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How long is your To-Do list?

I feel like I have an endless to do list.  Maybe everyone does.  Here is just part of mine this summer:

 

And the list goes on and on.  Not to mention that I’m still having fun sewing and making cute things for Sophia.  I even have a pattern and fabric ready for a dress for the baby.  Imagine that – now I can sew for two cutie pies!

I found a blog called Shwin and Shwin – Sister Who Create.  One of the sisters sews like mad and can literally make anything for her daughter.  her patterns are a tiny bit hard to follow for someone who is so Type A (shocking, right), because she just patterns what she' makes off of a shirt or pants that currently fit her daughter, but I took a shot at one of them last week and it was actually pretty simple!

Here is her original":

Click on the image above (or any of the images from their website below) to find the patterns I am referencing.


Here’s how Sophia’s turned out:


Not bad.  The insides aren’t very clean, as there aren’t instructions to hem in the inside seams, but I think I’d do that next time.  It literally took a half an hour (Well, if you don’t count the time it took to rip out the seam for the elastic and re-do it. It was WAY to big for my skinny miss!)

Here is the example she has for the dress for baby:

 

And here is the next project for Sophia.  It’s SO cute – I love the entire thing, so I’m copying it completely, color and all.  I can’t wait for this one. 



No wonder my To-Do list is so long and incomplete – I keep getting distracted by projects that are a little bit more fun. 

All this creating has me thinking.  What if what I’m planning on going to school for (okay, back to school for) is something I will enjoy and be happy in, but not what I’m passionate about?  What if I need to be creating to be happy?  Ah!  I hate deciding what to be when I grow up, because I’m pretty sure (at least some of the time) that I am grown up so I should probably nail down exactly what I will be doing at some point, right?

I’m helping a friend redesign her blog and I’m having a BLAST creating blog headers and playing around with colors and patterns!  I looked into graphic design at one point and now Dan’s encouraging it again.  Who knows.  You can always have a fun business on the side, right?  :)  Thankfully, my parents were examples of changing careers and being happy and satisfied in doing so.  I’m fortunate to have that as an example, because I’m

pretty sure positive

I’m just not the Have-one-job-for-the-rest-of-your-life kind of girl.

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Father’s Day 2011

Sophia is very lucky to have such a wonderful guy for her dad.  Earlier this week I read this quote and it reminded me SO much of Dan and Sophia…

He grows with her, learning as they go.  He feels with her—each restlessness, each fear, each pain. She laughs and he is overjoyed. She reaches out her little arms to him and he rejoices. She sleeps on his shoulder and he does not move her, for fear of waking her….All disappointments, all failures fade like a mist before this golden girl. His daughter.  

                     -  Pam Brown

 

We had a lot of fun together this weekend.  There was time at the park, where Dan reconnected with his inner child on the swing.



Sunday, we went out for pizza after church – so much fun. 

Father-daughter bonding time – a must on Father’s day.  Sophia even made his day by sitting on his lap for a bit and watching golf. 



Later, there was a little shopping – they both needed new shoes – and some frozen yogurt.

All in all a great Father’s Day.  We’re so lucky to have a bunch of great dad’s in our lives.  Sophia has two wonderful “Bapas” that she adores – one she saw at home on Sunday and we’re off to visit my dad to celebrate next weekend.  Happy, Happy Father’s Day, just one day late, to my fabulous dad.  A father and daughter bond is so unique and special - I’m so glad Sophia’s just as lucky to have Dan as I have been to have my dad.

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My baby likes purple

I, generally, am not a big purple fan.  I have a few items that are purple-ish, but they definitely have gray undertones, so I’m okay with it.  When it came to dressing Sophia, I went all pink.  It just seemed natural.  I rarely bought her something purple, and when I did, I usually ended up returning it.

 

Baby girl #2, however, has been a bit different.  No matter how much I try to stay away from purple, I’ve been SO drawn to it.  Almost as if the baby likes purple – the only explanation that seems “logical” at this point. 

These cute jammies are at babyGap right now and I’m dying to buy them.   Sophia had a lot of these jams when she was teeny and they’re so cozy and comfy – our next little girl probably needs them, right?  :)



Do you know about Tea Collection clothing?  It’s so cute and the quality is great, so when they had a “liking” contest on Facebook that brought the price of this shirt down to $8 (less than some shirts at Target!), I may have immediately jumped online and bought a 6-12 month for next spring.  And we can’t leave out Big Sister, can we?  So, I also bought a size 3 – that makes matching outfit #2.  :)


Since most of our baby clothes fall in the pink category, I guess we’ll have to do some shopping…I mean, the baby like purple, so I have to, right?

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The straw that broke the camel’s back

My mother in law has been nice enough to lend me her sewing machine over the past few months.  It’s a bit vintage – the newest it could be (I looked up the model number) is 57 years old – they stopped making this model in 1954, but it’s been great.  The only thing that is hard sometimes is that it only does a straight stitch, nothing too fancy.  Actually, it probably keeps me from trying anything above my ability level while I continue to learn to sew.  I may need to have it tuned up, though, because at the end of this last project it began to moan, squeak and move incredibly slowly.  The bottom hem of the dress took over a minute, just to get around the bottom one time.  I was just happy that it let me finish the project!

I have fallen head over heels for a line of patterns by Oliver + S.  Their patterns are super cute – they remind me a lot of the clothes that Evie, who I nanny, wears and she has some pretty cute stuff.  It’s more classic looking in style and you can easily make adjustments and change the look by choosing different fabrics.

This dress is my favorite so far, mostly because it only cost about $4 total!  The pattern was free on the Oliver + S blog and I found a great deal on cute clearance fabric at Hancock Fabrics.  I tend to judge a book by it’s cover (actually, that’s how I found my Oliver +S book – it was SO cute!!), and Hancock Fabrics is a bit ghetto inside, but I like the style of their fabrics patterns more than those I find at JoAnn’s.


Unfortunately, Sophia may not be able to wear this until next spring.  There was only a teeny-tiny difference in the sizing for the size 2 and the size 3 so I decided to go for the size 3 thinking it would last longer, but it turned out to be much too wide on her.  I probably should have just gone for the size 2 and made it a bit longer than suggested. 

Oh well – that little whoops inspired me and now my newest goal/project is to make 90% of our girls wardrobe for spring and summer next year.  Well, that and the other three or four that are in the works, but on stand by until the sewing machine situation is resolved.

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We’ve been up to…

SO MUCH!   (Seriously…this may be our longest post yet!)

There is the general cuteness that we get to experience every day:


TRYING to make caramel, but failing miserably.  This version looked like crystallized motor oil…



And this version turned out as a hard (but tasty) sugar rock…



Other than the failed caramel, I’ve been baking like a rock star.  By the way – if you want to instantly feel like a professional baker, just put two Kitchen Aid mixers next to each other and feel good about yourself.  You probably don’t even need to use them – it instantly looks like you know exactly what you’re doing!  :)




Unfortunately, we said good-bye to some good friends, Ben and Erica.  They were one of the first couples we met at Woodcrest (our church) in our small group.  Ben was also our youth pastor and they left to go to Phoenix to plant a church.  Erica’s been a great friend and we’ve been able to have countless play dates, mall-walking times and sometimes even get togethers without our children along to just hang out.  We we SO sad to see them go, but so excited to see what’s in store for them!  You can check out their blog here – there’s a link to their new church and ministry if you’re interested in checking it out.

 

I made these two cakes for their good-bye party – one for Ben and one for Erica (can you guess which is which?!).  Erica asked simply for pink, and she gave me a hint to Ben’s fav cake flavors.

 

The botched caramel attempts were for the chocolate cake.  Luckily, I finally found a caramel butter cream recipe that didn’t make me want to scream and tasted super yummy.  Selfishly, as I baked them part of me was wishing there wasn’t a reason for the party, but I can be supportive when I want to be, so I happily did it anyway in the name of a good send off.  Good luck guys!



What else is new?  Um…my girly girl just keeps getting more and more girly.  She loves to do her make-up and her hair while I get ready.  She REQUIRES a mirror and seems to actually have an idea of what she’s doing.  

This is her set-up.  I kept a sample brush I got a while back and gave her that as well as an empty make-up container and she happily puts on her make-up.  Sometimes, even Daddy gets a make-over.  Poor Dan!  Just wait until there are two of them – I think he’s going to attend his share of tea parties…

I don’t think he’ll mind.  He’s pretty thrilled with this sweet girl and we’re both very excited about having another!  



I finally got a chance to start on some sewing projects.  I finished the top of the quilt for Sophia’s babies, a tutu for dress-up time and a pillow for her toddler bed.



The pillow almost ended up in the trash.  I used every pin I own, had it all ready to go and realized I had pinned the trim on the wrong side of the fabric.  Once it was finally right and ready to go, I broke a needle on the machine.  Grr!   It’s not perfect, but it’s going to be for a 2-year-old, who won’t know, or care about, the imperfections.  And so it stays!


We’re reading a lot of “magazines” lately.  Really, they’re just catalogs, but she’s a girl after my own heart – her favorite is to sit with me on the couch and read Pottery Barn Kids together!  Love it!
 

I also painted Sophia’s toes for the first time this weekend.  They started out messy, but ended up looking okay.  She’s always stopping to look at her pretty toes, and tells me that my toes are pretty too!

Was that enough for you?  I wasn’t sure I could fit that many random photos into one blog post, but I did it and now I’m all caught up.  What next?

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Summer…finally!

So, maybe it’s technically still spring, but it’s definitely starting to feel like summer.  Schools will be out soon, which, to me, means summer has begun.  We were able to enjoy the nice weather all week and weekend.  We did a picnic lunch at Como Lake and then Sophia was able to have some pool time with her cousin, Lucas, while he was in town. 

      

We’ve been up to a LOT more than this lately, but it seems like I do blogging the way I do exercise…if it’s been a while, I need something easy to get me back into it.  :)  We’ll be back with more of our happenings very soon!

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