Remember this???

So, if you've been reading this blog for some time, or if you happen to be friends with me in real life and therefore got obnoxious e-mails from me, crowing about how I MADE SOMETHING FROM SCRATCH, you may remember that I wrote about this dress:

I still swoon just looking at it. Those blues get me every time. 

I made the dress with the intent of it being C's Easter dress. And... it was! Here's sweet C hunting for eggs:

No, this isn't at our home. It would be rocky it it were our yard. Our home and land essentially consists of 95% of the limestone God created on earth. We spent Easter at the ranch and hunted eggs at a cousin's new home. This photo is definitely a "West Texas Easter" image!

My MIL gave me one of her old sewing machines for Christmas, and I can't wait to get it up-and-running in the next few months. I need to find a good place for it where I can sit and sew during the (alleged) quiet times my kids take. For some reason my hubby wasn't keen on the sewing machine taking up permanent residence on the kitchen table-- go figure.

Getting crafty: Baby gift

I wasn't able to attend the baptism of one of my best friend's (Hi, Lauren!) daughter (Hi, Abigail!), but wanted to give her a special, meaningful gift. Lauren is my daughter's Godmother, and I wanted my gift to Abigail to reflect how highly I regard that special relationship. Additionally, I wanted to commemorate the fact that Abigail is, forever and ever, in the eyes of God AND the law, Lauren and J's daughter.

I knew that I wanted to make something that would be very personal, and I started thinking about the different kinds of things I could do with photos. I thought about making a photo mobile for her crib, but she's too old for that now-- too dangerous past around 5 months. Then, I thought about making a photo album, but thought that Lauren and her husband might want to do that sort of thing. Finally, I decided that I wanted to make something that she could play with everyday, and see the people who love her so much.

I thought about decoupaging wooden blocks with family members' photos, but I wasn't 100% sold on the idea. Finally, I decided to make some sort of puzzle, and started looking at the shape-puzzle templates online. When I searched for a Melissa and Doug shape puzzle (I heart Melissa and Doug products!), I came across a website that had nearly the exact project I was imagining, with all of the steps included! (Update: I just fixed the broken link-- sorry!)

Here's MY take on the project!

 

I bought the above puzzle from ChristianBook.com. Not only did they have the best price, but it happened to be on sale for a tiny bit more, and I got free shipping because I had some other (sale!) items that I had already wanted to purchase.

 I glued and then decoupaged the shapes with 5 different patterns of coordinating scrapbooking paper. I thought about painting the rest of the puzzle (white? green? pink?) or writing a message on it (I ended up doing that on the back), but decided to make it really girly and cover it with the paisley paper.

On the back, I wrote the verse that Lauren and J chose for Abigail (my daughter "helpfully" bumped my arm when I was writing. Agh! I had to remind myself that Abigail won't notice and even if she did, she wouldn't care). :-)  The "Look at how many people love you!" was the theme that I was aiming for with whatever project I ended up doing. The hearts were added as an afterthought, because the HUGE Melissa and Doug sticker left that side of the board sticky when I peeled it off. The "Isn't that amazing?" was for my daughter, who, whenever I tell her that God loves her even more than Mommy and Daddy do, says, "Wow! That's a-ma-zing!" Again, I decoupaged the back.
And yes, I edited the photo to remove our names.

What it will look like when Abigail plays with it! I included Godparents, both sides of grandparents, aunt and uncles, Lauren and J, and Baby Abigail in the middle. I traced the photos from the shapes, then cut them out, glued them over the pictures of the shapes (stop sign, bus, etc), and then covered the photos with the matte Mod Podge (what I used for the entire thing).

What I would do differently: I wish I had used an x-acto knife (by the way-- I always have spelled that "exacto" until I just looked it up. Who knew?) and cut on a self-healing cutting mat. I used scissors for the most part and wasn't able to get it as precisely cut as I would have liked. Getting the paper around the knobs was a pain, too. If I could go back in time, I might have purchased the puzzle with the wooden knobs and then tried to remove them and then add them back at the end. Using the Mod Podge on the paper for the "frame" of the puzzle was also challenging-- I don't know if it was the paper or the fact that the glue underneath wasn't completely dry, but the paper "smeared" a bit, in that some of the print came off. I would have let it dry completely before attempting to cover the top, because I think the bottom was still a bit wet, so it moved as I brushed over it, making the paper too fragile to work with just then. Finally, I think that if I did this again I would paint the back of the puzzle white. My paint pens ran a bit because of the wood grain, and that annoyed me at first.

Overall, I love it! Both of my kids played with it to "test it out," and it got 2 thumbs (4 thumbs?) up. And, even more importantly, Lauren and Abigail love it!

So... what do you think?? I can see this being a great baptism, adoption, or 1-year-old gift. You could include family or just 9 different photos of the baby! You could do pets or photos of the baby's favorite toys/foods/places. You could give it as a shower gift, with a sonogram photo in the middle, or an "insert baby photo here" note. So many possibilities. :-)

Getting crafty: Chair reupholstery

Out with the old, in with the new!

The Lenten season always makes me want to clean everything and change it and make it new and shiny again-- both inside me and around the house. Even my chairs need to be worthy of the Resurrection.

Hee hee. (Lisa chuckles to herself, imagining the six chairs and four stools lined up together on Judgment Day, awaiting their inspection)

So, this is what my dining room chairs and bar stools used to look like:

The chairs are gorgeous and match the dining room table we inherited from M's grandmother. The cream seat is the original one, likely 30 years old or so. I've gotten tired of cleaning up tiny fingerprints and crumbs that leave behind stains. The bar stools also had their original fabric. It actually looked really nice, but it wasn't quite my style. So... my MIL, the kids, and I loaded up in the truck for a grand adventure of finding new fabric I loved. I ended up falling for some fabric at Hobby Lobby-- it wasn't even the color scheme I was going for, but I love it even more than the old plan!

Side note: check out the granite tile countertops that M and I replaced over the holidays. That's one project I am sooooo happy to have completed. I had to go sink-less, water-less, and dishwasher-less for several days, but still had kids and a husband to cook for and feed. It made things challenging, but forced me to get creative. I washed dished several nights on the back porch using a soapy water bucket, a rinse bucket, and a sterilizing bucket, just like I used to do as a Girl Scout camp counselor, and then I took lots of dishes over to a neighbor's house to run a load while she was a work. I also avoided cooking raw meat, so I would pick up a cooked chicken and use that in my recipes, or buy fully cooked sausage that I just had to grill. It's true that necessity is the mother of invention! 

Armed with scissors, a staple gun, and a screwdriver, I went to work... 

 

Old chair... new chair! 

 

From top left, clockwise: stool with no seat... stool with old seat... stool with new seat!

 Fun! 

Note: even though the stripes look a bit wavy in the photos, I've since restretched the fabric so that it lays perfectly on the round pad.

The upholstery changes in the kitchen meant that the blue Oriental rug in the living room no longer matched. Uh oh... oh well! Time for Phase II of the Great Shake-up, where Lisa moves the blue rug into the master bedroom and buys a gorgeous new Oriental rug from Costco!

Ignore the pillows on the side-- they help protect a certain wobbly walker's runner's head as he barrels about the room, looking like a drunken sailor seeking a woman church for Mass after months at sea.

So... what do you think? I need to make some pillow covers for the couch and loveseat, but that will require more material searching. 

Now, if I can only get my soul to look as fresh and rejuvenated as the house...

7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 11), the "Where have I been?" edition

Sweet Leila wrote me an e-mail, asking where I've been lately. I thought I'd answer her e-mail with a blog post. :)

1. Having LOTS of overnight visitors. Mom came for around a week to escape downtown Fort Worth while the Steelers were in town for the Super Bowl. She accidentally took little H's carseat back home with her, so my dad drove it down the next day and spent a few nights with us. Then, my MIL came down to watch the kids while I took care of the next Quick Take item.

2. Preparing for and having a colonoscopy. This is the 3rd one I've had in the past 10 years, and the only one where I was convinced drinking the prep solution (MoviPrep, which I referred to as MoviHell) might kill me. I kept vomiting it up at 4:30 am, and my loving husband was comically (very sleepily, in his defense) unsympathetic about my plight, telling me to 1) chug it all down at once (impossible), 2) stop throwing up in the sink (also impossible... I couldn't move), and 3) either drink it or go back to bed. Truly, this isn't meant to disparage my hubby-- he's just missing that sympathetic-to-his-wife's-pain gene. For instance, he didn't believe I was going into labor with H, since I wanted to shower and put on make-up instead of screaming; he slept through most of my active labor contractions at the hospital; and I'm pretty convinced that he thought I exaggerated all of my pregnancy and birthing pains. Ha!

3. Realizing that my online time and time I spend maintaining relationships with online "friends" (I only put this in quotes because I don't know many-- most-- of the friends in real life) is giving me an excuse to avoid forming new and maintaining old real life relationships. It was becoming unhealthy, and I decided to step back, the way I did with Facebook around a year ago. I still read many of the blogs and pop in occasionally to comment, but even needed to stop posting as frequently on my own blog because I was too interested in how many comments I had and how many people were reading.

4. Tying into #3, I've been questioning (yet again) the information on the Internet concerning my family, that I've put out there on either Facebook or this blog. I thought the other day about how I'm so glad that Facebook didn't exist when I was in college, because there are plenty of photos I'm more than happy to forget. Then, I thought about how happy I am that my mom wasn't blogging/updating every moment of my life, especially with photos of every awkward moment of my youth. Even when people take down their blogs, some of the cached posts can be found. While I don't post photos of my kids on the blog, I occasionally do on Facebook. I'm starting to think that it's not necessarily my "right" to expose them in that way, when they have no option, and when the photos may follow them, potentially for the rest of their lives. What if C runs for President someday, or H wants to start his own company? :) I think they are the ones who should be able to write their own stories, with or without photos. Thoughts on this? And would you have minded if your mom (or dad) posted thousands of pics of you online and wrote about everything before you had a chance to tell your own story?

5. Getting crafty. I've been finishing the kitchen countertops and reorganizing the kitchen, recovering the dining room chairs and our bar stools, planning some sewing projects for the kids, picking fabric to make new pillow covers for the couch and loveseat, making Valentine wreaths, and planning my spring and summer flowers, herbs, fruits, and veggies.

This took less than 5 minutes while my son was napping. I "Love" it.

These are berries from a tree in our front yard (see header). I've since added more berries and moved the wreath to the front door in case any berries fell off and H ate some. Just call me Mom of the Year.

6. Fishin' for rattlesnakes out of an old cistern. I wish I was kidding about this, but the snakeskin currently residing in my freezer confirms my story. As does this photo, with my FIL, hubby, and BIL (left to right).

I won't even explain what's going on here. Feel free to form your own opinions.

7. Trying tons of new recipes. I lost my HUGE recipe folder (ok, technically the freezer bag that I stuck all of my original and modified recipes in before I transferred them to my official recipe book.  This means I'm missing around 250 recipes) and my Macbook crashed (again), so I lost all of my bookmarks for online recipes that I like. I've decided to use this as a positive time to try new things and remodify recipes that I've made before from online recipes. I also realized that if I'd updated my cooking blog, I'd have a record of everything. Sigh. I've also been having fun with my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. I made a delicious boule this week and then used more of the same dough to make sticky buns for M last night, since he had a big morning today at work.

Look what I made...

AKA "What? Lisa can SEW? With a MACHINE?"

Do you see this? Do you see this? Do you see THIS??? Because I can't stop staring. For the record, "words of praise" is totally my love language. I can't stop praising myself for what I made! By myself! On a machine!

And I apparently can't stop using italics, either. It's an addiction. I'm trying to get away from the incessant semi-colons, so I need my italics to keep me strong.

I first saw the pattern in cherries on The Domestic Notebook and fell in love. THEN, she made the dress with monkeys and I knew I had to try my hand at it.

I give total pattern-credit to Made by Rae and Amber. I ADORE this pattern and already purchased enough material in other colors so I can make more! And one of my best friends is having twins next year... guess what they'll be wearing if either or both are girls.

Finally, I have to tell you how FABULOUS M's sweet aunt is. The kids and I spent several days at her home while M was busy in Iowa. She helped me pick out the fabric, taught me all the basics of cutting and pinning the fabric (she even cut out and pinned 2 of the bodice pieces for me!), set the machine up for me, and supervised me while I got started. I worked on the dress after the kiddos went to bed, which was rather late some nights, so she stayed up until the wee hours of the night with me while I sewed in the basement for two nights in a row. And the most amazing thing of all for me was that she let ME do it all. Now I can say that I made the dress by myself. I am seriously so proud of myself that I might pop. It's been a long time since I've had this much pride in creating anything but my kids (and there was definitely help from M there). I learned how to use bias tape, make my own trim, gather the skirt, sew around curves, and basically just how to use a sewing machine for something more than baby blankets and stuffed teddy bears... the previous extent of my machine experience.

Have you made anything exciting lately? Leave a link if you have something to show off!

PS Don't miss out on the cookbook giveaway!

Getting crafty

So, I don't have time to mop my floor, but I have time to do an art project. Go figure.

I take no credit for the idea for this; I found the tutorial at Under the Table and Dreaming via Tatertots and Jello-- that's the site on which I was a WINNER (my look book will be another post).

Anyway, I LOVE how this turned out! Not only does it help me keep my menus straight for the week (granted, this means that I actually have to plan ahead of time for seven straight days), but it's so cute. Everyone who comes over comments on it and asks me where I got it. Lisa's House of Wonders, I tell them. That's what M would call "Lisa-humor." That's another way of him saying that I'm likely the only one who thinks what I've said is funny.

Silence...

Moving on! Here's how I made the menu board:

1) I started with an old frame.

My mother-in-law gave me this old frame when I broke the glass in another frame, so I could see if the glass would fit. It didn't. So, this nicked-up frame was just taking up precious space in my house.

2) I "updated" it with brown shoe polish. Not because I'm crazy-creative, but because I don't own brown paint. Or brown stain. But I do own brown shoe polish.

Look how nicely it buffs up! I feel like the polish gave those nicks wayyyyyy more character. They now have a purpose in life, and we all know how good that feels.

My purpose in life?  

Not mopping the floor right now.

3) I glued burlap to the frame backing, added "MENU" in sticky letters left-over from days when I dealt with high school freshmen who couldn't stop talking and before I dealt with a two year old who can't stop talking. I printed out the super-cute letters for the days of the week, cut them out and glued them on, and then replaced the glass. Finally, I wrote out my menu directly on the glass with a dry-erase marker!

Don't judge me by my pathetic dinner planning that week. We had been out-of-town the weekend before, my husband had a work dinner one night, and we went out of town at the end of the week. I worked with what I had.

4) I hung it up. Whoo-hoo!

I'm still feeling super self-conscious about showing you the menu. Does it help if I tell you that, in the last five days, I've made homemade chicken pot pie (with homemade pie crusts, too!), chicken enchiladas, hamburgers, ribeye, baked sweet potatoes, and (more) chili?

That made me feel a bit better, at least. Thanks for indulging me.