pink elephants on parade party

May 30, 2012September 14, 201239 Comments

way back before vintage may started, Em turned four! since her favorite thing is still the color pink (she’s obsessed with it, seriously), her party much resembles last year’s but with the added flair of elephants (her very favorite animal!). it’s a pink elephants on parade party!

the living room got the full elephant treatment, with even her favorite stuffed elephants in attendance…

the art was painted by my talented friend Erin in Em’s nursery colors before she was born, inspired by one we saw at a local store. she moved bedrooms so it normally hangs in O’s room now, though she has requested it be moved to hers soon. the elephant statue is from west elm a while back. i made the elephant garland out of felt using the same method as the elsie marley eye patch tutorial, which worked great though it was pretty much the most tedious sew ever. i wanted to do it right rather than glue it or something so it could hang in her room later (which it now does).

dining room decorations were a bit more subtle – just a little pink garland and a couple elephant drawings by our resident elephant artist…

our house is pretty small but has a great floor plan – the living and dining room are open to each other and separated by an archway, so we can fit a lot more people in than we should based on the square footage. and for parties, all i need to decorate are two rooms! kind of nice. we had the party in the morning again, which i love doing. the kids got a pancake bar and the adults got biscuits and gravy from pine state – yummmm…

Em helped me color her cake to be…which colors? oh yeah, pink and purple! i don’t care if this is all over blogland, pretty much no one at the party had seen it. Em helped me with the sprinkles (i cut a 4 out of cardboard and she sprinkled…er…dumped them into the stencil).

it was well-received.

the birthday girl wore a new oliver + s ice cream dress, a pattern i first made for her second birthday. this one’s View B in a 3T and because she has a big head i cut the neck hole in a 4T, though i should have just followed this tutorial to lengthen the opening because it slips down off her shoulder a bit. i omitted the v to copy gail. Em didn’t like the morning dew on her feet.

it’s in four colors of shot cotton from bolt, and i let her pick either a sparkly pink button or an elephant button…guess which one she chose?

i had originally planned to make the dress ombre but couldn’t find four pink shot cottons that worked, so i moved the colors around and added the purple. then i saw this lovely ice cream dress and realized i should’ve just done the top in the light pink too! gah!

her favorite gift was the sarah jane necklace we got her (you’ll never guess what’s on it).

it’s pretty crazy to me that she’s four already! she suddenly seems so grown up…

tiny sketchbooks

March 28, 2012March 29, 20128 Comments

i spotted this super cute mini sketchbook project here and knew i had to make some right away! i actually made them a couple weeks ago but sometimes it takes me a while to blog about things (hehe).

i’m pretty sure the key to a successful trip to a restaurant with kids is having fun art materials to keep them entertained before dinner comes. we were heading out to dinner with my inlaws, including 5 kids under 8 years old (our two plus three nephews), so i whipped up these little sketchbooks for each to claim as their own. the covers are cardstock in fun colors, and the insides are resume paper that we’ve had laying around the house since our college days. i cut them all with an x-acto knife and a straight edge on my self-healing mat. before sewing up each spine, i added a strip of washi tape for a little extra pop.

rubyellen made all of her books teeny tiny, which are very cute. i made two of the books that small (about 2″ square), but also made some twice that size. my thought was that the oldest boys would like the smallest books, the 3 year olds would like the bigger books, and the baby would like whatever we put in front of him. i was right! that’s exactly what happened. the oldest boys (almost 8 and 6) had the most fun with the books, filling them with ninjas and angry birds, comic book style. Em and S colored in various pages with markers. she has a very on-trend love of colorblocking right now.

i think kids love things that are just their size and specially made for THEM, you know? and these are great because they slip nicely into a mama’s purse to continue coloring the next time you’re out and about with boredom to bust. big thumbs up to little sketchbooks! try ’em, you’ll like ’em!

teeny tiny mini pierrot

November 3, 2011March 23, 201210 Comments

anyone else having a little bit of lingering inspiration overload after KCWC? now that i can get back to non-halloween sewing, i find i have too many ideas in my head. i don’t know where to start! i never seem to have a lack of projects, but sometimes when i have too many, i get a bit blocked. usually a trip to the fabric store for the perfect fabric will push a project up to the top of my mental “must make” pile, but sometimes it just takes a ridiculously short deadline. this is a case of the latter. 😉

my cousin therese, who didn’t find out what she was having ahead of time (prompting me to make this gender neutral baby shower gift), gave birth to a beautiful baby girl a couple weeks ago. baby E is a sweet little thing, and so teensy! since they didn’t know they were having a girl, i wanted to make a girly dress, even though dresses aren’t super practical for tiny babies. WHATEVER! i got some ruffle butt leggings to go under it. that makes it practical, right? i think it’ll fit her next spring.

since pierrots can be sewn in a couple hours start to finish, i made this in the evening while texting therese to see if they were up for a visit the next morning. as plans were firmed up, i continued to sew!

the pattern is made by rae’s pierrot tunic (which fits more as a dress for the little sizes), 0-3 month size. the fabric is hide and seek by kayo horaguchi (with kona cotton neckline facing). i wanted Em to show how tiny this dress was in comparison to her wearing one of her two 3T pierrot tops, but instead she insisted on wearing her “zebra dress.” she wanted the dress with the matching fabric!

the selvage side i used for the tiny pierrot is a slightly different print than the one i used for her popover dress, but they match well enough for her!

i’ll end with the picture my little artist wanted to draw for the baby. she tells me it’s a horse. she’s going through a color-blocking period. 🙂

a new friend

October 18, 2011May 14, 201214 Comments

well, i wasn’t able to get my “bonus item” sewn for kids clothes week day 7. it can wait. instead, i had a full weekend – a date night with the husband, Em’s ballet class, a foot massage and lunch with a great friend, folded 5+ loads of laundry, cleaned (and cleaned and cleaned) the house, had friends over and made homemade chicken noodle soup, and played a soccer game. it was great. i was getting just a tad fatigued of sewing, so the couple days away did wonders. i had such a fun time last week, though – it was a whirlwind! i got totally inspired, found some great new blogs, and added to my kids’ wardrobes. my sewing for kids pinterest board saw some action for the future, too.

last night, i was able to sew up a little project that i had cut and ready prior to KCWC, but in the hustle and bustle i hadn’t gotten to it yet. it’s an idea that i saw on hart + sew, a lovely blog i just started following recently after we both guest posted for sparkle power!. stacy had her daughter draw a monster, then she helped turn it into a stuffie! i thought it was the sweetest idea and something Em would definitely get behind. i asked her to draw an animal/monster, let her pick fabrics out of my scrap pile, and i sewed it up. here’s what we came up with:

she says it’s an elephant.

it’s the craziest looking thing i’ve ever made.

it’s my first try at embroidery (and it shows).

it’s backed with pink minky.

she kind of flipped out for it this morning, a much stronger reaction than i expected.

she immediately giggled, hugged it, and asked if she could nap with it.

she named it…wait for it, it’s a doozy…”popsicle popsicle.”

popsicle popsicle is a girl elephant.

her stuffed elephant collection now includes frankie, little frankie, go go, mommy, dumbo, and popsicle popsicle.

i love her three year old brain.

welcome and monkeys

June 13, 2011December 28, 2011Leave a comment

hello to anyone that has found me through dana or rae’s roundup of celebrate the summer boy! i was so excited to see my little fox bib show up on both of their sites on friday, and i’m happy to have so many new visitors! i have a few sewing projects in the works that just need to be photographed, so check back soon.

meanwhile, in the “i’m so proud of my daughter’s new feat and i’ve gotta tell everyone” department, she started making non-scribble drawings in the last month or so! first it was just “happy faces,” but now she adds bodies, too. she drew these at dinner the other night after i started her off with the two blue circles. she told me they are monkeys. they have ears and hair and hands and feet! one even has a nose! i am just blown away by how kids can suddenly do things that seemed way beyond them just a few weeks prior. she went from just drawing eyes and a mouth to fully-appendaged people/monkeys! note: her people don’t have big ears. i guess big ears are the differentiating factor between humans and monkeys, in her three-year-old mind.

she drew her first “arms coming out of the head” person last week, too, and it’s a good thing i snapped a quick photo, because she immediately “colored it in” (read: scribbled all over it), rendering it no longer frameworthy. she did the same to this monkey drawing. i would feel like a mean mom snatching away her drawings as soon as she finishes them to my satisfaction, so i’ll have to be patient and wait for her to complete her project with the drawing still recognizable before i can frame an original. meanwhile, i’ll stay quick with my camera!