My Christmas To Do List--- Part 1

  


This beautiful stuffed fish comes from a fabulous tutorial from Lindsey over at The Cottage Home 
My 1 yr old daughter is obsessed with fish at the moment and she walks around all day long saying ffffff sh, while she points up at the wall at the beautiful painting of the fish and also my husbands fish mount of a walleye he caught in Canada several yrs ago.  Obsessed is an understatement of how much my darling loves fish, so this will be the perfect Christmas gift for her.




Felt Food, the above picture is a felt pizza with removable toppings so the kids can get really creative. I found this at craftster.org

I also came across the fabulous blog Keeper of the Cheerios who has been so kind as to compile a list of the most fabulous felt food patterns that she has found.  My daughter is going to love playing kitchen with all of this come Christmas time.
  
This is an adorable Tea party felt food set, you can find the pattern among many others available for sale at Gulf Coast Cottage etsy's shop.


Okay, so now I have to find some gifts to make for someone other than my daughter.

 
I have this lovely bag (from Martha Stewart of course) in mind for one of my very best friends ever.  She owns so many bags, but I don't think one of them are this darling, and to go with it is a fabulous computer cover from a pattern I have been saving for her personally.


I must find someone to make these luxurious pillows for!


All right, for the hubba wubba- (clears throat) and for me  ; )



Amy Butler's beautiful quilt that I shall make for our room. Our room needs a drastic makeover and I think this is just the thing. I love the design and the name says it all Sexy Hexy.  Even better, this is a free downloaded pattern!!!


This is going to be a gift for one of the mother in laws that I have
 
Thanks Jessica for sharing this very detailed tutorial.

Birthday to do list among other things on my mind

My darling Olivia (who is not so darling at the moment due to a persistant tooth trying to poke through) is going to be 1 yr old on Aug. 11th. I am trying my best to make it an awesome birthday party on limited funds so, I have gone searching in blogland and here is what I have found:



great idea! My hubby has a ton of butcher paper since he runs a meat dept!


How darling is this???



Love these invitations, so beautifully homemade and organic looking




what great decor is this!

All of these fantastic party ideas came from the wonderful, talented Cottage Mama

I am doing a sesame street theme while still keeping the party cute and girly. I am doing fabric invites that are all going to be different from very cute $0.99 fat quarters from Joann's and I am hanging a sign that is going to say

This birthday party was brought to you by the number 1 and the letter's O-L-I-V-I-A

Just like on sesame street!

I am going to order a cupcake tray with one small cake on top for the bday girl, and I am in the process of making her a birthday dress.

I also love these ideas for birthdays:



I love this, and I knew those empty formula can would come in handy.

These ones are made by Sumo over at Sumo's Sweet Stuff but it originated at Fireflies and Jellybeans.



How awesome are these bday favors, pretty cheap too with a dollar store trip and a little DIY.

For more bday awesomeness, check out The Girl Creative's link up

Now, I must say that I am feeling inspired and ready to work!!!

But alas, I have some family news that I am quite excited about and just have to share. After a recent family vacay back home, the Hubba Wubba and I have decided that we HAVE to move closer to our families. I am so homesick, and I want nothing more than to be able to raise our daughter close to her 3 sets of grandparents!

So instead of living a whopping 10 hours away from our family we will soon be uprooting our family about 2 hours away from our parents. I must say that I am quite excited about this which is making all the more homesick and ready to just pack up and go. I can't wait to be able to have weekend visits with our family, and holidays together, and no more teary good byes because we can see them whenever we have a few spare hours in the day :)

Don't get me wrong, I love where we live but family is truly the most important thing to us and what's the point of living that far away from the thing that means the most to you if you don't have too??

Wish us luck, because we are about to write a whole new chapter in our lives!!!

by the way, I am open to birthday party ideas, and links if you know of any good ones.

Thanks!!

DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!! Announcing winner for blog award

The Rules:
•Thank the blogger who awarded it to you.

•Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation, and experience using five (5) words.

•Pass it on to 10 other blogs which you feel have real substance.





Thank You again so much Susie B. Homemaker!!!

If you want to read the post where I formally thanked her, please look here.


Now, after a crazy weeked full of walking for Relay For Life (woo hoo, we kicked cancer's ass just so you know and took 4th place with a total of $5,000) and then sleeping the rest of the weekend because I was about to fall over in my tracks from sleep deprivation, I am finally announcing the winner's of the 'A Blog With Substance' award!!!!! (sorry, I suffer from exclamation point overload syndrome- EPOS)


Now, these are in no paticular order, so here it goes.

DRUMROLL PLEASE...........................................................................................................................................................

• Laundry Hurts My Feelings
  

Joann makes me laugh every single post! (Better than any date I have ever been on)

• Mommas's Pixie Dreams

Her blog rock's and her little girls are seriously the cutest thing you ever laid eyes on

• The Cottage Home

I have the greatest desire ever to be half as good of a seamstress as she is, she also lives in my dream house, and throws my dream birthday parties!

• Girl. Inspired.

This girl truly does inspire me, if you don't have a creative bone in your body, you will still feel the urge to go and make whatever awesome tutorial she is walking you through.

• Night Owl Crafting

OMG.... Idea overload is all I can say- but that a good thing right, because we always need a million projects lying around!

• Ruffles and Roses

Giveaways, tutorials, and a summer of skirts- what more can a crafty girl want!

• Housewife Eclectic

This woman is a genius for many reasons, one being that she created a Blogshare Community which have to go check out to find out what it is and the other being that she actually convinced her hubby to help her do it!

The Handmade Dress

This wonderful lady is a master seamstress who I only aspire to be like someday in my sewing endeavors.

• Made By Jess
  

Cute blog, tutorials, and ideas

• Running With Scissors

She is crafty, thrifty, and chalk full of helpful ideas and directions!

Having a mental breakdown!!!

HELP!!!! So I am in the midst of finishing my little girl's birthday dress and I am about to royally mess this up. I am at a crucial stage of joining the bottom to the top and I am quite positive that I have no clue what I am doing from this point on.

So, I am thinking about going to the one sewing shop in town and begging them for help even though I have already asked about pointers and they said "We don't sew clothes, we make quilts."

I am left with no other choice, I am a desperate woman who really wants to learn and be good at this. I have to keep reminding myself that my first attempt is not going to be perfect, but that leaves me with a question-

How long does it take to finally get things perfect? I don't know if I can handle the imperfectness if it's going to take me years to get things down. Ya know what i mean?

The icing on the cake- it is currently July 6, 2010 and raining cats and dogs. It has been like this all spring and all summer except the one week I was gone. Oh don't you worry, it was 90 degrees when I was gone, and now it currently feels like 50 degrees out- and no I am not just estimating that, weather.com told me that.

Oh well- maybe I will just start sewing my apron, it looks easier than this dress I am working on.


I am linking up with Tuesday Tag Along at Twee Poppets





I am hoping to meet some fabulous bloggers over there, especially one that sew- then maybe I can finish this dang dress.

ADDICTED TO SEWING!

Okay, so my mom gave me her sewing machine last week and I am in love!!! I am currently attempting (I use that word loosely) to make Olivia a dress from a pattern but somehow messed up with my amount of material for the bottom portion so now I am winging it with some fat quarters that were $0.99 at JoAnns the other day. I hope it turns out!

I also got a bunch of patterns that were typically $16 for (brace yourself) $0.99! One of them makes an adorable apron which I bought super cute material for (on sale of course) and laptop carrier pattern, stuffed animal pattern, window treatment pattern, and yoga pants pattern! I am going to be a sewing fool.

The bottom of my Jo Ann's receipt says that I spent $23 and saved $73!!!!!! Now if any of you would like to step up and be my mentor so I don't royally screw this up and lose lots of money in the process- that would be fantastic! (I am sort of kidding about that last part.)



Anyhow.... I will post pics when I charge my camera and get around to it sometime tomorrow.

Grounded for being a bad blogger!!

Yep, that's right, I am grounding myself to stick to my blogging. I have been a very bad blogger and completely MIA. I am so sorry!!! Truly I am, but on the bright side of things I have A LOT to catch up on.


Alright, first things first. Let's rewind about 2 weeks ago, it was a beautiful sunny day and I was positive that summer was finally here. I was outside taking pictures of our beautiful blossoming garden and perennials. Actually, I was taking the pictures specifically to put on the blog (whoops!)
So before we get to the bad news, allow me to show you around my beautiful vegetable and flower garden.






Beautiful right????



Well, here is what it looks like the next day!!!






As you can see from the flooding, tree leaf confetti, damaged garden, and massive golf ball size hail- we had quite a storm. A tornado touched down 1 1/2 miles away from us, and the pics of the house across the street was our neighbors place who ended up having their yard flooded under 3-4 ft of water. (Thank God their pug dog was inside during the storm because they were not home when it happened)

Not only did this happen once but then on Father's Day another storm of the same magnitude came through. That is 2 storms in one week. ( The second storm is the same one that went through Billings, Mt with a major tornado)

Luckily no one was hurt but it was still pretty devastating.




In other news in our household-

Olivia is full on running and walking and talking- she will be 11 months old on the 11th of July!
This age is so much fun and I really want it to slow down!

My mother gave me my first sewing machine and I am sewing up a storm trying to make Olivia a dress for her 1st b-day party (fingers crossed and knocking on wood that I am doing it right)

We have also decided after a recent trip back home that we NEED to move closer home. Olivia is our first and only child and she is also the first grandchild on both sides of the family, we really hate being this far away and so we have decided to move to Lander, Wy before winter hits this year. It is about 2 hrs away from our family where as in Mt we are currently 9-10 hrs away. I have never really gotten that experience of being able to send Olivia with her grandparents or having my mom help me when I need advice or just want to visit with her about being a new mom. We have done everything on our own for the last 2yrs which has been challenging but it has also given us a sense of independence. Lander is just far enough away to have the best of both worlds and we are really looking forward to everything the future has to hold.


HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!

I hope everyone has safe travels, safe BBQ's, and safe firework explosions!!!!

To Do list a mile long

I have a to do list a mile long and between the housework and two babies I have no clue how i am going to get it done. I finally bought the remainder of our vegetable plants so I need to plant those and weed the garden. I also need to mow by the garden and move the picnic table, the hubba wubba is camping and I was hoping to surprise him and have it all done but instead I am blogging (damn you blogger for being so addictive).

I started weight watchers Tuesday night and so far I am doing good, I have been eating a ton of fruits and vegetables since they are 0 points and I feel like my energy has skyrocketed which is good because I was sorta in a slump. But I must admit the challenge will start tonight when the hubba wubba returns because he is a horrible influence, I am quite positive he puts a stick of butter on everything he cooks, then again that would explain why his cooking is delicious. So, I am really going to need to stand my ground and just ignore his offer to cook me shrimp scampi, I will also have to ignore his offer to make me a cocktail or fetch me a beer which is going to be really really hard!

On another note my daughter thinks she is a dog, and I have no idea where she learned this because even my dog does not think she is a dog. Olivia has been carrying toys around in her mouth while she crawls and walks around, someone please tell me it is just a phase, because while it is extremely adorable and cute, i don't want her to think she is a dog. I am worried about this you see because she has developed a taste for dog food and dog toys also, if I put everything up then I forget about the dog needing to eat and if I leave it down, the baby that thinks she's a dog will get into it.

My very first ever attempt at being a crafty DIY will take place soon, I have a bedside table that I am going to fix up so I will post pictures of that and of my garden once everything is done. I also have plans to turn a picture frame into an earring holder and when I find the blog that I got the idea from I will give credit where it's due. I am also really wanting to sew Olivia a dress for her first birthday, I have fallen in love with Amy Butler fabrics but I am having a hard time picking a semi-easy dress pattern, so if you have any ideas- you know where to leave them.