Things Are Getting Back to Normal

Sigh. Where to start? Well, how about with the new Easter dress I made. It still hasn't been worn. The whole family spent Easter weekend with my parents. Unfortunately, my daughter had an allergic reaction to something she ate. It started Saturday morning with just a couple of small red dots, and got progressively worse. By Easter Sunday morning, her face was swollen and my husband and I took her to the emergency room.

The emergency room visit was an all day affair. The doctors wanted to keep her most of the day for observation to make sure she wasn't going to get any worse. We still don't know what caused the reaction, but we do know she had two new foods - mushrooms and pecan - and one of those could be the culprit. Her pediatrician says we can do allergy testing in six weeks. Here is a picture of how she looked after she was getting better. I can honestly say I have never seen anyone have a skin reaction as bad as hers. It was awful!



When my husband, my daughter and I came home on Monday my son stayed behind at my parents' house. It was the first time he had stayed somewhere overnight without us, and he had a wonderful time. In fact, he had so much fun that he had no desire to talk to his Mommy and Daddy on the phone, and didn't want to discuss plans for coming home.

My Mom kept saying he could stay as long as he wanted, and at one point I told my husband we might not see our son again until he was four or five. Ultimately, he agreed that he would come home today, so I drove down and picked him up. If no one had pushed the matter, however, I don't think he would have asked to come home for quite some time.

And can I just say that it made me feel just a tad sad (alright, a lot sad). I am really glad he had a good time, but at some point I thought he would have thought "gosh, it sure would be nice to have some snuggle time with Mommy". Tonight, after we got home, he did give me a couple kisses (kisses are very rare from him), and told me that he missed me. But maybe that was just because he wanted one of my oreos...

Now that we are all back home together and my daughter is not sick anymore, things are starting to feel more normal. After a week of having medicine spit in my face twice a day and being worried sick about a sick little one, I am looking forward to what I hope will be a nice, calm week coming up.

I am excited about some fabric my Mom got for me from the thrift store where she volunteers. Total price for all of the fabric pictured below was less than $5!! I've put it downstairs in the basement so it can all get washed and I can sort through it.



My favorite piece so far, though, is this one with the mushrooms. How cute is this? I'm not sure what I'm going to make out of it, but I'd love some suggestions if anyone has any. Here is where it would be helpful to know how much of the fabric there is, right? Well, I didn't measure it, and it is already downstairs so I haven't any idea. Oh well.



I have a new project I will be starting soon. I decided to make a quilt for my Mom for her birthday (end of May). Nevermind that I've never made a quilt before, for some reason I decided that a quilt was what I wanted to make.

I ordered a watercolor quilt kit that I think is perfect for my Mom. She loves to garden, and she and my Dad also love to watch the bluebirds that nest on their property. The name of the kit is "Bathing Beauties", and hey - the package reads "Easy!" Not just "Easy", mind you, but "Easy!" with that exclamation point at the end. Well, there then - I should have no problems with it.



And the other project I'll be working on is planting flower seeds and getting all my plants out of the garage and acclimated to the sunlight again. I have some great seeds that I got last fall by swapping some of my tiger lily bulbils with other gardeners, and I can't wait to get them started.

I did take most of our banana plants out of the garage and basement on Friday, and was surprised that most of them have had at least one (some more) pups. I don't know what it is about banana plants and this house, but all they do is produce babies - even during the winter while stuck in a low light, little water situation. If anyone wants banana plants, this is the place to come!

I think I've gone on enough for one post (thank goodness, right?). I hope to start on the quilt this week, and will post in-progress pictures as it comes along.

The Easter Dress is Finished!!

Tip: never try to take a bright orange, yellow and black stuffed snake away from a one year old in order to take a picture unless you wish to hear lots of screaming and want to guarantee the inability to take any good pictures.

A Work In Progress

For the first time, I am attempting to make a dress without a pattern or tutorial. If I am successful, it will be my daughter's Easter dress. I saw a picture of a dress in a magazine that I thought was adorable, and decided to try to make my own version of it.

So far, things are going well with it. I've had the "test dress" hanging in the office/play room for a couple days so I could make sure I liked the look of it - nevermind that I didn't use enough fabric to make the skirt go around the entire bodice - really, nevermind that - that's what a test dress if for, right?

Within the next day or two I hope to be posting pictures of the completed dress!

Egg collecting baskets from paint cans

Today I made baskets for my son and daughter to use to collect Easter eggs at the annual Easter egg hunt.



These were very simple to make! To make one, you will need:

- empty, unused gallon size paint can (you can buy these at hardware stores)
- scrapbooking paper in two coordinating colors/patterns
- ribbon or ric-rac
- 20x4 inch strip of fabric
- Elmer's Craft Bond spray glue
- Removable Dotto adhesive or similar type double sided tape on a roll

You'll need to measure your can from bottom to top. Half this measurement, and this will be the height of the paper pieces you cut. Also measure from the middle of the circle the handle is in on one side to the middle of the circle the handle is in on the other and use this measurement as the length of the paper you will cut.

You are going to cut two pieces of paper out of each color you chose, to end up with four pieces total. For the top pieces, you will need to cut out half circles to go around the handle insertion points on the side of the can. I used cardstock to make templates before I cut my paper.

Spray the craft bond on the wrong side of the paper, and adhere it to the can. Line up the side seams under the handle insertion points.

You will have a seam in the middle of the can where the two different papers come together. Over this seam, you can put ric-rac or ribbon (for my son's I used bulletin board boarder). Meausure, and cut and put the double sided tape on the back of whatever it is you decide to put over the seam, and stick it down.

To make the handle cover, turn the ends of your fabric under just a bit, and sew. Then, sew the side seam (right sides together), and turn right side out to create a fabric tube. Take one side of the handle off of the paint bucket, and slide the fabric over it. Put the handle back on.

I cut letters and a butterfly out of contrasting scrapbooking paper, and used the double-sided tape to adhere these to the can as well.

All done!

Easter Gifts: a Bag and a Butterfly

My daughter loves crayons. She and my son have an art easel in the kitchen full of crayons, and she takes every opportunity she can to run off with handfuls of them. She colors on the stove, the floor, the walls, the refrigerator, my filing cabinets, and generally anything else she can get to before we notice she has taken off with them. She also loves to carry bags around. Currently, the Little Touch Leap Pad bag is her favorite.

Taking these two loves into consideration, I made a bag that has crayon holders inside it. This will be one of the things my daughter gets in her Easter basket.





Another thing in her basket will be a butterfly made by Mommy. I ordered the butterfly pattern from Wee Wonderfuls, and it came in the mail at the end of last week. The only felt I had in the house was left over from Christmas, and therefore not the ideal butterfly colors. But, I just couldn't wait to make one, so I used what I had. My husband says this butterfly has a certain charm, and he thinks I should put it in the Easter basket. I think that I should call this the "test butterfly", and let him hang out around the house, but make a more colorful, spring-time looking butterfly for the Easter basket.



Speaking of Easter baskets, a friend showed me a way to make the cutest egg-gathering basket (for Easter egg hunts) using an empty unused paint can (I never knew you could buy these), and scrapbooking paper. This will be my next project!!

Oh, and did you notice the tree I used for these pictures? It's the same one I used for the picture of the shirred dress 8 days ago. In that short amount of time the tree has become covered in beautiful white blooms. I DO love Spring!!

Shir Is Beginning to Look a lot Like Spring

I must have read eight to ten tutorials on shirring over the last week or two. Yesterday, I decided to give it a try. The dress above is the result of my effort. It definitely has some areas that could use improvement, but I learned a lot while making it, and I know the next one will be much better!

A Corduroy Smock

On a recent visit to Jo-Ann Fabrics, my husband picked out some brown corduroy that he liked from the remnant pile. I made a couple changes to the tutorial found here, to make this smock for my daughter.

An Apron for My Helper

My son seems to get a little disappointed when I get the sewing machine out to make something, and it is not going to be for him. So, I decided to make an apron for him since he enjoys helping me in the kitchen.

I found some neat fabric in my stash that has cars on it. My son thought it would be the perfect fabric for his new apron. Since I didn't have an apron pattern, I decided I needed to make a test apron out of some scrap fabric before I used the car fabric. I ended up using two colors of blue so that the apron is reversible.

The top of the apron needs to be narrower, but it turned out good enough that my son will be able to actually use the test apron too. He informed me that he doesn't like the pockets, and doesn't want pockets on the car apron.

I have added making the car apron to my "to do" list.