A little one on one time with the sewing machine

Months ago I bought two sewing patterns off etsy, this and this.  I sat down almost immediately and got to work on the skirt.  I had to make it big, so L.Soup hasn't had the chance to wear it yet, but it's so sooooo cute.  Of course at the time I had no idea where my camera was, so I didn't take any pictures of the process.  I do remember it involved the destruction of an old pair of very loved jeans that were unwearable.  It still hurt to cut them up.

Since then I've scored an awesome deal on denim fabric at the store one day and bought a ridiculous amount of it so I will never have to suffer through an experience like that again.

About two weeks ago I decided it was probably time to get to work on the other pattern, a coat.  My intention is for this to be L.Soup's winter coat for this year.  So I've put myself in a slight time crunch.  Lucky for me the pattern is really simple.

I picked a plaid fleece for the outside and a red swirly flannel for the inside...

I got half of the fabric cut out, with "assistance" one day while I was at my mom's.  I decided to wait until said assistant was asleep to try to cut anything else.  Then I had a week of not feeling well and general exhaustion, so nothing got done.  Well last night I decided it was time.

I sat down and cut the rest of the fabric.  On the floor.  I need a second table.   Then I got to work.

Wednesday:
I got the main pieces together for the outside and the lining.  I also finished the ruffled collar and got all of that sewn together.  (ps I didn't take any pictures of this entire process.  I am the worst)

I wanted to see what size the belt would be before I made button holes, so I started on that before I moved to the real next step.  I used the fleece and flannel and followed the instructions for putting the belt together.  But about halfway through I noticed the belt was curling.  First and foremost I want to say that fleece is nearly impossible to sew with (for me at least) because it is so stretchy.  It's also completely impossible to fold under 1/4 inch and sew.  So I think what happened is as I was ATTEMPTING to do that, I stretched the fleece out.  As it got sewn to the flannel, it tried to go back to normal, and that caused the curling.  I'm going to start over with two pieces of the flannel instead and run with that.

After that debacle, I started working on holes for the belt to go through.  I got one made and then realized it was after 10 pm.  And because I'm a 90 year old woman I immediately shut everything off and went to bed.

Thursday:
After putting L.Soup to bed I got right back into the swing of things with the coat.  I finished up the holes for the belt, and got the seam sewn around the bottom of the coat.  And I almost died from the cuteness.  I took two of my KAMSnaps and buttoned up the top.

Then I got to work fixing the disaster from the night before.  Luckily I always buy waaaayyy too much fabric for what I need (mostly because I never think to look at the pattern to see exactly how much I need before I go to the store, so that's always fun).  I cut two new lengths for the belt, both out of the red flannel and sewed them together.  SOO much easier than trying to work with a tiny strip of fleece.  Ugh.

I strung the belt through the holes, and had to talk myself out of waking L.Soup up to put it on her immediately.  Instead I ran into the bedroom and made D.Soup pause the hockey game to experience the ridiculousness.  He loved it.  I loved it.  I did a little happy dance.

I was so hyped up from the victory of the coat, I switched out the thread and threw a pair of Baby Legs together too!  I picked up a super cute pair of socks last month at Target, and just hadn't taken the time to do anything with them.  L.Soup will be wearing them today!

Speaking of wearing... When I went to get L.Soup out of the car this morning I had to fight the new coat on her.  Which isn't anything new...  She.looked.amazing.  I'm worried that it's a little short, but I should be able to fix that without much effort, I hope.  But then, after she got it off, she cried when we tried to put it back on her.  So that was awesome.  I tried the sad face and everything, and she just wasn't having it.  Sigh.

Finally got a picture of my little moving target:

No I will not look at you, mama.

Anyway.  Hooray for productivity!

Finishing touches to the nursery. Part 4: Final Product!

1. Find antique TV stand and refinish it.
2. Build bed frame.
3. Build matching night stands.
4. Refinish dining room table.
5. Refinish bedroom furniture to match bed and night stands.
6. Build computer desk for D.Soup.
7. Refinish wing back chair.
8. Build floating shelves. (almost)
   
9. Build outdoor planters.
10. Install cabinets with clothes folding space into laundry room, with cat door.
11. Paint L.Soup's bedroom.
12. Paint foyer. (almost)
13. Sew pillow for L.Soup's bedroom. 

SO.  I was trying to wait until the last 2 pieces for this room were finished.  But its going to be probably Christmas before they are done and I can't wait that long for two shelves.  This post has been written for months and its killing me just sitting here.  I'll write about the shelves if they are ever finished when they are finished.

While I was pregnant, I dreamed up this nursery idea based around the bedding set I had purchased.  The rainbow of colors and blocks on the wall.  Well it never came to fruition in the old house because of the hobo.  So when we moved to the new house, I knew I wanted to make it happen.

We decided when we moved in that painting her room would wait until it was warmer out, so the windows could be open to air the room out a bit.  Well, I decided that March was warm enough.  I wanted her room to be done before her birthday, and that was that.  D.Soup wasn't very happy with my decision, but he wasn't the one doing the work.  It turns out that it was a fantastic idea, because I got so warm while painting that I appreciated the cool air coming in through the window.

When we first moved in, before anything went into the nursery, I started taping.  Lower parts on the walls, door framing, some of the upper edges.  Then it just sat, and sat, and frustrated me beyond belief.  It was a good day when I got to tape the rest of the walls off and could get started painting.

Side note:  L.Soup's name is all over these pictures.  But I'm going to continue to call her L.Soup because I like it.  So there.

Before I finished taping though, we put up this super cute fan we found at Lowe's.  It can be white, or multicolored like we have here:

Finished expert taping job.

I had D.Soup help me measure height of the wall where the squares were going, and then match that distance on the wall width wise so that the squares would be... square!  He then left me to my own devices to take Little Miss somewhere and distract her.  She had not been very happy locked in the nursery with us while we were trying to get the lines taped up.

"Perfect" Square

It took me 2 (maybe 3, I can't remember) coats to get the walls covered.  All in all I'd say it took 2 hours to get the 3 walls done.  I was pretty happy with that.  Especially considering that included times where I had to take a break because L.Soup was banging on the door trying to figure out what I was doing and why I wasn't entertaining her.  Rude.

I let that dry a few days, and headed back in to do some more taping.  Because I'm impatient, in that interim some of the decorative pieces went up on the yellow walls.

Light switch matches the bed set.

Got these beauties at a huge craft show in the area

Mom and I took the coat rack, and turned it into a bow holder!  Obviously she needed it.  She's got too many even for this! The other little guy is hanging on the outside of the door on the handle.

Ridiculous

I again needed D.Soup's assistance for taping.  This time there was a little anger on both our parts, because he didn't understand what I was doing, and I didn't understand why he wouldn't just do what I asked him to.  But we got it figured out, and I got the squares all taped up.  We basically taped a straight line across the wall, then about every 2 feet I would have to tear the tape and start over, so that the corners connected.  It was never one continuous line.  I also had to incorporate vertical lines into this wall.  It sounds fairly confusing (it was) and its hard to describe.  Below are some pictures that should make more sense.  Luckily for me, I left every other square white, so I didn't have to worry about re-taping in order to paint the other squares.

This is how I figured out which color would go where.  I had a general idea in my head, but decided I didn't like it once I set the canisters that way the first time.  So I just moved them all around until I liked the way the colors looked in that order.  The space I was painting wasn't even 3 feet square, and these paint samples hold enough to do about a 4 square foot section, so I had a ton left over.  I used these same samples to paint the boxes so the colors match perfectly.

I've always had a hard time with paint seeping underneath the tape, but I think it did a fairly good job this time around.  I wanted to try using this method, but I didn't have the original color of the wall so I couldn't do it.

I worked as carefully as I could to not drip, and I did a pretty good job.  I had a few mistakes, but I also had a few places where the tape ripped the wall! That was pretty frustrating.  But those are just some minor issues that you really can't see because they are behind the crib and overall I'm so happy with how it turned out.  And like I said before, I'm not the best painter... So I was expecting some of this.

Rude.

Paint drip

Paint drip AND its source

Speckling

Drying

Once the paint was dry and the furniture was moved back, I took some animal vinyl stickers that match the bedroom set and placed them around the room.  The boxes were in here at the time, but didn't match and it was starting to annoy me.  So I fixed it.

Wall with the inspiration for all this

Purple and Gray just barely visible at the bottom

Months ago I made pennant banners, but had yet to do anything with them.  I recruited D.Soup one more time, and he begrudgingly helped me hang two of them in the corner of her room over the dresser.  I made MANY more triangles, intending to hang these all over her room.  But 1. they were too much work and I had a very small very needy infant at the time and 2. I think the two are PERFECT:

The new shelves we are making will give me space to put up a few things that I've been holding onto.  I intend to move the name blocks that I got off Etsy to one shelf, opening the dresser up for some more decorations. 

When I was still pregnant, I spotted these on Etsy.  I immediately decided I wanted to make them myself.  I used my Cricut (since then I've invested in a Silhouette Cameo, and I love it so much more than the Cricut) to cut the letters and graphics out, and glued them to a piece of 8.5x11 card stock paper.  Each page has 4 different shades of each color.

I put them in frames with just glass, so you can see the wall behind the paper.  They are the perfect piece of art to hang above L.Soup's crib.

I also saw this before she was born, and so as soon as she was here I ordered one... it looks like the "Audra" one.  It will go on the second shelf if it ever gets done which is currently in the works.  That shelf was also supposed to hold the iPod and speaker that played L.Soup's music at night time. But that ended up not happening...

I LOVED this little speaker.  I ordered it off Amazon, and wasn't really expecting much from it.  But it was awesome!  And then... It died!  I was so sad.  I didn't order another one to replace it.  Only because she doesn't seem to be dependent on the music to stay asleep anymore.  On my recommendation my sister ordered two of them, but she said her's didn't last long at all.  So I'm not quite sure what the deal is with them.  Ours lasted almost a year.

One last picture of the fan, now that you've seen the whole room finished.

I would love to paint the inside of the closet too, but at the moment I don't have the time or energy to take all of her stuff out of there and paint it, let it dry and then put it all back.  I do have some ideas for better storage in there.  But every time I'm in her room, so is she.  She's a fantastic helper.  For unpacking things.  So I never get anything accomplished.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Halloween!

Originally, when I was planning out a costume for L.Soup, I had everything ready for her to be a princess.  Or a fairy.  Or maybe even a really cute witch.  See, my sister passed down this adorable dress that her daughter wore for our wedding when she was the same age as L.Soup is right now.  I thought it would be perfect for a costume.

My niece and sister at my wedding.

Then I started thinking about it, and realized that in a few years she's going to be asking to be a princess, or a fairy, or maybe even a witch.  So I needed something else.

I was going to try to fit the dress into whatever plan I came up with, but it seemed more tailored towards my first 3 options.

I finally settled on candy corn.  Figuring I could add a little satin fabric to the dress and make her look like the fanciest piece of candy corn ever created.  So I went and bought the fabric.  And then I hemmed and hawed.  Is this going to look completely ridiculous?  Is adding pieces of fabric to this dress going to ruin it?  Is it going to even look like candy corn when I'm done with it?  Is it going to be warm enough?

So I hedged the idea of using the dress.   But by this point I was pretty dedicated to the candy corn concept.  My mom mentioned she had a good amount of felt in pretty much every color, since she uses them for hair felties.  She was nice enough to let me use some of it, and Monday night I created THIS:

I took a dress that fits her right now and used it as a pattern.  I just flipped the dress inside out, and traced (leaving a little extra all the way around for seams) around the outside of the dress for each color section.  The bottom of the pattern dress hits her right about mid thigh, so I knew I wanted it to be a little longer.  The orange fabric in the costume goes to the same length as the actual dress, and then the yellow is extra. I traced and cut two pieces for each color.  I could have also just cut one piece for each color, and only had one seam.  The white pieces are shaped a little differently for front and back, so I decided to do two seams for each level.

I sewed the colors together, for each side (front and back).  Then I carefully sewed the first seam, making sure the colors lined up perfectly with each other.  I had to do some trimming in the arm holes because I apparently am terrible at tracing, but it wasn't a huge issue.  Finished up the other side and I was basically done.

I'm pretty excited about how it turned out.  I got to use my KAM Snaps at the shoulders and overall it's perfect.  I enjoy working with felt, because you don't have worry about cut edges unraveling.  It was nice to not have to hem every unfinished section.  That just meant that I had to be very neat when cutting the arm and neck holes and the bottom of the dress.

What are you doing to me right now?

It's a little long.  Actually, it's exactly the perfect length.  Except L.Soup hates that it covers her feet, and she continuously pulls her legs up to try to figure out where they went.  So I'm going to have to cut an inch or two off the bottom.  Not a huge deal.  I might put it on her a few more times before I do to see if she gets used to it.  I kind of love it the way it is.

I even got inspired while I was in the crafting room, and printed out the pattern I bought a few months ago to make L.Soup a winter coat.  I got all the pieces cut out, now I just need to tape them together and get started. 

Now I just need to teach L.Soup to say "trick or treat".

That, and not cry every time she sees someone she doesn't know.

Yeah right.

Well that all went to hell

I was really excited about this whole weight loss thing.  Getting really motivated and even thinking about (gasp!) working in some running here and there.  Then this happened.

So for now, I'm putting the weight loss on hold, and I'm going to focus more on maintaining the current weight and not gaining too terribly much.  Since I never got rid of all the baby weight from L.Soup, I'm hoping to hold myself fairly level on the scale for as long as possible.  I'm going to continue eating healthy, well portioned meals.  Which is completely different from how I reacted to my first pregnancy, which was more like this:

original image source

With my first pregnancy, I was nauseated the first 3 months and lost 12 pounds.  But I ended up gaining it all back and then some with a little thing I like to call no self control.  That's the part I'm trying to avoid this time around.

At this point, I'm not having much of an issue with that, because every food related thing I see makes me want to die.  So... so far so good.

When I got pregnant the first time, I didn't want to make anything public on the internet.  I felt very private about what was happening to me, and didn't want to share it with everyone that I am linked to.  Well now a majority of my internet activity is posting cute pictures and videos of my daughter to Facebook and Instagram, so I think this time around I'll share more of the beginning stages too.

Last time I was sure that I would take weekly pictures of my progress and document everything, and I ended up with one picture of me at four weeks, and a picture of the positive pregnancy test.  That's it.  No other belly shots, not really many pictures of me at all from the entire pregnancy.

I'll try to be better this time around.

Back?

So I maintained basic radio silence for the last few months.  I figured:

1. It was too early to tell anyone at the onset that I was growing a person...
2. All I really had to talk about was how horrible I was feeling. I'm one of those lucky women that apparently experiences constant morning sickness throughout the first trimester.  Yay.
3. How many people really want to hear about how I feel like I'm going to pass out or barf every day? 
4. Because of said morning sickness I generally did nothing all day.  I would stare at my computer and forced myself to complete tasks at work.  Once I got home from work all bets were off.  Other than attempting to mildly amuse L.Soup I was useless to everyone around me.  I tried to be useless to her too, but she wasn't having it.
5. This included any projects that I had been working on before I found out about the little person.

Well, it seems that I'm starting to come out of the haze.  Still a little tired, but generally excited about starting back up on some projects.  I'm currently working on some signs for my youngest nephew's 2nd birthday party this weekend.  Because I'm on a little bit of a time crunch, my mom is going to be super awesome and help with some of the gluing.  She's totally amazing because that is the.worst.part. I think, at least.

I'll try to remember to take some pictures of them at the party.  Here's some of the samples:

Obviously, it's Finding Nemo themed...

Cupcake Toppers

Banner

Also, thanks to my little mini vacation last week (aka, the furlough) I got everything set up and D.Soup to help me start taping the wall so I can FINALLY finish the foyer.  It's been killing me that it's not done, so hopefully SOON.

We also put up some Halloween decorations outside, and I took some terrible pictures.  Once I get some better ones, I'll try to post them here too.  I have every intention of doing some more Halloween related crafts, but it may very well end up just being L.Soup's costume.

I'm keeping my expectations of myself low so I don't get too disappointed.

A little announcement

When I was pregnant with L.Soup I had a few of your usual pregnancy symptoms: nausea, exhaustion, cravings. The strangest thing I experienced though was complete and utter disgust at the sight or smell of meat cooking. I could eat it after the fact, once it was far away from the stove. But you couldn't ask me to be involved in the process at all. It was horrible. The first time I cooked dinner after I found out I was pregnant, I was so disgusted by the time it was done that I couldn't eat. After that it just grew more and more intense, and the sight/smell made me gag. I don't think I ever got sick (from that... no, other things... yes) but it was bad enough that D.Soup got stuck with dinner duty for pretty much the entire pregnancy.

Well, imagine my surprise at the end of July when cooking dinner made me feel absolutely terrible. I was sure that it was just an extension from earlier in the day when I was not feeling the greatest due to a horrible nights sleep. I muttered something about not feeling very well, and sat down to eat dinner. While sitting there I told D.Soup that afterwards I was going to run upstairs and take a test - just incase.  He agreed it was probably a good idea. We haven't been trying, but with our track record (it took one try before L.Soup was an actuality) I figured better safe than sorry.

 Well:

There's no denying that...



 Or that.

Finishing touches to the nursery. Part 3. Subpart A.

I'm alive!  Barely.

I've been begging D.Soup to get started on the shelves for the nursery for MONTHS.  I had just come to terms with the idea that it wasn't going to happen when my friend mentioned that she wanted to make some shelves for a room in her house too.  Score!

We had them over for dinner and some football on Sunday.  And then we got down to business.  We "tricked" the guys into doing the cuts for us for all of the plywood.  I say "tricked" because it more went down like this:
D.Soup: Okay, you guys have fun.  Just move the table saw out from under the workbench.
Me: Wait, what?
D.Soup:  I'll come do it for you.
Me. Awesome!
.....
And once we all got down there, they realized one of us was going to table saw a hand right off, so they decided it would be smarter if they just did it.  And that worked out wonderfully for me, because they even had a hard time cutting the plywood down to the right sizes.

Lucky for us, L.Soup took 2 naps on Sunday, so we could all 4 work on getting everything situated before she woke up.  We timed it really well.

I thought I had enough 1x2's for both of us.  But sadly, I only had enough for us to get the shell part of the shelves put together.  D.Soup and I have to make a trip to the hardware store to pick up a few more 1x2's and then we'll have round 2 of building.  We got the shells finished though, and put wood filler in most of the holes and let it sit to dry.  I intend on heading back to the basement some time soon to sand the dried filler down and put filler in the holes on the other side.  We've hardly been home the last few days though so it hasn't happened yet.

Also, I fail at picture taking, so I'll try to remember to do that when I work on the wood filler.

Tonight and tomorrow we have some errands to run and we have to do laundry so we can pack!  We decided to head to the beach this weekend for Sunfest!  Mom and I usually go and have a girls weekend, but we're dragging the boys along with us this time around.  D.Soup was a little unhappy with it, since hunting season just started.  But its still a little warm to be hunting anyway, so he got over it.

In other news L.Soup has been making up for getting to bed late the last few nights by waking up earlier than usual.  So that's awesome.  I think that's part of the reason she's been taking two naps during the day.  The weirdest part is, the two naps together are about the same amount of time she was napping with just one morning nap, so I'm not sure how that's working out for her.  We are going to try to get her to bed at normal time tonight and see how she sleeps.  I want her to get a few nights of good sleep before we turn around and completely destroy it over the weekend.

She DOES NOT SLEEP in a pack-n-play.  She's never been comfortable in the lower portion of one.  She used to sleep all the time in the infant level, but once she got too big for that it was a no go.  She's pretty spoiled and ends up sleeping on/with someone if she's not near a real crib.  At home she naps in the crib just fine though.  She's a weird kid.  I bought her a sleep mat for my parent's house to try to get her used to sleeping alone there too... she's not really having it.

I was contemplating taking her crib mattress with us to the beach, but D.Soup claimed it wasn't worth driving the truck all the way to the beach just for the crib, when we can take the Prius and save a million dollars in gas.  *sigh*

I'm SO CLOSE to being able to post the finished nursery write up that I have, I can TASTE it.  I'm dying to get it out to you all. 

I've been seriously slacking recently.