattern.

Oh how I love Ebay

In the last week I have bought four different fabrics that will become something. I have one now it's a plaid upholstrey weight about two yards and pretty wide in green. Part of it is going to become a bean bag chair for Olivia's room I think, it's not quite the color that I thought it was going to be. If not I'm thinking a coat, handbag, hat, I think I could get more out of it. On the way I have 7 yards of some kitchen themed fabric; I'm thinking shopping bags, table cloth/napkins, play linens for the little kitchen, aprons. For clothing I have coming 7 yards of yellow cotton/ploy and 4 yards of a brown with white polka dots, I plan to make some dresses for me and Olivia and hopefully some tops too. I was on my way to bidding on some denim, I need some for skirts and pants, when I was firmly told by Justin that I was to get no more fabric until I get my sewing room organized which will involve acquiring some organizing type furniture and a desk for our computers so the table they are on can go into the sewing room. Fair deal since you can't really walk into the room, but really he has NEVER told me I can't have something before and is usually telling me that if I want it I should go ahead and buy it. That remindes me I really should stop buying fabric and get on some auctions for notions, I could really use some fun stuff to do up projects.

Oh yeah, and after years of looking, shopping, almost buying I got 28 cloth napkins for around $20 including shipping which is not a bad price at all. I'm going to keep looking for more as most of them were dinner size and I would like more of other sizes. I'm also looking for table cloths and such too. And a cabinet to put this stuff in before I get banned from bying them too. I have a place to put the cabinet, not a place to put all the linnens with out a cabinet.

I have been enjoyin Ebay UK too. I have found what would be great deals and would solve some of my storage delimas if not for having to drive 5 or 6 hours one way to get some of it *sigh*. I have found some things a bit closer just don't want to eat our weekends up driving all over the country picing up finds and don't want to drive all over the country by myself with a child.

Bibs

One is in my shop now, more to come. I made a couple for Olivia and thought they were too cute not to share. Enjoy!

What I have been doing

The last couple of weeks have been up and down. I'm pretty sure I got everything I ordered a the beginning/middle of June so if I can make myself sit down down and do them I should have some projects going and done this month. Then on the other hand July is one of the nicest months of the year here in England and if it's not raining I sure would rather be out taking walks with Olivia or playing in the garden. Speaking of which we have a greenhouse and I have taken to growing things in there and it's not going half bad, if I can keep it up I think I can grow a good portion of produce right in our back yard.

I have completed one project. Part of my big shopping spree was an order of diaper kits from Diaperkits.com I spent an entire weekend and a little bit putting together a dozen all in one diapers but the results were great and the order was well worth it since I could not have bought the materials to cut them myself for what I paid per diaper. Justin told me when he put one on that if we got 50 more of them he would be perfectly happy. We don't need 50 but another dozen in this size and three dozen or so in smaller sizes should do us along with some sleeping diapers.

Up next, the ruffling foot for my sewing machine FINALLY came in so I will be working on the pettiskirt I started for Devan while we were home and send that to her. I have 30 yards of chiffon so I'm going to make one for Olivia for play clothes and put at least one in my ESTY shop. I also got in two yards of oil cloth to make bibs with, I will be making a couple for us because we are in desperate need of bibs and putting the rest in my shop. I also have a shirt cut out for myself if I ever get to it and I would love to get to my fabric stash and make myself and Olivia some new clothes since I have lost a couple of dress sizes since moving here and Olivia is growing like a weed.

Tutu

I put this together when we first got over here. I'm hoping to add some to my shop at some point when I can orders some more tulle. As it is I have ordered a whole load of things in the last week and will need to wait until the next pay check to have some more spending money ;).

These make wonderful dress up clothes for little girls and Olivia has a ball wearing what she called "Twinkle, Twinkle" the first time she put it on.

My SIL Devan uses them for props in her photography and they come out sooo cute.

Well that's all for now Olivia is down for a nap and I'm going to get some work done. Have a great day everyone.

What, I have a blog?

OK so I know it's been forever since I updated here and I have a whole long list of excuses, really. To start with my old computer died a very sudden and tragic death. The video card and hard drive both went at the same time. I was very attached to that computer, I also had not back anything up on it so I lost a lot. Luckily Justin had transferred the pictures we had taken of Olivia over to his computer so we did not loose those, but everything else was gone. We bought a new computer right away but I do not like this one the primary reason being that it does not have an SD card reader which makes blogging and posting things for sale on ETSY rather inconvenient. I have found the cord for my camera however I don't like that process as well as I like popping the SD card into the computer and getting the pictures that I needed.




Add into that finishing up with our move and well that just made life a little more stressed, but we are done with that for a while now and settled into our new house for the most part. Sometime I will post pictures as I know there are some out here who want to see it.




Before we left the States we spent three weeks with our family in Illinois we had a wonderful time and got to spend a lot of time with my brothers and their wives. I love having sisters after having had only my brothers for so long its so nice to have sisters to hang out with and do fun girl type stuff with. My youngest brothers wife and I went off a couple of times and did girl things like searching Joann's for the prefect fabric for a pettieskirt (I'm getting a foot in the mail to make it Devan I haven't forgotten) or going to a tea house to eat. We also all went out to a local pub for dinner and some drinks, it was so nice to be together too bad we are all over the world.






Devan also took some awesome family pictures of us.

When we got here we pretty much focused on finding a house and settling in. Well that's done now and I finally have a room that I can sew in so you can look for postings hopefully to be more frequent both on here and in my shop.



Now to leave you with the latest item in my shop this clothes pin apron.

It's been awhile

Wow! The last month has just flown. We have been very busy gearing up for our move and now I think we will be breathing a little easier for a few months.



We have a couple of very small projects to do and the house will be put up for sale, hopefully by the first of December.



I spent three weeks and three visits to vets trying to get our pets started on the import process into the UK. It's a complicated six month process that has to be done right or the go into a six month quarantine when we get there. We wound up driving two hours to Fort Leavenworth Kansas and the Army vet up there because the military vets are the only ones that have micro-chip readers that read European chips which two of our animals have. The processes is started now and they should be able to enter the country about the same time we fly over there. They may have a week or so of quarantine to Finnish up there but we will also have to find a house so that works for us.



In the mean time, I'm doing little bits of packing here and there in hopes that we sell our house right away and will move into a temp house. I have also gotten a creative streak, the stress has settled a bit. I cut 10 baby jumpers the other day, I'm going to give five of them away and keep the other five for our baby clothes stash. I also bought 20 some yards of fabric at Wal-Mart off the $1 rack. most of it will be pajama pants and dresses for Olivia. Some will be a shirt I have wanted to make for myself for a while and then I will have some for my fabric stash that I have a goal of building along with my pattern stash. Pictures will be coming soon.

I have been around just not much time to blog, or if I have the time I just can't get the energy together to form complete thoughts.


The last few days have been spent recovering from our trip back home to visit family. My supervisor at my last job made a comment once on how we still call our hometowns back home, even after being gone for nearly ten years now and having lived around the world. I think it's because of being in the military. You never really put down roots and as soon as you do your uprooted and transplanted to a new home again. Home is where the heart is, but it's also where Grandma still insist on making you breakfast every morrining and you can go out on a date with your husband with no problem because there are about a million people that are biting at the bit to babysit your daughter.









Anyway, it was a very nice visit. We went back because my brother is deploying to Iraq and DH was to deploy to Afghanistan also (more on that later). We spent a few days with DH's family and then went to my family and spent the rest of the time there. We had a great time with everyone just hanging out and having all the siblings and spouses together at one time. I am the oldest of three with two younger brothers so I love having sisters-in-law. I made this bag for one SIL who lives in North Carolina with my brother who is a marine

So being a marine wife really has nothing to do with this bag....it has more to do with why she lives where she lives. The bag is a messenger type bag for a computer. Made of denim so that hopefully it is very durable. What is so special about it is that the lining is this great hippy themed fabric that I found on the clearance rack at Joann's. She loved the bag. I have another project in mind for her that involves old uniforms but that is all I'm going to say for now as she may read this blog some day.

My other SIL who lives in Illinois and is married to my youngest brother who farms is a wonderful photographer and getting into business for herself. She took pictures of Olivia for us. She has done all of Olivia's pictures but these are much better because they aren't at Seares in the studio but outside on my parents property. It was really hot thought so Olivia got tired of it really quick and we tried to get pictures of her next to the chicken coop. That did not go over well, my mom gave the birds some cucumbers to get them to gather close and a goose hissed at Olivia and that was the end of the chicken coop. Here are some pics...

You can see more of her work here.

Our trip was a very relaxed one with no real commitments or things we had to do which is unusual, but then we are normally back for only a few days not almost two weeks and it's normally an holiday so we are obligated to go to every relatives dinner (or so most people think even if we only get five minutes notice). This was very nice because we just kind of hung out for a few days here and there.

We got back and spent a couple of days just kind of winding down then DH went to go to a pre-deployment briefing only to find out that he is not deploying. We do not expect people to understand this but we were not happy when we found out. DH volunteered to deploy to help us out financially. I am very happy to have my husband home for the holidays and to spend time with him, I did not want for him to go. However at the same time we had made the mutual decision that if the opportunity presented itself the best thing for the family would be for him to go. We had spent three months preparing for deployment emotionally and made plans for me to go home to our family over the holidays. We also made financial goals based on him getting extra pay for the next four months and having less taxable income next year. The news took us from behind and made us reevaluate everything that we have on the table at the moment, time for a fresh look.

DH still has one more week of leave left so he is finishing up the inside remodel of our house that has been going on for three plus years. It won't be quite done but the base boarding and door molding will be on the walls rather than sitting in the garage :) and there will only be a few small things to do and a couple of maintenance issues and we will be ready to move :) If the Air Force will be that kind to us.

I have many projects that I will be getting to soon, and I may just get to posting more often also.

I did it.....

I have the previously mentioned items listed in my shop. One handbag and three baby slings. I had a pretty productive afternoon. Not a normal thing for Sunday as I try to take a day of rest but since DH was in town giving away kittens and Olivia was sleeping a figured I would take advantage of the quite time. I listed the hand bag and then started pizza fro dinner. DH got home about that time and started finishing up some projects he had going...including putting a shelf back on the wall that had toppled down in the middle of the night and torn big holes in the drywall on the way down. We finally got the kitchen table cleared of the books that had come off that shelf. He then started cleaning the fridge which I finished because I wanted to make sure I could find everything when I needed it. My did it need to be done. It was embarrassing and I'm glad that when people come over they don't look in my appliances very much. After that was done DH spent time with Olivia and I went back to my sewing room. I finished the top stitching on two slings and got the lining put together on a bag I'm making for my sister-in-law. The lining is the same as the purse I posted in the last post, she is into anything hippy and when I saw the fabric I knew I had to make her something out of it so I bought what was left of it.

So for next week................I'm hoping to keep up on the house pretty well, I'm having company Friday night and really don't want to spend all day Friday cleaning. I'm still working on being routine enough that my house is pretty much always clean. I was there at one time, before we moved three years ago, I just have to get settled with my new life again and learn to balance all my task. I need to get the bag done for my sis-in-law as we are going to be seeing them in the next couple of weeks, and in all fairness I should come up with something for my other sis-in-law but I haven't gotten to know her well enough to know what she would love. I'm also hoping to at least get some christening dresses started to sell. I have allot of extra lace from the one I did for Olivia as well as extra fabric I figured I would give them a shot.

I havn't fallen off the face of the earth.

I promise I haven't. I have been very busy sewing though. I did a denim skirt that is sitting in the wash pile and I will take pictures of soon (I hope) maybe even with me modeling it, but that I'm not sure. I also did a high chair pad cover since my little one is sitting and eating solids a bit now.

I have also done a couple of projects that will be listed in my store. Last night I did this purse

It's a simple tote but it has this great lining inside of it

It's a hippy themed fabric that I found on the remnant table at Joann's. Go on over to my store and take a look if you are interested.

I have also put together a couple of baby slings. They are reversible pouch style slings with denim on one side for durability and then a fun print on the other for style. Each sling is custom made for the person who it is intended to be worn by. I made several of these slings before Olivia was born and I LOVE them. I do not use them as much now as she would rather sit in her exersauser (AKA her Command Center) where she can supervise all that goes on in the house, but when she was tiny and always wanting to be held it was a life saver. I still use it when I go to the store because she does not like to sit in her car seat while I shop and I can't say that I blame her.

I hope to get these Items listed by the end of the day so come on over if you like.

Have a wonderful day.

Sailor Dress & Hat

OK this isn't the best picture for showing the details of this dress but it is a cute picture isn't it?

I made this sailor dress out of a remnant piece of red and white seersucker that was just big enough for this dress and a matching hat. Olivia got to wear it for the first time to the picnic her daddy's squadron had last Friday and it's now sitting on my ironing board to be ironed thus the reason for no detail pictures.

Ah, and the picture.....she is sitting in the drivers seat of the car. DH had forgotten to put the stroller in the car before we headed out the door. I was still getting things in the house and instead of strapping her into her car seat he strapped her into the drivers seat. I don't think she quite knew what to make of it.