kirstencan

Thomas Squared

We recently went to the Day out with Thomas adventure.
It was our second year - so the boys were more than excited this year.
This is boy heaven at my house!

Waiting impatiently for the gates to open (I highly recommend going early in the morning!).

Thomas put his head on the railing and just absorbed every minute of the train ride -just like last year.

We love the open cars - and it was a beautiful morning with a nice breeze.

We want to try a longer ride with the kids in the fall  - I just worry about taking them on a 2 or 3 hour ride - what with the carsickness and all...

This engine was dubbed the 'Polar Express'.  Seriously, Thomas LOVES this place!

The morning ended in tears (like last year) because Thomas wanted to stay (forever) and play with all the toy trains - and there were just a LOT of people in that tent and he was getting frantic.  Just a little overstimulation, and he was fine when we got back to the car.

Gotta love this chubby fist - I do!

Robot Booties

Me, to Aaron: Do you want to see what I made during naps today?

Aaron replies:  I always want to see what you make during naps.

(Good answer.  Good man.)

Anyway, these robot booties (*made from Joanna's tutorial) are for my new nephew, Samuel.  He was born on May 30th, almost a month early - and early photos show that he is quite the cutie.  He's the first cousin for my kids on my side of the family - so it's very exciting!

Welcome to the world, Samuel.  I hope you fit into these someday.

(And, upon noticing that one of the robots is right-side-up and one upside-down, Aaron nicely commented that it was convenient so that the baby could look at one, and other people could look at the other.)

Good man.

 

twirly

My mom wanted to try out Erin's Twirly Skirt tutorial.
Who was I to stop her?  :)

The results are very twirly indeed.

I don't usually make clothes.  Embellish, yes.  My mom is the true seamstress in the family.  One of the cool things about that is she gives me the scraps to make headbands or t-shirts that coordinate. Matchy Matchy!

I made Princess the flower shirt.  I was going to put the flower in the top center, but this shirt had teeny stains on the bottom corner.  A few strategically placed petals and leaves and voila!  You would never know.

Also, I had dubbed this the Summer of the Skirt.  For me.  I usually wear skirts only to church.  I wanted to make some more casual ones that would be nice and cool in the summer.

Here are a couple of bad shots of the two I've made so far - out of vintage sheets.

The yellow sheet appealed to me because the print was only at the top.  So I cut the skirt so that the print was only on the bottom.  It's a basic A-line that falls at the extremely comfortable Just-below-the-knees length.  I lined this one, as the skirt was pretty thin (but SO SO SOFT - I love how it feels). 

I like to wear it with that red shirt hanging next to it - but next time I'll try black.  Also made a headband to match.  Very summery and happy to me.

This  one I whipped up yesterday to go to a local (and surprisingly great!) performance of Thorougly Modern Millie.  I used pink bias tape for the hem, which I will be doing again - a great and even solution!  This is another A-line that is knee-length.  Very light and summery.

Anyway, hooray for the Summer of the Skirt (and the end of Skirt Month)!

Ladybug, ladybug...

We had aphids trying to ruin our cherry tree...

Being all organic-like, we (Aaron) decided to get some ladybugs...

1500!

Princess and Thomas came with us to release them around the tree - Monkey had fallen asleep already...

Princess wouldn't touch them, and Thomas couldn't take the 'tickling' so they'd fly off his hand.  He liked them, though.

All in all - pretty darn cool, I'd say.

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Have a great weekend, everyone - go do something outside! :)

Stamps

I wanted to make make my packaging for my etsy orders look a little more professional. 

So, I ordered 2 custom stamps with my 'logo' on them.

Fun fun!

One is small enough to fit on my tags - I like how they look now - although I shouldn't have practiced on them...

It also makes great labels when stamped on bias or twill tape.

I've also experimented with stamping on ribbon, stickers, (my kids hands),
and of course on my mailing envelopes.

(I got them here - very cheap and fast!  And they had a free shipping deal so I got one for Princess with her name on it - her bday is coming up!)

yard sale recap

Alright, I'm surfacing from my vacation to tell you about our yardsale.  (btw, vacation is great!  Yesterday I finished the border on my quilt, sandwiched it, basted it, QUILTED it (machine, obviously), and trimmed it. 
And cut the binding.  Almost there!)

And for those of you who couldn't care less about a yard sale (What?!) scroll down and see the cute  little crafty I made!

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Anyhoo, getting ready for the yard sale wasn't as bad as I thought.  My mom helped me go through the clothes (we got rid of ALL the baby/toddler clothes except what I was saving for Monkey).  Everything was marked 50 cents except the really nice stuff or outfits (which I bundled together).

This was my living room while we were sorting.  You definitely can't see it all here - clothes EVERYWHERE!  Even I was surprised at how much we had. There ended up being more than 12 overflowing boxes to get rid of. (Plus 3 of maternity clothes and then all the 'big' stuff).   I was glad my mom was there, as she encouraged me to get rid of things that I otherwise might have kept (like the MANY dresses she made for Princess - I did keep a few...).  It was a little 'OH! Sniff!' while going through some of the baby boxes, but it was alright.

For the most part, the sorting was pretty fun - and, thanks to my mom, we got it done in just one naptime.  It would have taken me a week by myself.

We discovered that Monkey fits (barely) into the amazing elephant costume that my mom made for Thomas right before he turned 1.

We also discovered that Princess fits (barely) into the panties (diaper cover) from her very first easter dress.  She was about 9 months old.  I kid you not, that girl was one F.A.T baby.

Out goal was to 1: get rid of stuff - we marked everything low in order to get rid of it (high chair, swing, exersaucer, dollhouse - the list just keeps going - we had a ton of stuff) and 2: earn enough money for the playroom toy cabinets we picked out from IKEA.  It was a modest goal, but we exceeded it, so that's happy and now we have IKEA spending money (It opens here soon!) Woo hoo!

I really enjoyed talking to the people who shopped the sale.  I loved the little mexican grandma who bought some handmade baby blankets, the girl (who stole my heart because she had a speech delay) who fell in love with the My Little Ponies, the young couple who are expecting their first baby and walked their puppy around in the stroller to try it out (they bought quite a bit).  The clothes sold really well.

It was fun.

One of my concerns was handling the money.  I didn't want to be rifling through a pencil box full of cash to find change, nor did I want to set it down somewhere (which I totally would have done) and lose it.  So.... I made a Yard Sale Apron:

This is Princess modeling it.  After I made it I realized I made it way small - it looks much better on her, so from now on it'll be her craft/doll salon apron.

It was just a quicky project - made with leftover fabric from a bag from last summer and some bias tape.  I was getting a little sick of the fabric anyway...

Basically the front is divided into 4 pockets:  I figured one for 10's and 20's, one for 5's and 10's, one for 1's and one for change.  It worked REALLY well - I would highly recommend it!  Nothing fell out and it was really easy to make change.  The only problem (slight) was when Aaron manned the sale for a little bit - He just folded it up and kept it with him.

But I didn't expect him to wear it.

Hi!

Happy Monday!

Just a quick note - the yard sale went well, it was pretty fun - except for the sunburn... and I have a quick yard-sale craft to show you.

That will have to wait a bit, though.  For one, my camera isn't speaking to my computer (again!), and the other thing is that Aaron took the week off.  It's our vacation at home week - and today is my sewing day!  So I will be back soon - I'm going to go spend some quality time with Stanley.  I have a long-overdue quilt to finish, some more t-shirt pants, and some skirts.  (But first I finished your cape, Adrienne!)

Have a great week - I'm sure I'll be popping in and out!

Cotton

A strange mist has settled over our yard...

Not really, this is one of the 'fun' times to live with LOTS of cottonwood trees in your yard.  (The other 'fun' time is when the sticky yellow pod-things fall off, stick to everything, get tracked in the house and stain clothes and carpet).

I tried many times to get pictures of the 'snow'.  When the breeze picks up it seriously looks like a blizzard!  It gets so bad we can't go outside (or hang dry our laundry - boo!).

The kids like to run around saying 'It's snowing!' and play 'cotton ball fight'.

Sometimes it falls down in big clumps, and drifts form in every corner.

I have to admit, it's pretty fascinating!

I just hope that it doesn't put a damper on our yard sale this weekend.  There is a lot more cotton up in the trees ready to fall!  It will be our first and hopefully only yard sale.  It's been a crazy busy week and I apologize for not being 'around' more!

Have a great weekend!

ABC Walk

Thomas' new fascination/addiction is the alphabet.  His interest stemmed from some videos he loves (links below), books, puzzles, etc.

We do abc's everywhere.

Outside we write the letters on the driveway with chalk, and he steps on each one as he says them

and he discovered we could make letters with sticks.

(sidenote: this is one of the things I like about homeschooling - even though we're not technically homeschooling Thomas - you can really find out different ways to motivate/interest your kid and learn which way they learn best.).

Inside he loves playing with the word whammer (nice lineup, yes?), playing with the foam letters in the tub, and looking at books.  I didn't realize how many ABC books we had until Thomas started pulling them out!  We also have a wood puzzle (from Target) that he really likes.

Princess was trying to teach the boys the other day.  I've also caught Thomas trying to teach Monkey by himself.  Monkey is more wary than attentive. :)

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So proud of this kid.  He knows all the letters and almost all the sounds - he's really close to being ready to read.  Something I didn't think would happen for a while!

Next I'm buying this book - we used a small part of it for princess (when she dragged us along on the phonics path). I don't like the 'scripted' part, but I do like how sequential it is.

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FYI: Here are the ABC DVD's that he (and my other kids) really like:

They Might Be Giants (Thomas really likes to sing 'ZYX' (the abc's backwards) from this dvd - a very new feat - his speech is coming along!)

Signing Time ABC's - I briefly mentioned Signing Time a while ago - LOVE those dvd's!  My little fine-motor-delayed guy is trying to sign all the letters (and succeeding at many!) - plus it's really reinforced many words for him - excellent for speech.

Challenger Phonics DVD's (we ordered just the dvd's after borrowing them from someone - we didn't get the whole set).

Fairly Random Projects

The good news is that Princess was able to move into her new room this weekend.  And we haven't seen much of her since...  She loves having a place where her brothers can't come in - unless she invites them, which she does, for short dance parties.  She kept asking if she could have an alarm clock for her new room, and while thrifting I found a clock radio/cd player.  She is almost as excited to have a cd player as she is to have a new room! This morning I think she'll be waking up to the 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' soundtrack.

I made this little gourd birdhouse for her room:

Aaron grew the gourd in the garden last summer and drilled the hole.  We were going to paint it, but I saw that Jane had decoupaged one and knew I had to try it (don't go looking up hers - it's way better than mine!).  The floral paper was what the nice people at TJ Maxx wrapped some frames in one time and I saved it. 

I just glued on the birds today, and I'm not sure how I feel about them.  I might try and take them off - wish I had taken a 'before' picture so you could help me choose...
I think this little girly birdhouse will end up sitting on top of her bookcase.  Or in a corner, on one of the shelves.

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For Mother's Day I made my mom these wonky potholders:

They were fun to make.  There will be more in the future.
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And a bit more applique?  Are you sick of that yet?

An elephant shirt as a Thank You gift for Thomas' speech teacher (who has a baby boy):

I don't know what it is about elephants.  I know, this is my third elephant shirt!  It's a simple but cute shape + Thomas brought Lumpy with him to speech several times, so I thought it appropriate.

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A tree shirt for Princess:

I kept doodling this silly tree.  I have to say I rather like it.
If you look close, you can see that the tree has a little pink face sewn on.  I realized when I picked that brown fabric that the face wouldn't show up, but I did it anyway, and it makes me happy.  (And Princess loves the face).

I purposely included red + pink so that the shirt will work with several different outfits.

The flower stems are a similar idea to this shirt.  I just love freehand stitching on my machine.  Too fun.

Alright, so that's my show-and-tell for today - sorry that it is a fairly random group of projects - hope you had a great weekend and I'll be back soon!