A Shower...

I am now taking a break from sharing our Christmas fun with you all.  Instead, I will be showing off the shower that my sister-in-laws and I threw for our little Hannah.

Well, not so little now that she's getting married.

You know what I mean.  Here the blushing bride is:

Sorry for the awkward pic Hannah, but it's the only in-focus one I got.


Anywho, I would first like to give credit to someone for pretty much planning the entire shower.  And that credit goes to Pinterest.  Thank you for giving us pretty much all of the ideas for decorating and the refreshments.

Now, onto the pictures.

First up: the invite.

The advice table.

Write your advice for the bride on one of them there triangles then clothespin it onto the rope, thereby making a pendant.

Yeah, it looked way better in my head.

But did you see the oreo pops on the table?  Jessie made them for the favors.

And yes, they are as delicious as they look.

We held this shin-dig in the Relief Society building at this old church in Thatcher.  Luckily, everything was already blue in there so the colors all went nicely together.

The refreshment table (I was going for this look.  Hit and miss, people.  Hit and miss).

And yes, that is a plastic tablecloth.  We do it right.


Lindy rocked the food.

There may or may not have originally been twice as many dipped pretzels, but some one might have dropped a bag of them and broke one.  And that person might have been me.

Here's where the bride sat.

The bubblegum was for the one game we planned.  I know, I know.  Just one game?  But I find shower games to be just... uncomfortable. 

Can't read the bunting?  Here's a closer look.

We went simple for the centerpieces

We made these flowers out of paper napkins.  Who'da thunk?

Once everyone started coming in, I put away my camera and forgot to take pictures of all the action.  So sorry, but at least I got the decorations!

**Although I did get an awesome action shot of Stephanie eating, but I didn't think she'd appreciate it if I posted it on here**

VIP

So, I lost my camera.

You can at least act surprised.

Because of this, I'm posting some old pictures in my files...


Anywho, Miss Adi was the VIP in class a while ago.

And we made this totally awesome VIP poster-

Yeah, we pretty much rock.

Mail Bag

This was our Christmas card this year.

Back in July, Snapfish had special deal: a penny a print. Of course I didn't have our Christmas Pictures taken yet (even I am not that prepared), so I scrapped up this puppy.

I like it.

On another note, yesterday the kiddos painted some Christmas presents.

Don't you love the concentration on his face? He was so careful while doing this.

And don't you especially love his manprin? He had to borrow my apron since he doesn't have one.

I did, however, make him a John Deere one for Christmas.

Only five more days until Christmas! Yeah!

I am going to attempt to make

this from here:



This little buddy for church:




And just about everything from this site. This girl is amazing with a sewing machine.

I'm hoping to get those things made for our long old car ride down to AZ after Christmas.

Wish me luck (I'm gonna need it).

Beads, Beads Everywhere!

Last night we were supposed to go pick out ornaments at Hobby Lobby, but OP ended up working too late and didn't get home until 7 (which, if you know us, is the kiddo's bed time). So, I had to dust off the old thinker and come up with something.

Thus, the ornaments.

My Great Grandma (affectionately known as G.G.) had made some of these for her little table-top tree back when I was Piper's age. I loved them.

So I searched through my *ahem* very messy craft drawers and dug up some white pipe cleaners and beads.

The kids had tons of fun making them and spent over 40 minutes doing them. This is a record for my children- usually if a craft takes longer than 5 minutes, it is declared too hard and the kids just want me to finish it.

I am now crossing my fingers that OP will get off from work early enough that we'll be able to go ornament shopping tonight!

Daddy's Girl

One more creation to share with ya'all today (and then I really must do some chores).

I was sorting through some of our clothes for a yard sale a couple months ago and came across a couple of OP's shirts that no longer *ahem* fit him. I especially loved a certain button up-polo shirt and just hated the idea of selling it for 50 cents.

Then I thought about the Pioneer Motto:

Fix it up.
Wear it out.
Make it do,
Or do without.

Honestly, I am not one who usually adheres to this policy, but I was feeling a bit on the adventurous side that day and came up with this:

The Daddy's Girl Shirt

How very dramatic, I know.

It only took a few hours, some sweat, and a more than a little grumbling. But there it is.

I saved the buttons down the front, the short sleeves and detached the collar from the original shirt. Then, using one of the girls sleeveless shirts as a guide, I cut out the main part of the shirt over said-buttons then gathered up the sleeves and re-attached them (and added small elastic into a sewn-in casing on the arms).

I then took a fat quarter of fabric that I had laying around and sewed in three small casings into which went some more small elastic.

The neck line was the trickiest part, and I had to redo it about 5 times- and it still ain't perfect- but after re-attaching the collar, it all turned out pretty well.

This all may sound simple, but I think my un-picker may be out of commission after this project!

And just so you don't start thinking that I left my princess-cowgirl out, Miss Piper also has one made from another of OP's ill-fitting tops too- just no picture of it at this time.

Funning Around...

Today is Clown Day in Pip's class. The teacher invited all the kiddies to dress up as, well, clowns.

This presented a conundrum for Piper.

Everyhting in her tiny little body screams to be pretty. She loves to wear all things sparkly, pink, and princessy (yes, that is a word... now). So when her teacher (whom she loves) tells her to dress like a clown in miss-matching clothes and crazy hair, Piper is a bit torn.

I came across this rainbow-ish fabric at Walmart and immediantly thought of my baby girl. It just looked like her. And thus, the clown-fairy-princess dress was born.

I used the same idea as the these dresses that I had made previously (which was not easy with this organza-ish material), and created a giant flower to cover up a couple mistakes in the front of the dress.

**And, if you look closely, you can see the long strings that I forgot to cut off. My ninth grade sewing teacher would so flunk me if she saw my horrible finishing job.**

That was as clowinsh as she would go. No mis-matching shoes, no funny clown face-paint.

Ain't she a cutie?

I am SO making some of these...

for my girlies! The instructions are here... how easy, how simple, how wonderful!

Our poor little Adi has a long torso and long legs (for such a shorty lil' girl) that she can't wear a lot of her clothes. We can put leggings under her shorter skirts, and now these under her shirts. Now, where to find some knit material? Any suggestions?

What else I've been doing lately....

Some more thrift shopping.

I think that I just may be addicted. Awesome prices and so much potential!

Anywho, I found this desk at the D.I. Two spray paint cans later we had this (no before pics, sorry. That would require forethought :)

Last school year we had issues as to where Adi should store her backpack. No problems this year, thanks to my local thrift store, $2, and a can of paint:

And last, but certainly not least, I attacked this old bubble gum machine with some left-over paint and got this:

Just you wait to see what else I've been painting...

Thrifty Me

Lately I've had an itch to go peruse my local thrift store in search of some mega deals (this itchy-ness is due to reading Blaire's blog-she finds some awesome stuff). Here was my big find/project yesterday:

5 bucks (yeah, didn't look like much to me either)


But, some batting, fabric and staples later, it morphed it into this:


A much-needed headboard for my Baby Boy's room (I just threw the pillows on this morning for the picture- please don't judge my bed-making capabilities).

I'm almost finished with Porter Pot's room now, so I'll be posting pics soon...

Sew Crazy

My amiga Harmony came over yesterday, and after a healthy lunch of Wendy's hamburgers, we released all of our crazy kids outside to play and get wild with water while us ladies got wild with the fabric.

We sewed for about 4 hours straight.... oh my. By the end I was ready to throw my sew machine in the garbage and just walk away. Luckily, Harmony was the voice of reason and kept me focused on the end results, which were:

Porter's 4th of July shirt

Holiday dresses for the girlies with matching hair clips

And a couple of other fun little summer dresses.

Once again, we ventured into the land of no-patterns. Harmony had bought some really cute dresses like these at a boutique, and we figured we could do the same for a fraction of the price (and we did).

I have a few other dresses to finish, but I'm not sure when I will work up the courage to pull out the sewing beast again...