Oliver & S Popover Sundress

I was recently asked by a lady from church "So, do you sew clothing very often for your girls?"

In an ideal world, my answer would be: "Yes, everything they wear is handmade with love".

The real answer is something like this: "No way José."

How's that for honesty?  I'll go even further and explain why in unnecessary details, because what is a blog without unnecessary detail?

1. Elliott initially hates anything I make for her.  No joke.  (Proof: see here and here.  Just because she's aged doesn't mean she's any better.)

2. We're given SO much clothing by family and friends.  It's kind of a waste to have more.

3. I'll flip if it gets ruined.  And you probably wouldn't want to witness that.

4. Typically costs WAY more that buying off the rack. (Anyone love the Gap Kids clearance racks like I do?  Holla!)

5. No guarantee of quality or cuteness.  (That's a lot of pressure!)

6. Whenever I sew, my world crashes down around me.  I forget to feed my family, I don't do dishes or keep up with housework, and then...after all the trouble... see #1.   

Last year though, I made the Oliver and S Popover Sundress  for Elliott.  The pattern is free (yay!) and it is quick and simple to sew.  She wore it once (begrudgingly) and apparently it has been shoved into the back of a drawer ever since, wadded up and forgotten.  

When I was picking through her clothing this morning, I stumbled across a hint of familiar green seersucker and decided that this dress would be worn a second time. I prepared myself mentally for a massive throwdown, and I kid you not, I walked into the living room and handed Elliott her clothing and she replied "Oh, I looooooove this dress!".

Well.

So, here, after months have gone by, someone appreciates my hard work.  Naturally, this had to be documented.

Little sister is modeling her big sister's hand-me-down Target mix-n-matches, which, despite their cheapness are virtually indestructible, and again this is very demoralizing in the sewing arena.  The bunny that Bennett has shoved in her mouth is affectionately (and truthfully) called "stinky bunny".  It's rarely very far from her grasp, which is unfortunate, because it sure could stand to be washed daily based on the amount of love it receives.

You know, the human spirit never fails to amaze me.  After just one little glimmer of Elliott's appreciation, all I can think about is sewing.

(For the sake of details--I purchased the seersucker at Joann a few years ago and used scraps of navy blue cotton for the yoke.  I had a small scrap of white piping and added it under the yoke for detail.  I used the 3T size with a 4T length, as the dress is very easy to customize.)

Embroidered TOMS

Before Elliott started preschool, I went on a search for the "perfect" everyday shoes.  She's a Florida girl through-and-through and lived in jellies up to the point that she was required by school rules to wear close-toed "tennis shoes".  Her narrow feet (SO unlike her momma's) don't agree with most kids tennis shoes on the market, and throw in the whole laces vs. velcro debacle and as it would turn out, picking shoes for your four-year old isn't so cut and dry.  Not to mention, this girl has her own preferences.  Sheesh.  

After much research and time spent reading reviews for all the shoes that hit my criteria (had to be able to be put on independently, option to wear without socks, breathable, good for romping on the playground, would look good with a variety of types of outfits, E likes the look) we settled for Toms. 

I may be a bit biased, here.  I have a pair of Toms, too, that I adore.  Navy blue, in fact.  Are you seeing a trend?  I think it's cool that for now she's excited to have matching shoes with me.  That day will pass, so I'm digging it while it lasts.

Elliott was SOO excited for school to start, but continued to voice one concern.  

"Mommy, what if you forget to pick me up?" 

It pretty much broke my heart.  I couldn't convince the girl that it was impossible for me to forget to pick her up, because when I am away from her, it's like a piece of me is missing and that I'm counting the minutes until it's time to get her again.  (Oh, I sound so sappy, but it's SO true!)  I decided I wanted to give her a symbol that would remind her that Mommy loves her and would always be back for her.  This symbol came in the form of a simple heart that I embroidered into the side of her shoe.  When she's sitting with her legs crossed, as kiddos in preschool do, she sees the heart that reminds her that Mom loves her and will be back for her.

Those worries have since left her tender heart, but my reminder remains, just in case they creep back in.

{Project deets: It's literally a freehand heart, backstitched with pink embroidery floss, a needle, and my hand. Cost is like 20 cents, if you have to buy embroidery floss.  Lucky for me, I have unimaginable amounts of embroidery floss, thanks to a momma who cross-stitched a lot in decades past.}

{Gray & Rainbow} Granny Poncho

With as much creating as I do (seriously, my hands always stay busy with something) you'd think I'd be better about sharing what I've done.  I don't always think my projects are worthy of being shared or perhaps the effort of documenting is more than I'm willing to put forth at the time.  This granny poncho, however, is one worth sharing.  Almost anywhere it goes, it receives attention and granny-love.  There's something about muted grays and vibrant rainbow stripes that is just oh-so-appealing!

The method of making this poncho came entirely from Le Monde de Sucrette. Don't let the name intimidate you; it's a blog that's written in plain English.  Does anyone else ever feel like the majority of the awesome free patterns you find on Pinterest are written in another language?  Oh, the huge problems we face.  ; )  With the "pattern" you can make a poncho of any size to suit any age.  Pretty dern awesome.

I used yarn entirely from my stash.  The colors are all Lion Brand Vanna's Choice (it's my go-to budget  friendly yarn) and the gray is almost an entire skein of Red Heart Super Saver (one of my least favorite yarns, purchased a few years ago when I was just a wee grasshopper, learning the ancient ways of crochet).  Unlike the first poncho I made for Elliott several years ago, she LOVES this one.

And now I kinda want one, too.

-Tristin

Suburb-Tastic Maternity

So, I'm sure you've noticed the lull in posting.  Technically I have several posts ready to go (even an awesome guest post from my dear friend Laura) but I've just steered clear of the whole bloggy thing lately.  I'm not totally sure why--it has just happened that way.  To give you an update though, I'm now considered "full-term" in my pregnancy (full-term being 37-42 weeks) so little miss Bennett is free to grace us with her presence at any point.  Not that I'm technically "ready", but who is ever really (and I mean really) prepared for a wee one? 

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you some photos from my maternity photo shoot.  My friend Christy did an awesome job capturing just what I wanted--Elliott and I around our house and neighborhood.  If you follow me on Pinterest, you may have noticed a lot of maternity photos being pinned for inspiration, and I decided I wanted a very suburban feel.  Yes, I live super-close to the beach so a beach photo shoot crossed my mind, but I couldn't imagine myself splashing in waves with sheer scarves and such.  Pretty, but not very "Tristin".  So, here's what I'm calling my suburb-tastic maternity photos. 

See my dog in the background?
Little did we know he was plotting a picture-ruining but laugh-inducing
moment of deuce-dropping.  He's classy, that little man.





This is a "real" moment between Elliott and I.  Her arms crossed in defiance
 and my hands on my hips all "because-I-said-so" like.  Yeah, I've told you
before that we keep it real.  We still do.

This is the baby in Elliott's belly.  His name is Simon. ; )
(It's the name I'd intended to use for a boy.)

Thanks Christy, for an awesome capture of a cool time in our lives.  Oh, and if you want a glimpse of my buddha-tastic big ol' belly, I've saved the best for last.  How do our bellies stretch SOOO big and then slim back in?  It's simply amazing.

Kids say (and do) the darndest things.

In two months, I'll be the mom of a three year old.  How did this happen?!

In three months, I'll be the mother of two girls.  Pretty sure I know how that happened.

Our almost three-year-old with her almost three-year-old mentality never ceases to entertain us.  Elliott incessantly talks about her upcoming birthday party and specifies what she wants as a part of her special day.  Things that have been mentioned more than once as "I want that for my birdday" (misspelling is intentional as this is how she pronounces "birthday") are as follows:

1. Green
2. Hippopotomus
3. The song "The Greatest Love of All" by the late and great Whitney Houston

Let the party planning begin, right?!  Dang, that was NOT what I had in mind.  (If you're interested in MY party planning ideas, you can check out the Elliott is turning three, Come and celebrate with tea Pinboard on Pinterest.)

Elliott is majorly into pop music these days--specifically Bruno Mars.  If you ask her who her favorite musician is, without hesitation she will state "Bruno Mars".  I may need to nip this pop obsession in the bud--I still haven't gotten over the shock of hearing her try to beatbox to Jesus Loves Me during a song service at church.  (We worship without instruments, so believe you me, beatboxing children stand out like a sore thumb.)

In other musical entertainment news, she was recently singing along to some of her favorite tunes in the car (specifically they were tracks from NBC's the Sing Off) and she made a high pitched squeal when going into falsetto... and promptly stopped singing to say "Sorry guys.  I didn't mean to make that noise".  We're still laughing at that one.

Elliott's love of music is matched only by her love of dance.  Unfortunately, she inherited my dancing ability--or lack thereof.  What we lack in skill we make up for with unabashed enthusiasm, funny faces, complete obliviousness to the fact that we look like robots on crack, and plenty of pelvic thrusting.   The world is not ready for our dance parties, so we keep 'em in the safety of our living room, which, as long as my husband is not around, is a judgement-free zone.

Moms of gals out there--when is an ideal time to get your daughter's ears pierced?  I hear it's during infancy, though it's not something I cared enough to do at the time.  However, my little gal has really taken a liking to earrings.  Elliott is constantly asking if she can wear this pair or that pair of my earrings, to which I simply reply "You don't have holes in your ears so you can't wear earrings yet".  I guess I hope that she thinks holes will magically appear in her ears one day when she's ready for earrings.  She has different ideas, naturally, as you can tell by a conversation we had yesterday.

Elliott: Mom, I want earrings too.
Me: But Elliott, you don't have holes in your ears yet.
Elliott: Maybe Santa will cut holes in my ears.  With scissors.

Sheesh.  Remind me to lock up all of my scissors.  While most moms are concerned about the rite-of-passage self haircuts that so many toddlers manage to achieve, I'm concerned about my child slashing holes into her earlobes with my rusty coupon-cutting scissors.

In short, I'm rather enjoying this stage in Elliott's life.  I can't say I've enjoyed every moment like so many Moms seem to do (or at least they pretend better than I do).  I still remember Elliott's infancy as a thankless and frustrating time--and don't even get me started on the sleeplessness. Those beautiful Hallmark images of motherhood and warm embraces while light seeps through gorgeous open windows are truly few and far between here in our home--but laughter?  That's daily stuff around here, and I'll take it, thank you.

Til next time,
Tristin

The Blue Shark!

If you read my often long-winded stories, then you'll probably remember the conversation I had with Junebug about her Halloween costume selection.

If you didn't read it, the conclusion was that my wee two year old had her heart set on being a blue shark for Halloween.  Why?   I'm still not really sure.  Kids sure are crazy amazing.  Seriously though, a blue shark?!

So, here's what I came up with.  I know it looks like a total goofy shark, but playful and silly is what I was going for.  I mean, it is a blue shark after all.  When's the last time you saw a scary blue shark during Shark Week?  Any shark attacks from blue sharks?  I think not.  Goofy was clearly the way to go.

I had no pattern--just a few ideas stored in my mind grapes (ahh, 30 Rock, please come back soon!).  Surprisingly, the costume came out just as I had envisioned it.  That almost never happens!

So, what did the shark's momma decide to dress up as?  Here's a small hint...

 

And another hint...

The only word to describe my costume is "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

Last year's costume

Recently I asked what your kiddos are being for Halloween this year.  Well, today I am going to share a conversation I had with my two year old that reveals her Halloween costume this year.

Me: "Elliott, would you like to be Mary Poppins for Halloween this year?"
Please, please, please child, just be agreeable for once in your life.

Junebug: "No, Mom.  Shark."
At this point, I'm not totally surprised about the "no" but where did shark come from??

Me: "Shark??"
Seriously kid, shark?!

Junebug: "Yes, mom.  Blue shark."
Man, I love her confidence.

Me: "Umm, ok."
Seriously??  Nuts.  That's gonna be a lot harder than Mary Poppins.


I totally thought she'd forget about this whole "blue shark" thing, but any time she's asked what she'll be for Halloween, Junebug answers "blue shark".


So, I bought some blue felt.  We'll see what we can come up with.


Last year, Junebug was a Ladybug for Halloween.  Kind of.  Read on if you want to see how I went about making last year's costume.

Please excuse the worse than usual photos and the poor formatting.  It's from last year... I guess that's my excuse.

Click below to read on...

Simple Skirt

Is it terribly obvious that I'm having a great time sewing with my new machine?  It sews like a dream and I love that during one naptime I can whip out a project like this little skirt.

It was made using the Simple Skirt tutorial offered by Dana of made.  On her blog, Dana offers lots of free tutorials showing how to make simple and precious clothing for little ones.  If you're new to sewing (or even if you're experienced, for that matter) you should check it out for lots of inspiration.  Plus, her photography is striking and clean and gorgeous.  It's one of my favorite blogs.

With quite a bit of typical resistance, I was able to get a few good shots of Junebug modeling her new skirt outside of our local farmer's market.  Well, she calls it a "skirk".  She also calls shirts "shirks", which we encourage because it's pretty much the cutest thing ever.  I'm not overly critical of her emerging language--I realize that pretty soon she'll be speaking fluently and I'll miss the days of cute toddler words like "shirk" and listening to her sing "a spoon full of sugar helps the lettuce-in go down".

My sweet little gal.  Sheesh, she's grown up so fast.

An on a completely unrelated note--what are your kiddos going to be for Halloween?  Junebug and I have differing opinions (go figure) on what she'll be for Halloween.  Of course she'll win, but more on that later.



Junebug's Jacket and a Heidi & Finn Pattern Giveaway!

Heidi and Finn has graciously offered to share a FREE pattern with two lucky readers--more info below!

First of all, thanks to all of you who weighed in on the choosing of fabric for Junebug's jacket.  The general consensus was to use the mustard fabric as the lining fabric--which I was totally on board with!  (Have no fear, the other fabric will be used for an upcoming skirt.)  Once the jacket was constructed, I decided to use a hook and eye closure instead of the orange buttons.  I still love the orange buttons for this jacket, but the closure just needed to be slightly more dramatic than plain ol' buttons.  I am SO happy with the end result!

I shared before that the pattern was from the Etsy shop Heidi and Finn and boy, was it a good pattern.  The instructions were clear and concise and there were fabulous pictures that really made everything "click" for a new seamstress like me.  Heidi and Finn has graciously offered to share a FREE pattern with two lucky readers--read on for more info.

First, let me share Junebug's Jacket.  Oh, I am SOO excited!

The closure is supposed to be a big fabric bow, but Junebug is not the biggest fan of big bulky pieces on her clothing so I adapted to suit her pickiness.  (I personally loved the bow featured on the pattern.)

Love it, right?

You probably want to make one too, huh?  Well, folks, today's your lucky day!  Two lucky readers will win a pattern--all you have to do is:

1. Visit Heidi and Finn's Etsy Shop

2. Leave a comment on this post!

The giveaway will be open from now until Saturday, September 24th at midnight E.S.T.  One entry per reader, please!

And I wouldn't hate feedback on Junebug's jacket.  In fact, I'd love it.

Take a peek at a few of the other patterns you'll see in Heidi & Finn's Etsy shop:

Yay for giveaways!  So, what are you going to make?!

P.S. Please be sure that you leave an email address if your email address is not associated with your Blogger profile.   Also, this giveaway is open internationally because it's a PDF that will be sent to your email address.

Junebug's Summer Birthday Party

As of yesterday, it's officially summer--though here in Florida we've been feeling summer for a few months.  And the air conditioning in my beautiful yet aged Volvo just went out.  Sheesh.  But that's not what I'm here to tell you about today.

I want to share Junebug's second birthday bash with you!

You probably remember from my last post that the theme was simply "Summer".  I left lots of room for interpretation and mind-changing ('cause I can be a bit fickle when it comes to choosing "themes").  And if you follow me on Pinterest then you probably have a good idea of what we did for the birthday party based on my pinboard.  So without further adieu, here's how we celebrated!

The Decor:

The Food:

Looong story short (really, it's a long story) these cupcakes had to have the liners removed before serving because some of our weirdo freaky-deaky Florida ants showed up unexpectedly in my laundry room (where these lovely cupcakes were waiting) and started munching on the WRAPPERS, but not the cupcakes.  Seriously, how weird is that?  Once hubs figured out what was going on he removed all of the cupcake liners and saved the day!

The Birthday Gal:

I can't believe she's TWO!  Time flies.

She's Second to None.

My little one is about to turn two.  Two.  I still can't believe how quickly time flies when you have a child.  Two is only 1/9th of the way to 18, when she'll leave me for greener pastures.  Ok, I'm not ready to talk about that--so let's talk party!

We'll be celebrating Junebug's birthday this weekend with a small family gathering.  I opted out of paper invites this year because I'm cheap I thought an Evite would be a "greener" option.  Yeah, because I wanted to be "green". 

Here's a little peek at what our guests received in their email:

Writing things in sand is a great way to take beach pictures.  Plus, I'll always remember how old she was in that photo.  Brilliant, I am.

My mom and I spent a bit of time yesterday making tissue paper pompoms for the party--they're already fluffed and are waiting in the laundry room for the big event.  It's quite comical, really--check it out:

I want the decor to be a surprise to Junebug on the day of her party--so I have to keep her out of the laundry room (which is tougher than it sounds).

I'm also so excited about my other party finds.  The "theme" of the party is simply "Summer".  Bright colors, sunshine, funky patterns, you know what I mean, right?

 

I'm so excited.  I'm using some of the same things I used for Junebug's first birthday party last year.  Last year's theme was "Watermelon" and what a fun theme it was! 

The pièce de résistance last year (that people are still talking about) was Junebug's "Watermelon Cake".  I wanted to forego the messy smashcake tradition and enjoy a slice of refreshing watermelon. Having to immediately bathe my daughter after her first cake experience while having 20+ guests at my home didn't seem appealing.  So sue me.

Here's a pic of Junebug's party last year:

 

The "Watermelon Cake" was a little trickier than I had initially anticipated and there were definitely a few lessons learned, but all in all it was well worth the effort.  I couldn't find any sort of instructions or tutorial for such a thing so I winged it and I'm glad I did!

If you're interested, you can check out the inspiration for Junebug's second birthday party on my Pinterest page.

P.S. Once I recover from the event, I'll be sharing some photos--so check back next week!