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:)

Longgies and a photo prop cocoon

Longgies I made yesterday, quick project and so fun. I need to find lanolin and waterproof them for diaper covers.
I made this cocoon and hat for my SIL to use as a photography prop. Erik does not appreciate being a model for me.

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.

New Diapers

The next size up from new born, Erik is growing fast and will be in these soon! This is the one I have done, a fitted diaper with a cute tractor print flannel on the outside. This diaper has a layer of bamboo french terry on the side that touches the bottom, inside I put a layer of Zorb sandwiched between two layers of diaper flannel. This should be one heavy duty diaper, can't wait to try it out when I get a cover made, or maybe I will try out the wool soakers I made :).

My latest creations

I haven't blogged in a long time, I feel like I have done so much more than I have pictures to post, and I have I just don't have the pictures. I have been a diaper making machine getting new born diapers done just before our new baby arrived, then burp cloths also as I realized that we did not have any that were not pink LOL. I don't have pictures of the new diapers (well very used now) and burb cloths but here is what I have done in the last few weeks.

This is a baby quilt (or lap quilt) made from squares of denim and DCU's with a flannel backing that has John Deer tractor camo pattern.
The next two are some dish towel sets I made up by crochet, I have taken a liking to crochet and have found I can do it while nursing the baby.


And finaly here is our beautiful baby boy, Erik, born June 15 after a fairly uneventful pregnancy. He is 9 weeks old in this picuter.

Back, maybe....

So I logged on to blogger for the first time in months. I have had update my blog on my to-do list for a while now but find more "important" things to do. In the last few months I havn't been all that createive. Blame the gloomy English winter or pregnancy but I just have not had the will to do more than what had to be done. I have done a few things and I am working on getting photos of them to put up.

I am in the midst of making newborn diapers and covers, I have much of them cut I'm just waiting on supplies to come that I have ordered and most likely will not get them done until the end of May since I want to put bamboo velor on the indside of them and well I special ordered a bunch of it, so lets hope my new born diapers get done before I have a new born, LOL.

Here is a picture of one diaper I did make while exprimenting with diaper making. I made several proto types and eventualy drafted my own patteren because most of the patterens I printed off the internet wound up way too small and now Livi has a few diapers for her dolls. This diaper I made from an old polo shirt that Justin no loger wanted.

I made a Mai Tia carrier a couple of months ago and think I will really like it, unfortualty I have not been able to try it out because Olivia runs and hides every time I get it out. I would love to try it and take some pics but I don't think it's going to happen unless I put it on the dress manaquine and put a doll in it.

I also recently made a pair of pajamas and a dress for Olivia but I have not taken photos because Olivia loves these and also has learned to use the camera so wants to be the photographer instead of having the picture taken of her. Eventualy I will sneak photos of these things.

I have lots of other projects on the list and am working through them along with looking for a new house and preparing for baby to come. I hope I can keep up on this blog, but I'm not making promises.

43Things

I like list so I think this site is just neat. Baicaly you make a life list, things you want to do. They can be basic goals like make a grocery list or long term over the top travle the world and see the seven wonders and everything in between. I have come across this site at times when I have done google searches for various things and I'm giving it a shot just for the fun of it, I think it will be fun to track what I have accomplished.

Life Update

We took Olivia to the Linton Zoo on Monday, it was an OK trip but really I wish we had gone to the bigger zoo. I had been there before when I worked with youth services and so I knew it wasn't a big zoo and that there were not a lot of animals there but I was disappointed really this time, many of the cages were so overgrown you couldn't see anything. Olivia did enjoy it though and we saw lions, tigers, owls, parrots, zebras, turtles, giant tortoises, and many other animals I can't remember all the names.

We have some more trips planned in the next few weeks as my DH has some extra time off, we plan to see some castles and go to some towns we havn't been to yet

I know some of you would like to see pictures from here, I would love to share and hope to but my computer is a pain to upload and edit them, not good when you are trying to do an online store. I think I'm going to start looking at the mac books at the BX, I'm not impressed with VISTA can't use the word processor that came with my computer without a product key and there is no SD card reader on this thing (I bought it in February!!!!). Also we have not gotten back into the grove of taking pictures, so far what we have done has pretty much been going to the High Street and that is pretty much mundane for us though I know some of you it is knew and exciting.

I had to move the cat food today

It's not a new thing to keep the cat food up off the floor, we have to do that to keep the dogs out of it. We have kept if various places over the years, on top of the refrigerator, in a room with a kitty door, on the dryer..... Our last house we had a little room that served as an office and pantry we kept a baby gate on the door way and put the cat food in there, here we just do not have that luxury there are three rooms down stairs kitchen, living room, and office. We don't have a full sized refrigerator and I was trying to avoid having the cat on the counters. My solution was to put the cat bowl in a window since he comes in and out of them all day anyway. Well today that plan was taken out of commission as Olivia discovered where the cat food was and started playing in it. So now the bowl is on my laundry counter, the cat may just start eating in the garage.

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.

Swimming!

What started out as an attempt to teach Olivia about pouring liquids into containers turned into a fun afternoon of swimming. She's still small enough to fit in a wash basin :).

This is our back yard, the smallest we have had yet, and a postage stamp to our last one.

She spent a lot of time just lounging like this. We are going to buy a wading pool this weekend!

Home Tour

So here it is the promised post with pictures of my house!! There are things that are very normal for a British house in our home and there are things that are not for example it's pretty open feeling even though it's not really all that large it's laid out so that there are windows on both sides of the living room and kitchen which help to give light all day and let them feel larger.

So onto the tour....

This first picture is the entry and our downstairs cloak room (half bath). To the right there is a small room that is either a study or small bed room, it's my sewing room but due to lack of furniture its a mess so I'm not showing that room today, sorry.

This is looking into our lounge (living room)/dinning room from the entry. We use this area for living room/play room/office, and we will have a dining table there in front of the fireplace once we find one, the one we had didn't fit.

Here is looking at it from the other side by the fire place.

Here is my kitchen this is the side that has all the cooking stuff. The stove is 21" wide by the way. All of my baking stuff fits in it except for on pampered chef pizza stone that I just bought last year :(

This is my kitchen from the other side, basically a view of my laundry area, allot of people have a hard time with the *small* washers here. I must have been given a larger one by the base because I don't have an issue with it, I can't wash blankets like my king sized washer in the states but it gets my clothes clean and that's what matters.

Here is the breakfast bar and drink station. The cabinet with the lock on it is the snack cabinet and it's the only one I have to keep locked or Olivia will tend to pour cereal all over LOL.

Here is the upstairs cloakroom and bathroom. The cloakroom has a toilet and sink, the bathroom has a bathtub and sink.

This is Olivia's Room.

This is the guest room, this is the only room in the house that is completely decorated (with the exception of needing a bed frame) mainly because Justin couldn't take most of his military stuff to work at this office so we had a surplus of things that just really did not fit in the rest of the house. If you ask him this is his room LOL, it's where he comes to get away and play his video games.

This is the hallway entering into the wing of the house we use for the Master suite. One of the minor drawbacks to this house is that it doesn't have a proper master bedroom and the bathroom with the shower and such is next to the two smallest bedrooms which are coming up. We decided to cope with it by using the whole section of the house as one large room cut into different sections. What you can see here is the dressing area, which is a very nice feature to have since you can't plug anything in in a bathroom here, there are no electric outlets in them (sometimes there is one for electric shavers). I think it was a law thought up by a man who was tired of all his wife's stuff on the bathroom vanity LOL. Anyway in this area is a vanity, a very small built in closet (one of three the other two are in Olivia and the guest rooms) a dresser and a built in cupboard with shelves (linen closet).

This is the big bathroom in the house. It's called a family bath. to the right and back a little is a large shower. The floors are radiant heat and we found out the radiant heat can be uncomfortable if turned up too high and you have wet feet :)

This is the fourth and smallest bedroom, right now it's kinda a catch all room-like my sewing room but neater. It has a wardrobe for my hangup clothes because the other closet is not big enough. We would like to make this a full on dressing room and/or use it as a nursery if/when we have another little one.

And this is the bedroom, nothing fancy literally a bed in a room. Not much room for anything else. We were hoping to be able to get a king bed when we moved so that our guest could have a queen bed to sleep on but there is no way that a king bed is going to fit in this room so if you come visit I will promise to make you a comfortable as possible.

And that's our house. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

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!

Under the Sink

Retro Housewife has issued a challenge to show her what is under our sinks, or what we use for cleaning for those of us who do not keep cleaning supplies under the sink so here it is. Since we have moved and I had to start from the beginning I have made an effort to go as simple as possible with my supplies I have:

Seventh Generation: dish soap, dishwasher detergent, and all purpose cleaner

baking soda

vinegar

Charlies Soap

shout

Febreez allergen reducer

borax

sea salt

liquid starch

and I need to buy rubbing alcohol

That it I use a combination of these to make various cleaning products like window washer, floor cleaner, shower spray, and scouring powder.

To take the challenge head on over to Retro Housewife and follow the instructions.

Incase she is ever a tomboy

This last weekend we went to the Fourth of July celebration at the Air Force Base here. They had a carnival and all the fun stuff you do at a summer fair including the games. Of all the stuffed animals that could have been won by her Daddy Olivia just had to have this

They came in this small size, medium, and very large. She wanted the large one but loves this one just the same. All I could think of is...Whats that saying...Ignoring the pink elephant in the room.

Sorry I don't have pictures from the carnival, I left the camera in the van. Don't worry though there were no important first like carnival rides, or ice cream cones and we did not stay long enough to see the fireworks as we forgot to bring warm clothing and got too cold.

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.

It must have been very hungry

Meet our dinosaurHe is a very cool toy if you are under 3 ft tall, you take the balls which you can see in the turtle (another cool toy) and put them into the holes on the top and they come tumbling or rolling out of different places on his body. OK I admit this can be a fun toy if you are a bit taller than 3 ft also. All that rolling and tumbling makes a Dino very hungry and what better snack than........

Crayola coloring crayons. You can see here that we have a very well balanced diet as we have a whole rainbow to choose from.

And yes he was very, very hungry.

The talented cook.

Bowl of Blossoms

Fresh out of my garden.

Newborn Jumper

Catching up on the few things I have made in the past few months. This jumper is in the shop .

I made ten jumpers a while back and am still working on them. Olivia wears one and it is a favorite outfit the others are in various stages of completion, waiting for the prefect embellishment to call their name.....

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.