Blog Review - At Second Street

I have become addicted to craft blogs. Notice I said craft BLOGS, not actual crafting! :D If it involves a sewing machine, sure! I'll try it! Unfortunately paper, glue and scissors are not really my friends. It takes me forever to think of something to do with them and it never turns out quite how I saw it in my head. But I do love to read about other people's fantastic ideas and see their cute pictures. I also get a kick out of all the fun, creative food ideas out there. It almost makes me want to bust out my cake decorating nozzles and my chocolate dipping... wait, nozzles? No, no, no, no, no. I'm not really a "fancy food" person. I'm more of a chocolate chip cookie person. :) There are SO many great ideas out there right now, though! Hence the craft blog surfing.

Super cute re-fashioned T-shirt dresses for her girls.

One of my frequently visited links is Sugardoodle. It is an LDS-run site that has ideas for activities, treats and inspiration for Activity Days, Young Women, Boy Scouts... you name it! I love to go there for ideas! I even have a little reminder that pops up in my Facebook feed from them that reminds me to go look at cool things if I want.

Adorable T-shirt hat that I really, really need to make for myself!

One day, one of those Facebook links took me to the cutest crafty blogs I had ever seen. I seriously loved all of her sewing projects and drooled over her food ideas and enjoyed her cute, upbeat writing style. Usually, I like some of the ideas in any one blog, but this one was just totally speaking my language. So, after clicking around for quite a while, I got curious who was writing this new favorite blog of mine. How shocked and excited was I to find out that we had lived on the same block as kids and she and her sisters were my sisters' best friends? (The one my age was a boy, or I'm sure I could include myself in there!) :D AND even better than that, the man I married has a family of cousins that are HER cousins, too! It was so fun to write her an email and give her props for a seriously awesome blog.

I love, love, love this unique craft! Seriously, how cool are these kid-inspired wall hangings?

So, if you want to join me in my all new crafty blog addiction, start with At Second Street and don't look back! The links and labels listed down the right side are a great place to start. I need to find someone with as cool of a donate pile as she has that she has made into so many re-fashioned projects. Say "Hi!" to Kalleen while you're there and tell her Diana sent you! ;D

The post that started it all... I really want to make some of these, too... for next year! ;)

Patches

Just like my Mom and other countless women progenitors before us, I have a gigantic meding pile. :) I'm actually quite proud of it. It's a symbol of my resourcefulness, talent and thriftyness, but only if I actually mend the clothing languishing in there once in a while! :)

So, one day I decided to sort the mending pile. I made a "would take 2 seconds" pile, "would take quite a while, but is still worth it pile," "oops, they've grown out of it" pile and a "not worth saving" pile. Miraculously, there was only about 2 things in the "oops they've grown out of it pile." That has previously been know to be a large portion of the mending pile, unfortunately. The biggest pile (by far!) was the "would take 2 seconds" pile. Split seams mostly. I sat down that day and put a bunch of beloved clothes back into circulation... you know, the one that goes body, floor, laundry hamper, washer, dryer, laundry basket, drawer, floor, drawer, body, floor, etc. :)

Another very large portion of the mending pile pie chart were pants with torn knees. They mostly belonged to my girls, but I only expect that to last as long as the cold weather does. Once my boys are outside more often, so their jeans will also land in the mending pile with ripped knees. I've tried several different strategies to ripped knees. Cutting them off, those pre-glued iron-on patches you buy at the store that are the same color denim as the jeans were new which they most decidedly aren't any more, putting fabric behind the tear and zig zagging back and forth and back and forth. The ones that they always end up loving the most are when the patch shows and becomes part of the fashion statement of the pants.



So, this time I took a scrap of some really, really cute fabric that was already printed in blocks with cute animals on some and other patterns on others. Then I ironed the fabric, un-cut, to some scraps of wonder under I had tucked away. When I cut them apart, I had my own patches that were MUCH bigger than the puny ones at the store that are cute, but aren't made to cover a seam to seam tear in a pant leg. Before ironing my new patches to the pants, I performed some pre-surgery surgery by zig zagging the frayed edges of the holes together and trimming the really frayed stuff off.

Wonder under is not strong enough to be its own patch. At least not strong enough by my standards. To me, wonder under is a way to hold something in place until you can sew it down. So, I ironed my patches to cover the recent zig zagged scars on the pant legs and sewed them around the edges and with a big X from corner to corner. I decided to use filament thread that is transparent so that I didn't have to change thread a hundred times or have the thread distract from the cute fabric since I sewed right through the middle of them.

Now, I know that the cotton fabric on the denim fabric will not last as long and will probably get torn through again before the pants are outgrown. But then I will just add more cotton fabric patches over the top and they can be play pants until they are high waters. They like these better than if I spent the money on brand new ones anyway!

Winnah! Winnah! Winnah!

Okay, WHAT?! I won something? For reals? I really never do. And although everyone says "I never win anything," I'm the only one who can truly say that. I mean, the last thing I probably won was a game of Chutes and Ladders with my kids in which I tried to win by the tiniest margin possible. :D So, it's no surprise that...

This apron makes me feel like a million bucks!!

It wasn't actually my first choice (she's become so awesome, they're flying off the shelves! :D) but THIS is the one that was meant to be mine. It has my nickname on it and it is even more fabulous due to the out-of-the-comfort-zone-ness that it represents. I super love it! I wore it all day on Sunday like it was part of my outfit. :D I'm wearing it to the Ward Christmas party while I go find something to stir to feed my friends on Saturday morning. I'm wearing it to the next family party whether there's something to stir or not! I'm the new...

Glamazon Mom!

I love it because I won it and it makes me feel lucky! I love it because it's aqua and has dots! I love it because it has the most wonderful shape and makes me feel perdy! I love it because I never ever get to sew for myself and someone made it just for me! It's like tying on a burst of self esteem!

And that, my Friends, is a very welcome feeling to me! ;)

Aprons by Amy

I almost never take the time to sew for myself as I always have stacks and stacks of things planned to sew and tons of ideas that never even make it out of my head. When my good friend and fellow Special Needs Mom posted this on her blog, I decided to go for it! You should, too! Start out by going over to Positively Organic and see a pic of my beautiful friend in her awesome apron. The gal that sews the aprons is from Tooele... yet another Awesome person from Tooele... coincidence? I think not! :D Enjoy!

UPDATE! Wanna know if you're a winner or not? When the envelope looks like this!

There, I fixed it!

Landon has a favorite pair of sandals. They have Buzz Lightyear on them and he can put them on himself... they're my favorites, too! All they really are is flip flops with elastic around the back. When they started getting too small, we tried to replace them with actual flip flops that had Lightning McQueen on them. Let's just say that flip flops and three year olds, at least my three year old, don't really mesh very well. So, taking a cue from Buzz, I rigged up ol' Lightning with fair success. I was going to cover them with fabric and sew it with the elastic stretched and all that "fancy" stuff, but then I realized that he is 3, he doesn't care! And all I really care about is that his shoes stay on his feet. So, without further ado, here's my project in pictures.

Buzz is actually in very good condition considering he wears these just about every day. I should re-phrase that... he wears these for several minutes in a row several times a day.


The white's a little bright, but I'm sure he can take care of that in short order.


Here's his cute feet. His feet really are that blurry in real life, they're hardly ever still!

P.S. If you ever need to waste some time (who doesn't have WAY too much time?) here's a site from which I borrowed the name of this post that is very entertaining.

Reflections

My sewing reflects my life. When I was younger (a lot younger) my Mom would buy me fabric so that I could make my own clothes that fit in the style of the day, but fit me and my gangliness. As I took classes in high school and college, I sewed things that fit into the assignments and time alotted for sewing during the years of cramming of information into my brain. When I got married, I tried to sew for my husband... boys are so hard to sew for! And when the kids came, thus ended the era of sewing anything for myself! As the mirror shows, my life is not all about me right now, it's about my kids. Keeping them bright, shiny and happy is my life's goal. :D When I have time to sew, I sew for them. Like I said, my sewing reflects my life.

So, when I gave myself the challenge of sewing myself a 50s inpsired dress, I got really excited. It's been a coon's age since I've sewn anything for myself. Do you know how long a coon lives? Me neither! :D But I know that in order to be concious to put the oxygen mask onto my children, I need to put my own mask on first. Knowaddimean? So in small and meaningful ways, I'm trying not to forget myself.

As in times of yore when life was all about ME and my Mom was the one with the check book at the fabric store, one of the reasons I have chosen to sew me a dress rather than to buy one is fit. Store bought dresses of this variety hit me in that weird place that looks too long to be short and too short to be long. It's called the 'awkward length' and I excel at it! :D

So, I fell in love with this pattern:



I actually really love the featured pink dress, but I'm not too crazy about the colloar, so I think I'll end up going for the yellow one. Cute, no? To me, this is what my Grandmothers would have worn as more of a work dress... the kind you change into after Church on Sunday to shell peas in or something. The dress that stays under an apron much of the day as she whirls from task to task. I see myself wearing this dress on a hot day instead of shorts, on a date with my hubby, to a meeting at the school... somewhere between dressy and casual.

I have yet to find the perfect fabric for this project, but I'm having an awful lot of fun looking! Tell me what you think of the pattern and I would LOVE to hear your fabric suggestions, but remember that if you're reading this on Facebook, to click the link and leave the comment on my blog, pretty please! ;D

Simplify

This is the one and only resolution I am making for myself. Simplify. I am only going to do the things, keep the things and think about the things that will make me happy, keep me close to the Lord and make my family stronger. My mind has already been reeling with things I can do (or stop doing) in order to accomplish this and I figure the best way to be held accountable is to openly declare my attempts and hopefully results. :)

The first thing that came to mind was simplify the way my house looks. There are many ways to describe how it looks now... lived in... broken in... an obstacle course... sanitary clutter (my favorite). You see, it does get cleaned regularly and I even get down to the scrubbing, vacuuming and disinfecting stages of things. But the clutter, well, now the clutter just keeps on creeping in. No matter how many times I put it away, it ends up right back on the floor. I often say in exasperation that I wish we had less stuff, but I never actually do anything about it except to keep right on picking it up and putting it back away. My goal for this year is to get rid of unnecessary things if only to avoid the laps they make from the shelf to the floor and back again. I would love to be so magnanimous as to donate them to a specific cause, but in light of simplifying, I will just hope that the good people at D.I. will price them such that someone who really needs them will be able to afford them easily. :)

An interesting thing happened to me during this past Christmas season that has driven my perspective on simplifying my life. I love to sew a lot for Christmas. It does tend to save money, but it also gives me oodles of time to think about the people that I am sewing for. By the time I have finished their gifts, I have imagined their response to the gift and reminisced on our shared experiences and thought about how much they mean to me and why I am spending my time on them instead of my money. However, this year I decided that I wasn't going to panic if things weren't finished on time and sew until the wee hours of every night right up until Christmas Eve. I wanted to enjoy it and all of the other things I sometimes miss out on when I sew obsessively. Instead, I prioritized my list with the things that definitely mattered that they were done early, such as those to be sent far away, and the things we had decided would be the "big" gifts for our kids and so on. As a result, I didn't get everything done that was on my list in time for Christmas morning. *GASP!* And it was okay. *Gasp! Choke! Bug eyes!*

I stopped sewing during the day right before my kids' first day of Christmas break and only sewed at night after they were asleep, making sure I went to bed at a good time. And you know what happened? I was happy. I enjoyed my kids while they were home (for the most part... I'm not THAT patient). I baked and made dinners that had thought behind them instead of "freezer surprise" every night. And I didn't hear anyone complaining Christmas morning. I don't sew for people in order to stress myself out and this year I made sure that didn't happen.

I really want this to work and with 5 kids it's just got to work or they will grow up remembering a stressed out, disheveled, screaming Mommy and that is just not an option. They grow up way too fast and I don't want to miss it! Wish me luck! ;)