Finally Finished - vintage jewelry statement necklace

It took me so long to get this thing made that now I am pretty sure they are SO 2008, LOL.  I started collecting stuff for two years ago near Mother's Day, but it took me a long while to figure out the best approach.

In the end I put felt behind it all.

Not a great solution, but it works.

And hey, it's done, right?

I went to a ton of garage sales this morning and only bought this frog. 

He's an awesome frog though and now he is gracing the blog header. :)

Record snows and a year of makin'

 We live in St Louis and when I "was a kid" it surely seemed snowy here than it does now. Just two years ago (I think it was two years, certainly since Sam was born) it was SO mild all winter that we played outside nearly every day that winter in just long sleeves.

Earlier this week the weather talk turned dire. Words like "blizzard" and "-30 degrees" started coming out of the talking heads on the tv.

I went to the store on Friday  night and it was like a zombie apocalypse out there.  No food, 20 people in line at the deli. Insanity.

This morning the snow is here and it is coming down hard.  They've just said we may very well beat the record from the infamous 1982 blizzard that everyone in St Louis still talks about. 15 inches of snow! 3-4 FOOT snow drifts! Air temps of -8! (Hasn't been that cold here in twenty years).  Even the milk company called to say we should not leave our MILK unattended outside for even a moment on Monday and if we cannot answer the door they will not leave it. (The glass bottles will break.)

I am pretty sure by Wednesday this week shall forever be known as snowmagwearegoingtodieggedon. (I cannot even imagine that many days without my children being able to go out at all. Lord send me strength.)

I am hoping to sit here and sew on my quilt binding, I have a big pile of quilt books and enough food (And diapers!) to feed (and diaper!) all of Missouri.

I was thinking the other day that it seems like I hardly made anything at all in 2013. But really when I browsed quickly through the blog it was not hard to see that I did manage to make at least one thing a month.

Some more impressive than others, but with two little, little kids and one bigger kid making anything at all feels like an accomplishment!

***We still have at least two spots in the heart to heart swap open, come join us!****

To be or not to be - a feedsack

 Thank you to everyone for your warm thoughts. I had two super bad days with more than my share of crying, then woke up Friday and decided all I can do is do what I do - get on with it. I can't see a rheumatologist until May 7th to decide if they confirm the RA diagnosis or not, so for now I just wait. Our ped had Grant x-rayed on Thursday and called Friday to say that three doctors looked at the x-rays and see nothing unusual happening with his jaw. He has called a geneticist at Wash U/Children's Hospital to expedite an appointment for us there to see if someone can decide if Grant has that birth defect or not. His words were "I am not at all comfortable waiting a year to see if the baby has something wrong with him or not." To which I say AMEN. I am still hopeful this was yet another rush to judgment on behalf of yet another doctor for Grant and that he will be okay.

Speaking of Grant - he has started rolling all over the living room suddenly. And he is sleeping much easier in his crib at night. AND he can sit up in the shopping cart. Go baby. (So much for that low muscle tone, eh?)

Sammi is utterly in love with "punjob" aka Spongebob. Lord help me, I hate spongebob. She is also doing adorable toddler speak for everything "sammi go bye bye? sammi wear shoes? sammi sleepy." Love.

My Jackson darling, well, he was terribly upset when he got off the bus and found me crying. I am not a crier. Not on purpose, I just don't do it often. So then he started to cry. And wail. Other than that he refuses to get dressed lately. At all. Ever. For anything. It takes HOURS to get him dressed. He was never like this before, what gives?

 I smacked together this umbrella idea from pinterest for the front door. I think I need one more thing in the front of the umbrella, but it's cute. That pink ruffly umbrella is a kid's umbrella from Amazon of all places.

 And we have a bird's nest on the porch. A few hours ago all the eggs were in the nest then when I got the camera out she seems to have tried to discard two  of them. Boo. When Jack was a toddler he LOVED finding baby birds in nests. I hope Sammi likes it too.

 The kids and I went to goodwill on Friday and I grabbed this. I cannot for the life of me decide if it is a feedsack or not.

 It has the rounded corners.

 And fairly large cotton stitching.

But this is the part that throws me off. Someone has made it into a laundry sack. These are really only one grommet split in half. And that string is a cotton string. Obviously people made feedsacks into lots of things, but it still makes me go hmmmm.

So what say you - feedsack or no? Barbara?

One for

 One for the dollies. (Made from those crochet squares I bought back in October and asked you all for advice on. It turns out you CAN just zig zag them together and it's quite sturdy. I edged it with some vintage bias trim. I appreciate the confidence that I could learn to crochet but ain't nobody got no time for that.)

 One for Sammi. (Made from laminated cotton. This was a nightmare because my favorite pattern for these smocks was missing pieces and is now out of print. I managed to find a new one on Etsy. Then I made a cutting mistake and it takes a full half yard of fabric to make this, which is all I had. And of course the laminated cotton I used is now out of print too. Had to order more from Hong Kong to finish it. Then it took me THREE tries to get the bias on the armholes. I guess I couldn't remember how to do it even though I have made at least 5 of these smocks before. And ripping out on laminated cotton leaves holes. Sigh.)

 One for Grant. (Also a bit of a disaster. I wanted to use a certain baby apron pattern, printed it out, discovered I had no suitable fabric, went to buy fabric and by the time I had that done she has made the pattern available by paying for it only. Ugh. Since I had the pattern already I just faked it. It worked.)

One for the house. (Zig zagged more of those squares and then backed them with a piece of white cotton. Still have a big pile of those squares and out of ideas.)

One for me. I bought a ring for $1 at the flea and I LOVED it. Then I went to wear it to a family thing and discovered one of the prongs was broken off this setting and the big stone kept falling out. Went on Etsy, found myself a new setting (only one choice in this HUGE size) and voila:

fixed my awesome ring.

Never mind how old my hands look right now. Or that I have arthritis so bad in two fingers I cannot bend them right now. Falling apart a bit I am. Sigh.

So, despite not really having my one hour a day to myself for about two weeks I still managed to do some makin'.  Then my dishwasher died. We are picking up the new one today and hopefully I will be back to my one hour a day VERY VERY soon!

A craft disaster

I had this great idea that Jack and I could turn pinecones into "porcelain" pinecones for my parents for Christmas by dipping them in plaster.

I am pretty sure I got this crazy idea when I saw some silk flowers dipped in plaster in a magazine.

They were lovely.

Pinecones dipped in plaster?

Lovely until they dry.
This one isn't so bad yet.
This one was the *very best* one in the bunch, but as you can see the plaster is pulling away from each "petal".
This is what it will look like in a few days.
We tried different kinds of pine cones - this one is delicate and papery - same result.
This one was the last one I dipped. For some reason by this point the plaster kept seizing, no matter how much water you added, and there was no way to make it thin.

The bonus of THAT disaster is that the plaster is so thick there is no way in hades it is going to chip off.

What I am left with is one hot mess, NOT a pile of Christmas pretties.

I am still trying to sort out a way to make this a viable plan, but it's entirely possible I should just give up!

What I do right now

You know what I do right now?

I take the children to the doctor.

A lot.

Like at least 4 times in the last 2 weeks.

I am so over it.

Everything else on my want to do list? Never gets done. Because I am visiting the doctor again. I see him more than my husband at this point!

I picked up a pair of shadowboxes at the flea market for a dollar last weekend. I took a before photo for you, but then it got deleted. They are from hobby lobby and they had pink polka dotted backgrounds with the letters L and I in them.

The shape instantly reminded me of these shadowboxes . I was not at all sure I could get them open, since hobby lobby didn't sell them as frames, but as "art".

After much encouragement with an exacto knife and a science spatula, I was in.

Then I had to decide what on earth to put in them. Every idea I had led to a *missing* item that was nowhere to be found. (I have clearly organized myself into chaos instead of organization in the sewing room.) Just when I was about to give up I spotted two prize rosettes on my bulletin board.
I smacked some scrapbook paper on to cover up where I ripped off the letters, glued in the rosettes with a Martha Stewart chipboard animal and up they went in the bathroom.
They are cute.

But someday I might find those missing items and put them in there instead.

What I really want to talk about is pinterest.

When I go back and look at my boards there I have pinned all sorts of white, white, white rooms. We just remodeled this house two years ago, and I had everything the way I wanted it. Why do I pin all this white stuff? When I was doing Sammi's room I tried like hell to make it white and beautiful and it just felt HORRIBLE in there. So I painted it a dark gray.

And yet, I still pin all things white.

I am left wondering if I should try a much whiter palette again or if I should just decide they are nice to look at but not to live with.

Hmmmmmmmm.

What do you think? Do you pin stuff you could actually live with? Or just dream about living with?

P.S. David says "pinterest is like crack." That's right, my HUSBAND is drinking the pinterest kool-aid.

Spider wreath

I've had an old Martha Stewart wreath for many years for the front door that just was, well, blah. (It was the glow in the dark eyeballs plus a crow, if you remember that one).

When I saw this wreath on pinterest I thought I had found a replacement. But the dollar store has no useful rubber snakes.

So we had a good wander around Dollar Tree and I realized there were spiders everywhere.

Spiders it is then. I think I spent $8 on the new spiders and I just put them on the old eyeball wreath.
What makes it super fun are the "escaping" spiders on the rest of the door. I just glued spiders to magnets and stuck them on our steel door. (We could use a few more, but I figured Jack would be messing with them constantly and it might make me crazy.)
The web is kind of sparkly. Dollar Tree had a glow in the dark spider tied to the middle of it, so I just plucked him off and replaced him with a better spider.

And then I went crazy gluing spiders everywhere.

Jack asked me if I had poster puttied the spiders to the door which turned my little light bulb on.
So I stuck spiders all over the house too. On the bone cloche...


And on the mad scientist mantle.

Hmmm, what else can I stick spiders on?

Man, I love Halloween!

From Daddy's shirts to covered with love

Before I tell you about the quilt, I have to tell you about the kids.
Here is Sammi in her "emergency outfit." Despite having more clothes than "Carter has little liver pills" (as my grandma would say) I am ALWAYS unprepared for her to poop when we are out. And without fail, she ALWAYS poops ALL over herself. This is the second time I have had to go to Target with a naked baby in my Moby wrap and buy her something to wear.

That's right, Mother of the year I am! LOL
And here's Jack. Playing. Guess what he is playing? Extreme Coupons. That's right. He is in LOVE with that show on TLC and now he is playing Extreme coupons.

Mother of the year for me again! LOL

Anyway, onto the quilt. I have been collecting Dave's work shirts from the goodwill bags whenever I really like the print. I was starting to get a heck of a pile of them and I had been tossing around the idea of making a new quilt for Jack with them.

I was having a really hard time deciding on a pattern when I saw Susan's* new book, Modern Log Cabin Quilting . I could not get that cover quilt out of my head.
So I did something I never do and ordered the book. And then I started cutting and sewing. And sewing and sewing and sewing. And cutting some more. And sewing some more. And a few months later I have managed to turn Daddy's work shirts, 2 queen sized flat sheets and a piece of batting into a new quilt for Jack.
I will say this thing gave me one fit after another.
I found the chain piecing really tedious.
And because there is SO MUCH fabric in it it's simply too heavy to quilt on the machine. So I was forced to sew on 64 buttons in the center of each cross.

In the end, I like the buttons because they are the shirt buttons I saved when I was cutting apart the quilt. But I do have concerns about the longevity of this method instead of just having quilted it.
And my piecing is a LOT wonkier than I like. I am more into perfection than wonky.

But Jack loves it and has been anxiously awaiting the finish line.

It's too big for his current bed, but I bought him a full size bed at the flea a few weeks ago and I figure by next year he will be ready for the bigger bed. Besides, his first quilt** is WAY too small now!

And that's what really matters, right?

*In the interest of disclosure - One of my projects appears in one of Susan's other books. I was in no way compensated/involved in reviewing/etc for her book though. I bought it myself, chose it myself, etc.

** I've made one other "recycled" quilt here . If looking at the remade/reused stuff on the blog gets yours wheels turning, you might enjoy that one too.

*** It makes me a little sad to look at Jack's baby quilt on the blog. 35 comments on his little quilt! Most days I feel like I am talking to myself here now and that is quite a change from a few years ago. I keep reminding myself that I blog for me and the kids and I would blog if no one were here, but ugh, lately that has been bugging me. 'Nuff said.