Madison's been going through a growth spurt lately and a lot of the clothes I bought for her at the end of summer are all getting a little small on her. Take this sweatshirt for example...

The sleeves were waaaaay to short on her. So I figured since it's only got a few months wear into it I'd make it fit her for a lot longer. I took out my handy scissors and my sewing machine and...

taa daa!..

Now it should last her till at least the end of the school year. 

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Madison has also been asking me to buy her some flowery things to put in her hair, but I thought I'd try make something at home before going out and actually spending money on them.

She thinks it's beautiful so I guess I won't be making that trip to the store. :)

(Kaelynn wanted a picture of her hair too)

I got the flower idea from The Trendy Treehouse.  I wasn't able to do it exactly like she did because I didn't have any brads in the house. I just used a button, sewed it on top of the two bottom layers, placed the top circle on top of that, and then used one elastic to secure it all together around the button. I sewed it onto a ouchless type elastic instead of attaching it to a clip or barrette. It seems to work!

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I made another, mostly futile attempt to get a picture of all four kids together. They get way to hyper when I take out my camera so I never seem to get my perfect picture that I imagine in my head but oh well. I'll love these pictures either way.

Pants for Ethan!

Let me just say that making pants for Ethan without a pattern is not something I'm going to be doing to often!

I started on thursday cutting an old, stained pair of his pants apart. The next step was to make pattern pieces, so I grabbed some tissue paper I had laying around. Once the pattern pieces were done I used an old pair of Byron's pants and laid out the pattern and cut it out. Then I attempted to put it all back together. :S 

(I should have paid more attention when I was taking his other pants apart.)  Oh well, it all worked out in the end, and I didn't end up having to take out too many seams! :P

Just Dreaming...

Once spring comes, you know, in May or June, I'm planning on painting our front door. It's white right now, not that there's anything wrong with that. But...

I really like this blue door.

Or maybe purple? (Although that one might be a little harder to sell to Byron...)

Ooohh... some more nice blue doors! 

I've also always like a red front door but only if it's the right shade of red.

But we have a long way to go before the snow melts and spring comes so I'll just keep dreaming about my painted door for the next few months. :)

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I attempted to crochet Madison a new hat this week, but I think I really misjudged on the size. 

 

Oops! 

Oh well, she doesn't seem to mind.

I'm not sure she's realized I've taken it over yet though, because everytime I put it on she tells me, 'That's ok mom, you can wear my hat!"  (I have a very generous daughter.) 

Maybe I should let her know I'll make her a new one... one that doesn't hang in front of her eyes. :)

Repurposed

I had some old pajama pants that I no longer wore because they had a rather inconvenient hole in them.

 But, me being me, I kept them thinking that maybe I could use the material for something. Well, I found a use for them! My oldest daughter has been growing like crazy in the last few months and not to many of her pajamas fit her anymore. So I made some new ones for her. She's so happy now!

I also had some leftover pink fleece so I sewed up a shirt as well using pattern 5744 from McCalls.

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I was using this wonderful jar for storing my kitchen utensils on my counter for the last 6 years. I'ts never been quite big enough to fit all the ones I use.  

So the other day while I was just about to throw away another empty can of formula I had an aha! moment.

I gathered together my supplies: some scrapbook paper, scissors and mod podge and got to work.

The end result was this! And look how much room I have to stuff things into it!!

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I gave Nadiya her first taste of rice cereal last night. I don't think she was quite as excited about it as I was. ;)

Heehee, it makes me giggle inside just looking at it! I don't think she was too impressed.

I just never seem to have enough time to get everything done. I have all these projects in my head and I just can't seem to find the time to do them all. I also seem to end up with lots of half finished projects because I get so eager to start on the next one. So silly! :)

Anyways, I did manage to get SOMETHING done this week. I made this for my son's room. He has some very empty walls just waiting to be decorated! I do wish I had looked at the back of the frame before I bought it though. I didn't realize till it was ready to be hung up that it's just a stand-up type frame. I got the idea for this from a quilting magazine, but I hadn't been able to find any really cute boyish fabrics in the little town where I live so I decided to try it with scrapbooking paper. I do still want to quilt the ones I make for the girls though. We'll see when I get around to that!

My baby girl will be 4 months old next week. Since she reached the 6 week mark she has been SUCH an easy baby. And she's so smiley! I just love her little grins and giggles. Here's some pictures of my littlest muffin...

WoW! 6 years already.
6 years ago today I said 'I do' to this wonderful man.



And now 6 years later we have 4 mostly wonderful, very much loved children. :)




We spent the day with Byron's very large family. In all there were 38 people there.
It was LOUD and BUSY but so much fun. I love time spent with family.



AND I went skidooing for the first time in years.
My face felt like it was freezing off by the time we got back but I loved every minute of it.

The tops of my cupboards were looking a little bare.
Boring.
Blah.
So I decided to do something about it. And I think I really like it.


Since I'm to cheap to go to the store and buy some nice blocks, I just got Byron to cut up some 2x4 that we had laying around into 5" blocks for me. Then I slapped some paint on them, sanded around the edges a bit and there they are. Aren't they pretty? ;)

I've been losing a lot of hair lately. You know that wonderful after-baby hair loss. And to make things worse, my little Nadiya has figured out how to grab on to things and unfortunately for my hair it's quite often within her grasp. So I...

...chopped it off.
I don't think she'll be able to reach it quite so easily anymore. So hopefully we won't be having as many hairballs laying around here.