The Handmade Dress

Molly got a sewing machine, Tim got a train table, and Maddie got a baby bed and a little kitchen. Then a lot more small stuff! I thought my house was so destroyed when I took this first picture! Then my mom and dad came and brought a VAN LOAD of gifts! Then I knew for sure it was destroyed! It took me half the day to my house to the point where it was tolerable! We were loving every minute of it! We had the best Christmas ever! Ben says I say that every year, but it seems to get better every year. The older the kids get the more they look forward to our little Christmas traditions. I love that, that it's the same every year and you know just what to look forward to. I will be back soon with all kinds of sewing and crochet projects, I promise! I am so busy right now with parties (yes, we are still partying!) and I am now working on book #2. I hope to have the book finished by March. Hope. The phase I am working on now is "the sewing phase", so for the ne...

Once again I wanted to thank all my sweet bloggy friends. I really have come to love your precious comments and emails. I wish you all a very merry Christmas! I hope it is full of memories. I can't wait to hear all about your holiday. I have had such a good week already. Friday we baked cookies in our PJ's at Nana's house (my mom). I took a few pictures of my little angels, they were so proud of their cookies. Maddie is such a ham! Every time I took a picture she gave me this same cute lil pose and said cheeeeeese. Molly and Tim love to help in the kitchen. Tim could not stay still for one picture! They all look like this! He is soooooo excited about Christmas, that's all he can talk about! A few days ago I showed him a picture of the train set he is getting for Christmas on the computer. I asked him if that was what he wanted and he said "yes!" I said "You will have to ask Santa." He immediately looked up and said " Jesus, pweese ...

A friend called the other day and asked if she could stop by. Why not? That's the easiest way! If you drop in on me you can't complain that the bed isn't made or that there is dirty clothes in the bathroom floor. You can say nothing of the smell of poopie diapers in the air. If the kids are still in jammies and it's after lunch, oh well, you dropped in! But if you call a day in advance I am obligated to make the bed, pick up the dirty clothes, take out the garbage full of poopies, and dress the kids! So by all means just stop by! So what do you think? Would you rather someone drop in or call a day ahead?

This is Tim's story. Here I am about a month before he was born at Molly's second birthday. She was Dorothy. Here we are in labor. I got to the hospital around 6am and had him around 12pm. I only held him for a second then they took him. He was not breathing good, so he had to go to the NICU. At four weeks early he was 7 Lbs and14 oz and 19" long. It was four days before I held him again. I will never forget that feeling. He had pneumonia. In all the early pictures my nose was red from crying. I never knew till then how bad you could miss someone who was right there, I just needed him in my arms. Ben was just as upset as me but he held it in a lot better. Thanks baby. Our new family of four! He was finally moved to a crib where I could hold him all I wanted during visiting hours, and boy did I take advantage of that! He then became another "doll" that I could dress up and play with! When we finally ma...

I have recently added a meter to my blog and wow! I never knew so many people would care what I have to say! Thank you! I wish you would all leave me a comment from time to time, I love hearing from you, it's so encouraging. There are a few people who comment but I have no way of getting back to them. Like Sheila, she always leaves the sweetest comments. I have so many sweet mamas who stop by. It's hard for me to believe anyone but my own mama would want to read anything that I wrote, with my horrible grammar, and bad pictures! God has blessed me with so many sweet friends. I want to thank you all for your friendship and support. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas! I will be pretty busy till after Christmas, but I will be back soon to show you Christmas dresses, hopefully some handmade gifts, and lots and lots of family pictures. As part of my Thank You I wanted to share some old pictures of Molly's arrival. I hope you enjoy. This was the day before Molly arriv...

That's what I call her, "Broidery machine", cause I love her! So many people thought it must be very expensive that I just had to show her off. This is the Brother Disney that is in most Walmart stores, and that's where I got "Broidery". But later I found her here for $299! I still kept my Broidery, but about 5 friends got this one and we all love it. If you have any questions just ask.

Yay! I love Christmas shirts! Especially when you can buy them for $2.88 and when your done they look like the $45 ones! We have our first Christmas party tonight with my grandparents and my kids can't wait to wear their shirts. I am going to start on their Christmas dresses tonight, hopefully, who knows! The kids are going to sing a special at church in a couple of weeks, so my girls "need" a new dress. Better go start cutting. Happy crafting!

Molly drew me a penguin and wrote "I love mama" underneath. I loved the penguin so much I decided to put it on a shirt for her. She was so amazed that her drawing was on a shirt! She tells everybody "I designed this shirt, want me to draw you one?", she's so sweet. I know it's dirty, she was outside playing when I took this picture. I have been making ornaments and I think I'm addicted. Hehe! I just think they are so cute. The one with "mama" on it is going to be a little apron. I like to do my kids a Christmas shirt every year, you know the applique tree or snowman with the monogrammed name underneath. I just wanted something a little different, so I decided to add beads and sequins (Kim I will talk to you about this later- I know I've got it comin). I gave it a try on an ornament. What do you think, too much? Molly's Thanksgiving dress. I made hers a little different than Maddie's, I criss-crossed the yoke. Then I made little...

I have been wanting a quilted tree skirt, so I finally made one! I cheated. And I am going to teach you to cheat too! I started with a quilt-not a very warm quilt, which is why we never used it. I think this quilt was a full size, maybe twin? I can't remember! Nanny do you remember? Yes.... Nanny reads my blog, and she got this quilt for me ON SALE! All of my store bought quilts came from Nanny, she takes care of me :) Then I laid my old tree skirt over the quilt being very aware of the design. Keep the center front of your tree skirt on the center of the quilt, Make sure the center hole of the skirt, is in the center of the quilt (mark it with a water soluble pen). I then cut the skirt out using my old one as a pattern. I took the binding off the quilt, and used it around the tree skirt. I am lazy so I just pinned mine in back but you could add ribbons. I think another edging would be pretty too (instead of the binding) like wide crochet lace or those trims with the fuzzy l...