the belt

 

Alright so here are some pictures of my very first sewing project.  Doesn't look so bad right?  Let's take a closer look. 

 Still not so bad, right?

 

Here is where it really gets fun.  Look at the "straight" stitches I was able to make.  Notice how the top stitch slooowly starts to go upward.

Now check out the nice wavy lines on in this area.  Also notice how I completely missed the side of the belt when I tried to overcast the edges on the top of the belt.  That area is already slowly starting to fray away.  I'm sure by looking at it no one would guess that this was my first time sewing, right?  At least from a distance you really can't see the stitches.  Only when you get really close can you tell it is a rotten job of sewing! :)

So there you have it.  Next up?  

Beanbags

Funny enough I had a client in the salon tonight who reads the blog.  She kept saying to me "Why don't you just buy this stuff?"  "You know there are people out there who have beanbags for sale, right?"

When I was younger I HATED sewing.  My mom made me do a couple of sewing projects for 4-H and I hated every minute of it.  Never in a million bajillion years did I think I would sew when I got older.  I think for me right now it is just a new challenge.  It is something that I know NOTHING about and it is so fun to just be able to say "Hey, I CAN do this!"  Well fine I can't really say that quite yet....but that is the end goal.

No, I won't be sending my child to school in an outfit all sewn by me.  I am far from that and probably will never get there.  It would be fun though to be able to whip up a bag for her or just little doll clothes or something like that.  Like I said....just another way to challenge myself a little bit.  Keep learning.

We are headed tomorrow morning to look at another possible place to put the salon.  Trying to keep as many options open as we can.  I'm excited at the prospect of redoing my salon.  It is something I have been wanting to do for awhile and I think it would be fun to start in a new place.

I think the stress is beginning to hit both Troy and I.  I am fighting a sore throat and the onset of a cold tonight.  I have lots to do the rest of the week and hopefully it will hold off until later this weekend.  We are both headed to bed and it is only 10:00.  Not normal....at all.

lots to do

Tuesday already?  Really?  

Full day today at work and I have tons of little things I need to get done.  

I promise you pictures of the belt today at some point and also my next sewing project.  

I have tons of pictures to upload and need to update my other blog.  

We are also working on finding a place to live and a place for my salon if our house sells.  

I have sales tax due in two days that I have not even started.

Lots of cleaning to do.

Lots of bills to pay.

Thank goodness we think Khloe is getting healthy and she started back at daycare today.

sewing

I got my machine turned on and threaded today. Kinda proud of myself that I threaded a sewing machine all by myself.

Pathetic, I know, but hey, it's the little things that make me happy.

I just managed to make my daughter the sorriest (is that a word?) looking belt you will ever see. I think I whipped it out in about 20 minutes. I couldn't sew a straight line to save my soul. Even the zigzag stitches look terrible.

This was my first sewing project (I practiced for about 2 minutes before I sewed it) and it turns out I need TONS of practice. Probably shouldn't have wasted all of my supplies on this belt, but I couldn't resist trying. We have a doctor's appointment tomorrow for her so I thought it would be nice if her pants weren't falling down, even though we all love singing "Pants on the ground."

So I will put her sorry looking belt on her and she will wear it and I will pretend to be proud of my first attempt at sewing.

And I'm sure I will show you some great pictures tomorrow of the new belt. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that it at least fits her.

Create an itemized list

Another week....another challenge finished. Amazingly enough. I swear each week keeps getting busier and busier.


My challenge this week was

Create an itemized list

I decided to use the pictures from the day we brought Khloe home from the hospital. I created a checklist of some of the items we would need to have at home, including our new little babe.

Didn't do anything real crazy with this page and really no new techniques to speak of. I just have to be ok with some of the pages being a little bit more plain than the last. After all it is about getting the information and pictures in the book, right?

Next challenge?

Include Memorabilia

I believe my day tomorrow will include pricing garage sale stuff, learning my new sewing machine (they forgot to send me all of the accessories and I finally got them on Thursday), laundry, and of course cleaning. The never ending job. Ughhhh

new recipe

Whew made it through another night. Amazingly enough she didn't even wake up last night!

It has been a long couple of days, which explains my lack of blog posts. We have been keeping her on the nebulizer. Last night was the first time she didn't scream bloody murder when we put her on it. She insists on Troy holding her while she does it, Dora must be on TV, and M&M's are always involved afterwards.


I did get a wild hair yesterday when I saw two over ripe bananas sitting on the counter. Lately those just get thrown in the garbage at our house. I decided to whip up some muffins in hopes that Khloe would at least eat those (which didn't happen). I found a great new recipe at allrecipes.com. It is for Banana Crumb Muffins.



This is what they looked like before I popped them in the oven. Don't they look yummy? They are!



That crumb topping is so good you could eat it by the spoonfuls, not that I would ever try that.

I don't think there will be bananas going to waste at our house anytime soon. I had plans to get a picture of the muffins after they got out of the oven....but there is only one left now!


My muffin making certainly added to the mess in my kitchen. Troy gets a hoot out of me when I bake. There is always sugar and flour spilled ALL over the counter. I'm sure he often time wonders if I actually get all of the ingredients into the pan.

I am dying to get some work done on my blog, as well as my challenge page. Hopefully this weekend that will happen. I think it is supposed to rain here all weekend, which will help me get some things done since there won't be any going outside. The laundry is piled up so high I am surprised any of us have anything to wear. I'm also fairly sure there won't be any house showings this weekend with the way our house looks. I think it might take us two days to clean it.

Speaking of the house, I may have a little news in the next couple of days. We'll see what happens over the weekend. Just in case, we have started the search for a place to live. We are going to go check a place out tomorrow. I'm getting fairly excited about selling since we do have a place in mind (hopefully) to live.

doing ok

The little peanut is doing ok. The steroids they put her on are making her a little crazy. We are trying to have lots of patience with her, since we know she doesn't feel good, but man is she ornery. I'll be really happy to have my nice little girl back. The cough is really hitting her tonight so it could be a long night.

Promise to be back with a loooong post tomorrow. I managed to make some really yummy banana muffins with some cinnamon crumb topping today and thought I would share the recipe I found. I can tell the little munchkin is sick, she doesn't even want to eat my yummy muffins.

May even have some exciting news to share about the house tomorrow....keep your fingers crossed!

more fun at our house

I'm sorry, did I say Khloe had Croup?

What I meant to say was after a half a day spent at two different doctor's today she got diagnosed with pneumonia.

You can about imagine the fun we had today, right?

Luckily I think we caught it early enough and she didn't have to stay in the hospital. Instead she gets to spend the rest of the week home with me.

croup

We have a little peanut who is fighting the croup at our house, so excuse the lack of blog posts. I did however manage to get my pictures updated at the Our Life..... blog.

Running on a few short hours (feels like minutes) of sleep today and a stiff neck from sleeping in a tiny rocking chair with a 2 year old.

Oh yeah and we are showing our house tonight. Thank goodness we have kept it picked up a bit so there is not too much major cleaning. I don't think I could handle it!

Be back later today or tomorrow....hopefully! :)

Already Sunday

Whew.....what a week....and a weekend.

Alright, so here is where we are.

We have not gotten a offer on our house...yet. Hoping one comes in next week. We did a lot of talking this weekend and are both really excited now to start a new adventure in a new house. So hopefully since we have come to terms with selling we will get an offer. I think my hold up was that so much has happened in this house. It was the first thing we bought together, first place we lived after we got married, house we brought Khloe home to, owned my first business here, etc. There have been so many firsts in this house for both of us. I know I will cry the day we sell because we have had so many great memories here, but it is time to move on in order to expand my salon. We also are both really hoping for a house that we can gut and start from scratch and have it be the way we want. Picking out cabinets, flooring, countertops, etc.

Ok so on to the next......

I finished only one of my layouts this week.

Make use of fabric scraps in your layout

It was the project I was most excited about when I got the book. I knew instantly what I wanted to do. So here are the results.

I LOVE doing these fabric flowers. I got a tutorial back in February on them and have been so anxious to use them on a page.

The only problem is they do stick up quite a bit, which will make Khloe's scrapbook a little thicker, but that is a minor problem.

So next week I will tackle

Create an itemized list

I really need to start picking a couple of weeks to do two layouts, but I might wait until later this fall or winter. I have a feeling summer is going to be really hard to even get one layout done. Especially since we just brought one of Khloe's Christmas presents home this weekend.

We just got done charging up the battery and have a kiddo who just can't wait for it to warm up outside today.

I'm sure she will just hate it and we will end up having to take it back! ;) Actually, we are a little concerned that we only have one battery. I hope it lasts long enough!

first showing

*big sigh*

What a day!

Talked to our Realtor at about 11:00 today and she told us that two families already want to look at our house!!! Unreal. It was just listed yesterday! We figured they were just snoopy people, but she claims that they are both potential buyers. One of them wanted to look at our house tonight! WOW!

So she calls about 3:30 and tells us they want to come and they will be here at 7! I had a client from 4-6, so you can about imagine how much scrambling we did from 3:30-4. I had started picking up during the day, but it didn't help matters that I had chosen today to make all of my pizza crusts to refill the freezer. A nice BIG mess to clean up!

But we got everything cleaned and Troy even made the comment the house looks so good cleaned up maybe we should put an offer in on it! ha ha


So we loaded Khloe into the car and expected to be gone all of 15-20 minutes. An HOUR later they finally left our house!!! I swear they must have just laid on our comfy couches and taken a nap while they were here. What the heck could take an hour to walk through a house? We don't have 10 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms to walk through. Needless to say the thought of showing our house again does not excite me! I half expected there to be an offer laying on our table when we got home as long as it took.

So this, I'm sure, is the first of many showings. Probably another one tomorrow or Saturday. Hopefully the weather is nice so we can go to the park.

Blog work and BIG NEWS

I'm starting work on revamping my blog here in the next week or so. Just wanted to send out the forewarning that if you click on my blog someday and it is all screwy, I am probably just playing around and trying out new things with it! :)

I am sooo excited about all of these new challenges that I'm presenting myself with. It feels really good sometimes just to exercise the old brain and get some new creative juices flowing. The only problem is there really are not enough hours in the day, but I do have one way of fixing that.

I have become a TOTAL TV head lately and I hate it. I don't know what I am getting out of all of these shows (Troy says they are just corrupting me hee hee), so I believe we are making the decision to drop all of our cable this summer. That means NO TV at all! I know...don't fall off your chair, I can't believe I am doing it either.

The idea all started after all of the problems we were having with our Directv. We are paying roughly $80 a month for tv! (Seriously?!?!?! Is it really worth that?) Half the time the channels don't come in or we have some sort of problem with our receiver that it doesn't work, the other times we are flipping through and can't find one thing to watch on all of the channels that we get, so why pay the money? Oooohhhh I'm going to miss my House Hunters on HGTV though. :(

We started thinking about all of the things we could do with $80 a month....taking Khloe to the zoo, going to a waterpark for a day, saving up and going on a family vacation, etc. It just isn't making sense to have my butt parked on the couch in front of the TV when there are so many other things I want to do with my time.

So I'll keep you posted on what we decide! :)

We are really just all about downsizing right now. Getting rid of things that we don't really need.

Which brings me to my next big bit of news. Our house is officially on the market! SCARY!!! We have been talking about selling for the last 2 years and finally just yesterday decided to take the plunge. The housing market in our area is really good and now is a great time to sell. We have absolutely no clue what house we would buy next. We have nothing waiting in the wings. We do know that we want a fixer-upper that we can go in and gut things and change them to how we want them.

The problem with our house now is that I have my salon in our home. With Khloe getting older you can really hear her running around in the house, screaming, laughing, crying, etc. We need to find a place we can add the salon onto, rather than having it right in the house. We love our house and are sooo scared at the prospect of selling and regretting our decision, but right now we really feel we need a different layout in order to keep my business in/around the home.

I think Troy and I went back and forth at least 10 times the day the realtor came. In fact Troy asked her what a good price was to list it so that no one would buy it! ha ha Can you tell how torn we are? We have a HUGE lot with a HUGE backyard and it makes me want to cry thinking about leaving that backyard. We are hoping we can find something comparable and we are going to be very picky.

So I know....lots of big news in this post. Lots of changes headed our way (possibly...if we have a buyer). We just figure we will go with the flow. Whatever is meant to be will be.

Wish us luck! :)

Time to sew

My new sewing machine came today! Whoo hoo

Unfortunately I am beat so I haven't even taken it out of the box. Here is my first project though.

I saw this on a really really cool site called A Pretty Cool Life. She has GREAT ideas on there for sewing projects and I can't wait to get started! I have been searching and searching to find Khloe a toddler belt and can't find one anywhere. Hopefully I will be able to figure out my machine without too much trouble.

Obviously this is a little boy belt, but I plan to make a couple of really cute girly belts. Cross your fingers for me!

I will be sure and take plenty of pictures and bring you along on my sewing adventure! :)

behind

Well I did not even come close to finishing my challenge page for the week. Lots going on at our house this week...including really nice weather this weekend.

I went to a scrapbooking event yesterday and today was just too nice to stay inside and work on a page. There is no way to keep Khloe in. She wanted to be outside ALL DAY LONG and who can blame her. She has been asking all winter long to get the croquet set out. It is, by far, our favorite pastime in the summer. I bet we play at least 2-3 games every night that it is nice out. So today we finally drug it out. Although we didn't have time to set it up and play a full round, she still had a great time just hitting the balls around.

I can tell that once summer draws near it is going to be harder and harder to get my challenge pages done.

I did finish three pages this week for a digital scrapbook showcase. I posted the first two and here is my third.

I think this one will definitely be used in Khloe's album, along with the boots layout. This is one of my favorite layouts I have done. I just love the natural colors and then the "pop" of the red sucker.

Although I am definitely still a "hands on" scrapbooker, I do love doing a digital page every once in awhile just to change it up. Khloe's scrapbook will be filled with all different sorts of pages.

I wanted to post the next challenge for the week. It is

Create an itemized list

Hopefully I'll have my last challenge page posted this week, before Sunday! :)

online shopping

Spent a little time today putting in an online shopping order. Next to my camera this is the most I have researched an item before buying. I settled on this.

The Janome 11558 Sewing Machine from Overstock. It is a refurbished machine, which made me a little nervous...but all of the reviews were great and tons of people said that the machine was in better shape than a brand new one from a store because all of the kinks had been worked out when it is sent back to the factory. Makes sense, I guess. They claim all refurbished machines have to go through 2 inspections instead of 1. So I took a risk...and a $9.99 2 year replacement plan....and bought it. It ended up being $89.99 for the sewing machine plus the $9.99 protection plan. I didn't think it was too bad....especially after being told by many people that I would not find a good machine for under $100. This machine had better reviews than many of the $200-$300 machines. There was no way I was spending much over $100 for a sewing machine, when I don't even know if I will be able to sew. Hopefully I made the right choice. I have TONS of pages online bookmarked for projects to make. I can't wait to get started.

First things first though and I have to learn out to even turn the thing on. To help me I bought this book

I have read many good reviews about it on some blogs. Thought I would give it a try...since I know NOTHING about sewing. Like I said...turning it on may be challenging, and I'm not joking.

First up is a belt for my little girl. I cannot find a toddler belt ANYWHERE. Poor little peanut is between sizes and has her little bottom hanging out everywhere we go.

I'm sure there will be some interesting pictures up on the blog after I start! :) Hopefully this is way easier than I think and I'll just be a natural sewer....it can happen, right? I am quite determined though and really want to self teach, so we'll see how it goes.

excitement

Lot of fun stuff going on in my world the past week. I have been working on a few digital pages for a showcase. I will fill you in more on that later on next week after I finish my last page. For the first page I somewhat recreated one of my challenge pages.

The second page I worked on was a lot of fun. I went to dafont and pulled up a new font for this layout. I think it fit in great. Love love love the butterflies.

Onto the 3rd page. I am struggling with pictures/color scheme for this next one. I want it to pop, just not real sure in which direction I want to take it. I'm starting work on it tonight, hopefully I will have some sort of result tomorrow or Friday.

As a result of working on all of these digital pages....I have not even begun to think about my challenge page for the week. Hopefully I can pull all of this off!

My scrapbook table is up! Troy just needs to add some support to the bottom to make it really sturdy. Sounds like he is going to try and get that finished tomorrow for me!

I have a day off tomorrow and by the looks of our house, half the day is going to be spent cleaning. I think I'm going to wish I was at work. Luckily Khloe is a good little helper most of the time at picking up. She has a love/hate relationship with the vacuum cleaner. Never know if she is going to want to give it a hug or run in her room and close the door in fear. Strange. We might do a little baking, but nothing can compare to Troy's cheesecakes he has been making (yes that is plural). Those have really been assisting me in my weight loss.

What else? I know there was something else....but I cannot even think what it was. Hmmm ok well I guess I will just add it to my next post when I think of it! I was up a little early this morning and it must be affecting me. :) Hopefully my brain will keep functioning for another hour so I can get started on my last page.

Happy Easter

We had a really great Easter this year. Full of fun. Khloe is at such a fun age to where she is really understanding things and enjoying them.

She woke up to a basket from the Easter bunny. The Easter bunny really didn't go all out on candy this year. We were pleased to see a new toothbrush in her basket. She loves Abby Cadaby (sp?) lately and therefore has been begging to brush her teeth all the time. She also got a new "lipstick," which she was sooo happy about because she lost her other one. This little girl loves to tear open bandaids and stick them everywhere, so it was nice of the bunny to leave some Dora bandaids for her.

Man, this Easter bunny really knows his/her stuff.

She did get some skittles. I would love to say that she grabbed the other stuff first, but no. The skittles were the first to get torn into.

Daddy was even lucky enough to get a couple of Cadbury eggs from the bunny. He thought he was safe getting those and didn't think this little cat would like them. She sure proved him wrong by eating most of it.

I think daddy got maybe one or two bites at the end.

We headed outside after her nap and got in some good Easter egg hunting and bubble blowing.

This big talker wanted nothing more than to pop some bubbles, but when we actually started blowing them she was running scared. We couldn't get her to pop one bubble.

Next on to an Easter egg hunt.

She had soooo much fun doing this. I really didn't know if she would understand it, but she took off before I could even explain it to her. We ended up having to keep pulling eggs out of the bag and throwing them into the lawn when her back was turned because she just kept wanting to find more eggs.

We had a great day and couldn't have asked for better weather (well maybe a little bit warmer...but we aren't complaining). I hope everyone had a Happy Easter.

Challenge #12 results

Decided to post this just a little early due to Easter this weekend.

This week I took on....

Format your journaling as a Mad Lib

Now you may not spot my Mad Lib right away. It is tucked away again.

This was another page that I just had a hard time trying to figure out where to put the journaling. I just didn't think it would look right on the bottom left. So I made it into a tag and tucked it behind the bottom picture.

The next challenge I'm going to tackle is:

Make use of fabric scraps in your scrapbooking

I have been so excited about this one and just haven't wanted to do it yet because I didn't have pictures picked out. I still don't, but decided not to wait any longer because I wanted to do something different. So here's to an exciting week playing with fabric.

We've had a busy weekend so far, but of course it has gone so fast.

We headed to the lumber store last night and picked up some new legs for my desk. The ones we had gotten previously were treated. Since we haven't worked too much with wood in the past, we didn't know that you couldn't paint treated wood. Sooo....back to get some new legs that could be painted.

We also picked up a shelf to go above my desk. The room should hopefully be coming along in the next two weeks, depending on the weather, if we can get out to get the desk finished.

more scrapbooking room

Thought I would show you one of my favorite things in my new room. I got this wire basket at an antique store last summer and knew exactly what I would use it for when I saw it.

How perfect is that for my rubber stamps?? :) LOVE IT!

I had big plans to get that metal cabinet spray painted this weekend, but this wind just wasn't cooperating with me.

Oh well I'm sure there will be plenty more warm days to come.

What a day

Wow...I cannot believe the weather today. 85 degrees here! Amazing

Even though there is about 35 mph winds outside it was still a nice day and we managed to get all the sticks picked up, leaves picked up, and all the yard work done. Whew. I feel so dirty from all the dust and dirt blowing on me, but it is a good feeling. Just to be outside and get to run around in the yard with Khloe....ahhhh.

Well we are going to take baths and eat some supper and I will be back later tonight with another post.