Look what I did

We went to Hobby Lobby the other day and Sarah saw some pink yarn and just loved it.  She wanted me to buy it for her and so I bought it.  I don't usually buy random things like that just because my kids want it but Christmas was coming up and I thought that if I had time I could crochet her something for Christmas.

Well it didn't happen before Christmas because I didn't have time but I decided to crochet her a hat.  I found one online at Alli Crafts.  She has all sorts of free patterns there that are really cute.  I picked a hat and asked Sarah if she would like me to make it for her and she was super excited.

So I spent an hour online looking up stitches again and how to do magic rings and all sorts of stuff and then sat down and made her this really cute hat.

 She wore it all day yesterday.  She just loved it.  The flaps were easy and it was fun to learn.  It has me excited to make more.

 Isn't it cute.

I still need practice joining the rounds but it is cute and she likes it and that is all that matters.

Last night I sat down with the same pattern but for a smaller head and started making one for Yana.  I will make pom poms to attach to the top once I finish the one I'm working on. 

It is amazing what you can find online.

Well today is going to be a super busy day and it is already half over.  We started late and have lots to do.  I hope that you have a wonderful day.  I'll try to get on later and start sharing pictures of all the Christmas presents I made this year.

Fun in the sun.

Well I have kept my poor kids indoors pretty much since we've been back from Idaho.  Other than to go to the store or other indoor places they don't step out of the house.  I have been feeling really bad about that.  I've had a really bad attitude towards this heat and it is going to get us no where.  So this morning I went for a jog as you might have read already and while I was jogging I decided that I needed to get my kids outside more.  They need more physical activity as well.  I can't only be working to making myself healthier just to leave my family behind.

So after yoga and a shower I got dressed and went to wake up my beautiful girls and low and behold they were already awake...somewhat.  So I told them that if we hurried and got dressed and ate breakfast than we could go to the park.  I was thinking the park that we can walk to but my daughter asked if we could go to the "big park".  I decided why not.  We haven't been in a while and they deserve it.

Breakfast took a little longer than I was hoping for.  We had to deal with some stubborn streaks in my daughter but eventually we got through it.  We loaded up and went to the big park a few miles down the road and they had a blast.

 Sarah really likes to ride those things.  That was the first thing she went for.

Yana is going to be just like her sister.  They both love to swing and neither of them has any fear.  Yana would giggle and giggle as she was pushed a little higher.

Sarah went down the slides and ran around and had lots of fun.  It was getting warmer and warmer so we only stayed an hour but it was worth it.  I told her that if she was good and didn't have a fit when it was time to leave then we would go again tomorrow if we could.

We will either go back to the big park or we will walk to our park.  As soon as their eye infections are gone then we will go swimming as well.  We will just do all our outdoor stuff in the morning and in the evenings right before bed. 

If any of you have good ideas for things to do indoors with kids please fill free to share.

I will be starting Sarah on her own school program next week when the school year starts here.  Nothing huge but enough to help her learn some things she needs to for next years public school system.

Any ideas?

If you've read my post from this morning you will know that we are about to go for a week without the TV.  I need some ideas of activities to do inside and out with my 3 year old daughter.  We go to the park when the weather is nice like this morning.  It was a lot of fun but I don't want to spend all day at the park in order to avoid the television.

Here are the ideas that I have:

Color

Practice ABC's

Read books

Indoor hopscotch

That isn't a very big list.  So I'm asking you.  What do you do with your kids indoors and out?  Please help me come up with some ideas.

100th Post - Upcoming projects

Well first off I never imagined that I would have my own blog let a long have 100 posts on it.  I plan to have many more but want to acknowledge that I do have 100. 

Next I thought I would share with you some upcoming projects.  I have one sunflower table runner with one step left before it is ready to sale and another one almost ready to be sandwiched and free motion stitched.  I am trying different patterns and am having lots of fun with this. 

I have two more projects coming up.  We went to Joann's fabric a little while ago.  I bought fabric to make cute little hats for children as well as material for some 4th of July table runners.  Have a look see:

 This is the hat that I will be making.  This one is my daughters and she loves it.

This is the back of it.  I am not that great at tying bows so please forgive me.  I did buy some cute material for hats that boys will like and I will be making the band in the middle available to be tied into a bow or buttoned in place.  Here is the material that I bought for the hats.

The material on the left I bought enough to make a couple hats as well as dresses for my girls.  I'll let you know how it goes.

This is the material that I bought for some July table runners.  As we were driving home I had so many ideas for these runners for the front and the back.  I am hoping that these will be cute and reversible.

I also have another project that I will share once it is done.  It is for someone that might see this post so I don't want to ruin the surprise.

I had so much fun shopping for this material.  My days are starting to get some semblance of a routine again so I should be able to make more time to sew.  So keep checking back and I'll let you know how it goes.

A busy day and a new bib!

Today has been a wonderfully busy day.  Tonight I have invited all the laurels over to hang out.  So you know what that means.  Guests are coming and I need to clean the house at least a little bit.  So we wake up and eat and the day begins.  We cleaned the kitchen by gathering the garbages in the house and taking out the main garbage.  We wipe the counters down and clean off the table.  We do the dishes and unload the dishwasher.  We clean out the fridge and then move onto the rest of the house.  We even stopped to take a break.  The break was taking things to the post office.

After lunch there is more cleaning.  Dusting, vacuuming, laundry, organizing.  Really I'm not just doing this for the girls coming tonight.  My house needs cleaned and I haven't been keeping up on it as well as I should have.  The girls just give me an excuse to catch up. 

After getting things organized and off the counters and the table I am once again reminded how much I like a clean house where I can see the counter tops.  The house smells clean and looks good.  So now I'm sitting here telling everyone that my house is now clean again.

I am also blogging here today to tell you all that I have posted another bib to my store.  The striped ones from Wednesday are gone.  They are all very cute and this new bib is turned the other direction to save the cute little birds that are on it. 

I hope that you all have a wonderful afternoon and a wonderful weekend.  I think we will be getting rain.

Time to go check on the bread....

New bib and upcoming bibs in the store.

I finished a few more bibs and will be adding a new bib every couple days.  Here are just a couple pictures for you to see.  Make sure that you check out my store to see more pictures and see the cute new aprons.

There are more coming.  I know that these ones are more focused towards girls with the flowers and ducks.  Don't worry.  If you have boys and would like a pullover bib keep checking back or even let me know what colors you might be interested it.  I have browns and dark blues coming soon.  Hopefully in the next week I'll get them done and posted.

I also will have some cute grocery sack holders coming soon as well.  I just need to buy some more string and then I can get them sewn.  I have several projects on the table right now and will bet getting them done as I can.  I will start working on table runners here in about 3 weeks.  I will have sunflower table runners as well as a grape themed table runner or so.  If you have a different theme in your kitchen and would like a table runner to go with it please let me know what your theme is and I'll start looking for material to match the theme.

I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend and that you have a wonderful week.  Thanks for stopping by.

New Pullover bib in my store.

 I just posted this cute pullover bib on my store.  It is a toddler pullover bib and is machine washable.  I originally purchased this towel at Target so it is a nice bib.  My daughter loves her pullover bibs.   They are very durable and are a good way to protect your children's shirts from breakfast all day through dinner.  We use ours for all our meals and snacks that could stain or just get her clothes dirty.  Hope you like them.  I have several more very cute bibs coming over the next few days.

Finished projects!

I know it has taken a while but I finally took some pictures of the projects that I finished right before Christmas.  I already showed you the Christmas dress that I made my daughter.  It turned out rather cute I think.  She really likes it which is the good thing.

When I first blogged about these projects all I showed you was the material and the pattern.  So here are the pictures of the finished products.

The above pictures are of the bath robe that I made for my daughter.  Yes it is a little big but I didn't want her growing out of it any time soon.  It was fun to make and I thought it turned out rather cute.  I am thinking about making some and selling them in my store.  My daughter picked out the material herself and we bought some ducky slippers to go with it.  She loves the slippers but as of yet hasn't decided what she thinks about the finished robe.  We think it is very cute.

The pattern calls this a bunting but I just call them sleepers.  However, this one is made out of fleece so it is really warm and it is more for outdoors than indoors.  She hasn't used it yet as we haven't really taken her outside a lot.  The hat is really cute but is way to big for her at this time.  As she grows she should be able to wear them.

I really enjoy working with fleece and had a lot of fun with these outfits.

Christmas Dress finished.

Ok so last time I posted I commented on 3 new projects that I was working on and wanting to get done before Christmas.  One of them is finished, One almost finished, and one not started yet.

I started working on the Christmas dress last Monday and finished it yesterday before Church.  It was really fun to make and even better when it turned out so cute.  It is a little bit bigger than my daughter but that way she can wear it again next year.

Today I will finish her bathrobe and get the material cut out for the babies outfit.  I also think I'll sew some tabs on one of the baby blankets so it will attach to the top of the car seat.

I'll keep everyone posted and pictures put up when things are done.

Newest Projects

Sorry I haven't blogged much the last week or so.  I've been trying to get as much done as I can before this baby comes.  I've been trying to spend more quality time with my daughter, clean, sew, pack bags, finish getting things ready for Christmas, and doctor appointments.

This week after my doctor appointment my daughter and I went to Joann's to get some material for a Christmas dress and had so much fun.  We spent over an hour in the store.  I found 3 very cute patterns that I bought and then we had to get material for each of them.

I started out looking for material for the Christmas dress first but just couldn't find what I wanted so we started looking for cute material for this outfit.  I went over to the fleece and walked through the material and finally found a few that I liked and let my daughter pick which one it would be.  She chose this pink material and I think it will be very cute.

While in the fleece department I decided to get the material for this cute pattern.  My husband and I found some very cute ducky slippers in the LTD Commodities catalog and they even make sounds when you touch the duckies.  We ordered them for her for Christmas so I thought a robe would go nicely with the slippers.  My daughter even picked out the ducky material without help from me.  It was cute and she will love it.

When I was done getting zippers and bias binding tape I finally pulled this pattern out again and started trying to decide what I wanted to do for the Christmas dress.  The selection was getting smaller and smaller at Joann's so I wasn't left with much.  I wasn't sure I wanted green and red and they had some cute black and grey material in the Christmas section but this snowflake material kept catching my eye.  I asked my daughter if she wanted snowflakes and she did so we picked it out and then the long process for me of finding the lining material.  I actually forgot the contrast material for the tie ends and had this pretty sky blue already in my stash.  The dress I am making is the one second one down on the right that has sleeves and a bow.  I still haven't decided on the bow yet.  I have the top done and after looking at all the measurements for all the material I forgot to look at the Tulle.  So tonight I will be going back for more Tulle to finish this adorable dress.  I am very excited.

Since I didn't have enough tulle today I worked on the bathrobe and it was so easy and fast that in the 1 1/2 hours that my daughter slept I almost finished it.  I decided I had better blog before I forgot again.  I will take pictures and blog about the finished projects as soon as I finish each one. 

I hope that everyone is ready for Christmas and enjoying this Christmas season.

New posts to my store

Ok well you saw a picture of the different towels that I was turning into pull over bibs.  Now they are finished and posted at my store.  Come check them out.  They turned out very cute.  I went with a different softer towel than normal and loved it.  I think I will stick to that in the future.  They shed a lot but when I was done serging they stopped shedding. 

I have listed 4 new pullover bibs.  One pink baby girls bib, one pink striped toddler pullover bib, one solid red bib that can be used for girls or boys, and one green striped bib.

They are great to have at your house for your own children or if you babysit.  If you watch your grand kids they are also great to have on hand.  They are all machine washable and very durable.

They have knit collars so they are soft on the neck and very easy to put on and off.

Come check them out and spread the word.

These are only two of the 4 bibs.  Check out my store to see the other two.  www.IdahoAtHeart.etsy.com.

I finished three Christmas presents.

 I finished these 3 toddler aprons for some friends of ours.  They have 3 adorable little girls and I wanted to make them for Christmas.  Each are different as you can see.  The top one has a ducky and some flowers.
The middle one has butterflies.

The bottom one has flowers growing out of the pocket.  They were fun to make and I'm learning more and more about appliques.

I hope to make more like these for my store but with Christmas right around the corner I think it will have to wait until the new year.

New Toddler Pullover bibs available now.

I just finished four new Toddler pullover bibs.  They are available at my store.  Two are white with red and grey stripes and two are white with blue and green stripes.  They can be used for boys or girls.  They are made from kitchen towels and have been pre-washed.  The color is made from knit so it stretches.

They make great gifts to people who have toddlers or to grandparents.  They are great to have on hand when food is involved.  My daughter hates wearing the ones with ties, snaps or Velcro.  She was always pulling them off.  These pullover bibs however are so nice because she feels so independent.  She can put them on and take them off by herself and where she has favorite shirts now she doesn't like to get them dirty.

They are fun to make and fun for the kids to use.  We have saved several shirts when eating oatmeal and spaghetti.  When they get dirty just throw them in the wash.

Pullover Bib Tutorial

This is a post where I show you how to make pull over bibs.  I do sell them at my store to make things simple but for those of you who like to sew and learn new things.  I thought I would share this with you.  I have broke it down into 12 simple steps with pictures.

Step 1

Pick your towel.  The one in this tutorial is a hand towel from Target.  It was the perfect size for a baby pull over towel.  You can also cut bigger towels into smaller ones to make more.

Step 2

You need to decide how much of the bib you will want on the back of the head and then fold it that much.

Step 3

Before this step you need to decide how big your neck hole is going to be.  I have mine drawn out on parchment paper.  You only need to draw half of it and then place it on the fold and pin in place.

Step 4

Once you have it pinned in place.  Cut the hole out.

Step 5

Now you need to mark it evenly into fourths.  If you mark it while it is already folded and then match those pins in the opposite direction and mark the other sides it works really well and quickly.

Steps 6 & 7

Then you need to measure out the knit.  It needs to be 3/4 of the measurement plus 1 inch.  If you measure from one pin around to the last pin, leaving a gap between the last pin and the first it works really well. 

Then you need to fold the knit in half and serge the end closed.

Steps 8 & 9

Know you open up the knit and fold the edges up together.  Then you need to also pin it into fourths.  The serged edge can count as 1 of the fourths.  Then you match the pins up on the knit necking to the pins already marked on the towel.

Steps 10 & 11

Now you serge around the neck edge.  Make sure you stretch the towel to match the knit.  Keep all the edges nicely lined up.  When you get to the start - keep stitching for about an inch.  Then stitch until you get a tail so you can finish off the threads.



Your finished and it looks great.



Now that you have finished serging just check the top side to make sure that you don't have any bunches and that you haven't missed any parts of it while serging.  When you iron it just don't iron the folded edge of the knit and it will look really good.  Now you can embellish or leave as is.

Some other options

Something else I like to do is buy the bigger towels and cut them in half.  Then you can fold and sew the cut edges and make two of the toddler pull over bibs out of one towel.



I hope that you have enjoyed the tutorial.  Like I said, I do sell them at my store for your convenience.  If you have questions please feel free to contact me.  The bib seen in the tutorial is a baby pullover bib and will be available Monday in my store so come check it out.

Toddler Boy Apron

I finished the Toddler Apron for boys and it is very cute.  I used satin stiching to applique the mast, sail, cloud and sun to the levi and the boat itself is the pocket.  It is lined with blue bias binding tape.  I don't have any sons and although it looked cute on my daughter I opted to take pictures of it around the house.  These would make great birthday or Christmas gifts for the toddlers you are shopping for.

Toddler Girl Apron

Ok so I have finished my first toddler girls apron and I must say that I think it is very cute.  This one is made with a darker levi.  It has pink bias binding tape on the edges and then a black sparkly pocket that has butterflies on it.  Then there is also a flower that has been appliqued to the apron.

My daughter loves the apron that Grandma made for her.  She uses it when she is playing in her kitchen and when she is helping in my kitchen.  She has also used it when we were carving our pumpkins.  They are very durable and machine washable.  Check out my store for more pictures.

Toddler Aprons in progress

You saw the pictures of my daughter's apron.  Here are a few pictures of what I've been working on.  These pictures are of the progress so you can see them being sewn.  I am sewing one for a girl and one for a boy which should be available at Idaho At Heart within the next two days.  Tell me what you think as you see pictures of things being sewn.  Do you like seeing them in progress or would you prefer just the finished product pictures?