Bootastic Decorations

Halloween season is upon us and my house has been 'dieing' to dress up!

 

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Pottery Barn Kids

Have you seen the AMAZING costumes and decorations from Pottery Barn Kids?
Here are a few of my favorite costumes. They have adorable matching bags too!

Here us my favorite decorations! I love the decals on the picture frames.

 

Well, I loved these decals on the frames so much that I did a small collage of my own:)

Why hello there little crow

These are my pumpkins on candle sticks from last year.

Cute Hocus Pocus Blocks

Mantel Complete for Halloween. Except, I am not really loving the twigs and flowers. I think I am going to take it apart and put a clean jar with some candy corns in it. Then stick the sticks in it without the flowers. Then slap the crow onto one of the sticks.

Wreath

When we were eating at a restaurant in San Diego I saw this wreath. I figured it would inspire someone to make something similar:) It is just made out of old wine bottle corks. Then plastic grapes hot glued onto it. Sorry about the picture quality, I only had my phone.

News

Hubby's grandpa passed away last night. The funeral is in a week. Although, I didn't know him very well, my husband's family is feeling the loss greatly. Please keep them in your prayers. My posts will be a little sparse the next 2 weeks. We have to travel out of state for a funeral and my husband needs sometime with his family. My father in law needs the boost right now:(

Now, I did manage so get this dress made for my little woman. I used a very old pattern my mom had and jazzed it up a bit.












I love the teal and pink together. I added a ruffle around the bottom.

 The princess had no desire to have her picture taken. For the elastic waste line I made a casing of contrasting ribbon and did 1/2 the length of elastic. I wanted it bunchy in the front.

But I distracted her with the curtains.

Until I wanted to take a picture of the back, she laid on the floor and pouted. Instead of having the elastic waste line around the back too, I kept the ribbons long for a bow.

Halloween Board

Well, I was paroosing some of my favorite blogs and I came across THIS post on Poppies at Play. I shamelessly copied her! LOVE it!

It was soooo easy. Just paint, distress, and add vinyl. Done.

Christmas in September

This may seem like a strange early post, but my sister is coming to my house in 2 weeks and I wanted to save myself shipping costs. She lives in a different state. Sooooooooo, I made her Christmas present for her to take home with her. If you are said sister, STOP READING!!! You know who you are, you pregnant wonder you.

Alright, now that I got that cleared, I am pretty sure she is still reading:) BUT, whatever, this will spoil her Christmas surprise. hhhhhhmmmmm...... maybe I should wait to publish this post. NOPE! I am way too excited to show you what I came up with! This thing was a beast. I didn't really have a clear vision for what I was going for, so I had a ton of mistakes and had to re-paint 3 times because I tried putting the vinyl on when the paint was still a little wet. Then I sprayed some glitter and it came out way to fast and too thick. Then my daughter stepped on it when I was letting the paint dry and I had to clean her and all her little feet print up. NOT GOOD!

I seriously about just trashed the hole project, but I left it alone for about 4 days. I thought and thought of how to salvage what I did have. I wanted to use what I had so I could stop wasting vinyl. See each time I had to re-paint, I had to cut out more vinyl. Ugh!

Long story short, I finally got it right. I added some brown paint to distress it. It was the final touch to this project.

I used 2 colors of ribbon and overlapped them

Just some sparkly holly stickers from Hobby Lobby

Top words

Bottom words

Think she will like it!?! I do. Does it inspire you to make one? Well you still have 2 1/2 months left to make one!

While Supplies Last

Well, as you must know, I closed my etsy store. If that comes as a surprise to you, you can read more about it HERE.
I have a lot of supplies left over. I won't be sewing the onesies, but if you want to sew one yourself with the supplies, just let me know. The supplies will cost $4 a onesie + shipping. They make great baby gifts. If you buy 8 or more, you get free shipping. Colored onesies are limited and I will not be dying more.

Look through the photos and let me know which colors and sizes you want. Email orders to brenbren13@ymail.com

Hurry while supplies last. They are going fast:)

Getting back to Basics

I has been a while sense I felt like sharing my thoughts about how I have been feeling. I am still not sure if that is because I was pretending nothing was wrong or if nothing really was wrong. I am trying to go off my medication. Is that a good idea. Probably not, but I am doing it under a doctors supervision. I will be taking a lower dose for 3 months. If everything is still fine, then I will go even lower for another 3 months, etc. See it’s easier to up a dose and get quicker results than it is to give a new dose to someone who doesn’t have it in their system.

Why, you may be asking, do I want to go off it? Well, I want to have another child somewhere in the future and I don’t want to be on medication when I am pregnant. I figure if I start now, I will be ready next year sometime. Maybe have a winter baby. We shall see. Right now I am not depressed. I haven’t been “depressed” for a while. Except today I feel a little mediocre but that’s because I just ate five cookies for dinner (and maybe some, okay fine, a lot of cookie dough).  Freak! It’s not like I am on trial here, but I feel the need to spill my guts; however embarrassing and unhealthy they may be.

See, I learned something when I went to visit my mom over the summer. I realized I liked having fewer responsibilities. I like to craft for the shear pleasure, not because I have to. I was feeling pressure with my Etsy store. So I closed it down. I was feeling like my craft blog was taking too much time, so I cut back. I don’t feel the pressure to be constantly coming up with new ideas. I make what I feel like making right then. Doesn’t matter if it’s old news. At least it’s news.  I am learning not to care as much, to just do what I feel like I can do. That may mean my house isn’t clean for the day. Big deal! At least I made super hero capes that my kids LOVE. Maybe, just maybe, my dishes are left undone. Who cares when my son and I defeat the world we were stuck on in Super Mario. I my not have taken a shower, fixed, my hair, and put make up on, but I did get to see my daughter twirl around the room singing her heart out to the tune of her own made up song.

In a way, depression has made me cut back and get back to basics. I find myself only doing things that bring happiness and peace into my life. If it makes my daughter happy to have a pink dress, I will make her a pink dress. If it makes my son happy to play Super Mario brothers, I will play Super Mario brothers. My blog may suffer, the cleanliness of my house may be questionable, but I don’t care any more.

So if you come to my house and it is a disaster and you are afraid to sit down. Just now that I have been busy that day doing what brought me the most peace that day and obviously cleaning was not one of those things.

You so totally rock squirt

Well, we have had quite the achievement at our house!  My little woman is officially potty trained. Let me introduce you to the pink pantie wearing queen!

A few months ago she started telling me she had to potty. We would take her to the toilet and sure enough she would go. BUT, I just kept letting her do her thing while wearing a diaper.

I finally just did it. And guess what, the only work I have had to do is open a bag of fruit snacks and cheerfully say, "Good job princess! You did it!" This little woman did it all herself. I NEVER had to take her. She will take herself. In the words of her favorite movie, Finding Nemo, "You so totally rock squirt!"

Getting around to it

I guess this week is all about finally sewing those projects that I have been meaning to, but never got around to it. I have had THIS pattern for a long time and I decided yesterday to whip out one for Na-Nat. It took about 1 hour from start to finish.

Things I noticed, the pattern runs small. My daughter is in 2T and I made this dress 3T thinking she could wear it longer. Nope, it fits her perfectly right now. Also, next time I make it I am going to lower the front collar a little bit because the ruffles cover her chin sometimes.

(one sleeve is NOT longer than the other. It just looks like in the photo because she pushed the other sleeve up a little)

The pattern is for intermediate and the instructions are really easy to follow. I love this simple button loop on the back.

Here is a close up of those cute ruffles in the front.

I also made a black flower pin to spice up THIS red dress.

before:

After:

Making a difference one post at a time

You know, blogging started out as a way for me to release a lot of emotions. I crafted/ blogged my way through some very terrible times. So, when I saw THIS post on Samster Mommy, and THIS post on Whatever, it went straight to the heart.  I think blogging can really impact a lot more people than we realize. So vote and pick up some vitamins today.

Sewing Party

 Well, I had a sewing party at my house. Not really a party, just 3 friends who have been wanting to make a grocery bag holder. These are nothing new, I actually used a tutorial off of Make it and Love it. You can find it HERE. I have been meaning to make one for well over a year now;) I just now got around to making it!

Here is the before:

Here is the after:

We had a lot of fun. I just let the girls go through my scrap bins because I have got to get some of these scraps used up:)