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.