halloween

Afternoon! How was your Halloween? We had a fun time! At my daughter's request, we went to our church for Halloween for dinner and a fun time - they gave the kids candy and had some bounce houses for them all to play on. Safe candy and a great time, they sang and played and enjoyed dressing up. My daughter was a princess again this year, but she had a purple dressed she picked out to where. She got this dress for her birthday and she told me right then she wanted to wear it for Halloween and she kept it up safe in the closet just to wear it. My big girl definitely knows what she wants! My little man was a baby Frankenstein. I made him a crocheted Frankenstein hat and we -tried- the whole face paint thing... but it didn't work out as planned and he was happy with just the hat! I think he looks just adorable in it.

I just noticed how tired my Sky looks here after her long day at school! She was so very excited about Halloween though, that was for sure. :) I'm just glad they had a great time!

November already, I just can't believe it. In five days my little man is going to be a whole three years old! Time just keeps flying by faster and faster.. I don't know where it's all going! Soon he'll be off to school too and I won't know what to do with my time. Maybe more time for some crafts? It sounds so weird to have time to myself again, lol!

Now it's time to pull out the construction paper and get things ready for a Thanksgiving craft I'm going to do with the kids this afternoon before our community dinner at the church tonight. :) I found this one on Pinterest last night and I think that they'll have fun making them.

Trying to play catch up..

I'm always wondering how people find time to blog daily.. once a month seems to pull from me most times when I would like -atleast- twice a week.. even once would be good. I'm trying to make things more organized in my life though, including my entire house which I have been striving to be more organized forever now. I poked around on Pinterest and other blogs and am just amazed at home organized these ladies are. I want to get my life there! So with the may tips and some hard work, I'm slowly getting there. I've started throwing away the useless crap that no one in the house uses, instead of it just sitting there because someone 'might need it in the future'. I've already got stacks of boxes of clothes to donate to our local community center and I plan on going through the kids' toys this week. They don't use 90% of what they have sitting in their rooms! I could probably pull an entire box of toys out of my daughter's room and she would be like, "When did I get all of these toys?" and completely not remember them! Now if i could just afford to get some extra storage container sets. In time!

My Sky had a few rough first weeks in school, but is doing beautifully now. She's bringing me in blues daily now, which the teacher confirmed is better then getting a green. She's early got all of her sight words for this nine weeks memorized too. When did kindergarten get so different? No more naps. I guess it's easier to just not fight with kids about a nap they don't want to take in the first place? My three year old gives me a hard time about naps, I couldn't imagine a room full of five and six year olds who don't want to nap! Haha! Speaking of these sight words she's learning, I'm amazed that my son has even started picking up on some of the words. We made flash cards with all of her words and they sit down together while she says the words. A few days ago, he got a few of the words before she did - "girl", "dog" - talk about a proud mama! :)

While big sister has been at school, we have done a few projects to keep the little man busy while she's gone. He especially loved the lacing boards I made from cutting & hole punching a cereal box into some shapes and a box out of the bottom of it.

For a boy who is constantly going, going, going - this keeps him busy for up to 30-60 minutes straight sometimes! Just enough time to get a few dishes washed and maybe a load of laundry swapped into the dryer. ;) That dryer that I just recently completely cleaned all traces of lint from and now is running sooo much better!

And I leave you with my current WIP! It is going to be a dinosaur blanket for my son for his birthday next month.

Look at all those ends I get to weave in... doesn't it look like fun?

moved and all settled!

I'm back! Our move took about a week and a half to get things cleaned here, all our things packed, loaded and moved over. And since my DF works long hours, the unpacking has fallen to me. Which is fine, I'm glad to be mostly finished with it all, I just have some shelves that need to be put up! :) I was able to get the internet switched over last week but with my daughter's 5th birthday party and her starting kindergarten today there was so much to get done!  Atleast that meant a lot of crafty stuff too! With all the moving I was missing my creative side.

For my princess's party we made these sponge bombs that I saw on Pinterest!

I did them I little differently then they said, like using Sky's tiny hair elastic to hold them together and using different amounts of sponge strips. It was very easy. :) I bought two packs of sponges and cut them all into fourths.. grabbed random strips (5 or 6 a piece), twisted them together and wrapped the elastic around to hold it. Water fun!

I made some clips and hand bands for her to wear for school and also these yarn wrapped letters - again I saw the idea on pinterest - to hang over her bed in her room.

Quick, easy and cute! Not to mention that she loves them!  They are just cardboard cut letters, wrapped in acrylic yarn and held together with hot glue. Love my hot glue gun! :)

Miss Sky was also VERY clear on what she wanted food wise. Daddy was to get a pig to grill, and he did, and she wanted Mommy to make her a barbie cake. Not buy one, no, Mommy had to make this one! Okay then! Luckily, my mother in law had a barbie shaped cake pan that she let me borrow. I made her a marble cake and spent many hours on the decoration. First time on something like this, but she loved it! :)

So yesterday's party was a hit, lots of water fun, tons of food and the kids had a great time! What a awesome way to end the summer and get ready for school the next day! That's right, my little miss started her very first day of school today. She has been begging to go for years and today she finally started Kindergarten. She was soooo excited to ride the bus today!

Here we are waiting for the bus to come this morning! And when it finally came she ran so fast onto the bus I madely even got to say goodbye to her. So excited and happy to finally be going to school and she is my oldest.. I worry so much when my babies aren't with me and I miss her a lot. I just hope she is having a great first day and enjoys school! :) I thought it would be hard on little brother with his sissy not here all day, but he has taken it so good all day long. We even did a craft before nap time today!

We made home made moon sand! "Cloud Dough" as it was called on pinterest! Can you tell how addicted to Pinterest crafts I am? I absolutely love them! And a bit obsessed with Pinterest on it's own too. All this stuff is is flour and baby oil. It's so soft and we had a blast playing with it. It kept little man here busy for over an hour! After that we took a bath and used the water to paint on the walls with a paint brush. He thought that was just awesome. :)

So I haven't gotten to get any crocheting done, sadly.. I have a bunch of amigurumi ideas sketched out however and I can't wait to get started now that I'm all settled in!

crafts & moving

It's been busy, busy around here! I've been working on some projects, most I've finished and this is moving week for us! We've finally decided to look for that place we are going to want to be in forever and not have to move -- unless moving in a few years is just what life has planned for us. But this new place is somewhere we can build onto to and let the kids run in a nice fenced in yard. I should have boxes tomorrow to start packing and hope to be done before the weekend. I'm so excited for this move! :) And I really wanted to make sure I got an update up before I we started our move to this new place. Once we're moved and settled in I also hope to do my first giveaway!

So my first project was another amigurumi. This one was for my little sister who begged me for a doll when she saw me doing them. I ordered some saftey eyes from 6060 on Etsy, because I figured they would look much cuter then the buttons I've been using. So here is Edward from FMA. I did him with my bigger doll template and his jacket is removable. I hand stitched the symbol on the back of the jacket by hand and it was my first attempt at doing some kind of embroidery like this. I'm extremely happy with the outcome and she loves it! :)

I've got some new headbands made! I found this headband pattern over at You Seriously Made That?! and decided I wanted to make a few. I've been wanting to make these cool 3-strand headbands for a while now and just never got around to it. But when Pinterest kept reminding me about it, I knew it was time to finally make atleast one.

Now, since I'm about to be moving and I have absolutely no ribbon in the house, I wasn't about to run out to buy some. So I did the ties in yarn with a slst row and wrapped where the tie and band connected together in the tail of the yarn and used the hot glue to hold it. If someone wants to know how I did it, I'd be willing to make a tutorial for you after my move. :)

The first one I did.

Close up of where I wrapped the yarn.

My little princess modeling the first headband for me. She asked me for a purple one for her after this.

And here it is! I haven't gotten her to stop long enough to get a picture of her in it yet, but while we were out and about over the weekend she got a lot of nice comments about her pretty headband. :)

I've only done one hat however, since I haven't had very many orders lately. Though I had one request to try out a kitty cat hat to see what I might be able to come up with. Here is the first attempt at a cat beanie:

A baby orange tabby hat cat. I'm really happy with how it came out and have a few other ideas I want to try out now too.

My last thing crochet-wise today is that I did put my pattern up for the Sweet Pony Applique on my Etsy Store and at Ravelry. For another look at my Sweet Pony Applique:

Anyone else addicted to Pinterest as badly as I am? I will literally spend hours on this site looking at all these amazingly cool ideas! Since I can't really do home improvements until we actually move into our new place, I decided I would do a few simple ones to keep me busy until I get boxes for packing tomorrow. This tutorial for turning your T-shirt into a tank caught my eye a few times before I finally decided to try it out. I have so many T-shirt.. but I really just don't like them. I hate the way the collars are so close to my neck and it just makes me feel sick. So any T-shirts I have don't really get worn ever. I did this with a normal fitting one, and one that is a bit snug on me just to see if it would be worth trying on smaller shirts too. 

This is the outcome of the first one! Yes, I love using my webcam since my personal camera is on the touchy and close to dying side. Lol. I will be saving up for a new one very, very soon, that's for sure! I hand sewed it all and just hot glued the strips from the sleeves together to make the strap because I didn't want to cut the bottom of the shirt like this person had. It was really simple and even with hand sewing it, only took about an hour to transform this from a T-shirt to a tank. It is so comfortable and I really love it. I plan on doing this with every T-shirt I own probably. Lol! Over all, as you can tell, I'm proud proud of my learning to hand sew and how this shirt came out!

Time to update on my latest projects! Some new cute baby hats that I have up in my Etsy store. :) This first one I think is my favorite of the new bunch. A purple & pink baby dinosaur hat, complete with little pink spines.







Here's one perfect for daddy's little couch sidekick while watching the game! I am in the process of makes my little monkey a 3t sized one for when he's watching with daddy.







These two are actually for most of the same pieces. All it took was some imagination and rearranging for these two cuties to come to life. First we have an adorable pink puppy dog with short ears and an eye patch!




Next is the little piglet, curly tail and all!







I'm going to be working on some amigurumi patterns this week. I promised my dear little sister an Edward, from Full Metal Alchemist, doll.. I will most likely be starting that tonight. I can't wait to see how it will turn out! :) These dolls I've been doing are about 12inches tall too.. I want to make another versio about half the size, so I will be working on this over the weekend too, I think.






I've written out a new pattern though! My daughter is a complete My Little Pony lover and I wanted to make a colorful pony to remind her of it to put on her purse I made for her a few weeks ago. I came up with these:






Now she's asking me to put them on clips for her hair instead! I'm working on getting it up on my Etsy & Ravelry now. It's got loads of pictures, definitely gave me some time with my PhotoShop. ;)

Amigurumi Fun

So, I finally decided to try out some Amigurumi dolls. My last two attempts were easter bunnies from the past two years for the kids. They went over great and the kids still love them - my son even has to have his camo bunny from this year at bed time some nights. :) Dolls for some reason always seemed tougher to me? I think it was all that hair and making the clothes! Lol. Finally I sucked it up and tried!

This was my first attempt at an amigurumi doll: Rapunzel from Disney's Tangled. She came out okay, and I will be much more happy with her when I redo her hair. I definitely love the button eye look for these dolls though! :)

Here is Aerith, from Final Fantasy VII. My daughter claimed Rapunzel and I decided I wanted to have one of these for myself. So I altered my last design from the Rapunzel doll to make this small doll. I found a hair method that I like much, much better then how I did Rapunzel's hair by do the individual yarn strands around and inside the hair line. I did have a difficult time trying to make the longer bangs in the front curl. The dress and jacket are both removeable too.

After patting myself on the back for getting it, I decided that the stitches were too big and I needed to go down some hook sizes. Out came my D hook for ami doll #3. I created a mermaid!

She is definitely my favorite so far and I am sooo happy with how she came out. I'm thinking about writing out the pattern for her later on and getting it tested. :) Also debating on selling this little beauty at my Etsy store, I just don't know if I can part with it though! Hehe.

All of them were made out of Red heart Super Saver yarn. I love it. <3

Cotton Candy Princess Purse

My daughter asked me for a new purse, so I let her pick the colors and I made her something with ruffles like she asked. I thought I would share the pattern I made for it. :)




Bag

Round 1: Chain 26 (Or longer if you want your bag longer, just make sure to keep the 3SC in the last sts.). 1 SC in each st across. 3 SC in last st. 1 SC in next 24 on opposite side. 3 SC in last st. Slst to first SC. (54)
Round 2: Ch 1. 1 SC in next 24, 2 SC in next, 1 SC in next, 2 SC in next, 1 SC in next 24, 2 SC, 1 SC, 2 SC, slst to first SC. (58)
Round 3-14: Ch 2, DC in first ST and in each ST around. (58)
Round 15: Ch1, SC in first ST and in each ST around. FO and weave in ends. (58)
Round 16: With your CC**IN FLO TO CREATE THE RUFFLE AROUND THE BAG**
Slst CC into first loop, *[slst in next, slst in next, sc in same, 2 hdc in same, dc in same, tc in same, dc in sane, 2 hdc in same, sc in sme, slst in same, slst in next.]* repeat around, join, FO and weave in ends.

Handles

Make 2. Leave long end for sewing onto the bag.
Row 1: Ch 31, sc in 2nd ch from hook and in each ch across.
Row 2: Ch1, turn, sc in first st and in each across. FO, leave long end for sewing.
Sew ends of handles to the bag on each side so they are in the center. Use the picture for reference.

Free Patterns: Little Flower & Butterfly

I was wanting a few new appliques for some clips fore my daughter and came up with a few. They're fairly simple patterns and have probably been used been many people before now but if anyone is looking to get the same look, I'm sharing the patterns. :)

 Little Flower


Hook Size: Doesn't matter, depends on how big you want it. I used an F hook for this one.

Round 1: Create a magic ring, sc 5 in the ring. Slst into first sc.
Round 2: [Ch 1, sc into first st, 2 dc in same st, 1 sc in same st, slst into next st.]* x5
FO and weave in ends.

Little Butterfly

Round 1: Leaving a decent sized tail, Ch 2, sc 4 in 2nd chain from hook. 

Round 2: [Slst, ch 1, sc, dc, tc, dc, sc, slst]* in first st and in the next 3 st. 

Slst into the first st and fo off, leaving a good size of tail.

Wrap each end of the tail around the middle twice and then knot at the top. Cut to make antenna.

My finished projects from the past two weeks since my last update. :) I will also be posting a few small free patterns up in a bit as well.

Here is a purse that I made for my oldest niece's birthday. I didn't use a particular pattern, just used DCs and SCs around in the colors that she picked out and braided chained strands of black, purple and white to make the handle. She also got some bracelets I made and a purple genius headband. :)

My step-mother-in-law's mom asked for a hand full of solid headbands.. I gave her one a few weeks ago to have and she liked it so much she decided she needed to order a bunch for me. :)

I was lucky enough to get to test a basket out for Tiffany (Tiffer93 @ CrochetVille )! I absolutely love it and it holds up so well. It's currently holding all of my made appliques and headbands.

My monkey got himself a monkey hat. :) He loves it and is constantly wearing it. I need to get a good picture of him in it.

This is not crocheted, but it is definitely full of lots of yarn! I saw this adorable Pixie Tutu on Pinterest and just had to make it for my little girl. It was really fun to make and it came out so cuuute. I may make a few more in some other colors for her. Here is a picture of it on her. 

That's all for now but I will have some small free patterns up soon.. nothing huge, just a flower and a butterfly. I also have my Zebra Tote Bag pattern up for sale on Ravelry! And I have one fully made and ready for shipping at my Etsy Store.

So, its that time for me to catch up on the projects I've done seen my last update. :)

I made some Genius Headbands! I was looking for something that would be nice and stretchy, but not stretch out and be unusable and these are so perfect. It's all one piece and my four-year old has no problem putting them on by herself since there are no ties. :) I made some for her and me, they are awesome.

My daughter wearing her blue headband.

My black one and a newborn sized yellow one.

A cute baby girl owl hat. I had fun doing this one, I've been

wanting to do something owl for a while now.

My son loooves dogs and puppies, so I needed to come up some

kind of puppy hat for him. Here's the finished product. I think it is

sooo adorable.

So, my three Angry Bird hats were for my nephews' birthdays.

Another of my nephew's birthday was last week and asked my SIL

if he liked Angry Birds, cause I planned on making him one too.

She requested a shark because he has a love for them and he really

loved it when he got it. :)

A good friend of mine commissioned me to make this Spring Petals Backpack

for her. It was so easy and a fun pattern and the end look is so beautiful.

She wanted the straps bigger then what the pattern had, so used 2 strands

of Turqua together for some extra sturdiness.

This purse was for one of my hubby's co-worker's step-daughter.

She recently went through a lung transplant and was sick in the hospital

for a little while.  Hubby asked about her for me and found out she

loves zebras and hot pink. This was my first attempt at designing something

like this. I love how it came out and I hope she likes her get well gift.

I also made her this pink scrunchie and a pink headband to go

inside it.

Oh, what a rough couple of weeks it has been! The boyfriend had more teeth pulled on Monday - he's been having so many teeth problems from an issue he was born with, that the dentist recommended just having them all pulled and fitting dentures, said it would have him a lot of pain in the future. It looks like that's the path he may be taking, I don't blame him either, teeth pain is so terrible and he shouldn't have to keep going through it over and over again.

Wednesday was also the six year anniversary of my mom's death. She passed away from a long and hard fight with lung cancer, she was such a strong woman to go through all the treatments that those doctors put her through one after another.  My sister and I stayed up late all night talking and keeping each other company online. Keeping her and our dad and all the good times we had. My mother was such an amazing crafter and I used to watch in awe at the stuff she made .. and she could do everything! Sewing, crochet, knitting, etc.. there was just so much much she did! She always tried to teach me things then, but back then I would just rather watch then want to do it, and I got so easily aggravated as a kid I did want to bother with it. So now that I I'm doing all this crafting and crocheting myself now as an adult, while it's not something we can physically do together, I feel like she's there with me when I'm working away on my projects. :)

Me, my mom & my younger sister in our last picture together. :) She was such a beautiful woman!

On a happier note, I had nephews birthdays to make presents for! And since they all love Angry Birds so much, they each got a hat from me! The smiles I got when they got them made all the work worth while and my niece tells me the baby goes to sleep with his on every night because he refuses to take it off! How cute!

I had a lot of fun making them! I think I like the red one best but I love them all!