Dress #1 and Mother's Day

I finished the first of (hopefully) three dresses for convention!  Nicey Jane is the line that this fabric is from and it is still a favorite.  I love the blue, green and yellow colorway.  I must say that as of now these are some of my favorite fabrics.  The pattern is once again PortabelloPixie Claire in the round apron dress (without the apron of course)!  I got it all done and then thought it needed a little extra with the flowers, I then remembered that I had made some yellow ones for Mark and Kyla's wedding.  They match perfectly and really dress it up!

Cheeeeesy!

Back view.

What a goon!

The problem is my little girl is SO photogenic and adorable that I have too many photos that are cute!

And a late Mother's Day photo.  On Mother's Day I was really sick and Camden was running a fever so there was no photo taking being done!  We got a quick one this morning before meeting!  Love my little family, they make every day perfect!

A few more gifts

I am really enjoyed just sewing a bit here and there these past couple weeks.  So often it seems like when I sit down to sew I want to finish the entire project, which leads to me rushing to get it done!  I have had about four projects going at once which was actually great because I knew I wasn't going to get them all done but I could just work a little bit on them when I had the chance.  I found that I ended up sitting at my sewing machine more when there wasn't any pressure of finishing anything.  I do have a couple things that need to get done before convention next month (which means I need to finish them before we got to Hawaii) but I also have realized that if I work on them for just a few minutes a day, I will finish in plenty of time.  I was able to finish up a dress for Tiana this morning so I will get photos of her in it tomorrow.

These pillows are late Mother's Day gifts for my Mom.  With Tiana's party they didn't get done in time but they are ready now!  I found the blue doilies at a thrift store and they are the same color as her couch.  The big doilies I ended up adding after I saw them at JoAnn's.  I am in love with doily projects right now and so I am really happy with how these turned out.  I hope she likes them too!

These stacks are for my new little nephew who is coming soon!  I made some knit receiving blankets for Camden and loved them and had asked Shanna if she had any.  She didn't so I got to work.  All of this is from two yards of knit (one print, one solid): receiving blanket, 4 burp rags and 2 wash cloths!  I did one set in fire trucks and one set in monkeys!  Thanks to this project I learned my (new to me) serger a bit better. It is a Bernina, I KNOW it is an awesome serger but I didn't have the manual and have always fought with it.  I downloaded the manual and read all 23 pages!  I discovered that why I haven't liked the way it sews is I was missing a step with one of the threads during threading!!  It is a four thread serger, which I now LOVE, now that I know how to use it!  After figuring it out, these took no time at all.  I didn't bother with binding because I don't mind the look of a serged edge and would rather be able to give her more to use since it takes way less time to make them this way.  Plus I don't have my walking foot yet and I learned my lesson last time!

And she's off!

Tiana got a big bike for her birthday and we really didn't have high hopes of her being able to ride it any time soon.  It just so happened that while we were watching Craigslist for a good bike for Keaton, one for Tiana showed up also.  Yesterday I took the kids to the park.... note to self.... do NOT take the kids to the park on Thursdays.  They mow the lawn with a huge tractor lawn mower and Camden is TERRIFIED of it!  He won't even go outside our house when he can hear a lawn mower running anywhere in the neighborhood. That could get old really fast so Benji is going to start mowing with him in the Kelty backpack and see if that helps.  Anyways, back to my story, I told the kids that we could go on a bike ride instead.  Well of course Tiana wanted to ride her big bike, I just figured that it was going to be a little frustrating with a stroller, Keaton who cruises and a little girl that gets mad because she can't pedal yet.  Ummm yeah, this Mommy was way off!  She just took off riding like she has being riding forever!  That being said... she doesn't really steer well.... or at all!  She is so busy watching her feet that she forgets where she is going!  She took out a mailbox, ran into a parked pickup, and ran off the curb 6-8 times... 3 of which resulted in a somewhat big crash!  1 skinned elbow and NO tears later she hops back on and declares "I LOVE my new purple bike Mommy!".  I was SO proud of her!!!  So of course right after dinner we had to show Daddy how good she was.  She keeps right up with Keaton (in fact if Keaton goes too slow she runs into him!) and talks the ENTIRE time.  "Hurry up Mommy, you are going to slow." "Keep up Mommy"  "I am going SO fast" "I love my purple bike" "See me ride Camden" etc etc etc.  By the evening she actually was doing good steering too... we have to keep a close eye and remind her to watch where she is going if she gets distracted by kids, a bird, sprinklers, dancing... and the list goes on!

Camden gets excited to ride in the front of the (double) jogging stroller!  "Weeeee" he says  "Faster Mommy"  He had to try on Tiana's helmet though after we got home!

Nice hat buddy!

Yes, we think you are funny too!

On a side note when I picked up Keaton from preschool the other day, I had noticed that he had done SUCH a good job cutting!  His cutting has improved so much this past month!  His teacher told me that she had told him that he needed to slow down while cutting.  Keaton told her "Oh yeah, ok I can't cut like my Daddy drives, I have to cut slow.  My daddy speeds!"  We got a good laugh out if it and I had to tell her why he said that.  The night before on the way home from gospel meeting someone was going really slow.  Daddy passed them and of course had to speed up to the speed limit!  Keaton noticed the change of speed... therefore his Daddy must speed!  Can't get away with much in this house anymore!

Family Photos

I finally finished editing these!!  Last week we were able to squeeze in our family shoot!  It was really windy but it seemed to calm down a little bit so we decided to go for it.  It was still pretty gusty at times but I guess that is the positive to having more boys in the family... wind doesn't matter so much for them!  Nana and Papa of course were behind the camera getting smiles like they do best!  We didn't do very many of the boys since it was the big time for Sissy since she just turned 3!  I also REALLY wanted a specific shot for in a huge canvas above our fireplace!

This is it!  The one I think I have decided on for the canvas.  I debated between the one of them looking at the camera and this one but I think I have settled on this one!

I love those big eyes!

This would have to be my favorite one... not for the wall but it is just too funny.  This is his "cheeeeeeeese" smile!  He is trying SO hard to smile for the camera!

How come he looks so grown up all of the sudden!?!?

This is a true photo of Tiana... the little mommy!

Boys will be boys... and Camden with candy in his mouth!

While my Mom was taking the photos of us above, this is what Papa was doing to keep the kids occupied!

 This dress was crocheted by Tiana's Great-great-great Grandmother for my Grandma when she was a little girl.  Grandma has had this dress hanging up for years and I have always loved it.  She has a photo of herself in it when she was little hanging beside it.  This spring we tried it on Tiana and discovered that it fit!  We were SO excited!  I went home and made a slip to go under it and Tiana LOVES it!  She loves twirling in it.  I am so glad that we were able to get these photos!





Priceless, she was so worried about her bunny!