A beautiful day for a beautiful baby.
My sweet little girl, happy happy birthday.
Lovely Day
Cutie Patootie
When I saw Megan’s ruffle bumsie a little while back, I knew I had to pick up a package of white onesies and perfect my ruffling technique. I used her tutorial and serged each side of three 1.5-inch strips of fabric leftover from the aprons. On my sewing machine, I increased the stitch length and turned up the tension as far as it would go. I sewed straight up the center of each strip and it perfectly ruffled them. Then I pinned each strip onto the bottom area of the onesie and sewed them into place.
I wanted to embellish the front of the onesie, so I cut out the letter “A” (for Addie) from coordinating fabric that was printed with the alphabet. I used light weight Heat’n’Bond and ironed the letter onto the onesie using the package directions. Added a few rolled fabric flowers and two leaves to the bottom. Then I just used a regular stitch on the sewing machine and stitched around the edges of the “A” and the leaves, and over the top of the flowers.
The whole project took about 2 hours, while watching TV and chit-chatting. I think Addie knew she was extra fancy in her onesie because she let me take a lot of pictures! That or she was happy that I was letting her suck on an eye drop bottle.
A couple notes:
1. On the next one, I may stretch the fabric on the bottom horizontally a bit while pinning the ruffles. When I put the onesie on Addie, I had to be cautious to make sure that the stitches didn’t pop.
2. I will add at least two more rows of ruffles below the placement of these three on the next onesie. I love this one, but when she was crawling around, I thought it would be cute to have ruffles actually cover more of her bumsie.
3. I LOVE LOVE LOVE how the letter applique turned out. Now I want to order more of this fabric so that I can use it up and still have it.
My To-Do List
I like lists. A lot. I like making lists. I like crossing things off my lists. I really like to add things that I have already finished to my current lists, just so that I can cross them off. I have all kinds of lists titled with all kinds of subjects. Indoor Projects. Outdoor Projects. Emails to send. Work tasks to do. Things to buy. Things to buy when I win the lottery . . .
Over the weekend, we did a little reorganizing in the garage. I came across this old mirror that we’ve had stored for quite a few years. It just didn’t quite fit with this house and I hated to get rid of it since it was an antique. But since I wasn’t using it in its current state, I took the plunge and gave it a makeover. Removing the mirror from the frame, I hesitated at the 1943 stamped date before spraying it with a number of coats of chalkboard paint. Then I painted the frame with some of our leftover trim paint. Initially I was going for a nice smooth finish on the paint to coordinate with the door trim it would be hanging next to. But, the first two coats were not as smooth as I wanted and I thought it might help to sand it down a little before adding another coat of paint. When I sanded it, though, I loved the distressed look so much that I just sprayed the whole thing with a quick coat of clear paint. Reassembled it with its new chalkboard and sent my man to Home Depot late Saturday night to get new hardware to hang it.
I am really, really excited about how this turned out. So glad that I painted that mirror I’ve been hanging on to. And SO glad that I bothered to get out the sandpaper. I found a few other “someday” projects out in the garage that I’d like to get to work on. I’m adding them to my lists.
Isn’t it funny how the to-do lists grow exponentially with each thing that you cross off?
update: I’ve since cut “notes” out of white vinyl and it holds nicely at the top of the chalkboard.
More Mermaids
So, the mermaid birthday party thing….it all started when I saw the most adorable mermaid plates and tablecloth in Pottery Barn Kids. “Hey, Livi, do you want to have a mermaid party this year?” Of course she did! Addie was just a couple months old and I knew I didn’t have the time to go all crazy making stuff for the birthday party so I ran back to PBK and grabbed the plates, the tablecloth, and the cutest hanging puffer fish thingee. Easy, I thought. She’ll be four, we’ll just have a few kids, I’ll keep it simple. Surely, though, I could make the invitations, we only need a handful….
Hmmm…what sort of quick and easy decorations should we do? Wouldn’t it be cute if we had some under-the-sea accents? So, I found some really cute mermaid/starfish/seahorse cookie cutters here, and I traced them onto cardstock, cut them out, and accented them with a little Stickles. Easy to do just a few at a time when I could grab a spare minute. I ended up sticking them all over the windows and the walls. Then I decided to hole-punch a bunch more and tie them from balloon strings to give the impression that the fish were swimming around the room. I don’t know if anyone else “got it,” but I LOVED it – and the kids liked to have something to grab onto to drag the balloons all over the house.
Next, we needed activities. I did a quick search on the internet for “mermaid party game ideas,” and there were SO many ideas. We ended up doing a treasure hunt (mainly because I found this awesome chest at Joann’s and I wanted an excuse to buy it), sand necklaces, and a fishing game.
Oh yes, I suppose we should feed the kids….after all, I did buy mermaid plates. Wouldn’t it be fun to do fishy food? Goldfish crackers, blue jello with swedish fish on top (don’t put them in it, they’ll melt and look totally disgusting and you’ll have to freak out a little and send your husband to the grocery store in the middle of the night for more blue jello), pb&j sandwiches cut out with your starfish cookie cutters (don’t you love dual purpose purchases), octopus dogs (this was so cool – cut the bottom two thirds of hot dogs into eight “legs”, boil them and they curl and look like octopuses (octopi?)
Dare to ask your daughter if she thinks it would be fun to wear mermaid tails for the birthday party. I don’t know what I was thinking when this came out of my mouth. It really didn’t take too long to sew mermaid tails – I made eight or so, just quick, not-so-perfect tails, but still… All the girls wore them for about five minutes of the party (which I totally could have predicted, but I didn’t consider this before I let the idea fall on Livi’s ears). However, I think that the two or so pictures that I took before the tails came off made it all worthwhile. I mean, how do you look at Addie’s baby mermaid tail and not smile?
Now, I have to admit that the dessert part is where things got a little out of hand. But, we really like dessert around here. And the “cake” is the part that I always do. For some reason, I can’t let the cake go even though the kids really just want cupcakes. So, you saw the mermaid cupcakes in my how-to over at Life as Lori. I love how they turned out.
And then the actual cake…a sandcastle, a mermaid on a rock, and about 15 hours work worth of making fish from candy molds.
Anyone know how to photoshop that sippy cup out of the picture??Dear Olivia… Thank you for letting me get carried away. I really can’t help myself. You’re cute.
Slow and Steady
Finally… these guys are done and headed into the Easter baskets. Progress was slow, but they’ll certainly be received with smiles, don’t you think? After all, it’s the anticipation of the smiles that keeps me creating.
Another awesome Heather Bailey pattern.
So Cute in Bunny Ears
Isn’t this the cutest hat for your littlest bunny to wear Easter morning? I made one for each of the girls for their first Easter. The original instruction set was in an issue of Martha Stewart’s lovely Baby magazine when Olivia was a baby (circa 2006??). I made the first two from the sleeve of Graham’s white t-shirts, following Martha’s instructions. Addie, however, is quite a bit older than the other girls were on their first Easter. I made a little hat for Addie today, but I used the bottom of the t-shirt rather than the sleeve so that it would fit over her mess of hair. In case you are not really wanting to forage through your perfectly preserved back issues of MS magazine, I snapped some photos of the step-by-step. It’s a quick project and oh-so-cute for some Easter photos. Have fun!
For the finishing touch, tie a short ribbon into a bow around each “ear”, and you are done!
