Chic Chic dresses

I purchased a dress pattern online that I thought seemed easy enough for a beginner sewer like myself.  It is very easy and I've made two dresses now for my daughter!  I have another one for her I'd like to make soon out of some cute corduroy fabric.  Here are the two I've made using the chic chic dress pattern from Babes of Sweet on Etsy.

 This dress is made from a cute fairytale print (little red riding hood, the three bears, the three little pigs...)

I used fleece for this dress.  It came out short I think because fleece is thicker but she loves it and I think it looks really cute as a tunic top with the leggings!

Operation Christmas Child

My daughter's school is putting together boxes for children for Christmas.  We signed up to bring stuffed animals since that is something I like to make.  She needed one for a girl and one for a boy, I hope the children who receive these little stuffies find some joy in them!  Liza was so excited to take them to school this morning :)  I hope she is learning about giving and how some are less fortunate.  We'll go next week and pick out a food item for her to take to school for the Thanksgiving bags.

Crocheted Elmo!

I made this Elmo for a friends son... he turned out super cute!  If you'd like to make your own Elmo then head over to A Crochet Ninja Blog .  She was so nice to share her pattern for free!  I think I might need to make one for my little guy for Christmas since he is going gaga over this one!  My daughter likes to squeeze his nose and say "honk,honk"... too cute!

A happy doll

I made this doll for a friend to give as a gift.  I just love these little dolls!  Each one has her own little personality.  I made this doll using a Bit of Whimsy Dolls pattern.  You should check out her site bitofwhimsydolls.com. She just created this new site and it's so cute! She has lots of dolls and animals for sale. She has some free patterns that you can try before buying so you can see how easy they are.   I have so many patterns because they are easy to create and always turn out so sweet!
I will be making my daughter a horse from this ice cream fabric using the bit of whimsy pony pattern.  I'm so excited to see her face when I finish it!  A new frog pattern is coming out soon that I will have to get and make one for our son.  When she introduces new patterns she has them at a discounted price for several days - best time to purchase them! 

I hope you all have a happy weekend! It looks like ours will be rainy and maybe we'll have a little snow... I think chili and cinnamon rolls will be on the menu for this chilly weekend! 

Happy Halloween (A few days early)

I think this has been the best Halloween yet!  We went to a friends neighborhood to trick-or-treat and the kids had SO much fun!  So did Mommy and Daddy :O)  Wiley's costume was a huge hit! A lot of people commented on how cute he looked and what a great Elmo he was... I was pretty proud of my first costume!  I really want to make a Zoe one now for my daughter so they can play sesame street together!

 I had them pose with the pumpkin - not the greatest picture but still cute!

 I made their treat bags too... I had a few issues with them but they worked out ok and the kids loved them! I lined them with soft yellow fleece.  I just winged it without a pattern.  Here is a picture so you can kind of see what the bag looks like.  They are both now filled with candy - as they should be!

(Her nose is red because her little friends all had red noses to go with their costumes so we let her have a red nose too.)

I hope you all have a Happy Halloween!

Super cute Elmo costume!!

My son saw a very furry and red Elmo costume in a magazine we received.  He immediately picked it out as what he wanted to be for Halloween.  I did some searching online to see if I could get it for a good price and I couldn't find a nice furry costume for under about $30.  With my husbands support I decided to try and make him one!  This was my first big sewing project using a real brown paper pattern.  All the materials for the jumpsuit including the pattern cost me about $23 after tons of coupons at JoAnns.  I already had all the yarn I needed for the hat. I spent about three hours making the jumpsuit from cutting the fabric to sewing it all together.  I just finished the hat last night and wanted to share :) 

I'll have a fun Halloween post later this week after we've gone trick-or-treating!  I've heard they are holding Halloween on the 28th in our town since Halloween weekend is a big football game.  I'm a bit bummed to not celebrate on Halloween, but the kids will not know the difference.  I'm not quite done with Halloween... I'm planning on making their treat bags too with some cute kiddy Halloween fabric I have on hand :)

For my kitchen

I was getting tired of looking at our messy (because of me - no one else's fault) bulletin board in the kitchen.  Just about everytime I looked at it I thought about doing something to make it pretty.  I finally did a few weeks ago during the kids quiet time.  I had some cute Michael Miller fabric leftover from an apron I'm working on.  It was just a little bit left so this was the perfect project to use it on!  I LOVE my new place to keep important numbers and notes.

The board is really old... maybe from middle school or high school? I already had all the fabric and ric rac!  Eventually I plan to have curtains and dish towels in coordinating fabrics - probably not until we move again in several years.  I still need to paint the wood - it will be red!  Thanks to those of you that helped me to decide what color to use :)
To make this I cut the fabrics about a half inch to one inch larger then what fits the area inside of the frame.  I took a paper clip after centering the fabric where I wanted it and pushed the access fabric under the frame edge.  I did the same with the ric rac although I will hot glue it down eventually.  I wanted to take the frame off and just wrap and glue the fabric to the back but I was not sure if I could get the frame back on.  My way worked well enough and it is secure as long as you do not try to take the fabric out.