Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Halloween madness


Happy Halloween! yay!

Tonight will consist of:

watching Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy
making green frog eye salad, broccoli & mozzarella pasta, fun orange jello, and cookies
passing out candy with Talmage to all the little trick-or-treaters
rocking out to my monster mash mix tape 
keeping Charlotte asleep through the obnoxious door knocking and screaming kids
monitoring T's sugar intake....
hopefully not pulling out my hair from the madness of it all


wish me luck.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

ruffle hem dresses

So a few months back, I went to Joann's and picked out of a bunch of pretty fabric with no inclination as to what I would use it for. I do this sometimes...it's not a money waster, really, because I ALWAYS find something to make...

This particular fabric was all pretty girly, so I knew it would be something for Charlotte. I decided to make dresses. Any kind of making of clothes is really difficult for me. I'll admit that I have no clue how to read patterns and I hardly ever measure fabric. I don't know any fancy stitches or tricks. BUT I do know how to make a tube, cinch it up with a basting stitch, and attach it to a onesie. I can do that :]

Initially I was gonna make them all the same, but soon discovered how many fun & different ruffly styles there are! So they are all a bit different from the one another. I was up till 11:30 sewing them all last night. I'd be lying if I said that sewing wasn't addictive and therapeutic. *Not all the time, but once you get into the groove it is hard to stop!

So, what do you think?



Way back when I got the fabric, the first thing I did was make a bunch of hair things for C. And now they match the dresses! yay :]






Now, if I could just find a little grey cardigan to go with some of these dresses, I would be set. Oh how I love having a girl...

Because I have quite a few friends with little girls, here's how to make these:
Buy a pack on onesies, or use ones you already have. If you want to make these for an older girl, just use a t-shirt instead.
Buy 1/2 yd. of fabric(s). Pre-wash, iron. You will need more fabric if this if for a child over the age of 1.
Cut to chosen dimensions. For my 8 mo. old daughter, I bought 6-12 mo. size onesies and cut fabric 15 1/2 in x 36 1/2 in. 
Hem long sides first. One long side normal hem, the other a basting stitch for ruffle.
Ruffle up fabric so that it is just long enough to wrap around outside of onesie.
Sew short sides together inside out.
Turn right side out.
Pin and sew to onesie, sewing OVER the initial basting stitch to reinforce it.
and that's it!

I love this dress because you get to sew the fabric to the outside, instead of inside out which is a HUGE pain since you can't really see how it's lining up.

I promise you it's easy & simple. If you don't sew, this is easy enough to do for a first project with the help of a friend :]


Can't wait for all the Sunday's to come when I can dress up my sweet babe in all these ruffly outfits!

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Thursday, October 25, 2012

geek & chic

warning: LOTS AND LOTS of pictures this time. loads.

I love Halloween. Not so much the gory and scary stuff, but the sheer fun of everything else! I love thinking up costumes and executing them, passing out candy to all the little kids, and decorating my house with pumpkins & other decorations.

This year, call it laziness, but I did NOT feel like making costumes. But I was okay with making accessories. So...I found stuff we already had and elaborated on it. At first Talmage was gonna be a robot (because he's OBSESSED with them), but looking at pictures at little boys in robot costumes was overhwleming. Not only did they look extremely uncomfortable in those dryer hose arms and big boxes, but some even had electronics attached to their front. I thought, "whoa. maybe another costume choice...?" After all T is too young to even care...

The easiest choice was to dress him up as nerd geek (nerd is slightly derogatory, right?). All I had to make were the glasses. Woo! talk about cheap. and I like cheap.

I also made some little book covers...the idea was too cute to resist. He was such a sport- went right along with my little pretend geek story!




























I love how cheesy he can be! Such a little ham. hmmm now I want ham & cheese...

Charlotte's costume literally came together like two days ago. I already had a tutu that my sister-in-law made for her. We used it for her newborn pictures and amazingly it STILL fits! So I thought, "Ok. tutu. She could be a fairy...or a princess..or a ballerina!" I liked the ballerina idea because it wasn't as common as the other two (thought plenty common still I'm sure). To take it one step further, and make her even cuter, I came up with...

SHABBY CHIC BALLERINA! so exciting I know ;)

All I had to buy: some tiny ballet shoes, material for flowers, pink ribbon & elastic, and ruffly fabric for top. So easy.

As we walked out the door to the park, I grabbed some turquoise pearls that I thought might look cute. So glad I did! They went along with the outfit perfectly! And she loved to chew on them, which was the best part of course.

The little pearls on her wrist are from a strand of dress pearls I had a little girl :)















































She was happy when we were done taking pictures. Although it was a beautiful fall day, it was still nippy!


Happy almost Halloween everybody!