Another new tattoo. This one is to commerate my black belt, which I just received in April.

New tattoo. Not really crafty, I guess, but craft-inspired, to some extent.

New (to me) spinning wheel

I'm posting this mostly because I want to share these photos somewhere else and I can't get it to work! But, that being said, isn't she a beauty? She needs a little TLC (and a name) but I can't wait to play with her.

Christmas catch-up

I did a lot of sewing for the Holidays. I didn't get pictures of everything, but I'll share what I do have pictures of!

First up, and probably my favorite - DD's Christmas outfit. It was meant as her dressy outfit for church on Christmas Eve, but she wasn't feeling well and it was snowing hard so we ended up staying home and she wore it for Christmas Day.





The vest is Simplicity 2484 and the skirt is the Insa skirt pattern from Sewing Clothes Kids Love. (the white blouse and red hat are from Gymboree) The skirt is made from red and charcoal satin taffeta with a second "overskirt" of pin dot lace and trimmed with black velvet ribbon all from Jo-Ann's. I ran out of the red taffeta and couldn't get any more so the best is actually two layers of red satin, shiny sides in with the black lace overlaid and more black velvet ribbon. Oh, and cover buttons covered with the charcoal taffeta. I LOVE this outfit. I'll be hunting for more special occasions just so she can wear it!

I had planned to make Mokey a tie to match, but it didn't turn out well so I scrapped it. Maybe later.

Next up, Christmas jammies! Our tradition is that the kids get to open one package on Christmas Eve and it's always new pajamas to wear that night (I admit, it's so they have cute jammies for Christmas morning pictures, but they both love pajamas, so it works out for everybody). This is the second year of mama-made pajamas and I don't think the kids would let me go back to buying them!



Princess first: I used McCall's 6239. It's a touch big, and I need to hem it, but this way she'll get a couple of years of wear out of it.



Mokey: I used McCall's 5965. It's kind of my tried and true pajama pattern for him.

The pajamas are flannel from JoAnn's. I actually bought the brown flannel last year to make myself a robe, but I never got around to it and I liked it better for this anyway. The cookies and milk print was all the store had left but I loved it so I made it work. Then....someone on one of the message boards I belong to found some more at her JoAnn's and so...



Family jammies!!! I made pj pants for DH and I from McCall's 5992 (and "cheated" and bought t-shirts for us - I was just running out of time!)

Yo Ho, Christmas cards sent (a long time ago)

I totally should have posted this a long time ago, but you know how busy the holidays get. Here are the adorable Christmas cards Shutterfly sent me for free for blogging about their new line of cards:

Slate Snowflakes Christmas 5x7 folded card

Create beautiful photo Christmas cards at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

I was completely thrilled with how they turned out! And the quality was really great - these were printed on card stock, not photo paper.

"Yo Ho, Sending Christmas Cards"

Yup, it's that time of year again. There's a reason sending Christmas cards made it into the list of the pains of Christmas (an old Bob Rivers song, in case you haven't heard of it - it's funny 'cause it's true). Picking out a card, addressing all the envelopes, writing a message to make those cookie-cutter boxed cards more personal, or, conversely, trying to get the kids to both look at the camera and smile at the same time so you can put a cute picture of them either on or in the card...um, yeah. Well, as much fun as sending the cards isn't, receiving the cards is one of my favorite things in the whole year. Cards with photos are the best, of course, because, well, I love pictures!



Shutterfly is making it a little easier for me this year. Yeah, I still have to see if I can get the kids to cooperate with picture-taking, but I know the cards will be cute because Shutterfly has so many great options. Plus, this year Shutterfly has this great program for bloggers - just blog about their cards and they'll send you 50 cards for free! There's something about that word that makes everything more exciting and fun! You can find the details about the offer here.



Now the hard part, picking out which card to use. There are tons of options - from the more traditional red and green Christmas photo cards to holiday cards with more modern and free-spirited color combinations. I haven't gotten mine picked out yet, I might have to wait until I get pictures wrapped up to decide, but I know it'll be awesome.



So - what are you still reading this for? Get cracking, it's almost Thanksgiving! If you're a procrastinator, you might want to look at these cards instead: New Year's Cards.

King Mokey and Princess, um, Princess

I'm finally getting around to posting about the kiddos' Halloween costumes.

Mia declared, quite definitively, that she wanted to be a "Pintess wif boo tat" (Princess with a blue hat) for Halloween.



I used Simplicity 2569 for her costume. The sizing was a bit wacky with this one. By measurements, she should have needed a size 2 for length, but it should have been pretty roomy. When I was doing my "tester" I thought the pattern looked tiny, so I cut the size 3 and it wouldn't zip! The costume ended up a shortened (in the skirt and sleeves, but not the bodice) size 6! The bodice and underskirt are royal blue poly satin and the skirt is royal blue and gold tulle. There's gold tissue lame (no fun to work with, by the way) for the bodice inset and puff sleeves. I couldn't find royal blue sheer ribbon for the sleeves, but I did find a pretty trim that had royal blue, turquoise and gold all together so I substituted turquoise sheer ribbon on the sleeves and used the trim around the inset and added turquoise tulle on the hat to tie it all together.

Mokey originally wanted to be a mummy, but after Princess decided on her princess costume, he changed his mind. He decided to be a king because "the king's the boss." So a king it is.




I used McCall's 5214 for Mokey's tunic, belt and cape and Butterick 5161 for the crown. The tunic fit wonderfully, except for the length, I added a couple of inches in the torso (as usual). It's all poly satin and the buttons (all 21 of them) are from my mom's stash. The cape is poly satin lined with crepe back satin and underlined with corduroy to add body, the clasp is my mom's stash as well. The crown is my favorite part. It's made of metallic crinkle pleather over cardboard for stability, poly satin and the band across the top are metallic trim on ribbon covered wire. There were boot covers too, made from black vinyl using a pattern my mom drafted for me last year, but I broke the elastic on Friday getting Mokey dressed for his class party and didn't get around to fixing them before trick or treating on Sunday.