William's Dedication

Sunday was Will's dedication. Which is when we publicly declare our desire to raise Will in a Godly manner.





















Pastor Whittenburg about to pray for William.











Here we are getting a New Testament for William.

Emily's 2nd Birthday

Here are some shots of Emily's birthday party on Sunday.

Here she is with her "Melmo" cake.

My Little Picasso

The girls were coloring with markers the other day. Sarah "drew" a few pictures and then decided to fill the entire paper with blue marker (it was a boat).






Emily "drew" a picture and then decided to decorate herself.

This doesn't show the fact that the entire top of her left foot was covered in blue marker.

She later covered her right arm and hand in black marker. The big thing was, she was getting her picture taken the next day wearing her "Easter" dress. Thankfully, it came off in the bath!

Easter

I thought I'd put up some pictures of our Easter.







Sarah hugging her bunny from her Easter basket (which comes from Mommy & Daddy---mostly Mommy since she does the buying and divying it up!)















Emily with a magnifier filled with candy (of course!)



















William had no clue why I plopped him on the couch with this big fellow!










Here is the whole family. I made the matching dresses for the girls and my blouse and skirt in the week prior to Easter.








I also had gotten the idea to make cross bookmarks for everyone at church, so on top of the sewing, I made 37 bookmarks. I wanted to have at least 40, but ran out of time! There were 57 people at church, counting babies and little kids. I need to make a few more for my family, but had enough otherwise!

















Close up view of the tatted crosses.

Recycled Sweater Longies-Crotch Gusset Details

I had some people ask about how I came up with the crotch gusset in my recycled sweater longies, so I decided to use paper models to sort of show what I had done.
The red stands for the sweater and the yellow is the pattern. (Both are in half since the sleeve is already sewn.)




This shows the sleeve cut off from the sweater.




Here is the pattern.










When I laid the pattern on the sleeve, the sleeve was narrower than the pattern.







I cut off the part of the sleeve that stuck out from the pattern.
This shows the piece I cut off and the part of the pattern that isn't covered.

I cut the seam of the sleeve down to the level of the point of the crotch on the pattern.










I discovered that the part of the sleeve that I cut off is the right angle for the rest of the crotch seam.












I cut off the part that went past the crotch point.














I traced that piece 4 times (or twice opened up) to come up with a start to a pattern for the gusset.











I cut it out, rounding it out as I did.










This shows the actual piece of the sweater sleeve I cut off next to the gusset to show that the gusset isn't quite as long as the piece I cut off. (since this is the one I didn't use as a pattern, it is the original length)

















This shows the placement of the gusset for sewing on. The middle of the long side matches up with the seam on the sweater sleeve.








The actual pair of longies with the sleeves/legs out to the side with the gusset in the middle. So the left side is one sleeve and the right side is the other sleeve.
I basically just sewed the gusset into the part of the sleeve where I had cut the seam to reach the level of the crotch point.







The girls came over to see what I was doing and Sarah thought it was cool that she could see things in the camera "window". She wanted to take a picture of Emily (who was on the other side of my lap)






Here is her picture of Emily.




















And her picture of me.












Then she wanted me to take a picture of her.














I figured we might as well take a picture of Will, too. He was asleep from a recent trip in the car.

Recycled Sweater Longies

I bought a felted (i.e. shrunken) sweater at a yard sale last summer for 50¢ planning on using it to make Will some soakers. I decided I'd better make it since the arms are quite small/thin!

Here are the steps I used....





Cut off the arms and figure out the angle for the crotch seam. I didn't have enough width for the right angle, so I opted to add a gusset in the crotch.

I traced one half of Will's green longies before I sewed them up to use as a pattern. It is folded in half since the arms are 2 layers!














Sew the crotch gusset.


















Put one leg inside the other with right sides together and sew front and back seams using a ¼" seam.
I stretched the wool as I sewed.

Zig-zag the seams.

Sew a casing at the top for elastic.

















Thread elastic through the casing and sew ends together.


















All finished.


















William modeling them.












Close up view.














Back view (same as the front!).

Dog Cupcakes

Sarah told me that she wanted to make cupcakes--DOG cupcakes like we saw in the magazine at the store. I had no idea what she was talking about since she had gone to the store with Grandma! So we went and bought the magazine (Family Circle) so I could figure out what she wanted!





Of course we made CHOCOLATE cupcakes even though the magazine used white cupcakes!














The girls don't look too excited in the picture, even though they were having fun!










The dogs started














Westies













Schnauzers













Bulldogs












Beagles















All the dogs together