Crocheted Bag

Today my crochet project turned out to be a bag. Most likely one of my girls will get it. My oldest wants it because she collects purses and bags and because she thinks it is not fair that my youngest got more doll clothes. My youngest wants it because she wants something to carry the doll clothes that I have been making in. Guess I can decide a little later for now it is back to seeing what I come up with to crochet while I still have yarn and am in the mood to crochet.   

Christmas Pajamas (finally posting)

I finally got the pictures of my kids Christmas pajamas that I made for them. Only my two oldest kids did not get a pair of shorts and a top for their pajamas. My oldest daughter got a nightgown. While my oldest son just got a pair of pants since he seems to prefer sleeping with out a shirt now, must be him being a preteen now or something.

 

Crocheted Doll Clothes

The last two night I made more doll clothes for my girls. Last night I made a skirt and a pair of shoes for my daughter's doll. This evening I made a dress and another hat which my oldest daughter has claimed for her doll. I think I like this second hat a little more then the first. I was not planning on making more doll clothes it just turned out that is what I did. Kind of funny when I start asking for my daughter's doll or taking it out of her room after my daughter has gone to bed so that I can try the clothes on the doll and get pictures of them. I may need to just get myself an eighteen inch doll so that I do not have to keep doing that if I keep making doll clothes of any kind.

Crocheted Pillow

This is the pillow that I made to go with the purple afghan that I gave my husband for Christmas. I started it after Christmas got it to the point of needing a center pillow, which I was able to get around to making today. He has a nice afghan and pillow set for when he is watching television in the evening now. He as already hinted at wanting a second pillow if I have enough yarn, but I am not sure I will since I am just about out of the dark purple and I have been using the light purple to make doll clothes. I think he is happy with it even though it is just one pillow.

Doll Hat, Vest, Backpack, and update

Last night while watching television I picked up my crochet hook and yarn and just started crocheting. After a minute I decided to make a doll vest and asked my youngest daughter for her doll. Still wanting to crochet I played around some more and came up with the hat and then the little backpack. Guess I just needed to crochet and let my mind create. None of the projects were started with any idea of what I was going to make, I simple just stared and decided after I had something to look at. I think it helped me sleep too, which is a good thing.

I wish I could say that I have been so busy that I have not had time to craft or update my blog but I can not. While I did have plenty to do for the past while I have not had all that much to do. I managed to have a rather calm Thanksgiving and Christmas which in itself is amazing. I think I may have just been avoiding doing things so that it seemed that way or something. I did get some Christmas gifts made and embroidered Christmas stockings for another family, and help a friend get some of her Christmas gifts started and done. I did have a post of a purple afghan that was given to my husband for Christmas all though he did steel it a few times to use before then. I also posted an embroidered pillow case that I helped my friend with. (Proud of her for finishing the bags that we started for her girls, the embroidered pillow case she did, and the toy puppy that she made for kids too.)
Since those posts, I managed to make the pajamas that my kids got for Christmas this year, it is the one present that they get to open Christmas eve. I will have to get pictures of them posted later since I don't seem to have them on my camera card. Either I have taken more pictures then I thought I have been or I forgot to get the pictures of them and have to scan though the Christmas pictures to see if I have any good pictures of them on the kids or just go get them from the kids and take some. One way or the other those pictures have to get put up later. Just better get them posted before New Years since they were made this year, ha ha. Over all this year has been good, a few ups and down but over all good. Still hope that next year will be better then this year but it has been a great year.
Chicken update: Shortly after building the Chicken a play yard my husband bought four more hens. We have let one of the hens sit on a few eggs, two of which hatched. One two days before Christmas and one Christmas eve. My daughter and other kids are taking good care of them but now and then I am the one being left to care for them, it usually only lasts a day then my daughter remembers that she forgot to take care of them the day before. So over all she has done a great job with them. Though she will not be getting any of the other animals that she keeps asking for, my husband seems like he is more then willing to add to her flock of chickens. This coming year we will be building them a proper permanent coup so that the shed can be torn down.

Pillow case

A friend of mine started working on a set of pillow case cross stitches to give as gifts to two of her girls. Just she is kind of new to cross stitching and so it is a slow processes. She is doing great with it and will get faster as she does more of them. To help her out though I took one of the pillow cases to work on for her to make sure that she would have both of them done in time for Christmas. I am sure the girls will like the pillow cases.

Afghan

With the weather getting cooler I wanted to make a new afghan. So on one of our date nights my husband took me to the store to get me some new craft supplies. He picked two shades of purple and we bought out the last of those two colors. A day or two later I was looking for a pattern to get started. I found one that I liked but then after starting I decided to change the pattern. It ended up being a twin size afghan once completed. The entire time I worked on the afghan my husband told me I was going to fast, I am suppost to go slow and enjoy myself. I told him that I was going slow and enjoying my self but I was still done faster then he liked. Guess he did not want me asking for more yarn for another afghan. I was thinking of giving the afghan as a Christmas gift but my husband has already laid clam to it and been using it every night since it was finished. So he just might have to buy me more yarn sooner then he would like.

Shirt

After making all the costumes for the kids I wanted to make something for myself. I picked a pattern that I got from my husband's grandma to make me a shirt. I tried to make it by the pattern but it would not cover my under shirt. My solution to the problem was to make a third larger ruffle  to make more of a sleeve. I think it turned out nicely and my daughter now wants me to make her one of her own. Since she liked it I made her try it on to get my pictures for sharing.

Halloween

 Here are my six kids in their Halloween costumes this year. This picture was taken of Wednesday before Halloween as we were leaving for a party at our church.

 My oldest was a Vampire...I had to alter an old costume of mine for here. Mostly replacing the sleeves and bringing the slit down to the top of her knees.

 My youngest was a Firefighter. I made his costume last which drove him nuts because he was so excited for it.

 This little guy was Super Why the Super Reader...I did not even know that he still liked that show until he told me what he wanted to be.

 Here is my Pirate with out his sword since he would be hitting all his sibling with it if he had one.

 My little Cheerleader...I used her initials for the school letters.

 This is my oldest boy as Darth Maul. His costume was another old costume his dad wore years ago that I altered to fit him.

I also worked on two costumes for a friends kids. This one is a Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie costume. I made the skirt and bonnet for her.

 The other costume was a young Anakin Skywalker. It was kind of funny when I was asked to make it because I had already done my son's costume for Darth Maul and the boys did not know what each other was going to be until I made the Anakin costume.

 This is all the kids getting the last little pieces of their costumes put on before the trick or treating fun. We had a group of twelve kids, ten that went trick or treating. The two oldest girls standing by the door in the picture stayed behind to pass candy out. My Vampire lady ended up being put on crutches the day before Halloween for a leg injury in PE at school earlier in the week.

Our candy passers.

Proud of myself-for Halloween

I do not have any pictures yet but I will have plenty to choose from after Halloween I am sure, between school parties and trick or treating. But I have one more costume to finish tomorrow and I will have completed eight costumes. I worked on costumes for my kids and my friends two kids. Amazingly I not only have them done two weeks early but I also managed to only spend $3 to complete all of them, my personal best for savings for Halloween. Granted two of my kids are using old costumes with some alterations, there for not requiring much work. It still is great that I was able to finish them all so early and especially for such little cost. It has made me extremely proud of myself.

New pillow - for my husband

After I made my QR code pillow for me to just try it out my husband asked for one for him. Since I am able to make it personal to him, I took a saying that we have between the two of us and put it on his pillow. It turned out just as cool looking as the first.  

My two QR code pillows that I have done so far. I have two others that have been requested that I will put pictures of once completed. I just have to get the messages that they want for them so I can get started.

Chickens

Things have been a little wild and crazy at my house for the past week or two. My husband had a week long TDY for work because of that and one of his coworkers husbands having made plans a few months prier for that weekend that they left I ended up with one of their kids. My oldest was excited because they are good friends and do not get to see each other as much as they would like. Anyways, the girl got dropped off on a Friday and my husband and his group left early Saturday. At some point on Saturday two of my kids went to stay the night at a friends house, which helped me out but only partly...my oldest and her friend started begging me to say yes to getting a hen from my neighbor who would be selling some of theirs soon. After so begging and talking to my husband on the phone a bit, I managed to say yes to the girls delight. What I did not expect was having them run out the door and a few minutes come back with a rooster and news of having to wait a few minutes before they could get the hen. Since we had not place for them at the time they stuck the chickens in our large dog kennel for the night. The next day we converted part of our shed into a coop for them to sleep in and they had to keep using the dog kennel for when they would be out scratching in the yard. Once my husband got home we built a play yard for the chickens so they would have more room while outside and the our dogs can not get them. Although it is heavy it is able to be moved around our property if and when we need to.

The door on the little white building is the entrance to the chicken coop. Thank goodness that our shed had two doors and was big enough to split for the chickens and our yard supplies. We just had to build a dividing wall which I made my daughter and her friend help build. Her friend has been told that when ever she visits she has to help out with the chickens too. Her friend seems more then happy with that plan and wants to try to come over more now. I am happy to say that my daughter has been doing very good at taking care of the chickens with out being told or gets upset when my husband or I do anything for them. Hopefully it will last.

Creative Pillow

I had a fun idea for pillows and blankets, use QR codes that get scanned to give you information about an item. I thought that they looked interesting and would make a fun looking pillow and blanket.

I can make them say anything that I want. This one says 'love' which is why I picked red for it. My husband had hoped that once it was made that the code would still work but it does not. He is hoping that it might just be the colors picked for my first attempt.

My husband wants it to be his. He even says that he is taking it with him on his trip for work this coming week. Since the pillow turned out so good in my opinion I am going to make another one with a special message for my husband in it and print the QR code on a small tag to put on the pillow that will be able to be scanned by the app on his cell phone when he want to see what it says. I am going to try blue I think and I am sure my husband will try to scan it first to see if it works before trying any tags put on it.

I think these will make a great gift and making them say special messages will make each one fun and personal to the person getting one. I started with a pillow so that I could keep it small. I plan on making a blanket that is one giant code and even one that has a few different codes on it. If they turn out as good as the pillow they will definitely be cool looking. Let me know what you think about my first one. I will post picks of my next one soon. I am off to get started on it now.

Family Flag

My hubby got me fabric back in April or March I think it was, so that I could make some flags for our yard and possible some kites for my kids or something. The fabric has been sitting in my stuff for months now. My kids had made a mess of all my fabric yet again. So while cleaning up the mess I found the fabric on my sewing table. I figured it was about time that I make something with it so I made a family flag. My husband always says he likes the flags and signs that have the family names and the year the couple go married. So I made one for our family. I put a heart in the middle of it since September is the National Sewing Month and this year their things are hearts.

New Window Shelf

Since we moved into our house we have not really done to much with the window treatment because we had to replace all the windows. We have been doing them in stages and are down to the last six getting replaced here in two weeks. Now that we are getting to the end of replacing the windows we are starting to put up blinds and curtain. Since we want both on the windows and my husband was set in having to get the two inch blinds so the kids and pets can not destroy them as easily. They had to be mounted on the outside of the window frame so to put curtains up I had to figure out a way that would put the rod out far enough. My idea was to build a shelf and rod set. My husband finally bought us the stuff to give it a try on one window to see if he liked it. Now that we got it up he likes the idea and we are now going to be putting them up in all the bedrooms and in the family room. First we are going to finish our bedroom windows to include some new curtains. I think that the shelf turned out cute.

Old Projects Completed

Since my husband was kind enough to buy me some more batting and filler recently I have been able to finish off a few of my projects that I have had sitting around. I have more to finish and am looking forward to working on them but for now this is what I have been able to finish off.

Each of my kids have a small pillow that I made them for use around the house. Makes it easier when you line them all up on the floor for movie nights, because there is just not enough room for six kids and big pillows for each. My youngest had not gotten a pillow so when I saw this fabric in the box of stuff from my husband's Grandma I thought it would be cute for him. To bad I ran out of filling on everyone else's pillows before I could finish his. Now that it is done though he loves it.




A while back I made a table topper quilt top with hand appliqued flowers on it. This past week or so I was finally able to finish it off. To finish it off I used a pale yellow fabric for the backing and tried my hand at free motion quilting using a flower pattern between the appliqued flowers. It gives the front and the back both a nice look I think.












I was finally able to finish off a little table or wall quilt that had been started by my husband's Grandma. She had pieced together the small squares made of triangles. I put them together with blue squares to finish off the top but was unable to finish it with out batting. I hand quilted it which did not really turn out that great since it was done with out a hoop, but it did not turn out that bad. Since it is a cowboys football fabric and my husband does not like that team, it may end up being a gift for a friend of mine that does like them.