A New Top

I made this adorable new top. The pattern requires knit fabric and actually has adorable long sleeves, but I didn't have any girly knit or enough fabric for the sleeves soooooooo...

I am so glad I went for it. I made it in size 128 (a size too big I think).  The pattern you ask? It's from Ottobre 5/2006 named the Slavic-Style Tunic. Odd name I think, but totally cute design and easy to make.

Now I need to find some great knit to try it again. I kind of messed up the hemline, but I am very visual so every time I make a pattern from Ottobre for the first go around I tend to make multiple oopsies. For those of you who haven't used Ottobre designs for kids, they are fabulous but very limited in sewing instructions and utilize no line drawings for instruction.

Growing up can be tough

Someone is teething

Comfortable furniture and, oh yeah, the baby is cruising up a storm!

A while back I bought some great fabric from this Etsy seller (in Japan). I got some great knits and wovens. One of the knits is this cute car fabric. I bought enough to make pants a t-shirt (I totally screwed up the shirt last night). Lot's of un-picking if I want to salvage it. If you've been reading my blog for any time you know I'd almost rather lounge in this chair. 

 So for now the t-shirt sits on my sewing table crumpled into a ball.

Weekend Sewing

One of Chefs favorite shirts finally bit the dust. His loss, my gain. I love this fabric. He's owned the shirt for most of our marriage so the fabric is super soft from years of laundering. It actually reminds me of the feel of Heather Ross Mendocino line of fabric. I kept the front panel pocket and just cut the pattern around it. I like that the pocket is a little oversized for babywear. And yes, another Easy Fit Pant. What can I say? They are easy and they fit. I actually modified the pant a bit by cutting four pattern pieces instead of two pieces on the fold. So the pant has an inseam and side seams. I had to do this due to the nature of the upcycle.

Another pair...

Viva Las Vegas!

We are back from our family trip to Las Vegas. I say Las Vegas, but we actually didn't even go to the strip this year. My sister lives in the suburbs and we stayed as far away from the strip as possible. We did all that last year and I did not see a need for a repeat performance. 

The drive only took about 10 hours!!! yikes. The baby had a poop explosion in his brand new Britax car seat (installed the day before we left). I have no need to dwell on that matter much other than he had another poop-losion on the way home. If you knew what act of God it took to install the damn thing you would not be laughing so hard right now. I dread removing the cover to wash it.

 We had glorious weather. Hot. Hot. Hot. 95 degrees in the shade. I love that dry desert heat. It was difficult to keep the kids in enough sunblock. Did you know they make 100 SPF now? It still wasn't good enough. I was on serious sunburn patrol.

We hung out at the Green Valley Ranch pool and had the cute pool girls in teeny bikinis serve us food and drinks all day long. I loved this pool. There is a sandy beach for the kids and they have shovels and pails for the kids. I was worried it would be a bit of a stuffy atmosphere but there were quite a lot of children. I actually felt sorry for the adults because the hot tub was also filled with kids. It's a pretty swanky place, but they have a cool relaxed vibe. Apparently the "adult" pool is pretty wild on the weekends. My sister likes to hang out there... 'nuff said.

My sister is a helicopter pilot and we got to fly to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. AMAZING! It is a truly wondrous place. 

It was a great trip but I am glad to be back home. We weren't gone long but I feel like I have so much catching up to do. To start with... how the hell did we accumulate four loads of laundry on our trip? Oh yeah, don't remind me...poop-losion.

Summer Vacation?

This Friday we are headed to Vegas. Since we are taking all three kids I'm not sure you'd call it a vacation. Actually, we are going to visit my sister, and according the the older kids you would think we planned a trip to Disneyworld. She's pretty popular among the small folk.

The kids are all in desperate need of hot weather clothes. I've known about the trip for months (12 to be exact), so you would think I might have prepared a bit. Um, NO!

I have piles of fabric set aside to become shorts and t-shirt and skirts and hats. Ha Ha Sascha Romeo. Yesterday Luca asked me if I could pretty please with sugar on top make her a dress for Las Vegas. Since I had planned a virtual new wardrobe for her I felt a little guilty that nothing had been made.

So here is her new halter dress. She adores it and says it feels like a princess dress. I used a Whole Grain Baby pattern named the Halter Dress. I love how it turned out and it's a super quick dress to sew. The instructions are very basic but so is the construction of the dress so it doesn't really matter. The only thing I did different is add the bottom trim. This was for two reasons. One, Luca wanted a long dress and in order to keep the print on center I didn't have enough width to go any longer. Two, I wanted the halter portion to tie in with the body better. I used Anna Maria Horner's Festival in tangerine for the body of the dress and Heather Bailey Mod Bead in tangerine for the halter and trim. The match is awesome. 

Luca loves the dress so much she convinced me to let her wear it today to an emergency pediatrician appointment for the baby. Baby is fine and the dress held up well. 

I have another dress cut. She wants it even longer. If I didn't make it long enough I can add the bottom trim again.

So meanwhile it's only a few days until we leave and the house is a mess (I can't stand going out of town with a messy house), I haven't sewn anything for the boys to wear in 105 degree weather, and I haven't slept in two days because the baby had a temp of 103.1!

So much for dressing the baby in all handmade clothing. I swung by Baby Gap and picked up some cute items (on sale, of course).

Skirt Week

So I made a skirt for Skirt Week hosted by Crafterhours. I have been meaning to make a few skirts to go with my gorgeous new boots (thank you lord for Ebay).

It's just a self drafted simple A line skirt. No biggie, but check out those awesome boots. I haven't tried them out with my skinny jeans and I hope they look cute because I don't wear skirts all too often and I wear jeans damn near every day.

Sew Mama Sew

 Guess who's image made photo of the day on the Sew Mama Sew blog? 

How exciting! Here is my original post on these fun shirts.

Working into the wee hours of the night

Argh. I am very tired this morning. I thought I would quickly sew up a drawstring bag to hold the softie memory game, but I didn't like the way it turned out so I found this box that fits the game perfectly. I cut out some fabric and printed up a title tag on the computer and Mod Podged the whole thing together. Since today is the last day of school I was really cutting it too close for my taste. Once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator. 

As I look at this photo I realize I forgot to pink the edges of the fabric like I had intended and the paper got a little wrinkled. Oh well. It does have a cute vintage feel to it. 

p.s. In case you're wondering why there is Braille on the cover it's because Rocco is blind (this is a gift for his regular ed teacher).

Softie Memory Game and a Little Outfit

I had to pull together a quick end of the year teacher gift for Rocco's first grade teacher. Well, I didn't really have to. The room mom collected $20 per child (helllllllloooooooooo $400!). She got a $300 gift card for the teacher and $100 gift card for Rocco's aide (very nice to think of her too). I am curious about what you all out there give as teacher gifts. Is it just us crazy Californians that give that much money to the teacher? I'm not saying she isn't worth it, but year after year for two teachers and in the future three, that is a lot of money. I also have therapists to buy for... speech, OT, Vision. It gets expensive. I really appreciate what they do though.

Anyway, I like to give something a little personal so I made her 12 month old son a pair of Easy Fit Pants and a 90 Minute Shirt. I also made a little drooly bib for when he's teething.

I also made a softie memory game for her 5 year old. I used this great tute from Chez Beeper Bebe. I love the elephant graphic. Too cute. 

The last day of school is tomorrow and I just finished the memory. I still need to make a little drawstring bag to put it all in. Guess it'll be a late night.

This charming little bird has made a nest in the orchids outside my front door. You read that correctly... directly outside the front door to a building that houses three children, a dog and a cat! Can you say Grand Central Station? The funny thing is that just around the corner is our dining room table where my computer sits and as I type this I can hear the pitiful little screeching of her baby(ies?) ALL.DAY.LONG. It's cute for the first 15 seconds or so. 

This mommy bird is one busy lady. She brings her little flock bugs about every 15 minutes from sun-up to sundown.  When I took the above photo she had just come out of the flower pot. I tried to catch her with a worm in her mouth but she's a fast lady. I actually don't blame her for her location choice. Those cymbidium are amazing. This has been a stellar year for us. I have five pots around the front of the house filled with orchids and they are exploding with blooms. I barely water them and I certainly don't fertilize (I'm lazy that way). I actually posted about these orchids earlier this year.

It's Pahty Time! Whoo Hoo!

Let me start this post by saying if you don't have any interest in kids birthday parties then come back in a few days when I'm bound to post something about sewing. Or read ahead to hear about how I don't have any interest in them either.

Oh good, you're still here. Also, this is a long post so settle in and enjoy as I go into great detail on how I stress about the tiniest details when it comes to birthday party planning. 

Rocco has a Summer birthday and every year he gets the shaft. Finally this year he asked if we could hold a birthday party before school lets out so that all the friends he made this year can attend. I love planning a party but hate throwing a party. Especially with other people's children in attendance. I'm sorry, I like my kids, others not so much. Oh joy, this is looking like a lot of fun.

Since Rocco has his birthday in August I've been brainstorming since then. I kind of gave him license to pick a theme, but not really, because I don't do commercial themed parties (ie: Cars Movie, Thomas the Train, Oh my God Monster Trucks actually was proposed). So Retro Space it is! Good thing Rocco is obsessed with planets and knows an extraordinary amount of trivia related to outer space. 

Let me tell you the fantastic ideas that are out there in reference to this subject. If I had the party budget of Torie Spelling, hold on to your seatbelts, I would be a feature on Martha Stewart. (do any of you even get the reference to Torie Spelling? I watch a sh*tload of reality t.v.)

I'll just show you some photos of the highlights of my low budget party and at the end of this post I will list some of the great ideas I found/read about, but couldn't do because either I was on a budget or that I didn't want the other parents to give me that look. Oh ya, that look that says "Holy crap lady, he's seven years old for crissakes!" 

We held the party at a park for two reasons. 

1. Not at my house. No way, no how. Hello! You've seen what lives on my floors. That would mean I'd have to clean before the party and then clean again once they left. That would be twice in one week for cleaning and I didn't sign that contract thankyouverymuch (love you Chef!).

2. Rocco had to have a pinata. Most planned party venues don't want the mess.

 I found these fantastic invitations from letterspacepaper that come blank so you can run them through your printer at home. I've used invites from them before for two other birthday parties. I love the high quality card stock and they have quite a few great designs. I believe they will also print them for you if you prefer.

In the gift bags I gave glo sticks, "moon rocks", robot stickers, astronaut crayons, Dollar Store "comet balls" (that's what was actually printed on them) and the best part... a music compilation of some of our favorite children's music.

Oh how we love good kids music. When Rocco was little, before we knew he was blind, he was developmentally delayed and a super late talker. Listening to kids music would entrance him and you could tell he was concentrating on the stories being told through music. My particular favorite is Justin Roberts (he has a new album "Jungle Gym" being released 6/8/10 OMG I am so excited!) His style is I guess kind of folksy with great storytelling. I am not kidding I know the words to every song he's ever written. I'm telling you that means a lot because my own personal music taste is definitely nothing like this. I just lurve his lyrics and lovely storytelling. I think I'm going to drag the Chef and the kids to San Francisco to see him perform this summer. O.k. enough about him. Back to this darn party.

I used iron on transfer paper to make a t-shirt for me and Luca to wear. Rocco had this cute astrobot t-shirt already. I thought they were cute, but apparently most of the parents didn't get it because they all kind of looked at us weird. Do you get it?

We made a pretty cool cake...

 Got the idea online somewhere.

I found these adorable thank you cards at paper source. This is a great site for blank colored cardstock cards in various sizes. Love them!

 

Things we didn't do but I thought would be fun...

* Homemade tub of moonsand with tin foil balls as moon rocks

* Refrigerator box decorated as a rocketship

* Saturn ring toss

* Pin the spaceship on the planet

* If held indoors make one room dark with glow in the dark activities

* Astronaut costume and cardboard cutout background to take a photo of each child dressed  up and send as thank you's

* Seltzer rockets

And of course there is a cool place to get all things space related online. The Space Store.

The party turned out great. Glad it's over. Now I can start to stress about the next one.

Needless to say there are tons of great ideas to make a great astronaut/space party theme. I could go on for days and I won't. Yourwelcome.

Have any other great ideas to add to this theme? Just leave me a comment. Maybe one of my readers will use some of these ideas when planning their next birthday party.
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Before and After

I've been busy planning a birthday party for Rocco so I haven't had much sewing time. It's also the last week of school and I'm trying to finish up some home made teachers gifts. I am really looking forward to Summer break. What?!? I can't believe I just said that. That means all three of them will need to be entertained from morning til night. Guess I won't be getting much done. At least there's summer camp.

I did manage to make an infant gown that I kept from Vinny into a new shirt. Yes, another 90 minute shirt. I really liked the cars print and the cotton is very soft.

So there you have it.

We are such a fans of Heather Ross' Mendocino line of fabrics. Luca is busy designing Mendocino II for Heather.