Monday, July 29, 2013

A nice little weekend

First and foremost, we found this little guy on the back of the truck. I can't remember what day we found him, but I'm pretty sure it was this weekend at some point.
Sup?
A few months ago, my grandfather gave me two praying mantis nests to relocate to my house.  They are supposed to eat mosquitoes, so I happily took them.  I think they've finally hatched!  This is the only one we've seen so far, but I thought it was pretty cool.  Saturday we saw him again, on the garage door.  I moved him back to the safety of the flower bed.  I haven't seen him since.

Friday my parents kindly kept L.Soup and brought her home for bedtime so that we could do this:
Pretty sunset

Our friends have a boat, and asked us to go fishing with them after work. We had a great time and it was absolutely beautiful.

Saturday we cleaned up around the house in the morning. We all ended up napping when L.Soup was ready. That's one good part about her not taking naps in her crib, its an excuse for us to nap too!  After her nap, we went down to the beach in our neighborhood.  It was a beautiful day out, and the water was so warm. We walked around in the water and on the sand for about 45 minutes, and then we came back home.

L.Soup got a bath, and we changed our clothes and headed to Target!  I decided during the week that I needed 2 things in my life:
1.  A "recycle bin" trash can
2.  A basket for all L.Soup's dirty bibs and wash clothes.
I had a trash can I wanted to use already, problem was, it was being used in L.Soup's bedroom.  And it was definitely overkill for what we needed in there.  So we found a smaller, replacement trash can that fits perfectly in the space.  So we moved the bigger trash can downstairs next to our actual trash can.  I'm going to make some stickers with the little "recycling" symbol, so that its clearly marked for guests.  Now I just have to teach L.Soup the difference between the two!

The basket is actually working perfectly.  It's exactly what we needed to put her dirty stuff in.  When it fills up, we just carry it upstairs.  It's much easier than scooping it all up off the table and trying to fumble up the stairs with it as a pile in  your arms.  I already have enough problems going up the stairs.  On top of the fact that usually I'm not alone when I'm making the trip anymore.

We got back from Target later than we expected to, and L.Soup was HUNGRY.  We had dinner planned out already, but hadn't taken the chicken out of the freezer.  Luckily it thawed pretty fast in a bowl of hot water, and we were able to make a delicious version of Cajun Chicken Pasta.  We substituted asparagus for mushrooms because D.Soup does not like them, and we had asparagus in the fridge.


It was a delicious decision. A serving size is 1.5 cups. The meal itself makes 7.5 cups so we had a million left overs. It was so amazingly good. We've made it before but I had forgotten how yummy it was. Also, luckily it is really filling, so I didn't even eat over my serving size.

NOM NOM NOM.
Sunday we did some more cleaning, packed up a bunch of things that don't belong to us and took them over to my parent's house so they could be delivered to where they actually belong.  It was great to get more stuff moved out of the main level of our house.  The last thing we really need to do is switch around where the couch and loveseat are and the living room will be complete (for now).  D.Soup went out for a few hours with his brother, so L.Soup and I settled in for a nap.  Not soon after we woke up, D.Soup came back home.  So the timing worked out really well for us.

The rest of the afternoon we played, had leftovers of the deliciousness above, and watched Firefly because I had control of the remote it's awesome.  We all went upstairs when it was time for L.Soup to go to bed.  When I came out of her room D.Soup was asleep on the bed!  Rude.  I went in and took a bath in scalding hot water, and it was glorious.  He was still asleep when I got done.  So I went back downstairs and watched TWO (!) more hours of Firefly before I came upstairs and finally got in bed.

Then, it felt like someone was playing a cruel joke on me, because I couldn't fall asleep for almost an hour.  That was terrible.

I fully intend on finishing the foyer wall this week.  So I can finally stop talking about it and actually show it to you.  Other than that I don't have much planned for this week.


We'll see how that works out.

PS How many times did I say "delicious" when referring to my dinner.
Obviously I liked it.
Jeez.

Friday, July 26, 2013

MzSoup's personal weight loss challenge

I mentioned getting back into healthy habits briefly in this post, but wanted to go a little more into it.  I have slowly and steadily gained 50 pounds over the last 10 years.  A little bit at a time so that I didn't really notice it, until it was too late.  Well, I gained about 15 of those pounds during pregnancy and just never lost them.  But they are still there so they count.  Dang it.

I signed up for two 5K run/walks, one in April and one in May, and started Couch to 5k at the end of February to try to get myself ready to run.  Walking or running three times a week and keeping track of my calorie intake using My Fitness Pal, I ended up losing 10 pounds in a little over a month.  It was enough to keep me motivated and working... until April hit and it was crunch time for finishing everything for L.Soup's birthday party on the 13th.  I of course decided I had to make everything myself (or as much as possible) and I went slightly overboard with the decorations.  I was adamant that I would pick it back up as soon as I felt ready for the party.

But that was a lie.

As soon as the party was over, I was exhausted.  For about a week.  THEN I had to work on cleaning everything up (and lets be honest, there's STILL some decorations up around the house... and I'm not even embarrassed about it... okay maybe a little).  And then I was exhausted for another week.

I never had the energy or time to pick it back up.  So I walked both 5K's.  Which isn't a terrible thing, but I had really wanted to try running, since I had put so much work into it.  Oh well.

Well, here I am.  It's July.  I still haven't lost this baby weight, and my baby is 15 months old.  I think I've finally gotten it into my head that I need to DO this.  So I'm putting it out here.  Almost like I'm shaming myself into putting in the effort.  Because now that you all know, I have to at least try.  I've even been debating with myself if I should take before pictures and post them up here, but I don't know if I want to expose you all to that.  Maybe I will take some, and keep them around for motivation anyway.

So I've started back up with My Fitness Pal -- if anyone is there, mzsoup is my user name (of course), friend me!  I've also added a weight loss tracker here, from MFP... It's waaaayy down on the right hand side somewhere.  (That number includes from when I was working before.)

D.Soup and I have a plan to pick out all the meals we want for the week, and make a shopping trip.  Getting only the stuff we would need for that week.  That way we stick to our planned meals, and don't overspend.  The last 2 weeks it has worked really well for us.

We get a lot of our recipes from Skinnytaste, I've never been disappointed by a recipe that I've pulled off of there.  I really appreciate the people that take time to share the healthy meals they are making for their families, because sometimes I run out of ideas.

At the moment I don't have any huge plans for starting seriously back up with running.  We love to go on walks as a family, and we have a bike seat for L.Soup so we can go on bike rides together too.  In a few weeks we're going to have to start physical therapy with Calli, so I will be getting out more often.

I just have a lot of other things I would rather be doing that running, at the moment.  I'd like to see how the weight loss goes for a little while with just changing my eating habits. 



I'll keep you posted.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Too much to do.

Its been a few days since I've been here.  I've been so busy trying to get life back in order and get back to a healthy diet that I have gotten absolutely nothing done in the crafty part of my life.  Which makes me sad.

My sister dropped off a million bags of baby clothes for me about 2 weeks ago.  She's not having any more babies and she gave me everything that her kids have grown out of.  So we lugged about 10 bags and 4 large Rubbermaid containers into the house and sat the in front of the wall I'm trying to finish painting in the foyer.  So I didn't get a chance to work on that over the weekend because that would have involved actually moving all that stuff out of the way.  Slowly over the last few days we have been carrying it upstairs so that its out of the way.  My plan is to go through all of it, put it into Rubbermaid containers based on size and store it in the attic.  First I have to get a bunch of containers, oh, and find time.  Ha.

I have a new project in mind.  But I need to collect all the pieces that I need to make my own canvas.  For this project I need a 4 foot x 5 foot canvas, and those suckers are like $100.  No thank you! 

Today we go back to the vet to get Calli's staples removed.  I can't believe its already been two weeks.  10 more to go.  I think she's progressing really well, we shall see what the vet thinks.

We are also getting a gate for the main level of the house today.  That way we don't have to chase L.Soup to the stairs every 5 minutes.  She loves to climb them, look out the window, sit on them.  Really they are her favorite place to be right now.  She is NOT going to be happy with us when that gate goes up.

Tomorrow we are going out on a friends boat!  My parents are kind enough to watch L.Soup during the day tomorrow AND keep her tomorrow night.  Including driving her home and putting her to bed in her own crib, because she refuses to sleep anywhere else.  I'm really excited because its been a few years since I've been on a boat, so it will be super fun.

This weekend my intentions are to finish the foyer wall.  I'm tired of talking about it, so it needs to be finished.  That will also allow me to put everything back where it is supposed to be, and clean up.  Which needs to happen.  I'd also like to get started on the shelves for L.Soup's room, so that her room can be complete.  But I'm not holding my breath on both of those things happening this weekend. 

I really need to get some of my house cleaned up, so that might be a major focal point.  I'd like to get some of it done today after Calli's vet appointment.



We'll see how that goes.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Our little garden

A while ago I noted that D.Soup built a planter box in the back yard.  I filled it up very soon after it was built, and we are finally seeing some spoils from all the hard work letting it sit there and have the rain/sprinklers water it.  I collected 4 cherry tomatoes this morning, and there are 3 cucumbers that are steadily growing, one is almost ready for picking!

I took some time yesterday to stake up the tomato plants, and the pepper plants.  They all had been laying down a little, and I wanted to get them up so that they could get light.  I had been meaning to do it for a while, and avoiding it because we have about a billion mosquitoes in our yard and they must be starving because they are on me in an instant when I walk out the door.  But I finally sucked it up and took the time to work on it yesterday.

It was probably the worst time for me to decide to get something outside accomplished.  Considering it's 95 degrees here all this week, with a heat index up to 105.  Ugh.  I was sweating just standing there.  Not.even.moving.  It was awful.  Then I started doing actual work, and it was worse.  I was only out there for maybe 30 minutes and I was drenched.  Yuck.

I never really covered the build process for the planter box, mostly because I didn't help with the build.  You can find the plans on ana-white.com.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Poor puppy

Calli had always been a little crazy.   We have gotten used to that over the last two years.   She jumps even though we've tried to stop her.  She licks.  She gets ridiculously excited if you even look at her in her general direction.  She frantically runs around the backyard at full speed.   She's part off the reason we got this house, because of how great this yard is and how much she loves to run. 
Well last weekend she was doing just that while D.Soup and his brother put his new shed together.  She either took a wrong turn our stepping down wrong.   She has not put her right hind leg down since.  She had some issues a few weeks ago where she would pull that same leg up, but she always ended up back to normal so we didn't think too much of it.
We took her to the vet Monday before we left for vacation.  She was pretty sure a cruciate ligament was torn, but wanted us to check with an orthopedic.   She gave us some doggie ibuprofen to help with the pain and told us to keep her off it as much as possible.
We gave her a lot of down time while at the beach even though we could tell she was getting cabin fever.

When we got back from vacation we took her to see a doggie orthopedic.  He checked her leg and watched her walk, and verified that she had torn her Cranial Cruciate Ligament.  It's like the human Anterior Cruciate Ligament.  He highly recommended she have surgery to repair the damage, because if not she would have really bad arthritis in that leg. 

We said our goodbyes, and went home to make a serious decision.  There are two surgeries that will fix a torn CCL, both are expensive.  The first takes a type of string, and mimics the positioning of the cruciate ligament.  Scar tissue build up over time strengthens this hold.  The surgery is the lesser expensive of the two.

The other surgery is called TPLO, and it changes the angle that the knee sits, removing the need for the ligament completely.  Its more expensive than the first option.  But the vet (and another vet who is a relative) said that it is much more likely to be beneficial in the long run because of Calli's size, age and activity level.  She's almost a large breed dog, just on the cusp.  And she's only 2.

So we made our decision to get her the TPLO, and Wednesday morning we dropped her off for surgery.  I was so upset all day, and worried about her.  They called in the afternoon to let us know that she did great, and that she was out of surgery and resting.  We had to wait until Thursday afternoon to pick her up.

Thursday rolled around and we anxiously worked a full day.  Our appointment to pick her up was at 4 pm.  When we got there they were telling us all about how she hates the cone (which we already knew) and how she had broken free multiple times.  The vet even called her "Houdoggie".

They gave us her medications, and instructions to keep her fairly stationary for the next 2 weeks.  We also have to prevent her from licking her leg. 

This was her on the ride home:
Not happy about this situation.
Sad little leg:
Naked leg.
She was much happier when we got her home and settled down. 
Happy now that we're on our bed.
I gave her some food, right in front of her face.  But apparently she was just.too.tired. to eat it.  Which was fine with me.  I also gave her water out of a solo cup, so she wouldn't have to get up and walk over to the water bowl.  She's not spoiled or anything.
Obviously.
We are trying our best to keep her on bedrest for the most part.  She's gotten very energetic the last few days (which they warned us about), almost back to her normal self... but not quite.  She's got pretty much one more week of restricted movement, and then we go back to the orthopedic to get the staples removed.  After that she's on 4 more weeks of restricted movement.  Then we can start physical therapy.  The vet recommended slow walking, for about 5 minutes to start with and building up from there.  He also recommended swimming, if she's not too scared (which is a strong possibility with this girl).  Conveniently there is a doggie underwater therapy facility right down the street from us.  Crazy.  Once we get closer to that we're going to look into it.


****WARNING****

The last picture is of the scar on her leg.  It's not terrible, just a bunch of staples and some redness.  But I don't know how squeamish you are, so I tried to set it up so it would be blurry unless you hovered over the image.  But because I'm new to this it DID NOT WORK.  So be warned, don't scroll down if you don't think your stomach can handle it.  I'll try to keep working on the blur thing, I'd really like it to work :(





















Scar.

Crazy puppy.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Finishing touches to the nursery. Part 2

The boxes are all finished!  Finally.  I kind of pushed them to the side there for a little while.  I got burned out with all the painting that was happening.  Then I realized that I was cutting it mighty close to get L.Soup's 4th of July outfit finished in time for her to actually wear it on the 4th of July.  Then I finished working on the bow display that I made for my mom as a surprise.  Hey, at least I'm getting something done.

So at long last.  Here they are:  (I apologize for the iffy pictures, it was late and passed L.Soup's bedtime.  So these were a little rushed)
Yellow Top with Blue handles.  White Middle. Gray Bottom.
Orange Top.  White Middle.  Pink Bottom.  And a little D.Soup shoe action.

Terrible lighting... Purple Top.  White Middle.  Red Bottom.
In its designated space
Green on the very top.
Top drawer stores diapers.  Bottom drawer stores wipes.  We have a little bit of a problem already, because the bookshelves are pretty much full.  I can't really put a second row behind the first because we'll never remember they are back there.  Although, L.Soup likes to yank all the books out of the shelf and leave them all over the room. So two rows might not be much of an issue.

Next up are the shelves.  I'd like them to look  something like this:
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One for above her changing table, so I have a place to display some of the picture type stuff that I have for her room.  Also, one above the dresser, so I can put her name blocks there, and give myself some more display space on the dresser.  I think we have all the supplies that I need to get these started.  But I'm not sure how long its going to take to build up the motivation. 

D. Soup is using the some plywood to build seats for his boat.  When he is done we're going to use the leftovers for this project.  He hasn't started them yet, so obviously I can't get to work on these.  Good thing too because I've got other things I need to finish.


I'll let you know how that goes.

End of June recap. I am really far behind.

I've been quite busy in the time since I last posted any crafty update... so busy that this post is all about stuff that happened in June!  But I'm starting to feel a little embarrassed in the amount of time it's taking me to finish these things I've started.  Let's recap:

1.  Foyer wall.  Got the new paint to finish the base layer for this wall.  Have not even thought about opening it.  I think now I need a new roller, since I was all "oh I'll be right back to this in a few days" and never cleaned off the old roller, just wrapped it in saran wrap.  *sigh*

2.  Boxes for the nursery.  I FINALLY FINISHED THEM.  If L.Soup wasn't already asleep I would march this last part up there right now and take pictures of all of them together.  Its taken so long to get these done.  I'll be happy when I don't have to look at them anymore.  For a "quick project" they've been misery.  Okay, that's an exaggeration.  I just didn't expect them to take this long.  They are looking super cute though, can't wait for them to be done so I can take pictures of them!  I put the two bookshelf boxes in her room already because I was sick of books all over.  I'll get some pictures tomorrow and post that right up.

3. A present for my mom.  I have been working on this for a while, and originally you all were supposed to see this post before the reveal of the surprise.  But I finished it and gave it to her yesterday.  So that post went up because I got excited about it.

4.  Sewing.  Just all general sewing projects.  Which have been on hold since I decided that I NEEDED the boxes to be done.  Most important was L.Soup's 4th of July outfit.  Well I actually did get this finished, the morning of the 4th (I'm totally not a procrastinator). I also made a pattern for some bibs that I'm going to make for her.  So, there's a step in the right direction.

Now let's move on to the reasons I haven't gotten anything done.

First, and most importantly: Saturday, June 22 was Girls Day Out.  There were cupcakes, and shopping, and day drinking, and more cupcakes, and BRUNO MARS.  And it was incredible!  It was one of my friend's birthdays, so we did an entire day of celebrating. I have a ton of pictures, but I didn't really dedicate a post to it, and now it's almost a month past and I feel I've missed the boat.  Whoops.

Then Sunday D.Soup went fishing in the morning, and we hung out with some OTHER friends for dinner and frozen yogurt.  Now, I'm not usually one to choose frozen yogurt over ice cream.  But I must say that Yolavie is actually really good.  We've been there twice in the last few days.  We've had other places that we really were not happy with, but I can be down with sometimes substituting.  Not all the time. No no no no.

In other (more disgusting, sorry) news.  Sunday morning I went to snuggle in with L.Soup on the couch for nap time.  And smelled something strange.  I started looking around, and found cat pee on my couch!  GAH!  I couldn't believe it.  I was so sad all the rest of the day.  I cleaned up as much of it as I could, but of course he peed right where the back of the couch meets the seat, so I was never 100% sure that I got it all.

Now let me explain...  One of my cats is very particular about the cleanliness of his litter box.  We are normally really good about taking care of it, but sometimes it goes a little bit longer than it should before we clean it.  We have 2 boxes, but haven't really found a good place for the second one, so currently we're working with 1, which is not a good thing when you have 2 cats.  Anywho.   A few times in the past, he's used the couch as a litter box.  I don't know why he decided on the couch, but that's where he goes.  I guess its because he knows we are there all the time.  But never NEVER before has he peed.  It's always been poop...  Which sounds like it would be more disgusting than pee...  But in actuality I've always been grateful because cat pee is not something that you can get out of ANYTHING.  It always smells.  *sigh*

So immediately when D.Soup got home I demanded that we go to the furniture store and pick out a new couch.  We found one that we liked, but we were still looking around when a salesman came up and started talking to us.  We ended up asking him about getting animal urine smells out of the couch and he asked if we had gotten a warranty on the couch when we had purchased it.  And we had.  So we felt a little better about that.  AND we found the matching loveseat to the couch we currently have, which had been discontinued, and was on sale!  So we bought that and headed home happier with the news that we could have someone come clean the couch and get use out of our warranty...

WELL, come to find out.  Because there is no actual stain on the couch, and it's just smell, the warranty does not cover it!  Of course not!  How is a couch that's DARK BROWN going to get a stain on it EVER.  Answer?  IT'S NOT.  So what's the point of paying for a warranty (which we really only got BECAUSE of situations like this) if it's not going to cover the ONE TIME I need it.  I was so angry.  It does cover other things, like scratches and if its broken, things of that nature.  So I guess there's still a chance for me to need it.  But why INCLUDE "pet urine" and "pet feces" into the list, when you know the only REAL worry with those things is the SMELL. 

hurumph





Moving on...

On Tuesday's schedule was the delivery of a shed D.Soup bought with his bonus money.  The only problem is the delivery time was 9-5.  And someone needed to be there to sign for it.  Luckily my parents came over in the morning and watched L.Soup at our house and waited for the delivery. 

Wednesday was the pick up for our new loveseat.  D.Soup and one of our friends drove over to the furniture place and picked it up while I picked L.Soup up from my parents.  We got there about the same time.  I got everything together to pass the boat pads on to our friend while they put the few pieces.  When they finished putting the loveseat together, they plopped down onto it, reclined both their seats and started holding hands... I just about fell over.  I was laughing too hard to even think about getting my camera, and I'm really sad about that now.  Then we handed over the boat pads...
He was happy to have them (and to not have spent a million dollars on them) and I was happy to get them out of my house.  At least I got one thing completed.

I borrowed a wet vac and went to work on the couch.  I'm hoping that fixed all the issues.

After that we met D.Soup's family for dinner.  I got a salad because everything else on the menu at Friendly's is well over 900 calories, and that's a bit extreme.  By the time we got home and got Little Miss to bed, we were not in the mood to do anything.  So we sat on our new loveseat and watched the first episode of this season on Rizzoli and Isles! I was so excited that it was coming back on!
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That next weekend was filled with building the shed, laundry and preparing for vacation!



More on that later.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

A surprise for mom!

A few posts back I mentioned that my mom has a shop on Etsy (here!)  Well she also does shows around the area a few times a year.  She's been talking about wanting a new display piece to put her bows on.  She's been looking for something like this:
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But recently decided to hold off on buying it until later when she really needs it.  Right about the same time that she found the triangle display above, I found something online that I just loved and immediately wanted to make it for her:
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I reused some of the paint from L.Soup's room, and got the mirror off Craigslist for $10.  So I'm doing fairly well in a price comparison for the two items.  And I think the refinished mirror has so much more character! 

I didn't have enough forethought to take a picture of the mirror all put together before I started, but here is the base (minus the one arm):
MESS... ugh.  Welcome to my basement
And here are the pieces after sanding:

I removed all the hardware: screws holding the mirror to the frame, bolts holding the mirror frame to the stand and the bolts holding the legs onto the stand.  I sat all the hardware to the side so they wouldn't get misplaced (with my multiple projects happening in the basement right now).

I used a fine sandpaper, because I didn't want any sanding lines to be noticeable once I was finished painting, and sanded all over the mirror frame, stand, and legs to rough up the wood a little so the paint would have a better time sticking.  I then went over everything with a paper towel to get all the sanding dust off.
And this is why you shouldn't do anything in your work clothes... Sand dust.
I had an assistant.

At this point I probably should have primered everything with a white base.  But because I'm stubborn and lazy I decided that the paint and primer in one that I had would be fine.  Well it took about 3, maybe 4 coats on each piece before I couldn't see darkness anymore through the very light yellow that I ended up using.  So much for lazy.  I moved back and forth between painting the pieces of this mirror and painting the box colors so that each individual piece has time to dry.  It worked out fairly well, there were times that I was sitting on the floor waiting for something, ANYTHING to be dry.
Obviously I'm not the best painter.

I had some other stuff going on, so I didn't get to do anything with this project for a few weeks.  But I finally got around to putting the chicken wire on and finishing it up.  I originally wanted to get the chicken wire tucked into where the mirror had been before, but I couldn't staple it in there, it wasn't wide enough.  So I settled for stapling the wire to the main back part, and I'm going to cover it with some fabric so the sharp edges don't cut anyone.  Also so it doesn't look ugly.

I went back and forth trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to finish it.  The yellow is very light, and I just wasn't sure when it was all apart if it was TOO light.  Do I want to paint the hardware so that it was a happier color than the dark brass?  Do I want to add "embellishment colors" on the wood? Do I want to paint the chicken wire?  Do I give it to mom as is and let her decide if she wants any changes?

I finally decided on this:
I left it plain and delivered it to mom today.  She LOVED it, and was happy that I didn't add any embellishments to the wood.  She thinks the bows will add enough color that it would have been too much to include it with the paint.  I left the hardware dark, and honestly it doesn't look bad.  I had one issue after painting, one side of the base arms comes off... and when I painted it (despite my best efforts) some paint got into the crevasses and I had a hard time getting the two pieces back together.  I had to sand down the paint inside of there and even after that the fit is a little off...  I think we are going to end up wood gluing those two pieces together anyway, so it won't be an issue.

This was my first refinishing project, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I learned that I need to be more patient with things, but I get so excited when I'm working on something that I just want to GOGOGO, and I can't always operate at that speed.  I have some more things to work on, so I'm going to try to focus on being more patient next time around.  We'll see how that works.

Let me know what you think!

Monday, July 8, 2013

A new little punkin baby!

One of my dearest friends had her first little girl yesterday.  She is 6 lb 14 oz, just about the same size as L.Soup when she was born.   D.Soup and I got to visit them today at the hospital.   She is perfect.

My friend had a crazy fast labor and is doing great.   I'm so happy for her because I know the frustration of an excessively long labor. 

Welcome to the world munchkin.   We love you. 

Friday, July 5, 2013

A patriotic dress for L.Soup

I had a vision in my head for what I wanted L.Soup to wear for 4th of July this year.  I wasn't really able to find anything that matched it perfectly, so I looked into some patterns that mom and I had gotten on clearance on day while we were in JoAnn Fabrics.  Every once in a while they have some of their patterns on sale, for $1-2 per baggie.  It's awesome, and I usually have a hard time cutting myself off.  Some of those patterns are normally $10!

Luckily, one looked exactly what I had envisioned in my head:

source
This is McCall's M6270, I made it in size 1.  Honestly that was a little big for L.Soup, who is almost 15 months old, so it would probably fit a child in 18 month clothes nicely.

I then set about looking for the fabrics that I wanted.  So we went BACK to JoAnn's... and I found some red, white and blue fabrics that I liked, but weren't exactly what I wanted. But I couldn't find the perfect match, so I picked them up. I was a little disappointed but figured I would make it work, since I didn't have any other options. Well then a few weeks later mom and I went to another fabric store in the area called Hancock Fabrics. As we were walking around I spotted a rack with red, white and blue. Magically they had exactly what I had envisioned! Blue fabric with white stars, and red and white stripe fabric!
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I knew I had to get it! L.Soup's going to be a little tiny ruffled flag! It's going to be so cute!

I had the pattern all cut out and ready to go, but decided that I needed to work on the boxes for her room instead.  Well, a few days ago I realized that it was crunch time... so I got in gear and started really focusing on it when L.Soup went to bed.

Well, I quickly realized that I had not purchased enough fabric for the ruffles.  I had also purchased white fabric, to make the lining and top section of the dress, so I supplemented two of the ruffles with white stripes mixed in with colored fabric.  It ended up looking really cute, so I wasn't too upset about that.  

The next road block was my inability to sew.  That's always a problem... I spent more time during this project removing stitches than I did putting stitches in.  That was unbelievably frustrating.

Also frustrating was the fact I didn't realize in advance that the pattern was designed so the first and fourth ruffles matched, and the third ruffle and the top piece matched.  You can see it in the picture at the top, which is directly from the packaging.  I didn't realize it until I already had all the pieces cut out.  My intention was to have the colors go blue, then red, then blue then red again... but it didn't work out that way because of how I followed the pattern.

I didn't finish sewing before we left for vacation, so I took the sewing machine with me.  I managed to remember almost all the pieces, except the lining part, somehow I left that at home (along with a bunch of other -- non sewing related -- things).  Luckily it wasn't absolutely necessary, and I made the dress work without.

All in all it was a good project, and it turned out really cute.  I will definitely try it again, with the right amount of fabric next time.   Here's pictures of the finished product:
Back
Front
And here are some action shots of L.Soup in the dress.  They are from my phone and she would.not.stand.still... so this is all I got.  She also had a really great bow in, courtesy of my momma... but of course I didn't take a single picture of her when she had it on.
Blatantly ignoring me.
Answering the remote phone
Mid-spin, and an nice shot of my toes.
Something else exciting with this dress:  I got to try out the KAM Snaps and pliers and that I bought earlier this month, which I plan on using to make bibs.  It was super easy and I'm pretty excited about it.  You can see the snap at the top of the neckline on the back of the dress!



Hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July!