The Season of Birthdays Continues!

A few hours before my niece's fourth birthday party, Rory and I were at a clinic in Frisco being diagnosed with strep throat.  We decided not to share, but were disappointed to have to miss the party.  We finally were able to meet up with her this week to give her a birthday gift.  I used the Naomi Dress/Tunic pattern from Brynnberlee again for Kinsley's dress and a Simplicity pattern to make a coordinating dress for her new American Girl doll (as modeled by my Samantha doll from the '90's.  I think she was glad to finally get out of those thick Victorian tights.)

There's a pretty good chance that we'll miss Heather's birthday party this weekend, too, so we delivered her gift early.  This family is really on a roll with our birthday parties, aren't we?  I changed to top of a Shannon Bag for Heather by hemming the top of the bag with the lining side showing and encasing the top ruffle seam.  Not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me, but I think I like the variation.

We've been getting creative with gift wrap lately.  Sometimes it's just more fun to unwrap a gift (as opposed to a bag) but I don't always (ever) have wrapping paper that isn't Christmas patterned.  I do have a huge roll of butcher paper and random fabric scraps lying around...

Happy birthday, Mary!

Taken on the very picturesque dashboard of my car.

Still in love with T-shirts.

Andrew did some closet cleaning and added a few shirts to my pile of clothes to repurpose.  I made the kids some soft hanging-around-the-house pants from some old t-shirts.  I took a pair of pants that currently fit each kid, folded them in half and traced around the shape.  I sewed them up and put a faux drawstring tie on each one.  Super quick, super satisfying.   In all my "this is so fast!" excitement, I caught a bit of Rory's pants in the serger and made a teensy hole in the front.  Easy enough fix: I used a horned frog from another old t-shirt and covered the spot.  Looks like I intended it to be there, right?  Whew.

Rory was all about posing in her pants (which are a little short...I'll have to figure out a solution for that issue later.) With her juice.  No other way, Mom.  Sigh.  Jack wouldn't stay still enough to get a picture.  Go figure.  I'll probably make more of these for the kids as the weather gets a cooler.  Comfy pants = happiness.

A is for Arnold

A while ago, I made some baby name books for my friend Vanessa and was glad to accommodate her recent request for another.  Time consuming as they may be, these are really just too much fun to make.

The rhino has a horn, I promise.

Every time I make one, though, I tell myself that I'm going to make a pattern for the little pictures.  Except I never do.  Maybe I'll pretend that's part of the charm- the uniqueness of each one.  Yeah, that sounds better than the non-organized reality.

One for two.

Just before Halloween, I was a sports-related nervous wreck.  By that point, the Rangers had stopped and restarted my heart at least a dozen times.  TCU had a big game against BYU at Cowboys Stadium. We had tickets to see the Horned Frogs, and spent a fair amount of time squinting at the baseball game on TV in several of the boxes.  I had decided on making purple candy corns that morning to share.  And for good luck, let's not kid ourselves.  I was dressed in purple but decided that I needed to support the Rangers at the same time, so I whipped up a few little felt pins in the car on the way.

As it turns out, the candy corns worked.  To my surprise, they weren't awful.  I didn't think they tasted exactly like the packaged-for-fifty-years-and-still-taste-pretty-good store-bought ones, but not entirely gross, either.