Post Christmas sew up.

I didn't do much in the way of sewing or beading in the run up to Christmas what with moving and everything else going on but on boxing day I pulled out the machine and since then it has had a little use. Finishing up some odd bits, a bit of fixing and some new makes.

This skirt was the last remnant of a top I made dd a long time ago, she must have only just been pulling herself up in those days. She saw this in my fabric box and brought it to me. 'Please Mummy skirt'. How could I refuse such a nice request. Luckily there was just enough left for this pretty little number. She was so excited to watch me sew it. I shall have to let her start pressing the buttons soon. As it's a remnant and the elastic was bought so long ago it was from the euro shop before we moved back I am considering this a free sew. We like free sews. ;)

These trousers are made of a soft fleecy fabric I was gifted earlier this year, I used the Dana Made It kids pants pattern and extended it slightly for her height as she is 2 in a size 4. I added elastic in the cuffs as a jogging bottom feel. The fabric is so soft I want a pair too. I have a bit left and am hoping there is enough for me to make up a pattern for a top to go with them. Ideal for this miserable weather. Another free sew!

Trousers from the Made by Rae new born pattern. These are for my friend whose daughter is due end of Jan. I love this fabric, I bought it a couple of years ago with dd in mind but never came up with a plan. I am glad to use it or it would have been a money sucker. I hope they fit the new arrival.

These are also for my friends baby. A reversible bib and burp cloth. Both from a me made pattern, well the burp cloth was just made up as I went. It has towelling on the back for a bit of resilience to any burp residue that may occur. The fabric was from a bundle I bought a while ago now and have used for a dress for dd and also her dolls cot bumper. I think it stretched to a pen roll too. But this seems to be the last of it. Satisfying when you can use something up completely.

PJ bottoms for me. My first pair for me. Another free make, the fabric was left from the dress hubby made from his challenge in Germany. He bought a lot as he hadn't chosen a pattern when he found the fabric and it became a summer dress so lots for me to play with. The pattern was from Lauren's book but I just made casing for 1" elastic as couldn't be faffed with the adding ties. The elastic is doing me well I bought a huge roll in Germany from ebay and have loads left still. It has more than paid for itself over time. I have yet to wear them but they do fit. I tested before completing.

Trousers. I can't remember the pattern, I cut them in the summer as long shorts for dd but I made them too small and never finished them. Now there is a new baby on the way I finished them off. I know looking at them it's blue and boyish but my dd loved the second pair I made her that fitted. I admit initially I bought it for my son but he grew out of trains too fast unlike his older brother and indeed his sister. Still it came in handy in the end so no loss there.

I made this dress after our trip in the summer for dd. She choose the Minnie fabric in the US and I added the black from left overs in the scrap bag. Buttons were from a card making kit just for show and the pattern is the Good Deed dress. I finally got around to adding the red ribbon to finish it off. Needless to say she was over the moon.

My final make was this skirt. Father Christmas bought some 'Halloween Skellington' hair bands. She has developed a real thing for this film and the squeal when she opened them was incredible. It made Christmas. So when I saw this last remnant in my box, originally for hubby's pj bottoms from our American trip, I knew I had to create something for her. Again a bit of black from the scraps bag and voila her very own 'Nightmare' inspired skirt. I love this and so does hubby and dd.

I also fixed a few odd bits and made plans in my head for other bits but all in all I was happy with my little stash and UFO buster.

In other news hubby has laid the matting for the tiles in the bathroom. We hopefully will have a tiled floor before he goes back to work on Monday. I will show you a picture when it's done.

Merry Christmas

The weather is cold, damp and windy. It rains and rains and rains, though we are lucky and are too far south for the floods that are affecting so many right now.

But we had our first Christmas in our own home with our crazy excited children. Small girl squealed when she found Nightmare Before Christmas hairbands in her stocking and after two presents on my lap suddenly realised there were lots of presents and had to be held back a few times for fear of the tree getting knocked over and her brothers loosing out on gifts.

It was an incredible day. Luckily our huge oven did the perfect job and we managed to all squeeze in around the table despite the lack of a proper kitchen. The food was delicious, the children were happy. What more can we ask for.

I hope you all had a wonderful day too.

A new project

I have been a bit quiet recently as we have a new project on the go. When we bought it you had to go up the grass and under the bush to the door, we have since found the path that was hidden by bushes. Inside needed a lot of work and we are slowly but surely getting there. I have a half cupboard and a broken cupboard in my kitchen but running water and a Rangemaster 110 ceramic hob in cream. I love my oven. I can cook more than one thing at a time and grill too! It's the simple things. The tins are piled up on the floor between the oven and the fridge and I have to empty the cupboard every time I want to cook but we are kitchen shopping in the January sales. The bathroom had to be ripped out and we have had the new suite plumbed in but that is all for now. Again, it's a work in progress!

When we bought the house you couldn't get into the back garden very easily at all. It was completely overgrown, we found a bay tree in a pot that was taller then the house and my sons could open their window and pick blackberries. However we had left it as we had more pressing things to be getting on with, (mould removal, painting and papering, choosing bedroom carpets. . . ), but then next door were having some tree work done so I had a word with their contractors.

And this happened! My garden it turns out is pretty big when you clear out all the brambles and overgrown shrubs! 

SO that's why I haven't been around much but I hope to get back into the swing of things again very soon.

Sewing up a storm.

So we are back. The holidays are over though the memories are still fresh in everyone's minds. We have 100's of pictures to sort through and a rather amazing stash of new fabric to sew through!

I felt it would be rude to travel across the ocean and not bring home a bit of American fabric with me.

Unfortunately the picture of the stash was deleted after sending it to a friend. But there was a lot of lovely stuff, starting for $1 a yd in the sales. Amazing!

My first project was for hubby, Jack Skellington PJ or lounge bottoms. I used the GBSB pattern in a small size and they are perfect, I had to use a ribbon rather than a tape for the tie as our hobby craft had no tape in stock. But I was happy and so was he. Next up was the same pattern but in this fantastic $1 a yd fabric.

I then used the CKC pj bottoms pattern to make two pairs of Iron Man bottoms for the boys. The pattern comes up huge in case anyone is thinking of using it. But we fiddled around and they are both very happy, they were on before I could get a picture.

Finally I made madam something last night. It's the Good Deeds pattern. I had the black off cut already left over, and the buttons were in the button jar. Mini Mouse was an American purchase. Pleased to say she loved it this morning when she saw it. I just need some red ribbon to trim the waist with and it's done. A little big so good with a top in winter and will still fit in the summer we hope.

 

My last make was using up an off cut from Mr Skellington. It's a Christmas gift so ssshhh.

 

It's a tablet stand for hubby. Modelled by my tablet. I am pleased with the result but were I to make another I would add more stuffing. It was fun and easy to do. Using an idea from Half Yard Home. I may make more as presents for others as I found it very stress free and I have lots of odd off cuts that I refuse to part with. I have lots more projects to be getting on with but for now I will enjoy a quiet afternoon with my little one after her first busy morning at preschool. Before we have to collect the boys from school later.

Have a Tiggeriffic day!

 

 

 

Trip across the globe.

I have been a little quiet recently as we were planning a holiday to see family of my husband over in America. We have been planning this trip for a while and now we have less than a week left of our holidays. It has passed really quickly but it has been amazing with some completely priceless moments. Meeting characters at Disney, seeing animals at Seaworld and meeting with their American cousin. I am writing from my kindle and don't have any pictures on here to show you but I will share when we are back. We are just having a storm which is upsetting the smallest  person. But hopefully it will pass quite quickly. They are all currently looking for somewhere to hide. I hope the weather for you is a little better. ;)

Anyone for cake.

Anyone who knows me knows that we always make birthday cakes in this house. You don't buy a birthday cake you create it with love. That's what my mother always did and that's what we do too. My husband was new to the idea of homemade cake when we had our first 1st birthday, (actually he was in Afghanistan but that's by the by), but now he has come to relish the idea of cake time. He even made the figures for our second's Christening cake himself. We have often been found the night before a birthday or party up in the small hours trying to get the cake finished in time, there was a memorable occasion when he went to the 24hr ASDA at around 2 am for more fondant as we had run out and Thomas the Tank Engine was half bare. We have never been quite that bad since we did run out of green food colouring but I remembered a stash of fondant pre coloured which we bought for a minion in Germany, the boxes of pre coloured were new on the shelve and only came in a box of three colours red, yellow and green. The yellow was all used up but we had about 4 packs of green still. I think that must have been for Mike Radowski (?) not sure on the spelling the small green guy from Monsters Inc. There have been a number of cake tales and I am sure there will be many more. But I thought I would share my two most recent makes with you.

Following on from his Minion theme last year, (Minion bowling), we had a request for Minions on a bouncy castle. I cheated and ordered the figures. He loved it.

Top shot of all the Minions. The party cake went down well. It was banana and chocolate with vanilla pillars. There was a slice left that ended up going to the birds as it had gone a bit hard.

The second cake was for the husband. The people were an added after thought so the size is completely off to the crabs but the original idea was for a rock pool and crabs, we then spent the day out by the coast with friends and had a ball. So I decided to add us.

Three crabs as caught by our sons on the day out and our daughter in a nappy which is how she decided to spend most of the afternoon. She only fell in the sea twice I think. And our boys on the edge of the pool. We were too big to stand on the cake so are propped up next to it.

I made a third cake today because two in two weeks isn't enough. . . As our son's birthday is in the holidays his party was before his birthday which is the first time it's been so far from his birthday so we have made a cake for birthday tea tomorrow too. I will try and remember to add pictures at a later date.

I must say one thing I learnt this time around was if you are going to make figures do them in advance not on the day. ;)

Real Tomato Sauce.

So we were recently sent a bottle of Hellman's Tomato Ketchup to try for free courtesy of Hellman's.  I insisted our small people and the big one come to that finished the old bottle of supermarket's own before we opened the new one amidst rather a lot of grumbling, but it was almost out.

The bottle we were sent is a different shape to the usual squeezy bottles we get and actually this seemed to work as each of our children, 2, 4 and 6 were able to squeeze a reasonable sized amount without making a mess.

There was a slightly out of the ordinary element of excitement perhaps as we had received it for free but after the initial taste test I received verdicts of 'more Mummy', 'yummy' and 'absolutely yummy'. The large person said, 'I like it it tastes more tomatoey than the other one'.

We had burgers and buns for tea tonight and as I was putting sauce in the buns I realised we had run out already. There was just enough for four buns but the other two had to make do with some garlic herb dip I scavenged from the fridge door. I also noticed that the lid was sauce free. None of the usual build of of sticky gunk around the edges.

The final verdict - We would definitely recommend this new ketchup and we will be buying our own bottle now the free one is finished.