Christmas Cookies

Yes, I know it isn't even December 1st yet, but I can't help but get in the Christmas spirit! The days have been cold, the inside decorations are up, and I'm so excited about making wonderful holiday memories for the kids in our home!
Today I made a batch of sugar cookies and the kids had a great time decorating them. We are just now coming off our sugar high as we settle in to watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on TV tonight!



John Paul says that one of Santa's reindeer ran over this little ginger bread man (and then he bit his head off!)

Making a wrap skirt.

I LOVE wrap skirts and dresses! I've loved them ever since I wore them in elementary school! I found an excellent tutorial for making your own skirt at Sew,Mama,Sew: http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/?p=104
Here's my first one:

I'll definately be making more of these!

Happy Thanksgiving~

Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family, hope you all had wonderful days as well! We had such a nice day yesterday! It was nice and cool and a bit overcast, the perfect day for eating too much, watching football, and drinking hot chocolate!
We just had over Doug's mom since everyone else was scattered to the wind. We had a nice lunch around 1p.m. of HoneyBaked ham, broccoli cheese casserole, asparagus, candied yams, cornbread muffins, and peach cobbler. The boys set our holiday table:

After lunch, the boys decorated our Christmas tree. They did a wonderful job!

Little Danny especially loved it! Last year he was too small to appreciate any of the sparkle and lights, but this year he was right in the thick of things. He went through the ornament box digging out his favorites and clustered them all along the bottom!

I just love those chubby little baby fingers putting ornaments on the tree! He was so intent on getting them on just right! I can't wait to see his expression when we actually get the gifts under the tree!

Our boys

Think this will be our Christmas card photo this year...

Two seconds after this photo was taken, Danny threw those two handfulls of leaves at Kyle and the fight was ON!

More stuff to make from pillowcases!

I read Soulemama (http://www.soulemama.typepad.com/) everyday. I absolutely LOVED her lounge pants from bedsheets idea: http://soulemama.typepad.com/soulemama/2007/11/favorite-things.html and decided I could do the same thing for the little ones with old pillowcase material! Here's how I did it:
Take a pair of children's pants and fold in half. Lay it down on your fabric (in this case a vintage pillowcase!)and trace about an inch away from your pants. Flip the pants over to make a mirror image, and continue to trace.

Cut out when done tracing. These size six pants took the entire width of the pillowcase, smaller sizes will not. Cut through the sides of the pillowcase making two pieces of fabric. Put right sides together and sew the crotch of the pants together:

Open up the pants and reorient so that you have two legs. While keeping right sides together, sew up the inseam of the pants:

Turn down the top part of the pants 3/4 to 1" and sew. Leave a small hole to thread your elastic through:

Sew the elastic ends together and sew up the hole in your waistband:

These pants are AWESOME!!! They are so comfortable! Using the ends of old sheets or cases means no hemming, plus I love those funky little details on the pants! Making my own pair today...Doug will be so happy I'm finally using up my fabric stash!
They got a thumbs up from my biggest critics:

Lounging in my own pair!

Veteran's Day

We stopped school work for a little while to attend the Veteran's Day Memorial Ceremony on the square today....




Our town's courthouse and veteran's memorial with eternal flame:


...and a picture of my favorite veteran, my hero, my daddy:

Finished!

Finally got my laundry room cleaned and organized! It feels soooo good to get chores like that out of the way! I picked up some containers and baskets from the Dollar Tree to neaten up the space. Now you can actually find things when looking for them...but don't hold your breath, by Tuesday it'll most likely be a mess again!

UGH!

My mud/laundry/school book storage room is ALWAYS a mess! Kids come in from outside and leave shoes, books, balls and toys where ever they land. I decided that this would be the weekend that I would get everything in order - to stay!
I'm posting about it here to make myself accountable.
Look if you dare (and imagine piles of laundry on the floor!):






I'm still working on it (and that gigantic load of laundry!) hope to post pics of a new and improved laundry room later tonight!

My dress form

Another thrifting adventure turned up this great dress form for 10 bucks! Not only was it a steal, but it was my size! Up til now, I've not been able to find a dress form that wasn't a size 2!
As soon as I got home, I stripped off the old cover

and recovered it with some fabric from the dollar bin at Walmart. I have to admit, that was the HARDEST project I've done in a long time! I thought I'd just spray it down with adhesive and smooth on the fabric....NOT!
I soon realized that you cannot just put a flat piece of fabric onto a form with curves and bumps! Took me all day and most of the evening to get in on...but it was worth it!
I think it rocks!

Monster dolls

We saw some monster dolls at Walmart the other day and I thought, hey, I can make that! So here they are, my little monster family:

It seems the baby is everyone's favorite (check out mama's pouch above!):

Even the bigger boys liked them! Kyle dove into my fabric stash and made one of his own:

I've been singing "One eyed, one horn, flyin' purple people eater" ever since I saw it!

A treasure inside a treasure!

I went thrifting the other day and found some vintage children's books to add to our library. This little book was among them:

When I got home, I curled up on the couch to look through them. That was when I found this jewel written inside the cover:

It says:
"For my bride, my wife,
My soul, my life.
For the rain giving birth
to the one from two.
For the love we share,
For the souls we bear~
I love you,
(forever and ever, Amen)
Jowell
12 March '76

I've never read 'The Little Prince' but I cannot wait to sit down and read this book to try to discover what secret message Jowell was sending his wife. I cannot imagine how this little gem got lost inside a stack of books destined for the thrift store, but I'm glad it did because I'll definately treasure it. Saying a prayer for Jowell and his bride...wherever they are!

Quick craft project

I got this old bulletin board for a buck at a thrift store, but it had a lot of discoloration on the cork, so I decided to give it a makeover! I used pieces of scrapbooking papers and spray adhesive to give it this funky patchwork quilted look. I think it looks more like framed art than a bulletin board!

Some more great finds!

Ryan and I spent the wee hours of today going from yard sale to yard sale and it was totally worth the lost hours of sleep! Here's what we found:
Some great vintage pillowcases. Two of these I will turn into aprons (see my tutorial on how to do this in my October posts!) The other two I will save as scrap fabric for yet undetermined projects:

Speaking of linens, I got these great little table cloths! They are vintage cotton with embroidery, two of them are from Hawaii:

Two Longaberger baskets FOR ONE DOLLAR! Apparantly, the seller did not know their worth! Some very cool vintage plates, and a ceramic watering can that will look pretty on my kitchen windowsill.

Three colorful glass candle holders:

And some AWESOME costume jewelry! I'm going to collect this stuff, and when I get a box full, I'm going to hot glue it around a mirror frame. I saw this in a boutique and it was stunning! They wanted $75 bucks for a little 5x7 mirror and frame done this way...figure I can get the mirror at walmart for a buck, and the jewelry only cost me .25 cents a pair!

The thing I'm most proud of is this patio set! I'm going to wash it down with bleach today and paint it glossy black! It will look great with one of the Hawaiian table cloths I got! Just right for a romantic luau for two!

Grand total for all of this: $32.00

My little monsters!