Dress up time

Yesterday I decided to make myself a new dress. I've been wanting a new dress for a while now but couldn't really find anything I liked or if I did it was too expensive. Recently I came across a couple of tutorials on Pinterest. And I found one that seemed fairly simple It is a T-shirt, elastic and fabric. I won't go through all the steps. If you're interested check out the blog.

I had a few little problems, pretty much because I haven't sewed clothing in years. When you measure and sew your elastic, try it around your waist to make sure it is the correct fit before you sew the skirt to it. That will save you some time unpicking and resewing. Basically just think things through. I sewed this after Isaac was in bed and I just am not thinking right in the evening. I think if I hadn't made the stupid mistakes I did that it would have taken me around an hour to sew. Mistakes and all it took me closer to three hours. Stupid mistakes. but I like how the dress turned out and I think if I sew clothing in the future I won't make as many mistakes.

So I'm happy and I relearned some things. And I can't really complain about a $10 dress. Now I have something fun and new to wear to church today.

1

His new toy from Brad and Amy. He was more interested with the buttons and cars than with riding it around.

And this is the first birthday cupcake. He thought it was really weird when everyone was singing to him and then when we set the cupcake in front of him it took him a few seconds to decide what he was going to do with it. I gave him a taste of the frosting on my finger then he went for it and devoured it.

The fact that he is 1 today is pretty amazing. In the past year he's gone from a baby I didn't know to a baby I often wished I didn't know (sorry it's true) to a baby that I'm excited to get to hang out with everyday! The first 7 months were HORRIBLE and so SLOW! But since he decided to be a bit independent the time has gone so fast and he has just been a delight. I love to watch him play and discover things. He is walking like a pro now and it's just the cutest thing to watch him toddle around. He is such a big boy!

He has 3 teeth now and is working on three more at the moment. He loves Ray Ray and Daddy and Mommy and his friends. He likes to give hugs and cuddles. He quit nursing cold turkey a month ago and is just a big boy using sippy cups now. He loves his books and will have me read the same one over and over. He loves to skype with Pop Pop. He loves my phone. He likes swings. He is so sweet.

He got several fun presents from friends and family. We got him a bucket swing that we are going to hang on the tree in the back yard, a blowup pool for the summer, and a fun movie that we want him to have. He doesn't watch movies yet but we hope he likes this one when he does start watching them.

We love Isaac so much and our life wouldn't be complete without him. He is such a sweet boy. And he's 1 today! Happy Birthday Baby Boy!

The past couple months

So I have totally fallen off the blogging wagon. It's the last thing I want to do when I have some time to myself. But Isaac has been doing so much in the past couple months I feel like I should write it all down.

He has just become so independent and that is AWESOME! He loves to crawl all over the house and get into anything and everything. We've installed some child locks on cabinets and started moving things. But pretty much if he can't hurt it and it can't hurt him he can play with it. That's my no fuss parenting haha.

A few weeks ago he started trying out a word or two. His first word was dog; he really loves ray ray. And yesterday he tried out the word "done" at the end of his breakfast. It's really cute to see him figuring things out. He nods his head a lot. If we ask him if he's done eating he gets a big smile and nods his head vigorously.

Every week we bake with a few other moms from church and their kids and Isaac is starting to play with the other kids or at least try to keep up with them. It's really fun watching him develop into such a confident social guy. Last week at church a 2 year old was following him and sat right across from him on the floor and they started touching each others hair. It was pretty cute.

He is FINALLY taking good naps. And it's heavenly! I know I can count on an hour nap in the morning and a 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon. I can get some things done and have some me time that is consistent and that alone has made things better.

People ask me if I can believe he's 10 months old and I say yes and no. The first 7 months were the most horrible, slow months of my life but the past 3 have flown by and been so fun. I love little Isaac. I loved him through the horrible part and I love him now. He's just so much more fun now and I finally get why people think being a mom is the best. It pretty much is.

One week, one thing: Art Gallery Scraps Quilt Top

Art Gallery Fabrics generously offered scraps of their beautiful fabrics to people on facebook. I was lucky enough to see their post and get my information to them in time to get some scraps sent to me. I received the scraps in the mail about a week ago and have been working on this quilt top this past week. I am thrilled with how it turned out! I loved working with these fabrics! They are beautiful and feel great! I love this quilt top. I hope to finish this quilt up this week (my little boy came down with a cold today though so that will be dependent on how quickly he recovers I think). While I was working on it I found myself thinking of my cute 4 year old niece so I think this quilt might go to her. Her mom welcomes that idea because, I'm told, she constantly tries to snatch her mom's quilt. I think this quilt will like its new owner.

And just in case you're wondering if you should really be that careful with your rotary cutter, the answer is "Yes. Yes you should." While I was cutting charms for a swap I got a little too into the cutting and sliced my thumb pretty bad. Luckily it took a little while for it to start bleeding so my fabric wasn't ruined. Also lucky is that the cut wasn't vertical because it was pretty deep and if it had been vertical I'm guessing I would have had to have stitches. So now I have yet another quilting battle wound. Totally worth it!

Bee crazy!

I finished this baby quilt. I has the top made a few months ago. My quilt guild did a dot fabric swap last November and I decided to do some bento box blocks with them. I think it's a super fun baby quilt. I did a simple stippleish quilting on it. I like it a lot more after the quilting than I before. Not sure who this will be going to yet; I have a couple pregnant friends so I assume it will go to one of them.

I decided to jump into the world of online quilt bees so I've been working on a bunch of blocks for these bees the past couple weeks. The first 6 blocks are for the 4x5 bee and the other is for We bee modern too. I'm really loving making the bee blocks. It's fun to be able to do something new every month/quarter and learn some new things. I'm addicted to the online bees :)

For Jessica

For Jenn

For Pam

For me

For Em

For Julie

For Heather

I really loved the simplicity of this block and I started working on another project with this block today. More to come soon.

8 Months (1 day late)

I'm cute.

And I'm gonna getcha!

Got ya!

I love pasta!

In the past couple months Isaac has grown so much and learned so much! He loves solid food now! Some of his favorites are pasta with spaghetti sauce (which is ironic since tomato of any kind made me super sick while i was pregnant), eggs, pancakes, any fruit, rice, green beans and cream of wheat with fruit. He really loves food.

He is also starting to get mobile. He does a little army crawling and quite a bit of rolling these days. He is trying to pull himself up on everything and has succeeded without help once on the bathtub (terrified me as i was laying his towel out!). He gets on his hands and knees with his belly off the ground but only in his crib (weird huh?). All of his new found mobility hasn't really made things easier, it just makes him more capable to get to me for me to hold him. I do not have an independent little boy. And holding him constantly is killing my back, he is HEAVY.

The past couple weeks have been really really hard. I think I've had more days with tears (from me and him) than days without. He has just been so clingy and never wants to be on his own any more even for 5 minutes and it's wearing on me. So after 2 weeks of that he pinched his finger and was holding his breath while working up his scream (you know what I'm talking about) and I saw that he had cut a tooth! So that explains the super clingyness (i hope) and maybe it will get a little better after he cuts the second tooth which seems to be any day now if I can judge from the amount of drool he has. Despite the clingyness he has been quite the trooper with the teething. I didn't even realize that was what was going on until I saw the tooth.

At least he's cute to make up for the pain that he is a lot of the time! Happy 8 months little guy!

The quilt I'm letting my sister in law "have" :)

Front

Back

I had so much fun working on this quilt. I used this tutorial on Moda and it was fun and easy to make. I did a lot of chain piecing in the early stages of the quilt because you sew 144 pieces together several times before you're ready to organize your top and piece the rows. For my second border I just pieced the leftover pieces of fabric at their 2.5" width. I didn't bother cutting them down to 1.5" pieces. It was simply more efficient to do it the other way. I also didn't sew full ovals before piecing them together. I simply arranged the quilt then piece the quarter ovals into rows and the the rows into the quilt top. So much faster.

I used Stitch by Betz White for Robert Kaufman and I fell in love with about every fabric in that line. I love the colors and the designs.

My friend Amy gave me the idea for quilting it. I started quilting inside a square then every 2" throughout the rest of the quilt. It was easy and fast and I love how it turned out. This was a really fun quilt to do and I'm finding it hard to part with this one. I told my sister in law that I will just have to enjoy it every time I'm at her house.

Happy Birthday/Christmas Carolyn!