Weekly Check In {Jan. 25, 2014}

Well it's been a crazy week, but crazy in a much different way than usual. On Sunday, I was sitting planning out my menu for the week and thinking about what we needed for groceries. I remember thinking 'oh boy, here we go with another busy week being out of the house every evening for the girls sports and activities!' ... Little did I know all that would change!

Here is my weekly catch up!

Sunday Bob headed out of town with a couple friends to ski for a few days. I know it's so good for him to do these things but I really miss him when he's gone! 

The girls and I spent Sunday afternoon cheering for our Patriot's {who sadly lost!} and watching movies and relaxing. Thankfully we had NO SCHOOL on Monday for MLK day so we took advantage by staying up late and having fun together. 

On Monday we drove about an hour from here to a HOBBY LOBBY! I had only been in one once many years ago and let me just say ... my hubby should be VERY happy it's not closer to my house! That store was AMAZING and we spent so much time {and money!} in there! I could have taken pictures for hours of all the cool stuff they had but I was so busy looking around I wasn't focused on taking pictures. I came home with a few cool things for my house, some scrapbook supplies and NEW fabric for my kitchen! {When my husband came home on Wednesday his first comment was 'wow, it looks very ... retro!'} =) 

After Hobby Lobby we went to The Olive Garden for lunch, then Savers for a little while. It was a fun girls day out! Monday night we THOUGHT Haley had bball practice, come to find out it was cancelled because of the holiday - so we enjoyed a quiet evening at home. 

{Haley is very into decorating her room lately, she picked these fabrics to make throw pillows for her bed.} 

The other thing I bought at Hobby Lobby was some denim duct tape. I have this hardcover Bible that I have had for MANY years and it's filled with notes I've written, verses I've underlined and all sorts of stuff. Well, it was falling apart and I just didn't want to get a new Bible because this one means a lot to me. So I bought the duct tape and got it all fixed up - might be a little redneck, but it's as good as new now!

Tuesday we went to school/work - but there was snow arriving mid-day so they called it a half day and everyone was sent home early. With that happening it also meant all our evening activities and sports were cancelled. 

I'm including this picture from our school, I just LOVE these pictures that have been hanging in the hall lately! I love walking down the halls and seeing all the neat artwork, it might be one of my favorite things about our school! I wanted to be sure I snapped a pic of these ones before they were taken down and sent home. 

And this is a project Haley had to do for Social Studies, I think her lady is drawn pretty well! 

It snowed most of Tuesday and Tuesday night into Wednesday morning ... so with that, school was cancelled for Wednesday - woohooo! We woke up to a winter wonderland!

Unfortunately the temps have been FREEZING this week, so other than shoveling the driveway, we really haven't been out to play in the snow. Wednesday was a pretty lazy day - did the shoveling, then worked on some of my sewing and we also just laid around being kinda lazy. And again, the evening activities got cancelled. 

Thursday morning was the most bitter cold day I've seen/felt so far this season. The moment I stepped outside to go warm up my car, my nose hairs froze! It was also the first time I'd seen the negative temps in my car this season. It was definitely a BITTER COLD day. We did have school and work that day, but we had indoor recess because it's too cold for the kids to be out. And because there was a band concert at the middle school that night the basketball game for the evening got cancelled. {How funny that I went from being busy every single night to have things cancelled every single night!!} 

Friday was another bitter cold day, we did have work and school again. AND the kids were indoors again! These poor kids really need to get outside and RUN around a little! This is probably the one thing I like least about winter, being cooped up for so many weeks on end. 

Friday night we went to the LUKE BRYAN concert with some friends. We went out to dinner at Sol Toro before the show {one of my fave Mexican restaurants!}. Our seats were great, the opening acts {Cole Swindell & Lee Brice} were great, the show was AMAZING and we had a great time ... unfortunately my hubby wasn't feeling great though {I'm certain he has what I had last week} but he toughed it out the best he could because he really wanted to see the show. 

And that's our week! Last Friday we had a half day, Monday no school, Tuesday half day, Wednesday no school, then Thursday/Friday were regular days  -this sure has been a strange week but hopefully next week will be much more back to normal! Enjoy the weekend friends! 

Homemade Gifts ~ Aprons for Kids

Ready for picture overload and another tutorial today? Good! Here we go!

I love to make at least one homemade gift for my girls each year. First, I like to be crafty and creative, plus I like for them to see that all gifts don’t have to be costly {or electronic!} to be enjoyed.

While shopping on Black Friday I found these child sized aprons at AC Moore and knew they would be perfect. My girls LOVE to help with baking and I thought they might like having their own personalized, custom aprons to wear each time we bake. {I also decided to make one for my niece who is the same age as my daughter.}

Here’s what you’ll need:

* Child sized aprons {you could make your own, but these were pretty inexpensive so I figured I’d save myself one step and just buy the ones that were already made}

* Some fun cooking accessories – I got this bag of wooden spoons for just a buck!

 

* Fun colored sprinkles

* A cute cookie cutter for each child, I went with butterflies so they could be used year round.

* A few different spools of coordinating ribbon

* Felt in some fun colors/patterns {our AC Moore had lots of colors/patterns of these felt squares.}

OK, let’s get started. First use construction paper and cut out the letters you want to use to monogram. Figure out how large you want the letter to be and what font or whatever. I just kinda winged it and started cutting until I like the shape and size of the letters.

Flip the letter over and trace onto the BACK side of your felt fabric …

Then cut the felt letter out and flip back over to the right side.

Next, for an extra layer of felt {just for fun} pin your felt letter, right side down, onto another piece of felt in a coordinating color.

Then, using pinking shears, cut around the letter, leaving just a little extra on the edges so you will see BOTH felt colors when you’re done ….

It should look like this when you’re done …

Now you’re going to take your apron and figure out the basic layout of where you want things to be. Lay out your letter and your ribbons and play around with the placement until you have them just where you want them.

Leave some overlap on the ribbons, you’ll cut off the excess later, but for now just let it hang over the edges.

Now pin the letter and ribbons to the apron so that when you sew, they won’t shift and will stay just where you want them. After it is sewn on, it will look like the picture on the right …

Then sew along the ribbons too. I sewed right through the middle of each ribbon, except for the top one. Since it had words on it and I didn’t want to sew over the words, I carefully sewed a line above AND under the words. If you have really wide ribbon you might want to sew the top and bottom, but otherwise these thin ribbons only need one line of stitches.

Then flip the apron over and pin down the excess of the ribbons …

Then you will sew a line right up the edge to keep the end of the ribbons in place.

At this point you can cut off your excess.

OK, here’s what we have so far … but I thought I wanted just a little bit more flare soooo …

I used some of the excess felt, some pinking shears and some cute buttons, and I made these little rosette kinda things to attached to the top corner of the apron. Just cut 3 different fabrics into circles, I totally winged-it here and just started cutting the felt until I liked the way it looked. {have you noticed I do that a lot!?} I sewed the bottom one down to the apron with my machine, then just used a cute button to keep all 3 together.

And here are the 3 completed aprons!!!

 

Now, when you give these as a gift, simply attach the cute cookie cutter, a wooden spoon and a jar of sprinkles. It would also be cute to give with a jar of ‘Cookies in a Jar’ mix!! And don’t forget to give a recipe for Sugar Cookie Cutouts with it too!

Happy Crafting!

Pillow Cover Tutorial

OK friends, today I am giving you picture overload! I wanted to share a super easy way to recover your throw pillows for each season. If you have a sewing machine and know how to sew in a straight line - I promise you can DO this! =)



First, here are my pillows, I covered them last winter and made the mistake of making the coverings permanent. After the fact, and after they got sorta grungy sorta fast, I wished I had made removable covers so they could be changed or washed at will.
So this fall I finally got smart and made removable pillow covers in this gorgeous deep orange color, sort of a plush suede fabric. Anyway, I put those away with my fall decor and was back to the light blue pillows.

Which could only mean one thing, a trip to my local discount fabric store was in order! They sell everything, EVERYthing, for $2.99 a yard - even the BIG bolts of home dec fabrics! So I picked out 2 co-ordinating fabrics, one in an olive green and one in a deep red. I was totally guessing that they would match well with my couches and I was right! The green is almost identical to my couch color!


Next, decide if you plan to wash your covers or not. For these, I knew I wouldn't. They'll only be out for about a month and they are dark colors anyway, so I'll take a chance that they hopefully won't get spilled on. And even if they did, the fabric was cheap enough I would be OK with it. If you DO want to wash them, make sure you buy fabric that is washable, and bring it home and wash it FIRST before you do anything else. Then, measure your pillows and determine about how long and wide you need your fabric to be.


Here's what I do ... These pillows were approximately 20-22 inches square. So my WIDTH measurement is going to be 22 + 2-3 extra inches for leeway. {You can always cut the excess off, but if you cut it too small, you might not be able to fix it later. Then, for the LENGTH, make it DOUBLE that 22x2 = 44 + some overage for the flaps and stitching. I did mine at about 52 inches length and it was probably a bit too much, but again, I like to be certain that it's enough. An easy way to figure it out is to take the length of fabric and wrap the pillow and overlap the edges a bit. There is a saying that goes 'always measure twice, cut once' ... in other words, you can't redo it once it's cut, so be sure to measure carefully a couple times before cutting your fabric.

So to recap - my piece of fabric is now 24 inches x 52 inches. Next, I sewed the edges of each end - NOT the long sides, only the 2 short sides. Just fold up the edges a bit and sew straight down the side. It should look like this ...

Then, I lay the GOOD side down, and flap the two ends over each other like this ...

See how the left side overlaps the right side a bit? You want that.

Next I want to measure to make sure that my final product will be the proper size to fit the pillows. As I said above, I want the final product to be 22 inches square, so I take my ruler and measure across to be sure it's 22 inches, if it's too short or too long, I can adjust how far it's overlapping until I'm sure that it's 22 inches across ...

Then, I pin all along both sides so that it will STAY 22 inches and won't shift when I start sewing. I pin a little further in so that I can sew without having to remove the pins as I go.

Hard to see in this pic, but here it is with both sides pinned.

Then I want to measure the opposite direction, so that I know where I should sew and again, so I make sure it will end up being 22 inches across. I use my ruler and a dark black pen and I mark where I want my stitch line to go on both sides ...

See how I'll be left with about an inch or so excess on each side? That is fine ... like I said above, better to be left with some excess than to have it turn out too short. The excess can either be cut off {later, after you have sewed!} OR, you can just leave it cause it will be on the inside of the pillow and no one will notice it anyway. {You can guess what I do.}

Now you're ready to sew!! Make a straight stitch all the way down both sides, following the dark black line you made for yourself.

And here it is all sewn - I know you can hardly see the thread except right at the end, but trust me it's there. Now you can remove your pins. Don't trim your excess YET! Wait until you make sure that the cover fits the pillow properly before trimming anything!

Next you're going to flip the pillow cover inside out so that the pretty side of the fabric will show ...

And this is how it will look once it's flipped.

See how the two ends overlap each other?

And now the fun part ... wrestling that pillow into the cover ... it can be something like wrestling an ornery two year old into a snowsuit, but it's worth it in the end!

At this point it's halfway in and you're thinking ... there is no way it will all fit! The second half is a bit trickier cause you have to get it smushed all up to get it under that bottom flap. Just keep squishing and smushing and it WILL fit! Then you need to do a little fluffing and adjusting after you've gotten it squished in there.

And voila! It's in!

And my oh my ... don't they look nice?!

I made two green and two red ... {sad thing is they look nicer than the beat up couches they're sitting on!}

And one last look ...

Now, I know this has been a very WORDY post, and you're probably overwhelmed, but TRUST me, it took me longer to type it all out and explain it than it did to actually make the pillows! This project should take between 30-60 minutes {for all 4!}.

Hope you enjoyed. If you decide to cover your pillows come back and let me know so I can check out your pics!

Oh yeah ... thought I'd include these little cuties too ... Christmas flower pins! Wouldn't they be so cute to wear on a black coat this Christmas season? I'm doing a craft fair on Saturday and hope to sell some of these along with LOTS of other homemade stuff I make. =)