Where have I been??

I noticed that I haven’t posted on my blog since March!  Yes, I said March!  That is insane, even for me!  But It has been a super busy year for me.

The kids got out of school and we had a busy summer playing with friends and just hanging out.  At that time I just didn’t have time or the interest in keeping up my blog much.  I just had way to many things on my plate already.  So I just left it  hanging.  It isn’t like a have a billion blog followers or anything!

I have been searching for the perfect home for my family for a few years on and off but last fall started going full force, determined to get us out of our crappy apartment and into a space to call our own.  We found one we liked but it needed some roof work and we were worried things would go down hill for us quickly if we got that and had the roof situation over our heads.  So we held off and just kept looking.  We found a few that were just OK but nothing we liked as much as the one with the roof situation.  Well our Realtor happened to take over as the Realtor for the home we liked and let us in on the fact that the house was up for grabs and the price was even lower and the owners were going to fix some of the problems..mainly the roof!!  So we were like..oh yes, absolutely, get us in on this and fast!  Well it was fast.  From the day we found out to the day we owned it..it was maybe 30 days!  Well we signed the papers at the end of July and that night we started moving stuff in.  I couldn’t wait to get out of that apartment!  We had black mold in the basement because of constant flooding problems that the owners knew about and did nothing to fix.  Anyway..we got our house!  I am so excited and have been for the two months we have lived here.  It is OURS!  We have fantastic neighbors and the kids love having their own rooms and I really enjoy the fact that they don’t fight at bedtime anymore!  Another perk just for me..I have my own sewing room!!  I love it and I have spent a TON of time in there over the past two months.  We have a really nice yard with chestnut trees and a walnut tree, beautiful garden beds all around the house and my favorite thing??  The huge butterfly bush out front.  We have had tons and tons of beautiful butterflies visiting us daily and still with just a few buds left on the bush we still get some monarch butterflies that show up each and every day.  Because of the nuts from the trees right now we also have tons and tons of squirrels!  They are funny to watch.  Especially when our cat Ruby goes jumping window to window to catch a glimpse of them.

I have a ton of photos to share but I have to go find them and upload them to wordpress which I don’t have time to get done right now.  But soon I will be sharing photos of our home.  We still need to paint the walls throughout and take down some wallpaper off of the plaster walls, which is going to be interesting.  Does anyone know how to do that the right way?  We have wood floors throughout except for my sewing room which has a low pile carpet.  Two full baths, a sun porch, a deck and a beautiful kitchen!  Like I said, I love it!!  Our house was built in 1879 so it is very old but I love all the charm.

I have to run but I will be back to post photos soon!

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KCWC – Day 3

Today for the Kids Clothes Week Challenge I completed three items!  I am pretty proud of myself because I don’t think I have ever made so many things in one day..ever!  Well considering I have only really been sewing for under two years that says a lot for me.  LOL  I love how everything came out with the two fantastic tutorials that I used too!  I am so grateful for such wonderful people out there who create these tutorials for people like me to learn from and create wonderful clothing or household items for my family!  🙂  I can never thank them enough!

Please head over to visit Jess at Craftiness Is Not Optional and Jen at iCandy Handmade!

The first two shirts are reglan tees made using this tutorial here at Craftiness Is Not Optional.  It went together super quickly and I know I will be making tons of these shirts for the girls and maybe even Zachary.  (Just not with the heart fabric for him..lol!) Unfortunately I had to take pictures tonight in horrible lighting with the flash and just on hanging on a hanger but you get the idea.  Once the girls try them on I will get much better pictures to share.  This one was made for Melody in mind.

 The next one was made for Kylie.  I love them both.  ❤

This nightgown I made using the tutorial here on iCandy Handmade.

I have had this fabric in my stash for awhile and figured it would look so cute as a nightgown.  So glad I decided to use it because it is so cute and I know the girls are going to fight over it!  🙂  Thank goodness I am making another one tomorrow so they can just take turns wearing them.  (They are so close in size now that they can share things like this without any problems.)

So that is what I have accomplished today for the Kids Clothes Week Challenge.  Three days down and five more to go.  I can’t wait to see what I whip together for the kids tomorrow!

KCWC – Day 2

Well this morning I had the girls try on the sleep pants I made last night..only the second time making pants and they didn’t turn out the way I had planned but I was able to fix them with a butt panel into each pair of pants.  😀

I then made up and cut out a pattern for the two different sizes I needed for the reglan tee and that was where I had to stop because I had to go and pick up Zachary from school.  Ever since then I am sooooooo tired that I don’t think I am going to get any more sewing done today.  I will pick it back up again tomorrow and get even more done with some sleep in my system.  I think I ended up with three hours of sleep last night and with it now being 8:15pm I am sooo ready for bed!  The girls are still awake so I am waiting for them to crash and then heading up to bed myself.

Crossing my fingers that they crash sooner rather than later!!

Kids Clothes Week Challenge

I know I haven’t been around here much lately..or the past few months but I plan on keeping up with my blogging yet again.  I am going to be participating in the Kids Clothes Week Challenge on October 10 – 17, 2011.  What is involved in this week is spending at least ONE hour a day working on kids clothing.  I have had plans for all kinds of projects to work on for the girls but during this one week I plan on getting a lot of my ideas actually completed!  I will be using lots of great free tutorials I have found out there on the internet!  LOL  I have thousands of them!

Over the past few months I have also been sewing several items for the girls and I even entered them into the Terryville Fair and the Harwinton Fair and I won ribbons on them all!  Almost all 1st and 2nd place ribbons too!  I am very excited that my work was so liked by the judges!  🙂

When I have time I will get the photos and links to those items up but right now I need to get into the basement to finish organizing my stuff and pull the tutorials I want to use next week!

Thank you, Ryan Detzel!

I follow Ryan Detzel’s blog here at http://www.thisisreverb.com and I love his perspective on life, religion, kids and just fun in general.  He has the occasional giveaway and his last one was super fun.  He wanted to know what you used to hate but now love..as in foods.  I told him the story of how my mother in-law would often serve broccoli at dinners when we went there to visit.  I never wanted to try the little green trees again and kept saying, “No thank you” when I was offered some at each meal.  I finally, one day, decided to give it a try.   Come to find out I LOVED it!!  Who knew?  I didn’t grow up eating lots of veggies as a kid because I don’t think my father liked the much either.  But now I have branched out and serve broccoli often to my own family!  Kylie and Zachary both LOVE IT too!!  🙂

Today I was notified that I won this fun little giveaway and boy did I win some fun prizes!  Go here to check them out!

Thank you for visiting if you are here from This Is Reverb.  Maybe stay awhile and check out some of my fun pictures of the family and the world around us.

My latest sewing projects…

I haven’t been sewing much this past month while recovering from surgery as sitting in my sewing chair was painful but now that I am starting to feel much more normal I have started on a few new projects!  🙂  This skirt I made using some fabrics from Above All Fabrics during her remnant sale.

I love how it came out and Kylie is super excited to wear it too!

I made these tissue pouches using a tutorial posted here on A Lemon Squeezy Home.

I plan on having the girls give them to their teachers tonight at their MPact Graduation.

This skirt is for Melody’s girlfriend Paige for her birthday.  We couldn’t make it to her birthday party because I wasn’t feeling well so I told her mother that we would still bring her gift to the girls groups.  The next week it was horrible storms so we stayed home and then last week there wasn’t any group.  So tonight it is.  She gets to show off what she earned this year in Prims and she also gets a fun little skirt as a belated birthday gift.

Caterpillars – Days 1 – 9

I decided this year was the perfect year to do this project with the kids because the girls are old enough to read more books about caterpillars and butterflies and truly understand what they are seeing live and in person.  It has been lots of fun for us all so far and we are only on day 10!!  It takes up to about three weeks for a full transformation of our caterpillars into Painted Lady Butterflies.  I will be posting more updates on their progress as I have been taking a picture a day of their transformation!  🙂

Below are days 1 – 10

June 12th – 14th, 2011

We have been taking it easy the past few days as my belly was starting to hurt again.  I did get outside to take some new pictures of the lilies that were in bloom and the roses flourishing in my garden.  Today in the mail we received our order of live caterpillars!  They are painted lady caterpillars and I will be taking pictures of them DAILY for the next three weeks or so until we release them.  The girls are SUPER excited and didn’t want to leave the table because they thought they would miss something!

Showing the pictures with a slideshow which is a new thing that wordpress is doing with the pictures if you choose.  I hope it works!  🙂  Enjoy!

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June 1st – 9th, 2011

June 1st through June 9th was a bit crazy with insane weather and fun times outside in the heat..it was about 98* outside!  My flowers started growing like crazy and then the storms would roll in at night and blow us away!  The girls had a blast outside in the pool on the hot days ..even though they are small kiddie pools it was fun for them to float and splash one another in the heat.

May 29 – 31st, 2011

May 29th we went to my nieces son’s birthday party and my brother was there.  Kylie decided she wanted ONLY to hang out with Uncle Matt!  While the boys were opening their gifts the girls both sat down with Uncle Matt and cuddled up with him.  I think they all enjoyed the time together!

May 30th was Memorial Day and we went downtown to the parade.  I had the girls wear their 4th of July dresses from last year and we got so many comments on them!  Kylie even made a new friend!  She decided to go hang out with this little girl and her mother and spent the whole parade sitting with them! 🙂  The mother at the end told Kylie to never change!  (She never stopped talking!)

After the parade we went across the street to Dairy Queen and waited only a few minutes and after our order was placed and we started to get our items handed back out to us Zachary got this weird look on his face and suddenly passed out..only for a second but boy was that scary!  He had spent the whole parade in MY chair in the shade!  It didn’t make any sense!  So I had the paramedics take him to the hospital so they could hopefully figure out what happened.  In the over and hour that we spent there they really didn’t do much for tests and just sent him on his way.  I made an appt. for him to be seen the next day at his regular Dr. and he did some blood work which came back a few days later as perfect.  So we still have no idea what happened.  I guess I need to contact the Dr. again to find out if there is more we should be doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again!

On May 31st the girls had some fun in a large box that I turned into a little house for them.  They were both reading and making funny faces and it was just making me smile seeing them enjoying books the way I always have in life.