Fall Button Tree Shirt

In case you missed my guest post on Tatertots & Jello on the 2nd, here's what I shared! Also, make sure you check back next week...I have a giveaway for all of my awesome readers!

Today, I wanted to share a project with you inspired by my favorite season - fall! This fall button tree shirt is a really easy sew, perfect for beginners. You just have to have lots of patience to sit and hand sew all the button "leaves" on.

Here's what you need:

• Download my free tree pattern HERE
• A shirt
•  Brown fabric for the tree
• Sewable interfacing, like Heat 'N Bond Lite
• Lots of buttons in fall colors
• Basic sewing supplies

First, follow the directions on your interfacing to iron a piece of sewable interfacing larger than your tree image to the back of your fabric. Don't peel the paper backing off yet.

After your interfacing is ironed on, print and cut out my tree template, then trace it onto the paper backing of the interfacing.

Cut out your tree and remove the paper backing.

Using a hot iron, iron your tree onto your shirt following the interfacing instructions. Sew around the perimeter of your tree to secure (use stabilizer if needed, knits can be tricky sometimes.)

Now is where the patience part comes in! Dig into your button stash for some fall-colored buttons. Using a needle and thread, hand sew buttons around your tree until you're satisfied with how it looks. You might want to grab a snack and put on some of your DVR'd TV shows for the next hour or so while you're at it.

After lots of hand sewing, you should have a cute new fall shirt for your little one!

Now go find a big pile of leaves to jump in!

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

FroYo Shirts: Guest post with Come On, Ilene!

I found Come on, Ilene! just recently while blog stalking surfing and ever since, I've been hooked. She bakes, she sews, and she had the GREATEST bicycle-themed wedding that you have to check out. The tutorial that really caught my eye was for adorable FroYo shirts she made - I just love all the bead "sprinkles"! I'm so glad to have Ilene here sharing it with you today so you can make one too!

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Hi! I am ilene from Come on, ilene! Thanks for having me here, Jen! I am honored to be guest posting today. My blog is much like Jen's - full of tutorials, recipes and crafts. It's basically a collection of whatever is cooking up in this crazy little head of mine. Here are a few of my most popular posts (click to see full tutorials):


Today, I am sharing with you one of my favorite projects- how to sew frozen yogurt appliques!



We had some friends who were contemplating opening up a frozen yogurt business so I wanted to surprised their daughters with cute little froyo shirts! I'm totally loving this frozen yogurt fad, I could eat a large cup for breakfast! If only froyo stores were open that early. There is a place near our old house in Boston that had this awesome mojito-flavored froyo. Pile mochi on top and I am in heaven!

The froyo design was appliquéd onto plain T-shirts. This is a great project for using up scraps of fabric and mismatched "orphaned" buttons. I didn't have a pattern so I just drew one up with a sharpie. I tried hard not to make it look like a big cup of doo-dee:



Cut out the pattern pieces with scissors:



Then trace the pattern onto your fabric using disappearing ink:



To help the fabric pieces stick to the shirt, I like to back them with Heat N Bond iron on adhesive. You just iron on the paper-backed adhesive onto the back side of the fabric:



Then peel off the paper. Cut out the pieces and iron onto the shirt. The heat will activate the adhesive and bind the fabric to the shirt:



For the spoon, I cut out a silver piece of silhouette heat transfer material and ironed it on.

Now comes the tricky part, embroidering all around the design. This requires lots of patience and slow stitching. I used a zig-zag stitch all around:



Here is a great tutorial on how to appliqué. It definitely takes some practice!

Now comes the fun part! Adding buttons, swavorski crystals and beads as "toppings"! The girls love all things sparkly, so I wanted to add some bling!





And that's it! Two unique froyo shirts for two very special sisters!



Thanks for having me, Jen!! For more of my ideas, come visit me at Come on, ilene!

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How cute are these shirts? Frozen yogurt is all the rage in my town (I can think of 4 separate frozen yogurt places within 7 miles of each other), and I'm definitely a sucker for ice cream myself, so this project caught my eye right away.

Thanks for sharing, Ilene! Go check out Come on, Ilene! and see her other great projects, I'm sure her blog will become one of your new favorites too.

The Rules of Trick-or-Treat

Thank you all for your sweet comments on the passing of my grandpa on Saturday. All of your prayers and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

I know Halloween was a week ago, but I never got around to posting any pictures until now, so hopefully you don't mind some Halloween pictures and a little rant :)

(we never did get one where both of them were looking at the camera)

This is the first time my husband and I took the kids trick-or-treating so I guess you could call us amateurs, but as someone who trick-or-treated until I was 14 (yes, I just admitted that - I like candy!) I like to think I know how this Halloween thing works.

When I trick-or-treated, I followed a few simple rules:

1. Trick-or-treating begins when it starts to get dark.
2. If you plan on giving out candy, put your porch light on. Extra points for people who put their garage lights on too.
3. If you have your porch light on, I will ring your doorbell and ask for candy.
4. If your porch lights are on and I ring your doorbell, don't act surprised that my I am there and offer me a banana in place of candy.

We took the kids around for an hour and they barely got any candy and most people with their lights on said they didn't have any candy for her. I guess maybe Halloween isn't what I remember as a kid. My brother and I would go out as soon as we possibly could, then trick-or-treat until the last minute. The houses with their porch lights on meant "I have candy, come and get it!" Garage lights alone were iffy, those were probably the people hiding in their living room snickering as poor children rang their doorbells in hopes of candy. And if you were one of the people who left out a bowl of candy, I applaud you.

Near the end, my dad would drive us a few miles down the road where the mansions were and we would get full-sized candy bars. We would come back with several bags full of candy and when we got home, we would dump it all on the floor and sort them into categories: Chocolate, Hard Candies, Gross Candy For Mom and Dad (Dum Dums, Tootsie Rolls, etc.) Then for the next year, we would ration our candy out each day until it was next Halloween.

It was still fun, but I guess I'm a little sad that Halloween isn't what I remember. Or maybe I just went to the wrong neighborhood?

Guest posting on The Dating Divas

I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend! I just wanted to pop in and tell you that I guest posted on The Dating Divas yesterday and shared my tutorial for the Necklace Tee! Sorry for the late notice :)

The Necklace Tee was actually one of the first projects I did when I really started to get into craft blogging more. I had seen these kind of shirts for adults and thought, "Hey, I could totally do that!" Those kind of projects are my favorite kind! They're the ones where you can grab a handful of supplies that you already have on hand, sit down for half an hour, and whip out an awesome project. It's even no-sew - well almost, just a little hand sewing for the ribbon bows. 

So come check me out at The Dating Divas and say hi! And while you're there, check out all the great dates the Divas have put together to bring you and your better half closer together.

Life is precious

Yesterday I lost someone very special to me: my grandpa.

My family has known for awhile that his health was declining, but death is never easy, even when it's expected.

Actually, it came as somewhat of a shock to me on a day that was otherwise typical and ordinary. I got a call from my mom at the end of the work day He was admitted to the hospital due to poor health and the doctors thought that it was probably time for the family to gather to say goodbye. A couple short hours later, he had passed.

We called him "Pappy,"  and he has always been a fun-loving kind of guy, even mischievous at times. He was always making jokes and, even though he had diabetes, I would always catch him sneaking ice cream when my grandma wasn't watching. Maybe that's where I inherited my sweet tooth.

One of the things I was worried about over the past year as his health continued to decline even more was that he might never meet my son. He lived in Ohio, so I saw him only on the holidays when the whole family would get together. He met my daughter on her first Thanksgiving, but since our move to Tennessee, my son had been born and he hadn't had the chance to meet him yet.

This past July, we made a stop in Ohio on the way to visit my husband's family and Pappy got to meet my son for the first time.

While both of my children are still too young to remember, I'm so glad that we made that trip so Pappy could hold both of his great grandchildren.

Even though I know you're in a better place, I'll miss you, Pappy.

Guest posting at Tatertots & Jello!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm guest posting over at Tatertots and Jello today!!

I whipped up something a little fall-ish to celebrate my favorite season - and as an added bonus, I actually got to use up some of my button hoard.

Can we all take a moment of silence in honor of the fact that I actually got a holiday-themed project up before the actual holiday is a week from being over? And can we all just pretend for a moment that fall is actually a holiday?

Awesome, glad we got that all straightened out.


So anyway, head on over to Tatertots and Jello and check out my Fall Button Tree Shirt tutorial. And while you're at it, show some love! Because all you need is love. But comments are nice too :)

You guys are pretty stinkin' wonderful

I just wanted to take a minute and talk about how awesome you guys are. No, really!

I really started to get more into blogging this past February and man has it been an exciting journey. Some days, I'm tired or I question if people even want to read my ramblings at all, and then I get an awesome email in my inbox telling me that you were inspired by one of my projects or one of my goofy stories, and it encourages me to continue. While I've never met most of you in person (except of course my husband who started following my blog at the beginning because that's pretty much a requirement of being married to me I think), I've been amazed at how encouraging and uplifting the craft community is.

I don't have the best pictures or the best projects, I don't post every day, I'm terrible at staying up with all of the trends out there in blogland, I have an inbox full of 39 emails that I haven't responded to yet (yes, I counted, and I'm sorry if you're one of the 39!), and I have no sponsors offering awesome giveaways. Yet you guys still read my blog and send me sweet emails and comments.


So thank you for reading and supporting me, you guys rock! If I was a big, famous blogger, I would give you each a Silhouette or something equally as awesome. Unfortunately, all I can offer is a big ol' cyber hug. And for those of you who don't like to be touched, high five!


While I may never meet any of you in person, I really appreciate you. You make me want to continue blogging and sharing my life with you. Thanks for caring :)

And on a completely unrelated, somewhat random side note, I'm psyched to tell you that I'm going to be guest posting over at Tatertots and Jello tomorrow!! 

I keep pinching myself to see if I'm dreaming. Here's a little sneak peek at what I'm sharing:

Ooh, how very vague and unhelpful of me!

I got into the fall spirit with this project - fall is my favorite! (I channeled a little Elf there haha)

Anyway, I hope you'll come visit and check out my project and leave lots of sweet comments so I don't look like a complete loser or anything ;)