headbands for my little baldy

Lainey has been in desperate need of some head bands. My lovely friend Lindsey kindly shared some of her abundant gear with me and helped me make these little cuties.

I love the brown and yellow one! We made it specially to match her Wyoming outfit :-)

Giveaway oh giveaway!

Cool fabric giveaway here. Check out the rest of the blog too, it's so inspiring!

prototype hats

I'm thinking of attempting to sell some little crochet hats, adorned with detachable flowers as shown above. I've made a couple of prototypes/practice hats :-)

Teeny-weeny quilt

This is Lainey's new little blanket, for taking to bed with her. It's made of pre-cut squares of heart fabric, purchased on ebay about 3 years ago. I simply pieced them, used fusible fleece as batting, and quilted by stitching 'in-the'ditch'.

I am happy with it. Lainey loves it, because there are so many different patterns and colours in it. The best bit is that I managed to teach myself how to miter the corners on my binding, using a tutorial I can't find anymore, otherwise I'd link it.

This is a small quilt (maybe 25 inches square) It'll one day be perfect for a dolly's bed, and it has given me a taste for quilting and I can't wait to do more!

Luke's raggy

Just a silly little thing really- adapting Luke's 'raggy' to make it a bit more attractive! It used to be simply a pale blue textured fabric. I sewed some 'Cars' fabric to it, then did wavy stitching to hold the two layers together. Fortunately, Luke loves it and is just attached to it as ever :-)

Outside blanket

Well, it was going to be an outside blanket, until we decided that it's actually just the right weight and size for snuggling on the couch. So, now it's an inside blanket. But that's okay.

The top fabric is from Ikea, about 5 or 6 years ago. The bottom is denim I already had, and that's what gives it a bit more weight, which I love.

Silly boy!

Every Sunday, we have Trev's brother Caleb, and their long-time friend Craig over for dinner. Caleb and Craig are Freshmen at USU, so feeding them is our way of helping them out, plus it gives us chance to catch up and hang out with them for a few hours.

Luke absolutely loves them! Today he was being a little noisy and he needed to calm down so we allowed him to watch Shrek (his current favorite)

A few minutes in, I guess he decided that although he wanted to watch the movie, he couldn't bear being separated from the boys. Look at his solution-

He moved his TV chair onto the couch, between the Caleb and Craig. It was so cute!

boxes

Here's a quick project that can be done with materials that most 'crafty' people would probably have on hand.

Take a few old boxes. I used baby shoe boxes, as Lainey is demonstrating below-


Using scrapbook paper, Mod-Podge (pva glue) and felt, you can turn them into something quite attractive. Much better than the plain old boxes, don't you think?

I'm using them for accessible storage in my sewing area. I bet they would make nice gift-boxes, too.

Our life. (kind of boring post-sorry!)

Well, it's week four of the semester and we are starting to get into a groove, a routine, a comfortable-ness. Trev is pretty much never here, and when he is he is always working on assignments for school (or watching wrestling videos on Youtube, I can't nag at him for it though, I spend so much time reading blogs and 'researching' on the crafty sites and such. If he wants to waste his free time on watching men roll around on the floor in Spandex outfits, that's his choice.) Anyway...

He is doing well so far and enjoying most of his classes. He has a cool one where they read autobiographies. He even has to write a short one of his own. Why can't I be taking that class? It sounds like lots of fun.

The kids and I hang out all day. The kids play while I do stuff in the kitchen. We go outside in the morning, for a little play on the swings or sometimes we go grocery shopping or -occasionally- fabric shopping :-) Then we play together inside, take naps, have lunch, and then it's back outside again. Come in, do laundry and housework, then it's time for dinner. I usually just feed Luke at this point, 'cos I like to wait until Trev gets home from work, so we can eat together. I also give Lainey her 'solid' meal of the day. Bath both the kids, get pyjamas on, and finally, BEDTIME! I cook dinner for us, Trev gets home at 8, we eat, then Trev gets on with his homework and I sew/craft/leave the dishes for tomorrow morning.

This is probably the hardest semester so far. But we're getting through. I sometimes wish I could be the one going to university, but really I know I am the lucky one, because I get to spend my days with my two sweet babies. I love my darlings so much. They bring me joy every day.

Lainey can crawl! It's hard to believe how she is growing up so fast. It's fun to see but sad too. Life just goes by...I suppose the trick is to enjoy every moment and not waste a second. That's what I've got to try to do.

A few more pictures...

The following pictures are from the reunion weekend, and were taken by other people and emailed to me.



A while back, Sophie sent some matching t-shirts for the kids. They say 'Brother' and 'Sister' on them, in English and in Thai, with a cute picture on them. So, at the reunion, I asked Aunt Wendy to take some pictures of the little ones wearing them. They came out lovely!

The rest were taken by Katie. The bottom two are the results of a fun feature on her new camera. It beefs up your smile, giving you a really cheesy grin. We had lots of fun with it!

Reunion fun

We had the opportunity to attend the family reunion of Trev's mum's side of the family. We had a lovely time, relaxing, playing games, talking, eating (of course!) and camping out at night.

Luke having fun with daddy and uncle Jake

The blanket on the ground for the babies (and not-so-babies, as you can see)

Quigley had some serious bed-hair

Apparently, they were making hot chocolate

Lainey having her first dip in the creek



Luke doing his favorite activity...throwing rocks into the water

The theme was clowns, so we all dressed silly for dinner one night

Luke playing on the tractor




It was really very fun. Luke got to sleep over with his grandma and grandpa two of the nights, in their big spacious tent. He played with his cousins and ate junk food to his heart's content. We all came back feeling quite refreshed, and it was a shame that we had to get back to reality so quickly.