Elephants Make Us Happy

Another fun onesie from my mom's collection.

Christmas Garland and Glitter Painting

Here are the results ladies craft night. Above is my glittery button flower, which I think will be made into a ring by Christmas. As I was hunting for a spot to take it's picture I discovered that it would also look incredibly cute attached to the side of a pair of baby Uggs. Not sure I could get away with that one, there are too many bigger boys looking out for Abe to let me dress him in girls clothes:(

Below are the "Glitter Painted" photos, it wasnt exactly as easy as Martha made it out to be, but it was definitely a fun theme for our girly night of crafting.

It's not that I haven't been crafty...

Practical crafts are taking over the house!

We ran into a bit of an ornament dilemma while decorating the tree this year. And by dilemma I mean Finn taking ornaments off the tree and oops! smashing them to smithereens and then lecturing us all about how fragile they are. Of course I never lost my cool and banned all boys from even thinking about touching the tree. I just decided to put every ornament that I care for on the top third of the tree, and have been busy stitching up these sweet little birds for the rest of it. I might mention that it took about a week to decorate our tree, and not because I had to sew the ornaments, but jeeze! it is hard to decorate a tree and care for the needs of three small humans at the same time, especially when two of those humans are trying to inadvertently destroy the tree you are decorating! The next holiday challenge will be to get a picture that captures the handsome sweet natured perfectness of the boys for a christmas card. I am having a bit of guilt about not making a formal birth announcement for Abe. The Christmas card is my chance to make up for it. Wish me luck.

Oh Baby!

Baby Boy has arrived on the scene and blogging has hit the back burner, shoot! But really I have been using every spare moment of baby napping to sew sew sew! I have a million dresses made that just need snaps attached and they will be posted hopefully tonite on etsy! My first holiday craft fair is on Friday, yippee, I love it!

Felt Stories

Leo is back in school this week, which means less entertainment for Finn, which means a little less crafting for me. But as Fall starts to show it's colors I am hoping to find some time to pull out my bag of felt and pick up where I left off last Spring with these felt stories. This one is just called Bird.

Leo's little kindergarten yard, they call it Greenwood, inspires a whole different avenue of cozy crafting for me. All of the toys inside and out are natural wood or cloth, lots of colorful felt and seasonal animal or nature themes. It is so gentle, it smells so good, and the kids really use their imaginations to build on the simplicity of the toys.

I have a couple more of these stories that aren't quite finished, but eventually they will fold up and tie with a piece of yarn or ribbon.

Inspired by Lauren

BFF Sarah and her baby girl Lauren were in town recently and I got a glimpse of some of the girly wardrobe that I envy so much. There was a little dress like this one that Sarah knew I could reproduce, she was right and now I am addicted to the new pattern that I made from it. I switched it up a little to make it reversible, and the possibilities are endless. So much fun. These will soon be on etsy with the skirts.

The Ladies

Anyone who knows me the tiniest bit knows that I am a clothes horse. Although these days, more of a wishful clothes horse, sigh.... I still fantasize about the days when I could go guiltlessly shop around and come home with a bagful of sale rack treasures. My love of bargains often takes me to TJ Maxx or the Rack, but I also REALLY love expensive clothes too. I hate this about myself and have made many broken promises to only buy clothes here or there for cheap, but when it comes down to it, it just is not my nature to deny myself a pair of jeans that will bring me $200 worth of pleasure.

Snapping back to reality, I am like 50 weeks pregnant, I hate maternity clothes and I am soooo looking forward to digging into my clothes that have been tucked away for what seems like forever! I am also looking forward to some new additions to the closet, as I seem to ruthlessly purge my wardrobe with every pregnancy. However, Baby # 3 and staying at home will not be allowing me to shop, so my new promise to my wallet and hungry family is to make my own clothes!

Yesterday was my first attempt, and I love it! I can't wait to wear my new tunic with my old jeans. This pattern came from my mom's old collection, aren't the ladies stylin'? I modified my final product to be sleeveless and dug through my collection of trimmings for some old lace to border the bottom edge. Voila! A new shirt. I wonder if it will fit by Christmas?

It's Amazing What You Can Accomplish...

...When your three boys leave town for two nights. So this is what became of the weekend alone. Saturday morning I gardened until it was too hot to pull anymore weeds, then I ate my third breakfast, and then I set to work and did not stop until I had finished these three little cuties. I cant believe how exhausted I was on Sunday.

DIG

Until I visited the quilt shop last week, my most favorite stop on Vashon was DIG. It is an artsy gardeners paradise. They used to have these eggs in a giant twig bird nest that I want to replicate in my own backyard one day. Aren't they amazing?

Sooooooo cute!

Back in April, we spent a week out at the beach house recovering from lingering winter colds and crafting. My mom had a couple of dinosaur patterns that she wanted to make into fun stuffed animals for the boys. I get so tired of boy stuff sometimes, but the stuffed animal idea did seem fun and it made me think of one adorable picture that Heather had taken of a little friend with her stuffed pony. So after the dinos were completed mom and I started working on a pattern for elephants. 5 days later my mom had a collection of funky and fun elephants. The house would have had to be half burned down before she would have gotten up from the crafting table. As for me I made the ONE below. I hate to brag, but through all of the swearing and tearing out of stitches, solo mama-ing and refereeing of fighting boys (they were especially scrappy that week) I do think my elephant is the cutest, even if I did nearly lose my sanity in the making of it.

Well, the elephants exploded into a menagerie of ponies, puppies, lambs, and kittens with matching appliqued onesies, like only my mom could mass produce. So today we finally got mom set up on Etsy too! You can check out her shop at chrissycreates.etsy.com. I have to say hers looks better than mine already, her inventory being easier to photograph and the fact that there is much more of it. I am pretty proud of the banner that I made for the shop too. It is amazing what one can accomplish when one's 3 boys are in Spokane for the weekend, and this is only day 1! Stay tuned...

Vashon Quilt Shop

Rather than roast at home, we took a ferry ride over to Vashon on Monday to visit with Marcia. She has the most beautiful garden going this year that completely surrounds her cabin. Forest gnomes could not make a more magical little home in the trees. Before catching the afternoon ferry home, we stopped in at the island's quilt shop. Oooh la la, what a place of temptation. These are a few of the treasures I brought home....

All Squirrelly for Fall!

On an unusually hot day like today (96 degrees in the shaaaaaaaeeeeaaaade!) this pregnant girl is sort of longing for a bit of autumn breeze. With no respite in the forecast, at least I can play around with this squirrelly bit of fabric.

Maxine and Pheobe

Thank you to Maxine and Pheobe for giving me the opportunity to make these sweet BFF skirts. Maxine came over to my place a couple of weeks ago to give me some art direction and choose colors. These two skirts are the apron style that I was stitching up last winter, the big pocket is so fun for collecting treasures. I made these two with similar color combos but not exactly matching. We are hoping to see them on Maxine's twin little sisters next time around!

Tip-Toes and Belly Buttons

Fresh Start!

It's only a matter of days before I will be an independent girl attempting to make a buck off my brains and creativity! Yikes! I have been shutting myself within the revamped craft room in attempt to revamp my etsy site and connect it to a revamped blog. In between I am loving stitching up these super fun skirts with my 15 years worth of collected fabric. Snapdragon Tacoma is to be the new home of sweet frocks and other playful creations. I have quite a few of these little numbers completed so in the next few days I will be snapping photos of them on darling little models. Yippee!