I can't help it!

I tend get into these crafting-type "phases" where one or two things completely grab my attention and take up all my free time, and it lasts anywhere from a few days to a few months. This isn't something new, I've been like this for years. Some things I've focused on are crocheting, sewing diapers, sewing baby carriers, learning about home decor, stuff like that. Well, now I think I'm in the middle of a new phase, one that isn't focused on one particular craft or style of crafting. I just want to be creative and productive, making something new and working on anything crafty that I can, all the time! I can't help it, I just want to make things.

Here's what I made just yesterday:

- A wet bag. This is a water-resistant bag for holding wet and/or messy cloth diapers until it's time to launder them. It's an alternative to a diaper pail. We have a pail we use, but since we'll be going up to Idaho to visit my family this week I wanted something more portable for holding the used diapers. This bag is made of an inner layer of lab coat fabric (99% polyester and 1% plastic, designed for repelling liquids - Jeff had this old lab coat he didn't use anymore and said I could use it for diaper stuff) and an outer layer of fleece. I'll also be making a second wet bag, so that one can be in use while one is in the laundry.


- This wall hanging. I've had this idea in my head for quite a while. I got this frame with cork board at D.I. several weeks ago, and the blue/green pattern stuff is actually some of that plasticy stuff you stick to windows to block an unpleasant view or increase privacy, also purchased at D.I. I covered the cork board with the window covering stuff, then put it back in the frame. Then I hung it on the wall and hung the clock on it. I really like the way it turned out.


- This lovely necklace. I've been wanting to dress up a bit with accessories. My wardrobe is severely lacking in quantity and variety (having put away all my maternity clothes as well as clothing not appropriate for nursing, and then donated most of my other clothes because they were ill-fitting or hopelessly out of date). So I'm wanting to make little things that add a bit of variety, color, and personality to the things I wear. I crocheted this necklace based on this pattern I found. It was so quick and easy, I might make a couple more in different colors! I wore it to church today and felt very pretty.



Then today after church I made another crochet necklace. This one is more of a chunky choker, where the other was more delicate chains. I used this pattern for this one, using a bold dark red. I'm learning that accessories can be so much fun!



As you might be able to tell, I'm having a ton of fun with this latest "phase" of mine. However, I look around the house and wonder if maybe my next "phase" should be cleaning...

What I do late at night.

There's got to be a better time to do my sewing. It's just that, after I put the kids to bed, I spend the next while all to myself and that means hanging out online. Being online lately means perusing crafting and sewing blogs, which gets me inspired to make stuff. And to make sure that it actually gets done, I have to work on it right away! So that has led me to stay up past midnight for several nights working on sewing stuff. The other day it was Zaylee's crocheted dress (I stayed up until 2 in the morning to finish it so she could wear it to church that day). Then it was cutting out pieces to make some new fleece soakers for Thomas and Audrey. Then it was the green swirly dress. I can't seem to help it - late at night is when the urge to create really hits!

Tonight I got bit by the sewing bug and made something I've been wanting to do for a while - a new oven mitt. I actually want to do a whole matching set of two oven mitts and several hot pads, since all mine are old and dingy and have weak spots where hot pans can burn fingers through the oven mitt. But I will hopefully be able to force myself to go to bed tonight instead of working on more, haha.

I dug through my fabric box and found this sturdy brown woven fabric that I thought would work great for oven mitts and hot pads. Then I pulled out an old towel I got at D.I. Originally I was going to use the towel to sew absorbent inserts for diapers, but have since decided that I prefer other methods. So the towel was just sitting there not getting used, as was the fabric.

To make the oven mitt, I used one of my old dingy ones as a template. I turned it inside out, and used the shape to cut out four layers of towel and two layers of brown fabric. Then I quilted each layer of brown fabric to two layers of towel, sewed them together, and turned it right side out. Voila! Now I have a beautiful new brown oven mitt.

Here it is next to my dingy, dirty, worn-out old one. What a difference!


I'm excited to make the whole set. But first I should go to bed.

New Sling

Lately I've been keeping my ring sling in the van all the time, so I can just toss it on and wear Audrey when we go somewhere. I love my mei tai and my wrap, but nothing beats a simple sling for convenience when you're out and about.

However, the sling I have is one that I made several years ago and didn't know anything about babywearing style. It's cute in a babyish way - blue and white checkered with Winnie the Pooh stuff all over. Plus it's padded, which can be nice, but mostly just gets in the way. So I decided that I'd like to make another sling, one that's a bit more grown-up looking, without all the padding. Using these instructions, here's what I made:


Not the best picture, but it's basically a simple sling in a simple solid-colored fabric, which fits my style better than Winnie the Pooh. And I know Audrey looks like she's got a black eye or something, but she really doesn't - poor lighting can make even an adorable baby look strange. But as you can see, she is quite comfortable in her new sling, content to just fall asleep within a couple minutes of being put in.

The best part? This was just a big piece of fabric I had folded up in my fabric box, probably purchased at the thrift store or given to me. I've had it for ages, and never really planned anything to make with it. The rings were given to me years ago and I never did anything with them either. I absolutely looooove making awesome things with materials that I have literally just lying around!

New Dresses for Zaylee

Zaylee has decided that it's about time to outgrow all her favorite dresses. Choosing something for her to wear on Sundays has become somewhat of a challenge because most of her dresses are far too short to be considered modest, even on a four-year-old. Plus, it's too cold for immodestly short dresses anyway.

My solution has been to make her some new dresses. Why buy something when I can get creative and make it! Zaylee loves getting new clothes, and it's so special to her to be able to say that it's something Mommy made just for her.

First up is this sweet crocheted dress. A long time ago I crocheted her a little yellow and white dress with a big flower (here). She has loved that dress ever since I made it for her, but it's midway up her thigh now and getting to be a tight squeeze in the torso, so I decided it was time to make her a new one. The pattern has adjustments for sizes 2 through 10, so I did a size 6 and it fits her great with some extra growing room. This time I made it white, red, and purple, with two pretty little butterflies. She wore this dress this past Sunday and got many compliments. :-)



Last night I made her another dress. I found this colorful skirt at D.I. and thought it would make a really fun dress for Zaylee, especially with the flared, swirly bottom. Just the kind of skirt a little girl loves to twirl in!


I went through some clothes Zaylee has outgrown and found this onesie that is of course much too short but still fits around (Zaylee's a little skinny-minnie). The color was perfect to go with the skirt.


I lopped off the bottom of the onesie and the top of the skirt, then pinned and sewed them together, pleating the skirt so it would fit with the bodice.


All sewed together. Look at that skirt - so swirly-twirly!


I thought the bodice needed a bit of dressing up, so I added some ruffly embellishment with some of the extra skirt fabric.


When Zaylee woke up this morning and saw the dress laid out for her, she was so excited, and wore it most of the morning, twirling around and around just like I knew she would. I'll try to get pictures of her wearing her new dresses if I can. She just loves it when I make her new clothes, and I love being able to do this for her.

Power Outage

We lost power last night. A power line was knocked over, so we were without electricity, light, heat, etc. from 6:15 pm to about 12:45 am - 6 1/2 hours. I had already been having a difficult evening, due to Audrey being very fussy and the kids having had too much chocolate (Valentine's candy was on clearance, and of course we bought too much of it), and not being able to find the Olympic figure skating on TV. The power outage almost put me over the emotional edge, and at first I was in a terrible mood! But it ended up making my evening go much better than it had been. Somehow, being without the TV or computer, or any of those modern conveniences (and often time-wasters) improved my mood and calmed me down, and it ended up being a calm, peaceful, quiet evening.

Not having anything in the way of firewood, we lit a fire of coals. It actually did a pretty good job of warming up the living room, though the rest of the house quickly got chilly. Thankfully, it wasn't a terribly cold night last night, so it never really got frigid in the house. It was really peaceful to sit and stare at the flames.


Although, Zaylee and Thomas kept wanting to get closer to the fire than I was comfortable with, of course. Kids will be kids.

We have been very remiss about keeping our flashlights in working order (we have several, and last night all of them were without working batteries) so we lit some candles to help us get around. These candles ended up being my source of entertainment for most of the evening. As they burned smaller and smaller, they formed intricate and beautiful formations which were a lot of fun to photograph. We started off with three tall candles all burning together.


After a while, though, they became three not-so-tall candles all burning together.




Eventually, two of the candles went out, and all that was left was a single flame in a puddle of wax.


When that little flame went out, we replaced it with another tall candle. It too burned lower and lower as time passed, and the power continued to not come back on.




We finally decided to go to bed a little after 11, not before going through the house making sure all the light switches were turned off. I didn't want the lights to suddenly all turn on in the middle of the night should the power come back on! It's a good thing I did make sure the lights were off, as I mentioned before the power did come back on a little before 1 am. I was very grateful to realize when Audrey woke ma a little later that the furnace had kicked on and was heating the house! We all had plenty of blankets, but it's nice to not really need them quite so much.

Cows have four stomachs

I've started (finally!!!) doing some semi-organized preschool stuff with the kids. I found a neat little preschool homeschool blog with a fun and simple curriculum, one I can actually follow without too much stress or buying a bunch of stuff. We started yesterday and so far have enjoyed it.


This week's theme is cows. So yesterday we colored pictures of cows, learned the vocabulary word (calf), learned some fun facts about cows (they have four stomachs, and eat stuff like corn, wheat, hay, and grass), read a story about a cow that ate different colored flowers and they turned her milk different colors, sang Old McDonald (with bull, cow, and calf), read a poem about a little calf, and then put on some fun music and walked around on our hands and knees, pretending to be cows. We also talked about cows making milk, and the things you can make with milk. Today we made butter, and it was so tasty! Tomorrow I'm planning on making fresh cheese. :-)


Today we also learned our shape of the week, square. Jeff took the kids around the house and they found and pointed out all sorts of items with square shapes - the squares on Jeff's plaid bathrobe, the seats of the dining room chairs, the hot pad, the tiles in the bathroom, the bottom of the cream carton from when we made the butter. Tomorrow we'll focus on the letter of the week, A. I want to make chocolate cut-out cookies shaped like squares, and then we can pipe the letter A on them with frosting. Learning can be yummy!

New Calling

Today I was sustained and set apart as the Primary pianist. I love accompaniment callings - Relief Society pianist, choir pianist, ward organist, you name it. I love being behind the piano or organ and creating the music for everyone to sing to.

Primary pianist is an especially fun calling because the kids have so much energy, and there are so many fun songs. And all the ladies in the Primary presidency in this ward are baby snatchers, so they were taking turns holding Audrey the whole time and I didn't have to worry about her getting fussy. :-)

A really awesome thing about doing the music in this ward's Primary is that the junior and senior primaries switch off singing time and sharing time (so while we're doing singing time with the senior primary, the junior primary are in the other room having sharing time, then they switch), and then they all go to their individual classes for the last forty minutes or so - which leaves me free to go to Relief Society every week. Hooray, best of both worlds! Other wards we've been in have done junior singing time and sharing time, then senior singing time and sharing time, and then everyone came back in at the end for talks and stuff, and that would take up the whole two hours. I think I like it this way much better.

Seven Hours

Seven hours. Seven wonderful hours. Seven blissful, beautiful hours.

Seven hours of paradise.

My sweet little Audrey let me sleep for seven uninterrupted hours last night.

Life is beautiful.