"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.

Drive by posting

Drive by posting to share what I completed for the One Thing One Week Challenge over on Amy's Creative Side:

Yup, Halloween costumes, done. Well, except Mokey's belt was too big, so I have to fix that and remember to put his boot covers on him next time. I'll be back later when I get good pictures (this is a action shot from trick or treating at the campground Saturday night) to share more.

Boo!

It's the most wonderful time of the year.....no, wait, that's Christmas, isn't it? Well, I think October is the most wonderful month of the year, anyway. We get nice cool days, crisp nights that make cuddling up under a warm blanket feel heavely, beautiful colors in the trees, cheerful orange pumpkins (have I ever mentioned that orange is one of my favorite colors? It totally is). It's the best TV time of the whole year, too. They really beef up on the ghost stories in October and I love a good, cheesy ghost story. (and my husband would be embarassed to know this, but the cheesy teen Halloween movies on the Disney Channel - they're just fun). And then you get Halloween - picking out costumes (in my case, making the costumes - they're under way, I'll post as soon as they're done), making jack-o-lanterns, trick or treating and trick or treaters and parties. Ahhhhh, love it. So, it isn't any wonder that my kids always have Halloween themed clothing as well as their costumes. Mokey's Halloween t-shirts from last year don't fit anymore and I had some Halloween fabric down in my stash, so I decided to make him a shirt this year. And.....since he still loves it when he and Princess match, well, I found a way to make a matching skirt for her out of the scraps from his!

Voila!


Mokey's shirt is Simplicity 3852, changed just a tiny bit to make it more of a bowling shirt than a Hawaiian shirt (i.e. I made the collar, pocket and sleeves black instead of the print and added a stripe of black down one side). Princess' skirt was made from the dresden plate skirt tutorial on crafterhours. Mine is a touch less full, simply because I ran out of the print! Oh, and I did a full lining, instead of the facing so I didn't have to worry about finishing any seams. If you can't tell from the pictures, the print is tossed candy corn with little purple spiders and the black is actually from a set of XL twin sheets I found in the damaged area at Ikea for $3 or somethig (I think, now, that it might have been there because it's missing the flat sheet, but I can't remember if I stowed that part someplace else to earmark it for something special or not). I used pretty much the whole pillowcase and a chunk of the fitted sheet.

Oh, and, can anybody tell me who that 12 year old girl in that picture up there is and what she's done with my cute little two year old? Oh, wait, nevermind, found her:

Whoohoo!

See that pretty little brown and pink button over there - right there, on the right. Yeah, the Princess' cute little first day of school dress was featured on Sew Much Ado (one of my favorite blogs to read!) for this week's We Did It Wednesday. I'm so excited I could bust!

One Thing One Week Challenge 2

Amy over at Amy's Creative side hosted a one week challenge. Challengers were supposed to choose one thing to accomplish over the week and link back today if we got it done.

My challenge for the week was to cut fabric for my very first quilt and I got it done and then some! I've actually got the blocks all pieced and ready to assemble into a quilt top! I don't have the border fabric cut yet, but I figure that's okay since I really need to have my blocks connected to get the proper measurements. Maybe I'll get that done this week.

Here's my quilt so far:

Bloop bloop

You don't know how close you came to being subjected to a cheesy pun about the Princess' first day of preschool dress. Seriously, it has fish on it; that pun was just sitting there staring at me, daring me to use it. Ha! So there pun!

Anyway....this was a big week for our household. Mokey started Kindergarten on Monday (but since this is mostly a sewing blog and I sewed nothing for his bts outfit, I'm not posting a picture) and the Princess started preschool today.

My original plan for her first day outfit was the knot dress I posted a little while ago, but then I realized that it's still in the 80's here (and what a blessed relief that is from the 90's we've had most of the summer) and that dress is just a touch too big to wear without a top under it (planned that way so she has growing room, of course, don't know why that had't occurred to me before). So, on Sunday I took a little time (while the hubby was out mowing) to go throw my pattern and fabric stashes to see what I could whip up in time. I had a different pattern picked out, but the Princess latched on to this fishy print (from Playdate by Patty Young) and was adamant that she wanted a fishy dress. Only one problem: when I bought this fabric, I was intending to make a bag with it and so I only bought a half a yard - not exactly enough to make a whole dress!

Enter Simplicity 3511. This pattern is my go-to pants pattern for the Princess, at least when I'm making pants to go under a dress or tunic, but I'd never tried the dress. I didn't have quite enough for the dress based on the fabric requirements printed on the envelope, but I eyeballed the pieces and I was pretty sure I could get it all out of that piece. I just happened to have a piece of cotton in the perfect shade of orange so I was all set (well, minus some ribbon and buttons).

I was a little afraid that the print and the orange would be too bright together, but the aqua ribbon separating them makes it work. Fit-wise it's a little shorter than I would like, but it can be a tunic in a month or so when it starts to get too short. It is a little hard to put on and off, but I think it has more to do with the fact that it only opens about an inch or so in the back rather than too small (I think any bigger and it would fall off her shoulders). We'll have to get better at getting it on and off because we both love it; it might just be my favorite so far!