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It’s raining again. While it’s so amazing to have this much rain in Arizona, it kinda ruins plans… like my plan to get Declan dressed and let him roam the backyard with Fable all day. Yeah, that didn’t happen. We did all go to the grocery store today. I had the boys in their matching Skullys and we were approached and told that I should sell them. Do you think anyone would buy a “recycled” hat? Maybe they’ll sell better because they are recycled?

Matt and I talked about getting some things posted to my Etsy store, but this is where I must make a heartfelt plea. If any of you are considering purchasing anything for us, please let it be a new digital camera. There’s no way I could sell anything with the low quality pictures that my mom’s camera takes. Well, I could try I guess. You can find our “chosen” cameras in this post or view My Wists in the sidebar (but anything that takes crisp pictures will do), or if you have any artistic ideas to make my current photos work please let me know! I’d greatly appreciate it.
Oh yes!! I must post about my Valentine’s. We’re tight on money, so we decided to make all of our gifts, something we really should strive to do anyway. Matt got his favorite dinner and an IOU for his favorite cookies - Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. I got a beautiful card and a program. Yep, a program from my in-house lovable Linux guru/nerd. See?

Isn’t that just the sweetest thing!?

If there are any fellow nerds out there who’d like the source code for the program, lemme know. You should be able to figure it out yourself though.

We’re supposed to get our taxes done soon, and we’re already daydreaming about what to do with the return money. Reality is telling us that we need to keep it and just use it to live off of but we can always dream big right?

In all honesty though I am hoping that both Matt and I can splurge a little on ourselves. I really really really would like to get my hair done again. I was secretly hoping that Matt had some how found a hairstylist and befriended them before Valentines in hopes of finagling a free cut and color out of it. Alas, it did not happen and my mane of bi-color curly locks still hangs sadly from my head. I’m afraid to chop it myself. :S

I also have a running list of projects I’d like to complete, including but not limited to:

• New Ironing Board Cover
• Clothes Pin Bag
• Something for my nephew that his mom wont tear up or throw away. His birthday is soon
• Some more “recycled” items
• Duct-Tape dressing form
• Apron (or two)
• Try out some of the BurdaStyle patterns, as well as some vintage patterns, I’ve acquired. I think I’m on a jumper bender. I’m afraid to find out if Jumpers will work with my body shape or not.
• Don’t tell anyone, but I also am slowly piecing together ideas for a quilt. Get it… piecing? Ha!

Don’t hold your breathe though, things take time in this house.

On my final note, I’d like to leave you with this link. Have fun!

Step One: Choose an acceptable shirt - such as the long-sleeved one hiding in the back of your husbands dresser that you’ve seen worn once for 5 minutes. Even then it was obvious that the sleeves were much too short. Make sure it’s stretchy and warm - knits and fleece are great for this.

Step Two: Measure your child’s, or your own, head. Take two measurements - One around the biggest part of the head, where the brim of a hat normally sits. The second measurement is taken from between the eyes over the head to the base of the skull. Don’t worry about being exact, we mainly are making sure that we make it big enough to fit properly on the noggin and isn’t too small.

Then add an inch for seam allowances to both measurements. If you are going to reuse the seam along the bottom of the T-Shirt these are your final measurements. If you need to add your own hem, add an extra 1″ to the eye to nape measurement.

For example:

Reusing hem - Declan’s head circumference is 20″ and the eye-to-nape measurement is 15″, so after adding seam allowances I have a measurement of 21″ x 16″. Now divide that measurement by 2, which equals 10.5″ x 8″.

Not reusing hem - Declan’s head circumference is 20″ and the eye-to-nape measurement is 15″, so after adding seam allowances I have a measurement of 21″ x 16″. Then I add an additional inch to the eye-to-nape measurement which is now 21″ x 17″. Now divide that measurement by 2, which equals 10.5″ x 8.5″.

Step Three: Lay out the shirt you found and cut two rectangles using the size we determined above. If you don’t have the child around to measure, Declan has a pretty standard sized 2yo head. I like to iron the shirt out flat and cut the two pieces at the same time using a rotary cutter. Make sure to feign innocence when your husband finds you shredding his old “paintballing shirt”. You’ve never seen him go paintballing anyway.

Step Four: With wrong sides together, sew together one long side of the rectangle. Now grab a ruler and make a mark 3/4″ in on the unsewn long side of the rectangle. Make another mark 1/4″ in at the top. Connect the marks using a ruler to determine your seams for the short sides of the rectangle. This, along with the standard 1/4″ seam, will ensure that the skully will fit around the head without gapping. Sew up the seams you just drew.

Now your skully should start to take shape.

Step Five: Fold the opening up by 1/4″ or whatever you would like. Press and sew to form the bottom hem. Turn right side out. Viola! It’s seriously as simple as that.

To make the little ears, cut some strips from whatever fabric - I like to use strips of the knit T-Shirt because it will stop unraveling if you stretch it out - and tie them at the corners using a square knot. The size of the ear determines the final shape of the skully, though they all look the same while being worn.

Little adornments are easy to make if you happen to have some HeatNBond laying around. Basically just cut out your shape from a coordinating fabric, iron the HeatNBond to the wrong side, peel the backing and iron it onto the Skully in the desired location. I then go around the edges with a Zigzag stitch just to make sure it stays on and give it a cute little flair.

You can also use one long rectangle and fold it in half so there is no seam in the top.

Excuse the bad pictures.

Since making my small reversible purse, I realized that just tossing all of my many many cards into my purse was not working. When I say many cards, I mean like 50. So I made this.

It should have been relatively simple but I decided it needed a different pattern inside and it needed two compartments. I ended up ripping apart my first prototype only to discover that I had cut and sewn it right, I had just folded it wrong. Oops!

Tada!

I’ve been meaning to get some of these done for awhile, but reality always seems to slow me down.

Usually I sit down to make a shopping list and draw a complete blank on what I’m making for the week. Or I write out the main dishes, only to forget to shop for the side dishes. And honestly, our fridge is normally such a hodge-podge of coupons, recipes and clippings that space was a commodity. I saw a cute little memo board in some decorating magazine and it gave me the inspiration to make my own magnets.

I used OpenOffice.Org Draw to create my own though Wordpress does not allow its file type. Here’s a PDF of blank ones. You should be able to copy them over to something like PowerPoint or Microsoft Word and adjust them. If you use OpenOffice.Org email me for the original file.

I had originally intended to make magnets for the week, and blank ones that I could use a dry erase marker on for the meals. Unfortunately the only type that Wal-Mart sold were a “matte” finish - basically plain paper - and they are certainly not dry-erasable or something to touch with wet/dirty fingers. Staples was right down the shopping strip, but it was raining and I had Rowan with me. Just have to make do, right? So I ended up printing magnets with most of our staple meals on them and I’ll just use PostIts for special or new dinners.

I’ve been needing a new purse for a long time. Nothing in the stores really catches my attention, and the purses that do - a la Etsy - are expensive, though so worth it. I see so many cute designs and think to myself I could make that!

Since money has been tight I pushed those thoughts away for the time being. Last week I was hemming some Ikea curtains, including a set whose fabric pattern I just absolutely love. I should have bought like more sets before they were discontinued. Then I came along this cute and super easy pattern by Lula Louise. I knew then that I was going to make me a purse.

I started to put the pattern together and realized that it made a very large bag, so scaled it down to 50%. For me a larger bag means more unnecessary stuff to tote around. I did keep the original strap length though.

Once I figured out the pattern and got some spare time it took about 2 hours, taking frequent breaks to quiet the sleeping newborn fussing in my front carrier. It’ll be super quick to make any additinal bags.

Because I scaled it down so much some of the topstitching was very difficult to reach but the size ended up being perfect.

Happy Crafting!