Gifts Ideas

So I worked like crazy for a couple of days and produced some baby boy gifts for my friend and some gifts for her daughters to play with while on the long plane from here to America.

I ended up making a couple of felt finger puppets, a felt tic tac toe game, I added some play dough, a couple of princess notebooks, an activity book to the gift. I am hoping they will enjoy it for at least some of the 13+hour plane ride. :)

I also worked hard to make a baby gifts to give at our surprise baby shower this Friday. I made a couple of bibs that are reversible, a reversible burp rag, a small taggie blanket, and a lap pad that is all out of the same matching material. I would have loved to do more but I had to do sew all of these items by hand. After about 8 hours of sewing my fingers were sore. (I'm not going to get into why my sewing machine isn't working AGAIN!)

I am making a cake for the baby shower and bringing decorations. So this week has been busy with making all of these gifts, making a cake/decorating it (work to be done tomorrow afternoon) on top of life in general. I am also going to a lady's thing tomorrow night so I have to make sure everything is done for the shower earlier that day.

My teacher cancelled class for the second time this week (yet another frustration!) so I went out today to buy some small dolls that will be used for Ev's doll cupcake dresses. After several places decided to hike up the price of the dolls I found a place that had them for the price I have bought them for. In the process I found a Christmas present for Ev so that is one thing off my list.

So here are some pictures of what I've made this week.

October Holiday

So this year we have 10 days off from school. They are celebrating their 60th anniversary and there is other holiday (Mid Autumn Festival) all put together. So that means that I am busy at work trying to get some craft things done as well as other things around the house.

Today while Todd was watching 3 baseball games back to back I made some loaves of french bread, a loaf of wheat bread and some rolls for the up coming weeks. I will freeze most of the bread and pull it out when we need it for dinner. It it very handy to have that part already made. I just have to hide it from Todd and the kids. Elijah was in between my legs several times trying to get some dough as well as Ev who was trying to help me add ingredients. Everyone loves bread so it goes fast around here!

This week I have had some time to sew. A friend of mine is having her 3rd child in a couple of months so I made her a small baby blanket. And since their family is going back to the States to have baby #3 I was planning on making some things for their other 2 girls to do/play with while on the plane. I added some fabric to some khaki pants of mine to make them flair at the bottom and made a new pillowcase for our bed.

But today as I have a cute girl baby blanket made and some cute girl things ready to give my friend the doctor found out today at her ultrasound that she wasn't having another girl as they thought. She is having a BOY! While I am very excited for our friends and very excited that Elijah will have a little boy to play with, I am a little sad that I can't give her the baby items I made! So I am going to try to make her a nursing cover and a boy blanket. Most of my fabric is what people have sent me and it really isn't boyish. I need to come up with something quick because my friend leaves in a couple of weeks to go home. I need to put on my thinking cap!

Making Cakes

I made another Elmo cake for our friend's daughter. Their family came over today and celebrated their youngest daughter's birthday. She loves Elmo so that is what she got.

As I was making Elmo yesterday I decided to test out an idea that I had for Ev's party coming up in a couple of weeks. Ev is having a dress up tea party so I came across the idea of taking a doll and making the cake its dress. I am pretty sure my grandma make one for my mom for one of her birthdays. Ev has little dolls so I thought I would take those and use a cupcake as the dress part. It worked really well. The cup cake was the perfect size dress for Ev's little dolls. I experimented with some left over icing from Elmo and got this.

I am hoping to make a doll cupcake for each little girl coming to Ev's party. I am also hoping to attempt to make each of them look like a Disney princess. We will see if that works or not. Ev was just thrilled when I was decorating her doll. I will buy a set of them just for the cakes so the girls can take home the doll from their cupcake. Ev is very attached to her dolls.

We got a musical card in the mail from Todd's parents. We opened it and this is what the kids did. It captures Elijah perfectly. Any music he hears he starts dancing. It is just too cute.

New Shirt!

Yesterday I took 2 shirts of mine and made them into a new shirt. I am back into wearing fall clothes and I have been able to pull out some pre children clothes that I brought over here and haven't worn yet. But 3 plus years ago the trend in fashion was to have shirt that went right to the natural waist. With being pregnant and in between sizes for a while I feel more comfortable with longer shirts that go to my hips and it seems like most fashion has longer shirts. So my dilemma - how to make my shirt longer?

So after getting ideas from a few craft blogs I decided to take a tank top and cut off the bottom of it and attach it to the bottom of my other shirt. Then I cut off another section of the tank top and ruffled it and attached it to the neckline. It was so easy to do and it didn't take me long at all. I followed the stitch of the main shirt so you can't even tell I sewed on it. I now have a shirt that won't show skin when I bend over and it covers my neckline better too. Since we don't have dryers here and our washing machines really beat our clothes up most of our clothes get stretched our- collars are the worst! So I solved my problem and really like the result.

I have plans for a few other clothing items of mine. It is fun to be resourceful and to get a new clothing item out of existing clothes.

We Are Back

Our computer is fixed. PTL! We didn't lose anything so it is all working now we just have a loud keyboard from the sticky keys but we are very thankful.

We have been busy. I am a little more tired than usual. Maybe it is getting back into the routine of school on top of being a mom. :)

Ev and I are going to a "Mommy and Me" time. It is nice taking Ev to play with other kids her age. We are very thankful there are two new families in town with little girls Ev's age. In the past two years Ev has lost her 3 best friends so I am glad to have some other girls for her to play with. I also get to connect with some moms as we do crafts, singing, circle time and so on together. It is fun that we have all been teachers and I think we seem to flock together. We have had fun sharing educational ideas and other things that educators love to do.

Poor Elijah he is the only little boy around. I haven't taken him to the Mommy and Me time because out of the 6 kids that go, none are boys. All of the girls love dressing up, playing with doll houses and being girls. Little man is desperate for another boy his age. So are we.

While on the topic of Elijah this past week he got slammed into a wall giving him a nasty cut just missing his eye. He also got his finger stuck in a door and couldn't get it out. I really have to keep my eye on him.