And Another Thing...

Whew! What a great weekend!

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity.  On Friday, we went to our orthodontist's annual ics skating party.  I didn't get any pictures of this, I was way too busy eating pizza, pigging out at the chocolate fountain and ice skating with the kiddos to photograph anything.  Suffice it to say, it rocked!

When we got home, we had to bathe the girls and get them into bed so we could all get up early for Olivia's First Communion!  But first, I put Olivia's hair up in rag curlers.  It was so much fun and she looked so cute!

So when I was done, I shooed her off to bed and finished getting the house ready.  Then we were up early and bustin' our butts to get out the door on time for Olivia's mass.

Ben and Braidon served this mass so I thought I'd include ths shot of them and our beautiful church. 

Olivia in the dress my mom made for her, the sweater I knit for her and my own First Communion viel re-made to be a little more modern.

Olivia with my dad, because my dad made his First Communion this spring too!   After 40 some odd years, he finally relented and became a Catholic.  Olivia actually made her first communion at the Easter vigil with my dad.  This is technically her second communion.

Olivia with Grandma and Grandpa.

Olivia with Grammy and Papaw.

Olivia with Mama and Daddy.

It was a great mass,  Olivia got to read the second reading and enjoyed spending the morning in the limelight for her special event.   It's not very often in our house that you get a whole day just for you!  After mass, we went home and started getting ready for the party, of which I have no pictures beacause I have apparently taken leave of my senses.  I don't know what's wrong with me, people...

On Sunday, we got up and a bee-yutiful morning!  Oliver's parents stayed the night, so Oliver made french toast for everyone to selebrate Mother's Day.  It's super yummy french toast, and uf you ever spend the night at our house, chances are, you'll wake up in the morning to find Oliver in the kitchen, frying up a batch.  Yes, he deep fries his french toast.  Yum-o!

Then we spent the morning outside chatting with Oliver's parents and generally enjoying the first really fabulous day we've had this spring.

Good times :o)

Not bad for a morning's work...

This past weekend, we worked on the little girls' room and as soon as I put the finishing touches on, I will certainly be posting about it.  But for now, I want to show you how I spent my morning.  Inspired by this post, I ended up with a completely different project.  It was so neat to see how this evolved in my mind.  You should have been there.

I started with 3 framed pictures like the one above.  I bought these a few years ago at a garage sale and they were up in the little girls' room a year or so ago, but they don't go with the new look of the room.  So, I decided to repurpose them.

I used an Exacto knife and cut out the paper backing.  You can see the background paper on the counter behind the frame.  I just picked up a couple of pieces of it at Joann the other day.

Then I seperated the matte and picture from the carboard back.  I did this because it was too hard to get back in the frame under the staples with the matte still on.

I used the cardboard as a template for my patterned paper and cut it out to the right size for the frame.

I printed out the girls' names from the computer using a "holiday" foint I downloaded a while back.  Purple for Anna and blue for Saragh, of course.  Then I cut the name paper down to a good size, centered it and glued it onto the patterned paper.  I also cut out a heart shape out of a coordinating paper and glued it onto another coordinating paper.

And then I hung them on the newly painted yellow walls!  I am so excited about how this turned out!  I feel like the little girls will finally have a nice, pretty room to live in. 

Tonight, we're going to hang some bookshelves on the wall.  This is another project that I'm pretty stoked about and the inspiration comes from this post on ohdeedoh.  I'm using four Bekvam spice racks from Ikea as forward facing book racks.  I can't wait!

A Whole Lotta FO's

Get ready for it, I need to catch up!

This is the Robin's Egg Blue hat, except mine is the rainbow handspun hat :o)

Saragh's new horse, Equine Fabulous.  She loves her horse!  Raveled here.

Saragh's Twirly Skirt in colors that she picked out herself.  Just sayin'.   Raveled here.

Tulips Sweater for my new little neice.  I can't wait until she fits into it!  Raveled here.

I think that just about catches me up, but if I missed anything, I'll let you know!

Olivia's Room

We've been working on redecoratin Olivia's room for far too long now.  It was all supposed to be done over Christmas break, but as you can see, we're hopeless procrastinators.  We finally made some huge progress this weekend and I thought I'd share what we've been up to.

Oliver built a dollhouse bookcase for Olivia and I got to finish it today.

Here is the "before" picture.  I atcually liked the way it looked unfinished, but Oliver said he didn't make it to be unfinished so I had to paint it.

I painted the roof with brown chalkboard paint so Olivia can use it as a drawing surface.  I painted the body of the bookcase with white kid proof paint so hopefully it will be easy to keep clean.  Olivia and I took a trip to Joann this morning and picked out cute fabric that has the feel of vintage wallpaper.  We hot glued this to the back board of the bookcase.  We also picked up some pre-painted wooden flowers and a butterfly and used them to make a little yard scene on the side that will be visible.  So much cuter than plain white!

Here it is all installed in her room!  I love this so much!  It came out exactly as I had envisioned it and I LOVE the fabric.  If I had seen this when I was shopping for fbric, I would have made a duvet cover for her out of it. 

This is a banner I made for her a few weeks ago.  I had to wait until the new bookcase was installed becasue the old one was too tall.  It was totally worth the wait and it is lovely in her room.

So, there are a few more things to do.  I have to finish her quilt.  HAVE TO!!!  It's been sitting since before Christmas and I'm starting to feel terribly guilty about it.  I was going to have a friend quilt it for me, but I think now I will just tie it and then figure out some sort of binding for it.  I really need to get it done so keep on me about it!  I also need to put her valance together.  I'm just going to tie ribbons in various colors and patterns on a dowel and hang it.  It really just needs to cover the top of the ugle blinds so you can't see them during the day.  Oh!  We also hung her pink lights today.  She is DYING to go to bed so she can turn them on.  Hopefully Oliver will get some shelve thrown together for her closet soon so that we can get the dresser out and give her a nightstand.  Her room is really tiny and the less furniture the better, especially since we put the full size bed in there. 

I think that's it for Olivia's room!  If I can get my stuff together, I'll put up a post about the upstairs hallway (we painted it a deep, bright blue yesterday and it is quite dramatic!).

My Not-So-Perfect Plans...

Last week I had great hopes for getting back into a routine and getting back to "school."  Well, you'd think I would know better by now.  As I was sitting at the table drinking my coffee and alternately reading a book and knitting, the girls sauntered down the stairs and into the kitchen.  I cheerfully informed them that we would be buckling down and getting things done today.  They un-cheerfully growled at me and I chalked it up to a lack of sustenance so I fed them breakfast.  While they were eating, I went back upstairs to get dressed and make my bed, thereby setting a good example of getting back into the routine.  When I came back downstairs, this is the scene I found.  Olivia decided to write a book, Anna thought illustrating a graphic novel would be a good use of her time and Saragh was designing the ultimate weapon to take over the world (Her words, not mine.  No joke.).  Well, of course their plans for the day sounded way better than what I had dreamed up.  I mean, seriously, if Saragh's going to take over the world, her future is pretty much set, right?  It will certainly save on college tuition.  It's times like these when I wonder why I ever doubt their ability to navigate their own way in this world?  If they can come up with this kind of stuff, it would be almost cruel of me to make them abandon it.  So, I definitely learned my lesson, at least for the time being.  I'm going to continue to sit back and enjoy the ride they are taking me on.

A dress for me

Every year, Oliver's company has a big birthday party to celebrate it's inception.  It's a huge deal and they really go all out for it.  There's a different theme every year and this year, it's Clue.  Everyone is supposed to come dressed in the color of their favorite character.  Now, I actually do not enjoy these parties all that much because they are loud and full of inebriated people that I don't know.  I have become friendly with a few of the wives lately, but still...

So, I told Oliver that if he really wanted me to go, then I was going to need fabric to make a new dress.  He gave me the go ahead and I started my search.  Well kind of.  I actually started out at Salvation Army, but that turned out to be a very good move (ahem).

I knew that I wanted to sew this dress from Weekend Sewing (here's a link to the flickr pool) because it is fairly simple and I am pretty sure that the design will be flattering as it will emphasize my waist, which is still my smallest part.  The pattern calls for 3 yards of lightwieght fabric and I stumbled upon a 4 yard chunk of this fabric at Salvation Army.  Now, does that say Mrs. Peacock" or what?

I'm very excited about this and I can't wait to get started on it.  Blue is always my best color, along with this fun print, I think it will be a hit! 

PS If you never hear about this project again, you can asume that it was a major fail.  If that's the case, don't ask!

WIP Wednesday

A balaclava for Braidon.  Hopefully it will get done before Old Man Winter leaves us.  (Shamrock yarn from Knitpicks in Dougherty, my own pattern made up on the fly)

Koolhaas hat for Oliver.  This will match his new parka and the mitts I made him for Christmas.  If I can ever remember to take a picture of the mitts while he's at home, I'll make sure to post them here.  (Wool of the Andes yarn from Knitpicks in Coblestone Heather and Coal, Koolhaas pattern from Brooklyn Tweed)

Rainbow socks for Saragh.  I love knitting socks for her because they go oh so fast.  These are so soft and luxurious that I'm a bit jealous they're not for me! (Felici self striping yarn from Knitpicks in Rainbow, my own sock pattern made up on the fly)

Birthday present for Mama

My mother has recently started knitting again and has been lamenting that I'm loaning her all the stuff she needs, so I decided to put together a little knitting kit for her birthday.  Olivia and I went to the fabric store and picked out two different fat quarters to sew up into this little project bag.

(I know this picture is super blurry inside the bag and I am realy sorry for that!) 

I filled the bag with some yarn, circular needles, a tiny pair of scissors, a needle/knitting gauge/ruler thing and some stitch markers.  Now she's all set to knit with her own stuff! 

 

 

A Beautiful Butterfly...er...Wallaby...

Ta-da!  Olivia's new wallaby sweater in a custom dyed colorway called "A Beautiful Butterfly".  I originally found this yarn at a Yarn Harlot event in Detroit last year, in a fingering/lace weight.  After some deliberation, I messaged the dyer and asked her to do a custom dye in worsted weight for this sweater.   I had her dye it using a superwash merino so that it would last through all three girls, because this yarn did not come cheap.  I knit a 10 and added a little bit of length because Olivia has a long torso and long arms.  This will fit her for at least 2 years and then the other girls should get plenty of wear out of it.

  I'm so happy about how beautiful this turned out!  It has all the colors of the butterfly at the end of The Hungry Little Caterpillar and it is indeed beautiful.  Thar yarn is absolutely wonderful to work with and I enjoyed just about every minute of this project (I admit that the sleeves and the hood were daunting, but that had nothing to do with the yarn, only my impatience).  In fact, there are two colors in this yarn that I am thinking of asking Ann to dye for a sweater for Saragh. 

It's all about eight...

Eight?!?!  Really???  How can that be?  Can she really be eight?  Oh yes.  She can be and she will be eight.  And she'll do it with a vengence because that's who she is.  This little girl could rule the world, if only she were a bit taller.  I have watched her grow these past eight years and I can tell you without a doubt that she is going to set the world on fire and never look back.  She know what she wants and she'll figure out a way to get it.  But behind that tough girl exterior lies a very sensitive young lady who reminds me every day to be gentle and kind and thoughtful.  I would like to say that I can't wait to see who she becomes, but I can and I will and I will enjoy the ride in the meantime.