Finished Purse

As I said, springy. I know. But maybe a hint of spring in the winter is actually a little refreshing! :)
But I think it came out cute and I loved the dragon fly button I found to match the ones on the fabric.

More Princess Clips

I love these! The Pocahontas clip is for my little sister. She's her favorite. :)
Should I add another set of wings to Tinker Bell so she has 2 on each side, or is the one on each side better?

Debbie Mum fabric

Was 50% off! I'm so excited! I love this puppy fabric. The green and purple is a bit springy, I'll admit. But I thought it was too cute to leave behind. I'm going to make purses, one for my aunt, one for my mom. I'll post pictures later tonight.

Embroidered Scarves

I made a few more scarves out of remnant fabric. These cost me 45 cents each!! After I cut them I embroidered each girl's name on the side. You can see the difference to see which you like better. One scarf had skinny fringe that I pulled slightly to tighten, and the other had fatter fringe. These I didn't pull. I like the skinner ones better so I may go back and cut the fat ones in half.

Princess for a Princess

Making some princess clippies for the girls in our family. Each girl (as I'm sure you all know) has her favorite princess. So for Christmas instead of a bow on top of their present one of these clippies will be used as a decoration. If anyone is interested in knowing how to make these I have more to make so I can post some step by step instructions.

Hello Kitty Scarf

I was peeking through the Joann's remnant section and found some adorable hello kitty fabric. A whole yard, originally $15. The fabric was on sale, plus the remnant discount, which meant I got the whole yard for just under $6. Still may sound like a lot, but I made 7 scarves out of it, so less than a dollar per present. I simply sewed some decorative stitch about 6 inches up from each side and cut the fringe. Ta Da! A 10 minute gift for only $.80, and who doesn't love hello kitty?

WooHoo!!

Yea! I won the $100 grand prize (along with 2 other great gals) for the YCMT thrifty fifty contest! This has been amazing! I have so much to post, a weeks worth of projects, but I have had 2 sick kiddos at home and no time to take pictures. On another note, I finished my very last paper and assignment and am done with school! Thank goodness!
Well, I will get to work crafting and promise to post something tonight. :)

TIMES UP!!!

Well, ok, I have another half hour, but what I've been working on the past couple hours will take me more than that, but feel free to stay tuned for future updates.

Ok, so first things first.

I made a grand total of 104 gifts for..... drumroll please.... $48.90!!!!

Here's a highlight of what I've been working on. I have a few more things I need to wrap up (literally and figuratively), but the long haul is over!

Picture Frame

This is a frame for my grandma. I had the frame from the dollar tree, scraped the outside and the in. I hope she loves it!

Quilt

This quilt is for my little love bug. My youngest girl is into any kind of bug from the cute to the creepy, so her quilt is adorned with butterflies instead of hearts. I can't wait for her to open this on Christmas morning (or maybe Christmas Eve). :)

Additional Pic

Here's the girl wearing hers. When I showed it to her she was super excited but then stopped and said. "Actually momma, I think I'd like it better if it was purple." Go figure! But by tomorrow pink will be the fav again, let's hope. She still loved it though, and was doubly excited when I showed her the matching one I made for her cousin for Christmas. I wanted them to have matching outfits, but I was so excited, I couldn't wait for this to be worn until Christmas. But her cousin will love opening this on Christmas day, even if Leila opened hers a bit sooner. :)

What do you think?

Ok, so I'll admit, I made a mistake. Well, quite a few actually. First off, I used the YCMT.com pattern, All the Rage Raglans from Carla C. So cute! With the first one I realized I had sewed the hood on sideways (of course!) So, since my daughter's head does not come out of her right sholder, I spent near an hour trying to carefully deconstruct the previous 20 minutes of stitching. Ah!

So then all went well, until I realezed I had used the pattern piece for the shorter length, not the long length I wanted. This, of course prompted me to use my creativity in solving the problem. So what I had was this:


What I ended up doing was adding a stripe across the bottom of the hot pink, leaving me with:




Well everyone knows you can't make one girls shirt different than the other's because, well, that's just how girls are. So back to deconstructing the other one to add the stripe. Finally, I was left with two, identical reglans made out of the coziest thermal fabric ever. I actually think my mistake resulted in them looking a lot cuter. I totally love the constrasting stripe, don't you? I'll admit, my baby blanket was made out of this fabric and had to deeply resist the urge to wrap myself in this cozy stuff and take a deep inhale of it. I can't explain it, thermal has it's own smell. :)

So here's where you come in. I am contemplating adding he pocket on the front of the shirt. If you haven't seen the pattern, imagine the pocket on a sweatshirt/hoodie that opens on both sides of the front. I love the pocket idea, but here are my concerns:
1. Will that be too much bright pink (or is there no such thing?)
2. Will that hide the elephant print that I love which was the entire inspiration for the project too much?
3. Will I end up making a mistake and ruining the whole project?
Well, kidding on the last one, but seriously, I did sew the hood on sideways, so you never know.
So post comments, please!
Pocket, or no pocket?

Coming soon!

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday. I feel bad if I let anyone down. My goal was to post everyday, but I'll admit, I completely forgot. Anyways, I am working on a new project that will be up soon. From the looks of it I'll need some of your help! :)
Here's the fabric I am using... can you guess what it will be?

Personalized Coffee Mugs

Quick, easy, and cute!


Step one: Remove template from Coffee Mug.


Step two: Cut out templates.


Step three: Scrap Templates.
Step four: Place template in cup.
And top it off with a hot cocoa or coffee sampler...

Ta Da!

(Ok, so no one needs a tutorial for this, but I took pictures to show what the scrap page looked like, since you can't see it when looking at one side of the cup. And hey, I was bored.)

These cups were from the dollar tree, the coffee samplers were only $.78 cents each! I've already included the cost of these in my final cost as I bought them last week along with my Joann's fabric.

Quilt

So this pretty much took me all day. And I still have one more to make, but I am burnt out so I think it's safe to assume the second one won't be done before the thrifty fifty contest is up, but oh well! I bought this fabric ages ago to make baby quilts out of. Well, my girls are getting older, but it's been getting colder, so out of a whim today I decided, what the heck!? and went for it. There's some closer detail of the embroidery. It was stupid of me to embroidery on a busy print, you almost miss her name, but I mistakenly put this print on the bottom corner where I wanted her name. Oh, well. I know better for the next one. I'm going to start on one more gift tonight that I am going to mass produce for the family, so I better get hopping. I should have a picture up late tonight or tomorrow morning.

Hubby's Gift

Well, my husband is a huge Angel's fan. I don't really get it. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I love watching sports. When someone misses a catch I sympathize, when someone makes a home run I cheer. Sounds good, right? Well, apparently that only works when you do it for your team. I think home runs are exciting, no matter which team pulls it off. I'm not allowed to go to Angel's games anymore because I cheered for the Yankee's when they made a home run last year... Well, hopefully this scarf will get me back on his good side. This time I'll make sure I get it right. Angel's good. Yankee's bad. Ok, got it!

Another Tween Gift

This gift is for my other niece... although I think she is technically my cousin not my niece... hmm... if only my husband's family wasn't so big so I could remember how we were all related. Anyways... I put together a bunch of scrapbook stuff for her too. She's pretty crafty, but has never officially taken up scrapbooking. She thinks it will be too time consuming. So instead I provided her with a frame to alter and put a scrap page in. That was she can get a taste without having to buy all the supplies, or commit to filling an album. Here's to hoping she takes to it as much as her sister does!

Tween Gift

So I have two very crafty tween nieces that I couldn't think of anything to do for. Had I only seen Kim's wonderful ideas earlier! Here is the gift for one of the girls. She is very crafty and into scrapbooking, so I put together a bunch of scrapbooking goodies, and this great tin for her to embellish. This was all stuff I had on hand so the final cost was $0!!!

Pajama Bottoms

Ok, so I made 2 little girl jammie pants, and one adult pair today. I was hoping to just make one more pair for my husband, but as another lady on my team said-- it's amazing how quickly your list grows. My 4 year old saw these pants and begged for some of her own. I made her some already for Christmas, but decided to make matching ones for out whole family in Christmas themed. So somehow I have to find time to make 4 more of these with out my husband seeing the fabric (he's a penguin-holic). Silly husband. Well, now back to work, I got to get those scrapbook kits done ASAP.
~k

Update

So, I only have a few more things left. I still need to make 4 more PJ's, a scarf, and two scrapbook kits. The kits are in the works, and should be posted tomorrow night. Wednesday I will have my husband's PJ bottoms finished because he will be at school. Thursday I plan on finishing the other 3 pajama pants, which leaves friday for the scarf and voila! I am done! Amazing. The end is finally near!!

Crafty stuff for Kids

My daughter's class had a Christmas Craft day, and it was so much fun. The kids made mostly easy crafts that probably came from Oriental Trading Company or the likes, but these can easily be replicated at home. Here was my favorite. Home made bead candy canes. We took a pipe cleaner and alternated between red and white beads, then shaped the candy cane once all the beads were secured. Simply bend the ends to secure the beads in place. It only takes a few minutes for them to do, and looks so cute when finished!

My mom loves chickens. Loves them. She has eight in her backyard whose original intention was to lay eggs, though passed their prime now, are too much of family members to be eaten. She subscribes to chicken magazine (I swear there really is one!), and her entire kitchen is in chicken motif. Roosters, chickens, you know, the whole farm/country theme. It's adorable. So when I saw this fabric at Joann's, I knew I had to get it! I wanted to make something for her kitchen, so an apron seemed like the logical choice.

Believe it or not my aunt has a chicken kitchen too, so I made one for her as well.

That was it for today. I made these two aprons and the last cloche hat for my daughter, and a pair of shoes for my brother's boy Kimberbell Kids doll. I thought I needed a light day. :)

Scrapbook Frames

I have to admit, I needed a break from sewing. My back ached, my fingers had been pricked one too many times, oh! And I actually sewed through my finger with my sewing machine. Yep. Huge hole in my nail because I pushed the fabric right up to the needle, and then some. My finger was stuck on the needle in my machine and I had to pull the needle out of the nail bed in a rush so as to not spill any blood on my precious, loathsome machine. It's ok. We talked it over and we're cool now.

Anyways, back to the point. I was aching for some good old fashioned scrapbooking, so I figured, might as well get these out of the way. The first two are frames for our cousins, the little one in the middle is mine, the other two are sisters. I had the same picture for each of them, but made them slightly different. I love the shabby chic look to these frames. I bought them, oh, probably a year ago, and used all scrapbook paper from my stash.

The last frame is for my grandpa-to-be. My husband's grandmother is getting married on the 29th, but we love him to death, so we already call him grandpa. The picture is him with my eldest. It's a bit plain, but I figured men aren't so enticed by the ribbons and glitter as us women folk are.

TOTAL COST: $0
INDIVIDUAL COST: $0

Finished! At last!

I finally finished all four of the dolls I was working on. Here is the finished big brother (3 feet tall), with some clothes, this time! Also here is another little sister doll (2 feet tall) for my 3 year old. I love how they came out. I tried out the curly hair and it was not working for me in the least. I think I was doing something wrong. Sooo... long straight pony tails it is! :)
I also got 2 dresses, various shoes, the panties (which I don't know why, but these are my favorite!), hair ribbons, and all the goodies to go. Please excuse the girl for not matching, I put the pink shoes on instead of her tan ones... silly me!

Look Ma, I can sew!

My house is a mess. There are fabric scraps, strings, not to mention toys, glue, food crumbs, and host of other substances I wouldn't even attempt to guess at laying on my carpet. I haven't done the dishes in about 3 days, and my kids are running around in their pajamas from four days ago (ok, I'm exaggerating a tad, but really, just a tad!). I've been so consumed with deadlines, gifts, and sewing my fingers out. Well, so many of you have been giving me such wonderful compliments it finally made me sit back and objectively look at my projects... hey! they actually are pretty nice, huh?
6 months ago I ran across youcanmakethis.com and I had never sewn anything in my life! I looked back at the first picture I ever sumbitted to the you made this! section and it is so sad! I was so proud of that outfit and looking at it now everyone who looked at that outfit on my 3 year old probably thought, "Oh, how cute! She let her daughter sew that dress!" Yep, it really was that bad. But now I look at some of the stuff I'm making and I can finally think, "hey, that's pretty neat!" I can sew!

Big Brother

Here's another of the adorable youcanmakethis.com's newest pattern! I love it! I made a few noticeable changes... obviously, it's a boy! Again, since this one is 3 feet tall I added the rice to the bottom. I wasn't sure how to go about with the hair. I think it looks ok, but it could have been better. I am a bit disappointed, but tired, so it'll have to wait until the morning. :)
Please excuse his attire! I haven't made any clothes yet.

Christmas cooking dress

According to my daughter this is not an apron, but a "cooking dress". Works for me! Here is a Christmas themed apron for my mother in law. I had my daughter help because I knew that is the only way she would ever use it! It is an apron for an adult, so excuse how ridiculous it looks on my four year old model. Also, ignore the bed head and impromptu sister appearance (how I dare I try to take a picture with out her anyhow!?).