The other day I came home to this on the door:
And I was like, oh that’s okay, I can handle that…. and then I remembered that my daughter can not sleep without a fan and we were out of here! Luckily my mom lives close by so we got to hang out at her newly updated and awesome pad.
Hello grandma! We could destroy this in no time! Luckily right behind this is a great giant window seat that overlooks the neighborhood.
Oh look Tuesday already found treasures. What? Grandma has ribbon at her house too?!?! This little area up here is Tuesday’s idea of heaven. I mean a dog walked by and she almost passed out from the excitement, “a da! a DA! A DA!” (a dog, a DOG, A DOG). Beachwood she’s come a long way since freaking out at your house when she saw your dog.
More ribbon – mom it looks like you need to re-stock (don’t worry I’ll hook her up).
I love the terra cotta. I also love those silicone brush things. I had totally forgotten they even existed until I saw them here and now all I want to do is get out my paints and play.
I was very tempted by this glimpse of her stash. Never mind that I still have to hem the jacket and put buttons on. I couldn’t find bias binding to match so now I have to make it. I so want to be on to the next project already (knowing it is way too big for her to wear it does not help). You can see more of my mom’s room here – it still needs a few finishing touches, but I love it and can’t wait to see what she creates there. It doesn’t matter if you only have a small desk or a large room. If you have a space make it work for you and make it fun. I just rearranged a few things and now I’m actually using my stuff. I heart organizing.
p.s. just wait until you see why we had the outage…
14 months and you are…
You are making this very serious scowling face that we are not such fans of… but it is usually followed by laughter so maybe it's just toddler humor we don't understand?
You are very talkative. Babbling day (and night). Speaking of night: you usually only nurse once a night now, but you might get up a few more times for a quick cuddle. When you want to play in the middle of the night we decided you have to do that alone. You are not always a fan of this and will protest for a few minutes. If you could speak I think you would be saying, "I don't care if it's four AM get back in here and play with me now!" You slept for eight hours IN A ROW. That's right a solid eight hours. Ask me how I slept? Not so great, but I'm working on it. Your independence is going to take some getting used to.
You love to pick things up, move them and put them somewhere else. What types of things? Paper, acrylic blocks, your little purses, coupons, books, magnets, socks (I just found some in the tub – I've been with you all day when did you do that little lady?), fabric and did I mention socks? Speaking of socks you know what those are. When I ask you to bring me a pair you do and I usually wear what ever you bring me so I don't match so well these days. You know what lots of things are: me, your dad, grandma, nana, grandpa, ducks, dogs, cats, breakfast, milky, shoes, hat, cereal, GOLDFISH CRACKERS, paper, bowl, cup, crayon, William, Aunt Sciarrino, Lee Lee, Pinky, blanket, diaper bag… Actually this could be a really long list. Not only do you know these things you know where they are and will get them (if possible) if asked. I find this amazing.
You have eyes like mine – they seem to change colors, green, maybe brown, a little grey? Your hair and mine is the exact same color as well. I know because you like to pull mine over your face while you nurse. And I take your hand and tell you "nice" as I pat it softly. And you always giggle, even though you don't stop nursing.
You have some crazy good expressions. I love it when people come over to your carriage to coo at you and you give them a "stink eye" or a "what the heck are you looking at," a couple of your large repritiour of faces. Basically you are awesome and I love you so much. I can't believe you are 14 months old, like really I CAN NOT BELIEVE IT.
Sunday Scrapping
I had a lovely weekend, I hope you did too. It was interesting reading all your comments about making friends through blogging. I feel close to a bunch of you, that’s for sure. This weekend we had burst of sunshine which was just wonderful. Tuesday and I headed to the park at five o’clock on Saturday and still had lots of light to swing, play and take a leisurely stroll back. Sunday I took advantage of light coming in through my craft room windows and got some scrapbooking time in. Fun, fun, fun! I made a nice big creative mess, the best kind.
I’m still perfecting taking pictures of my layouts so they might look a little wonky. Couple of things about this layout I love (besides everything really :): the little brad. Sarah sent me three of them and I used them all up, love them!
Under that is a ghost heart, and then a fabric heart that I cut out of fabric I backed with some thin iron on interfacing. I had scraps of fabric and the interfacing after a project so I married the two to have on hand to cut shapes out of. It give the fabric a little more stability for that kind of thing. I remembered how much I love my quickutz (and the Paige alphabets). Also loved this label Sarah sent with the brads, and ordered more from this etsy shop right after I used this one up. The number stamps were part of a dollar spot pack at Michael’s. I was making a first birthday card so I got it out, which made me get out all my stamps. I was using this particular one a lot though and had a genius moment when I was about to throw out an old cracked rubber stamp:
Peel off old stamp
Use E600 to apply the new stamp. Stamp image on cardstock and slip into window. Now my vintage stamp caddy is even more handy!
I think my sister and I had grand plans for this paper because I have a bunch of it. It was really fun to color in with my Tombow’s (I’ve had these things for ten years and they are still going strong, I don’t think one has dried up – crazy!). Note the brad…
I knew I had those Technique Tuesday letter stamps somewhere and I found them in the basement, turns out I don’t have quite everything put away. Getting all this stuff out did make me reorganize a bit to fit the way I work better. Since I had the stamps out I also did this:
I like have a stockpile of things like this for throwing together quick pages/projects.
Hmmm didn’t photograph too well. But it is cute in real life, swear!
My lovely mother in law took some of my scrap yarn and made me a bunch of crochet flowers, super cute right? Makes me want to send her this book.
That was my scrap fun happy times. Besides my utility knife I think my favorite scrapbooking tools are my scrapworks pushpad and making memories paper piercer (I think both are discontinued unfortunately) plus brads. I am a complete brad addict, seriously.
Oh and I came across an extra one of these:
I had printed. You might have noticed one of the pages on my bulletin board:
True, two of the months have gone by already, but it might be fun to use on a scrapbook page if you read a lot to document your current favorites. Anyone want it?
Found
Yesterday Tuesday and I spent all day downtown since our car had to go in for a minor little warranty repair. I told the technician to keep it as long as they wanted – we were two girls on the town! Lunch with Aunt Sciarrino, new boots from a store going out of business ($50 – I got white now I just need to get some of their cool sock things to go in them), and lots of window shopping. I went into the Border's Express and found some great little books for Tuesday. They were in the clearance section, a six pack for $5.99 so they work out to a buck a piece.
I think the content is a little bit off (the "food" book starts off good with fruits and veggies and then wham – a tart is thrown in the mix, and the whole last page is candy), but what I really love is the size.
Tuesday can cart them around and flip through the pages easily. She can also gnaw on them, so I've got to watch her.
This morning I decided to forgo extra sleep and hit a sale with my mom. It was a BIG ONE the paper said, so we had to go. I go to lots of estate sales and I don't usually find it weird going through other people's things at all. I look at it this way, if it were my stuff I'd want someone to get it who was thrilled about getting a good deal/cool things. The one today though made me a little sad. An old woman with nobody, and no will so the state was selling all her things, even her house. And the house had seen (much, much) better days. I'm going to come out and say it, she was a cat lady. And not in a good way. In a, what's a litter box OMG it smelled so bad kind of way. Yikes. I don't know if it's the way the estate people set up her house but every room was a craft room. She had a sewing room, vintage textile room, painting room, book room, etc. It's like she had every single craft thing you could want (a lady in front of me was very happy about the Bernina she scored), but it got me wondering what made her craft? I love to make things for Tuesday, my friends, and to share these things on the blog.
On the way home my mom and I were talking and I mentioned that I thought blogs connected people and helped make friends, she thought the opposite, like maybe you get in a online bubble, but you can't call up any of those people to hang out. I think this might be a generational thing, but I wonder, do you feel like you've made "real" friends online? I do, but this sale also made me want to find some more cool people in my area (hey – it's harder once you're an adult!). Anyway here is what I ended up getting:
Oil pastels for Tutu, because they are so creamy kids usually find them even more fun than crayons. Little canvases for my little artist, along with some great canvas/watercolor pads and a bunch of paper palettes. There were so many things there, but I hesitated on a lot because of the smell, and also I felt like it was way over priced. I may go back on Sunday to see what they are discounting (lots of the cool knit fabric I hope). I also got a couple handy kitchen containers – a small fridge jug and an aluminum baking pan with lid. That kind of stuff is always so handy!
P.S. I picked a couple people for the kits, I can't wait to see what you make, and I'm going to work on details for a swap – watch for them soon!
Mail that leads to creating
Check it out I made a scrapbook page:
detail (I have started perusing scrapbooking blogs again and it seems everyone does this, no?):
What prompted this creative outlet? I won a contest over on Vee’s blog and got this:
Yum, yum. Which reminded me I did send out the box of Amber:
It had a bunch of stuff I love in it. Some knock knock goodies, scraping stuff, buttons I’ve made, candy, color catchers (best.invention.for the wash.EVER), and some books. Oh and some ribbon of course. In terms of the other mail I was supposed to send out, um.
Well the thank you notes are made…. but not sent, oops.
But I love mail so I’m thinking a couple of things.
1). that I need to send out some of these kits, because they really are awesome and I’ve discounted them and I don’t know why they won’t sell. So maybe a few of you want one and then you can make something awesome with it and I will send out a newsletter and you can blog about it? If you are interested comment and I’ll pick a few of you. The turquoise paper with gold dots and label on the layout above are from the kit. My mom made all these very happy cards from one kit:
2). I think I want to do another crafty swap. Is there interest? You should have a blog and do at least a couple crafty activities I think. If you remember way back to the first one we mostly swapped stuff we had in our stashes, but I think we could add a small dollar amount to fatten up the packages a bit. What do you think?
Girl plus Food
Tuesday has been hilarious in the eating department lately. At least I find her very amusing. She can be very dramatic. Here she is waiting for dinner at my mom’s.
“Ohhh grandma are you fixing me dinner?”
“I can’t wait feed me now I might die!”
“Do not make fun of my hunger.”
Distracted. Thanks Uncle Brent!
Earlier today I remembered why we only eat at tables. Also I should have never started her on goldfish. I sign “fish” and “cracker” and she about has spasms of happiness.
I do realize this is not cinematic greatness. But I can guess at least one person will watch it a couple of times (hi mom!).
Easy is good, hard is… hard
I have been attempting some garment sewing. I feel I must show it to you, lest you think I am so fantastic with much besides a straight line.
I severely overestimated the size of my daughter, and underestimated the size of the pattern (it’s vintage – who has time to figure those things out?). The jacket is the one from the vintage pattern I mentioned on this post.
Besides the size problem it isn’t turning out too terribly. I am learning a LOT making it.
I got this strange pucker at the side vents (I think that is what they are), turns out you can’t just sew around, you have to go up one side and up the other and hope they meet right. A little rip out and I fixed that. I still have to figure out hemming and stuff, there is some hand sewing to do. I did consider putting it on the back burner once I realized it really won’t fit until next spring. The back burner = land of the lost so I decided to just stick it out and finish it. But I had to mix it up with an instant gratification project:
Turning all these onsies into tee-shirts. Onsies are not so practical for a toddler. I think the quicker you can do a diaper change/pull down for bathroom at this age the better. Tuesday can flip from her back to her stomach in less than half a second easy. Sciarrino brought over her serger today so I could finish some of the edges that way. Some I’ll also fold up to make them look extra nice, and some I won’t do anything to and they’ll just roll. A few are getting an extra special treatment:
(that’s me realizing after the fact that I had no before picture, hahahaha).
Step 1: cut off bottom of bodysuit (I used a ruler and rotary cutter)
Step 2: sew edge with a zig zag stitch (make both settings about as small as they will go – experiment on the bottom half that you are going to toss) and use exact matching thread. As you sew right on the edge you pull both in front of and behind the needle stretching the fabric.
Ta da! Super cute ruffle shirt!
Extra awesome is that it was a hand me down to us and had a little stain on the bottom part so it’s even better now. I read about this “lettuce hem” in Ready Made magazine, I think I might have to lettuce hem all my tank tops I love it!
p.s. total side question: the vertical pics do you like them smaller or big (like on top), I’ve been wondering this for a while.
Curly Sue
Wow, thank you so much for the quilt love! Something tells me I wouldn't get the same response for a black and orange quilt, but I won't take that personally 🙂 I'm sewing up something else now, but it's for a moving human being and it turns out that is much MUCH harder for me, especially when using a vintage pattern. I do love a challenge. That moving human by the way had her first blue berries today:
I found them in the bottom of the freezer drawer and gave them to her partially frozen still. She was a fan. She was NOT a fan of getting that cleaned off her face and I think I permanently stained her (only) bowl. Oops.
Today while walking around looking adorable:
(finally fit these slippers that came with a 0-3 sized outfit) I realized that she is really getting curly hair.
Right now it is exactly the same color as mine, but that is where the similarities end. My hair is so stick straight. I'm at peace with it now, but I always wanted curly hair when I was younger (and during those perms in college). My mother appeased me by curling it before bedtime with pins, rags or rollers. I don't know if this is here to stay, but for right now I think Tuesday should consider herself a very lucky girl!
Baby Shower in a Box
The happiest of happy mail probably.
One of my oldest and dearest friends lives in Vermont. She is almost 8 months pregnant and too far away for my taste. We did always say we were going to live next to each other when we had kids, oh how things change. Good thing cell phones and free long distance came along. A few weeks ago my mom was watching Tuesday when I went for a haircut. I took the opportunity when I got back in the car (which was parked in a nice sunny spot) to ring up Ceara (fyi as you read this you say it like “kira”). Over an hour later I got moving. I hope you have a friend like that. One you can just talk and listen to. It’s a beautiful thing.
Ceara, of course, attracts wonderful friends to her where ever she may be so I wasn’t surprised that one jumped at the chance to throw her a perfect party. I wasn’t sure if I would get all the projects done I had planned, but really my pride was on the line after the last big thing I made her took FIVE YEARS. Yikes. I was a bit over my head with that one really though. Anyway I loved putting together this package. I went with her school colors (NOT MINE) yellow and green. I know I copied you on this Nora, but can’t find the link. It was totally Nora’s idea though:
So easy to do with the scraps and herringbone ribbon from my shop (this natural twill would also work great).
Do you want to know what was in the package? On top (that her friend put in a bag for me) was lots of little fun stuff like a shirt predicting her child’s future. Sarah and I found that shopping in Corvallis. The example in the store was “professional bowler”, which I found funny. She got “generous tipper” which I find a bit weird… the baby doesn’t have to wear it Ceara! Bj passed along his favorite baby book to Grant, and I filled the rest of the stuff with baby nose spray, lap pads, teething tablets, and stuff like that. I made her baby a little hat:
The yarn and book (from which I got this dead easy pattern) are both from my friend’s awesome new yarn shop here in town. My friend who happens to be my next door neighbor. I will be reporting about this awesome new wonderfulness soon. Can I just say that with Ceara’s lovely skin, and her husband’s even darker lovely skin that their probably edible looking creamy chocolate colored baby is going to look fabulous in this! I might have to eat it. Mmmm baby head in wool….
Now the big thing I did not get to choose the colors of. You may remember that I briefly mentioned when I visited Ceara that we picked out some fabric for a baby quilt. It had to match the room. And to be really nice I made it look great with all the Duck gear I’m sure they will have around. 🙂
And can I just say… I really love it! I think I might be unusually prejudice against yellow and green since I was raised to be a Beaver, but I might be loosening my stance a bit (ok a lot, I could have kept this). I designed it a few weeks before (ugh nothing like waiting until the last minute Amber!)
To include some big blogs with the little ones to give it more interest and highlight some of Ceara’s (and my) favorite prints. The back I also pieced:
With a little embroidery square:
I basted with quilting safety pins so I put a whole bunch around this area so I would quilt over it… then I quilted over a pin:
That I tried to remove which led to me BLEEDING ON THE QUILT. I got it out though, but not the safety pin with out a little damage to the stitches. You know what though? Here is another wonderful quality of Ceara’s: she won’t care. And I know this because if I didn’t blog about it I bet she wouldn’t notice. Not because she doesn’t notice things, but because she is not a crafter. I’m not being mean saying it. Her hobby is music, mine is craft. Yes, one of my best buddies does not craft, can you believe it? Anyway.
I all over free motion quilted it…
And did a sort of loopy-d-loo boarder with variegated yellow thread in TWO HOURS on my awesome machine that I love oh so much. It’s a bit wonky and totally random but I love it, it was so fun and I want to quilt fifty more things right now to practice and get better (don’t remind me about those UFOs…). Oh and I did a scrappy non-biased binding. I love this, and will do it again (got the idea from the now defunct blog Crazy Mom Quilts – still up with lots of tutorials archived).
Tuesday loved it too. The matching was accidental… though to be fair she is in green an average of four times a week. I had so much fun coming up with this quilt. I have been reading lots of “modern” quilting blogs and there is so much good info out there. Very inspirational.
Of course I couldn’t wait to see how this was received. Ceara loved it! She called me tonight and it’s hanging over the baby’s crib, awe…. I was like, “good, now I can blog about it.” So I did. Goodnight!
Elimination Communication
I read a bunch of blogs. Probably way to many (I’m working on cutting down my list to favorites right now!). One I read is called Ohdeedoh, an out post of Apartment Therapy. I was looking on there last spring and read a comment from a reader that said in Europe where she is from people start putting their babies on the potty when they can sit up, about 5.5 months. So the next time I placed on online order and I need to buy something else to get free shipping I got the Baby Bjorn Toilet Trainer. Bj took one look at it and our then four month old like I was crazy. I stored it under the sink and forgot about it. Then around seven months I was watching Tutu play, she stopped and I knew it was because she had to go to the bathroom. I ran her upstairs, took off her diaper and plopped her on the toilet and she went pee! For the next few months whenever I checked her and she wasn’t wet after playing for a while (or sleeping, or riding in the car), I helped her sit on the potty so she could go. I went days with out having to change a poopy diaper, which was awesome. Then she started crawling and being a lot more busy. She didn’t seem to mind being in a wet diaper like she did at the beginning so I didn’t really worry about it much. I had read somewhere that toilet training too early was bad and I didn’t want to pressure her.
Eventually I heard about Elimination Communication (EC), but didn’t really think much of it. In fact I had heard of diaper free babies but thought it was crazy. Like CA-RAZY. Then Tuesday got a terrible blistering diaper rash. We had to use sticky creams and disposable diapers so we wouldn’t ruin our cloth. I looked up info on EC and checked this book out from the library. I figured I could give it a go again, though we are on the very late side of starting this technique. I still didn’t want to pressure her, but I now believe (as it states in this book) that we basically taught her to sit in a wet diaper, so we are not really potty training her, but UNtraining her to go in her diaper. I started by putting her in a cloth diaper with no cover and changing her as soon as she got wet, even a little bit. I started going through so many more diapers! I did not realize she sat in pee so much, yikes.
I made up some leg warmers using this great tutorial. But Miss Sparkle Pant’s legs are too skinny so I stocked up on baby legs.
Which don’t fall down so she doesn’t slide on them. I let her run around with out a diaper when we were playing and just after she’d gone on the potty. I’m not a huge fan of cleaning up messes, but it really is no big deal. I ended up getting her some EC wear though for when she has to wear something. These little pants are great because the belt stays around the waist and the diaper part flips back.
Tuesday at the park today (with her Ikea potty). Now I don’t want you to think that every time she has to go she is on the potty. In fact 9 times out of 10 she’s probably not. Because she is older I have to rely mainly on timing, by the time she shows a cue (stopping in her tracks) it’s probably too late, and she has never “told” me she has to go (by gesturing or going to her potty). But we’ve been having better and better days. And every time we go to the potty or talk about it I sign her “potty”. She just started using the “milk” sign (oh my goodness so cute) so I’m hoping she’ll catch onto the potty sign soon. If not that’s okay too. I feel a lot better about how often I change her, and the fact that I can read her so well. It really is about communication, not potty training.
I’m mainly posting this so that if someone is reading and has a younger baby (or is pregnant) they can at least have it in their head. Who knows you might become an accidental ECer too!
