I've been busy

 *This giveaway is now closed*

Sorry I haven't posted a project yet this week, my craft room has been looking more and more like an assembly line lately. I've been cutting so much, I have a blister on one of my fingers from where the scissors rubbed it raw.

I've been doing LOTS of tracing, cutting, ironing, and sewing.

Just when I think I'm done, there's still more to do.

Can you guess what I'm up to?


There might be something in it for the first person who guesses right... :)

My new flash!

So this came in the mail recently....

My brand spankin new Canon Speedlite 430EX II!

I have been so bummed about some of the pictures I've been taking lately. I so wish I had the ability to stay at home with my babies and craft during the day like many of you other lucky ladies out there. If so, I would be able to craft during the day and take pictures then when the lighting is perfect. Right now, I need to work to help bring home the bacon, so the majority of my crafting is done at night - which makes for over exposed, often yellow pictures.

It's really a huge let down when I work so hard on projects and then staging them just so, and then they turn out yellow due to poor lighting. But not anymore now that I have this baby! My husband spoils me. I won't even list the many things we've purchased for me this year. Let's just say I won't be getting any Christmas, birthday, or anniversary gifts for the next few years. And I'm totally cool with that.

I still need to read the instruction book to really get the hang of the new flash, but I'm already loving it in auto mode. I played around with the flash some to see how big of a difference it really made with my pictures (please ignore the messy craft room!)

1. Without flash

2. With standard flash that came with my Canon Rebel

3. Speedlite pointed directly at me

3. With retractable wide panel down

4. Speedlite at a 75 degree angle

I can already see a HUGE difference with my Speedlite. It lightens up the shadows and makes all my pictures look much more natural. Plus, since the flash is adjustable, I can use it to bounce light off the ceiling and walls for better pictures. I'm SO excited to start using it with all my projects in the evening. No more over exposed pictures that I spend forever editing. I'm one happy girl!

Scrappy Flower Headband: guest post with Nature's Heirloom

Hello MOR readers!! I'm so excited to be visiting Jen's blog today! My name's Nikki and I have a little blog called Nature's Heirloom where I like to share my musings, whatever they may be that day or week.

I LOVE sewing things for my little girl, especially when it's a hair accessory. Yep, I'm an accessory-aholic. So I'm going to share with you one of my favorites, a scrappy flower headband. Not only are they adorable, but they also help you used up scraps, AND they're super easy to whip together. Plus, I can use these for her, or for myself. BONUS!

All you need is some scraps of 3 different fabrics. One needing to be at least 29 inches long and 2 1/2 inches wide. Also, a sewing machine would definitely be helpful, and scissors.

Start by folding your long piece of fabric in half, width wise. Cut from the fold to the ends, tapering down as you go. The fat end should be around 2 1/2 inches wide.

Next, either serge the edges, or if you don't have a serger, leave the edges raw and sew a straight line 1/4 inch around the edges. Over time, the edges will fray a bit, giving the headband a different, but equally as cute look.

Next, cut a couple strips of your fabric for the flower about 1 inch wide. How long you will need them will depend on how big you want your flower, and how "tight" the flower will be pleated. So the length is up to you. But more is always better to start out with. Also, cut a couple leaf shapes of your third fabric.

Lay one "leaf" off to one side of the headband. Sew around the edges about 1/4 inch in.

Lay the next "leaf" down where you want and sew.

Now, take one strip of fabric and pleat it a couple times so it fans out (pleates being tighter on the bottom, more loose on the top). Press with the iron.

Add a few more pleates. Press again.

Repeat until the strip is completely pleated.

Start laying out your flower, making a large circle.

Once you make a full circle, sew it down.

Circle the rest around and pin in place.

Sew it down. You can do a cirlce, but I like to do a triangle.

I'm not sure why.

Now, you can either finish it off with a button in the center, which I do often, or you can do a fabric center, which I will now show you.

Take a short strip of the fabric and pleat it to make a "mini pleated flower".

Place that in the center and sew down.

And you're done! It only takes a few minutes, and you can whip out a whole bunch of them in one sitting!

You can also do different variations, like instead of one big flower, you make smaller versions of the pleated flower, and group them in threes. You can see a bunch of my variations on my post HERE. These will fit a child or an adult.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial! If you make any, feel free to add them to my flickr group HERE! I'd love to see them!!

Thank you Jen for letting me visit your corner of the blogging world!!!!

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Thanks for the awesome tutorial Nikki!

Make sure you go visit Nikki over at Nature's Heirloom and check out all of her great projects that she somehow finds time for in between caring for her 3 kids.

Some of my favorites are her Simple Burp Cloths, Little Man Toolbelt, and Fall Pom Pom Wreath.

When life hands you lemons, make a brand new shirt.

Are you one of those people who makes perfect projects every time? Like, all you have to do is just envision your project, carry it out, and it comes out perfect, just how you imagined? If you are, I am extremely envious of you. I am not one of those people.

Most of the time I come up with a project, tweak it. Tweak it again. Do the project. Realize something is off. Tweak it again. Finish it, then when analyze the crap out of it and see only the flaws.

If you're on Pinterest, you've probably already seen this picture, but it makes me laugh every time because I feel this way during a lot of projects:

Source

I'm definitely harder on myself than anyone else, and a lot of the time it's just be being a perfectionist. Other times however, it seems the craft gods are against me.

This weekend, I got it in my head to make a cute football-themed shirt for my daughter to show her support for the Steelers. I found this adorable idea for a shirt on Pinterest for a shirt with a football helmet appliqued on it and a bow on the helmet - you know, show some support for your favorite team but with a girly twist. I was psyched. Since I had a lot of fabric leftover from making my son's Steeler's-themed bedding, I decided to use that fabric to make a shirt for my daughter.

I got all excited about making the shirt and was even going to do a tutorial, then everything started going wrong from the beginning. I couldn't get the Steelers logo to fit right into my helmet template and had to cut it 4 different times, then I was finally able to cut it out and iron it on my shirt.

I began using a satin stitch around the edges, and about 5 seconds in my machine caught the shirt fabric in the feed dogs. After prying the shirt mentally cursing out the innocent shirt (because that's a lot more sane than outright yelling at an article of clothing), I moved the applique and started again. Halfway through, my machine caught the shirt in the feed dogs again.

I don't know if you can see it well in the picture below, but it's the spot with the tangled mass of thread near the top of the mask.

When it happened, I cycled through the stages of grief.


Shock and denial: "Oh no!! Not again! I can't believe this happened a second time! Wait, it's Ok. It's barely noticeable. Except when I stick my entire finger through the hole..."

Anger: "Argh, stupid sewing machine, why did you have to eat my shirt! See if I ever oil you again...that'll show you..."

Depression: "Now I'm going to have to start all over. I might as well just throw the shirt away."


Dialogue and Bargaining: "Please just make this thing work, I don't want to have to start all over again! I've already lost 5 hours of my life!"

Acceptance: "...crap."


There was no way of ripping the original design out without making even MORE holes, so I decided to whip out my felt and cover the whole applique.

I still kept with the whole "girly football" theme, but with a football instead of a helmet. Not what I was originally shooting for, but I was about done with the shirt at this point. I was planning on doing a tutorial, but by the time I finished the shirt, I had run out of sanity.

So here it is. A football shirt for my daughter that took about 6 hours.

She will be wearing it until she's 16.

Check out my sidebar to see where I link up each week!

Bye bye diaper bag

We may not be celebrating a first day of school like many of you out there, but we do have another big milestone that we've been celebrating lately: the end of the diaper bag.

Since becoming potty trained recently, Haley has no need for her diaper bag any longer. It's a happy and sad moment since we've been using the same blue diaper bag for her for the past 2 1/2 years. While I certainly don't miss changing her diapers every day, the diaper bag has been a constant presence in our daily routine. Wake up, give Haley her milk, pack diaper bag, head to daycare. Now that she no longer needs her diapers, why carry around the bulky diaper bag?

On a date night recently, Pat and I went to Target after dinner to pick up Haley a present for being so good at using the potty. While we were there, we found the perfect diaper bag replacement. It's pink, it's girly, and it involves glitter. Oh, and it came with a Rapunzel lunchbox. What more could a girl ask for?

Now, we put her stuff in a Disney princess backpack each day. One more step to her becoming more of a "big kid" and less of a baby.

Sigh.

Big Girl Underwear: tutorial for girl's 2T/3T underwear

At 2 1/2 years old, I can proudly say my daughter is fully potty trained! Literally the afternoon that I posted about Haley's ghetto fabulous potty chart, she made the final step and went #2 in the potty. This day needs to be an official holiday or something. I have never been so happy about poo.

When she first started potty training, we bought my daughter a couple packages of "big girl underwear" to use. Since she's now officially potty trained, she needed more pairs than we had originally purchased. I had a lot of knit fabric laying around, so I thought it'd be fun to make her some myself!

I will say that it took me a lot longer than anticipated to make underwear, but it's fun to see my daughter running around in underwear I made myself. I think it would also be fun to involve your child in making her own Big Girl Underwear by allowing her to use a stamp and some fabric paint or fabric markers to make designs on her underwear to get her excited about potty training.

Supplies for Girl's 2T/3T Underwear:

• Download the free pattern HERE
• Knit fabric for main pieces and bias tape (I used some t-shirts I had sitting around - don't use really thin knit though! Comfy jersey shirts work well for this.)
• 1/4 inch elastic
• Ballpoint needle (helps a ton when sewing with knit fabric)
• Sewing machine and basic sewing supplies

Step 1: Cut out your pieces.

Download and cut out your pattern pieces and place them on top of your knit fabric Trace around your pattern pieces and cut out. You should now have 3 pieces (left to right): your front piece your crotch piece and your back piece.

Step 2: Sew the front and back pieces together.

Place your front piece on top of your back piece, right sides together. Match up the edges of the crotch area and pin.

Sew straight across to join. When you open your piece up, it should look like this with the line you just sewed on the inside of the underwear:

Next, take your crotch piece and iron down each end 1/4 inch. Place on top of the crotch area, ironed side down, making sure to overlap the edge of your crotch piece with the edge you just sewed on the underwear. Pin and sew both ends down.

Step 3: Add bias tape.

You can buy bias tape from the store, but I chose to make my own out of knit fabric because it's much more comfortable for little legs.

To make your own, cut strips 2 inches wide and 13 inches long from your knit fabric. Fold your piece in half wrong sides together and iron, then fold either side toward the crease in the middle and iron. That's it!

Line each leg with the bias tape by sandwiching the raw edge of your fabric inside of the bias tape. Pin and sew down the length of each leg. This is the easy way of sewing bias tape on. I won't bore you with the details of the hard (and proper) way of sewing on bias tape :)

Step 4: Finish the leg holes.

Cut 13 1/2 inches of 1/4 inch elastic for each leg and use a safety pin to thread it through one of the openings of your bias tape on each leg hole.

Let the ends of the elastic stick out the ends of the leg holes a little.

With your underwear inside out, match up the sides and pin from the waist to the top of the leg hole. Sew the sides closed, making sure you catch both ends of the elastic when you sew.

Trim off any additional fabric and elastic that still may be sticking out.

Step 5: Create your waistband.

With the underwear still inside out, fold the waistband 1/4 inch and iron, then fold down another 1/4 inch and iron. Sew your waistband closed.

Cut 19 inches of elastic and use a safety pin to thread it through your waistband.

And now you have a homemade pair of big girl underwear for your big girl!

I won't embarrass my daughter by posting pictures of her little bum in underwear all over the internet, but just know that she loves them :)

Do you have a little boy who's potty training? There's a great tutorial over at Home Sweet Homebodies on how to make your own Easy On Potty Training Pants for little boys.

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