My Sweetie Pea

Sorry for the long blog absence! My little girl finally arrived and we seem to have our days and nights mixed up!  She really is a good baby, if we could just sleep at night it would be soo nice.  Since she was born my blog has been featured on a few other blogs and I have failed to recognize them.  So thank you to Sew It To Me, Comin' Home, and Chick 'N Charge!  And especially thank you to all my followers!  Hang in there with me, I've got a notebook with pages, and pages and pages of awesome original projects that I want to do this spring and summer - and they don't include anything with burlap or vinyl lettering.  Not that there's anything wrong with those things - it's just getting a little overdone.  So anyways to wrap things up, thank you for following my blog and give me a few weeks to get our sleep schedule changed around and I promise I will have some fun posts comming soon!

Big Sister T-shirt

I'm still pregnant so I guess I better make the best of my free-time.  I made a "I'm a big sister" t-shirt with an iron on transfer and a matching korker bow for Macey to wear after the baby comes.  You can learn how to make korker bows here.  The graphics came from Peppermint Creatives' free download, which you can get here. (She replaces her free downloads often, so that link might be broken in a week or two).  I bought the t-shirt at Walmart for three dollars, and the iron on transfer paper and ribbon I already had.  That sure beats the pants off of Gymborees twenty dollar "big sister" t-shirts.  I hope this baby comes soon!

Bountiful Baskets

Yep, I'm still here.  No baby yet.  Last week on the news I heard about this food co-op called Bountiful Baskets. I decided to give it a try, it sounded like an awesome deal.  So last Monday I paid online for my basket and printed out my receipt.  Then this morning we went to go pick it up and I have to say, I'm pretty amazed at all the good food we got.  I was also surprised that there is soo many pick-up locations in Southern Utah.  It's not just a Utah thing either.  It's available in Nevada, Idaho, Washington and Arizona.  We loaded up our bags and came home and made some breakfast smoothies with our strawberries and blueberries.  It's kinda funny, last night I was telling my mom about it and I mentioned that I hope I don't get something wierd in my basket like radishes, and guess what? I got two bags of radishes.  What the heck am I going to do with them?

Freezer Meals

My freezer is all packed with meals, and I'm ready for this baby to come! My mom came over and we made my mama's Lasagna, Grandmas Green Chilli Burros (which Justin has already eaten half of), and Chicken Penne.  I even got around to getting my bag packed and ready to go. Don't worry, I remembered to pack my Ipod.  I wouldn't want to come home to a torn apart kitchen.  Did anyone else see The Office? It was hilarious!  Anyways, hopefully my next post will be a picture of my baby!

Mini Bow Tutorial

Since this baby has decided to stay in awhile longer I thought I would get some little hair bows ready, just in case she's a baldy.  I can't do bows the traditional way where you just do the rabbit ears thing and tie it.  Mine always turn out skiddywampus.  Some people can do it, and if you can, then good for you.  For those of us who can't, here's a tutorial on how to make them another way and have them turn out cute. Your going to need:

-Ribbon

-Thread and Needle

-Print out the template on cardstock template pattern here

-Hot glue gun

There are two different sizes of patterns, a big one and a small one.  This is the big pattern that I use on the thicker ribbon.  First you cut your ribbon to 5.5 inches.  If your using the small pattern and skinny ribbon you will cut it to 4.5 inches. You put your ribbon behind the pattern as shown.

Then you wrap the ends around the front.

Using a hair clippy you secure the ribbon down while you get your needle and thread ready.

Then you stick the needle through all three layers of ribbon and wrap the thread around the middle.  Make a knot in the back and tie it off and cut it.

Then cut a small piece of coordinating ribbon, or use the same ribbon if you want.

Put a little dab of hot glue on the backside of the bow and wrap the little piece of ribbon around it and hold it until the glue cools down.  Then cut the excess ribbon off. Trim up your ends so the match evenly on both sides and then seal the ends of the ribbon.

And your all finished!

I also bought some do-dads that were on sale at Joann's to make into mini hair clippies just in case the baby has a small amount of hair I can put a clip in. You can buy the little barrette clips at Wal-Mart.

First you line your clip with ribbon. Put a dab of hot glue in the middle and then put your little do-dad on top of it and there ya go.

Cute little clippies.  I think this is the shortest tutorial there is.

And now I put it all in a little organza bag and throw in the hospital bag, which is still not packed yet.  I guess I better get off the computer and get that done. Happy bow making to ya!

My Picky Eater

My little Macey is the pickiest eater I have ever seen! Some days, if I would let her, I swear she could live off of nothing but chocolate milk and goldfish crackers.  I have been looking all over the internet for a solution to this little problem and have tried a lot of different things.  I have tried the "you can't get down until you try one bite." I have tried the "if you eat this then you can have your chocolate milk." I have tried everything! It usually ends up with a crying two year old and a frustrated mom.  Then I came across this idea where you put a variety of different foods in a muffin tin.  Some of the foods are ones you know your toddler will eat and some are new things you want them to try.  The idea is to keep it fun and colorful.  This has worked soo good at our house.  She will try the new foods because I'm not standing over her making her take a bite of it.  I usually use one of the cups for ranch dressing or some kind of dipping sauce, and we all know toddlers looove to dip food.  It does take a little more effort to make a muffin tin lunch or dinner, but it's well worth it.  I hope this helps some other mom out! 

Jewelry - My First Attempt

Like the title says, this is my first attempt at making jewelry.  I saw an ad on Sisters Stuff for temple bracelets and of course I had to have one.  I went to their etsy store to look at them and thought I needed to get one for me, my mom, my sister, maybe even my grandma (who just went through the temple, yay!), and then it started to add up.  So I decided I could probably make them myself.  I have never attempted jewelry before because just walking down the bead aisle at the craft store is intimidating with all the different hardware and things.  Luckily, we had an enrichment activity about jewelry making and I kinda understood what I needed to buy to make these.  So for starters I made one for me, the one along the bottom with pins and bigger beads. The elastic one in the top left is for my mom.  I did hers elastic because she has arthritis, and with smaller beads because that's more her style.  The other one is pink and was just for fun.

I also bought these little organza bags to keep them in in our temple bags.  I can understand now why jewelry making is soo addictive.  It's really fun! I have a feeling this is the first of what will be many more bracelet making projects.