State Dish Towel

Between my 2 baby showers I had to give 26 hostess gifts.  I would love to be able to get something super nice for each hostess, I know how much time, energy and money goes into throwing a shower.  But the reality is I don't have enough monies to make that happen.  For me handmade items mean so much.  If someone takes the time to make something for me that means more than any gift that can be purchased at the store.    So I cranked out 26 gifts from my sewing machine.

I needed something that would pretty much appeal to 26 different women.  I may not know what style scarf or necklace they would prefer but I do know that we all live in Alabama and everyone needs at least 1 kitchen towel in their house.  Right?

These were super simple to make.  I just found an image of Alabama on google images and printed it out.  Traced around it BACKWARDS 26 times on heat and bond then ironed that onto my fabric.   A little zig zag stitch around the great state and you are finished.  These would also be cute with some rick rack or ruffles but simple was my goal. :)

I didn't want to just give a towel so I added some hand soap.  Bath and Body Works was having a 6 for $20 sale so I racked up there. 

Wrap it up tie a bow and boom you are finished. 

If you have the time to wait on shipping Groopdealz and Very Jane have some great gift options for little $.  They have new items everyday, just make sure you read the fine print on how long it will take for them to ship.

With all of those hostess gifts I have to write a lot of thank you notes.  142 so far.  I've been waiting on my special stamps to come in to mail the cards.

Anyone know why I chose Ronald Reagan stamps?  First one to get it right (that I havent' already told) gets a little prize!  Make sure your email is attached to your comment so I can contact you.

Vacation 2013

Eric and I went on a little vacation last weekend.  This vacation was a lot different from the ones we've taken the past few years.  It involved no airplane and no walking.  Even though we've been to the beach a million times, this time just the two of us went.  A first for us.

Of course on the last day the sun was shining like crazy.  We went out at 7am to catch a few rays before check out.  I am just now starting to learn about childbirth so listening to the waves and trying to compare them to a contraction was important to me.  Kind of weird, but the analogy helps me.  I haven't mentioned my desire to have a med-free birth to many people because they start to act like you are dogging them for having an epidural or just crazy but I'm going to TRY med free.  If anyone out there has been successful and has some tips please pass them along!  And yes this book was sort of weird and scary.

Saturday morning we mostly stayed inside waiting for the rain to stop and I wrote thank you notes.  We decided to catch the matinee of The Great Gatsby since the weather was pretty yuck.  Oh people I've been waiting for this movie since 2010 and it was my #1 thing to do before I had the baby.  I read the book every year and it was amazing how closely the movie followed the book.  After the movie we ate lunch and I may have had the best sweet tea of my life.  We hurried home to catch a little sun while it was out and the clouds came back.  It was cold but we sat on the beach wrapped in towels dang it. 

When you go on vacation alone there are a lot of self portraits.

On this trip I wanted so badly to eat at Another Broken Egg and Dusty's, get a tan, and swim in the ocean with my baby.  Well only the first 2 were accomplished.  I came back pale and the ocean was so extremely cold.  But Dusty's fried shrimp was so delicious and I smiled the whole time eating my southwest scramble from ABE.  Oh and they gave me a chocolate covered strawberry for Mother's Day!
I also wanted a pregnant silhouette picture.  The second we stepped on the beach the sun went behind solid clouds.  Oh well we are just blessed to be able to go to the beach!



Dutch's Baby Shower v2.0

This past Sunday was my baby shower in my hometown.  I was hoping it would be a simple shower because big events like this make me nervous.

Before we left my sister warned me that there were a lot of gifts and to just prepare myself because I would probably be overwhelmed.  She was right.

With all of those gifts to open I needed some helpers.  Dutch's big cousins were more than happy to help.  Baron asks about every 5 minutes what Dutch is doing and every time I opened an outfit that Chloe Beth's brother had she said "we HAVE to get their pictures together in their matching outfits". ha!

Here are some of the sweet clothes that were given to us.  In the south dressing your children is a big deal.  Even boys wear sweet little bubbles and lace.  Dutch mostly got bigger sizes at this shower so he will be good to go for a couple of years!

Lots of sweet gowns and sleepers.  Babies in gowns are my favorite and between our 2 showers, hand me downs and my purchases I think I have enough for Dutch to wear a different gown every day for the first few months of his life.  We didn't have any sleepers so I was really thankful to get several of them in bigger sizes to grow into. 

Stocked on blankets, little toys, towels and other fun goodies.

This handmade and hand embroidered bib is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen.  A keepsake for sure, drool will never touch this one.

Along with the fun things we also got lots of essentials.  There is only 1 thing on my registry that I don't have!  We are blessed for sure!

My mom and her sisters with my sisters.

Eric's mom and sister came from Texas, but his mom was sick so I didn't even get a photo with her.  These are Eric's brother's wife and Eric's sister.

 Thank you from coming from Memphis Elizabeth and Evie!  I was so happy you were there!

Now everything has found a place in our tiny house and tinynursery.  Just waiting on a tiny person to make his appearance! 6ish more weeks to go.

Randoms from the weekend

Today I thought I would do a random weekend post (that intrests only me) since we only have about 9 max of these left without a baby and I'm sure one day we will look back and laugh at how "busy" we thought we were.  Through the foggy lens of an iPhone:

We are trying to knock out some house projects that have been dragging before the baby comes.  One of them has been to finish the non sodded part of the back yard.  We are getting there.  Claire loves new plants because she gets to help water. 

Saturday morning there was a race that finished on the 50 yard line of the football field.  Claire and I walked up to the stadium Saturday morning to watch our friends finish.  She said why waste your time running when you can just ride around on the gator. 

After the race I came home and got started cutting out fabric for my next quilt.  It is an E & V quilt.  I wanted to make a triangle quilt and I thought I was so smart using my right angle triangle from college to cut my triangles until I was finished and realized that 2 right angle triangles = a square. Ugh.

I also tried to work on a sign for the baby's room but it was pretty impossible with stencils that aren't transparent. Who makes those?  Probably the same person that buys them.  I think we found an alternative and my goal this week is to finish that sign and layout the quilt.

This is pretty random but we tried out our new pineapple cutter.  It is pretty awesome and so much easier that the old way of cutting a pineapple.  Doesn't that empty pineapple look so cool.

Last night we made a quick trip to Walmart to buy the Lion King before it goes into the "vault" tomorrow.  I remember when I was little my Nana was buying me a Disney movie for my b'day.  Much to my sisters' dismay I chose Bedknobs and Broomsticks over The Little Mermaid.  What was I thinking, anyway The Little Mermaid got locked in the vault and we were never able to get it.  Not gonna happen again!

So anyway we got the movie and Eric found a jackpot sale on some fishing lures.  While he was looking at them I wandered over and found this slip covered ottoman for $5!  I can't even make the slipcover for that!
You can see the steps behind the ottoman, those are for Claire and there is about 8" between them and the wall.  It is getting harder for me to squeeze by so we are going to put the ottoman there instead.  Somehow she can jump straight up in the air about 6' but can't jump on a bed. 

 In parent training news Claire was up at 3 am because of an ear ache.  See first photo.  I am pretty proud that we got out of bed and diagnosed the problem.  Ok it wasn't really that hard, she was pawing at her ear and it was really red but we were able to give her correct med and she was back to sleep.  Me not so easy but this is the life I shall get use to.  I overslept this morning but Claire was lucky and got to stay in her cave and not go to work.

  She is like lady if you don't turn that light off...

Well I'm off to the Dr to check on my body and baby.  32 weeks 3 days along and still trying to squeeze into regular clothes.  I did unbutton the sleeve because it was too tight on my arm. :( arm fat is hard to lose yall.

 have a great week!



Final Roll

after 2010 SEC championship

 

Today is a sad day in Auburn.  The Toomer's Oaks were taken down.  If you don't know the history of the trees, it is a tradition at Auburn University to roll the 2 oak trees that stand on the corner of campus right in the middle of downtown after an Auburn victory.  Sadly a couple of years ago the trees were poisoned with 50x the lethal amount of herbicide by an Alabama fan and the rest is history.  I know that trees are trees and there are other things that are more important but when you are an Auburn alum, fan or resident those trees represent so much more. 

The day after Auburn won the National Championship as soon as we got in from Arizona we went home and picked up Claire and went downtown to roll Toomers.  It was amazing!  The trees looked like this for several days.

Even though the trees will be gone before our kids get to roll them, my nephew has been taught how to toilet paper trees on the best of them!

At least we got our 2010 SEC Championship and National Championship year in before the trees were killed. 

So Saturday after A-Day there was a "final roll" of these trees which look like big sticks because they are dead.  Over 83,000 were at A-Day but I'm not sure how many were downtown.  We'll just say a lot.

I love this night shot it looks like snow was everywhere.

We wanted to go on Saturday but I was exhausted from growing a human and Eric was tired too but he had just been at work all day.   We could hear the band at our house so we just pretended we were there and watched the webcam.  Sunday morning at 6:30 we went for our final roll.  Since Dutch won't get to roll these trees I wanted him to at least have a photo so I took his first Auburn shirt.

The streets looked like a snow plow had come through and put all of the tp on the sidewalks.
There was still a ton in the trees, but all of the long streams had fallen on the ground.  The guys cleaning up were rolling this toilet paper ball around like a huge snow ball. 

This morning the trees are being cut down so I walked over  to see for myself. 

Our walks downtown just won't be the same.

Lets leave this on a happy note, guess who I got to see last month.  Cam, Yep he was filming a commercial at the stadium and I just "had to stop by Eric's office".  When I see commercials with athletes I always wonder if they are really running as fast as it looks or is their footwork that fast.  I'm not sure about everyone else but the answer for Cam is yes.  He was incredibly fast and his body is a straight up chiseled muscle.  Plus he was really nice and bought smoothies for everyone.

They said we would be edited out of the background shots, but just in case they didn't look for me in an under armor commercial! ha!

The 17 Year Evolution Of A Swimsuit

Ok here is a really good story for a week that hasn't really had many good stories.

Back in 1996 I was at the beach with my family.  Staying at the same condo was Eric and his family & friends.  Since they were from the town right next to ours we knew some of the kids and would hang out during the day on the beach.  There was a guy in that group that had a green polka dot swimsuit and I have always remembered that suit because it is super cute. 

Ok so fast forward 6 years later when Eric and I started to date I told him that I thought I had seen him before and I thought he was wearing a polka dot swimsuit.  Sure enough it was him and he for some reason (divine intervention?) he still had the swimsuit.  I got the swim suit from him and have kept it for 9 years waiting for the perfect project.  Almost 17 years to the date of seeing him in that suit we are having a baby and I used that fabric to make something special for the little guy.

His first stuffed animal-a little deer!  Isn't he so cute!  It also happens to be the first thing that I have had his name put on.  Which is really crazy because in the south we monogram everything!  Having a piece of that swimsuit is really random but I think it will be a fun story for our family to have. 

This little guy was super simple to make, I bought the pattern from Dolls and Daydreams on etsy.  She has the cutest patterns and very good instructions, I'm sure I'll be buying more. 

The only thing I did change from the directions is I went ahead and sewed the arms, legs, ears, and antlers to the body piece before I sewed the front and back together.  I knew I would mess up somewhere if they were just pinned on.  I also put stuffing in my antlers because I didn't use felt so they were a little floppy, you could also use a heavy duty interfacing if you didn't want to use felt. 

So there you have it a good story for the week.  Oh and we get asked a lot why did we not know each other or date if we knew a lot of the same people growing up.  Well the answer is Eric is 6 years older than me.  I always knew his younger brother, but since Eric graduated high school when I was in 6th grade (ha!) I didn't know he existed. 

If you are Christie that left a comment in the last post about the fabric remnant please email me.  Your email isn't attached to your comment so I don't have a way of getting you the info. Thanks!

DIY Roman Shades

Last week I had a chance to sew the roman shades for the baby's room.  At first I wasn't going to tackle this project.  Anything more involved that sewing curtain panels seemed too much for me.  I had found someone that would make the 2 blackout shades for $230 which I thought was a good deal but add shipping and fabric and it came out to around $300.  If it were my living room I would have paid it but with it the shades being in a room that will probably be changed out in a couple of years my inner cheapie got to me and I just couldn't do it.
My fabric is Braemore Spice Market Ikat Putty, love it!

So for the most simple approach I thought about covering a blackout roll down shade with fabric.  But I thought that the room needed more texture and dimension that a flat roller shade so that was out.  I could have added panels with the roller shade but I didn't want to go there and besides the headers on those blackout ones are ugly. 

Thankfully Jenny at Little Green Notebook posted an updated tutorial to her DIY roman shades from miniblinds tutorial right when I needed it.  This project was so simple.  I didn't even make a mistake!

I did do a few things differently that the tutorial.  First of all I used blackout lining instead of regular lining.  It isn't that big of a deal but it was my first time to sew with blackout lining.  Because of the vinyl side of the lining I didn't have to worry about the fabric glue bleeding through to the front of the shade.  The bleed through seemed like a pretty big deal to me so I would be extra careful on that if you didn't use blackout lining.  Next I wanted to make sure that the wood bar was really secure so I stapled it instead of just gluing. 

I sewed around 3 sides of the shade and left the bottom open so that I could staple the lining to the wood piece.  Taping the wood helped to hold it in place when I flipped it over to staple on the inside of the fabric.

Inside of the panel.

Make sense?  I wish that I had painted the piece of wood white, I may still go back and do that.

In the tutorial she didn't say what kind of fabric glue she used but I zoomed in and saw that it was Beacon, so I used the same brand.  I couldn't find it at Hobby Lobby, only Walmart.

I made my spacing for my folds 11", just because it worked out that was the even amount of space that I had to work with.  I sewed 3 rows of rings plus the wood slat on each shade.

And here is how they turned out!  I think they look great and you can't tell that I cheated and used a blind as my base.  I do have to flatten my folds when I pull them up but I think that is due to the thickness of the blackout lining. The room isn't quiet this bright with sun (I bumped up my exposure in my camera) but it does get morning sun.  The wall color - Benjamin Moore Smokestack Gray is pretty accurate in the photo below. 

Oh and that white posterboard template on the floor in the corner, still trying to decide on a chair.  As you can see we don't have much space to work with.  The cute barn was Eric's when he was a kid and he has been fixing it up for Dutch!  The books are overflow from his alread full book case.

When the shades are down it does make it darker (still high camera exposure), but not totally blacked out.  I could have made the shades wider but didn't really want to cover the window trim.  If sleeping is a problem we may try some panels also but are kids that picky?! 

 
I spent about $60 on fabric, $10 on the vinyl blinds, $5 on blackout lining, and $10 on the wood strip, plastic rings, glue, and clear thread. $85 total, not too bad for two roman shades.
I do have some remnant of the fabric see "illustration" below.  If you are interested let me know I will sell it cheap!  You could get some good pillows out of it.

Last week I also sewed a crib sheet so I will post more about that soon.  We are getting close just need to decide on a chair and hang some things on the walls!