The Artist as a young child

Oh my goodness. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a look at the photos on Tuesday’s camera. Today I downloaded them and they were cracking me up. First of all, dozens of pictures of her bookshelf.

Maybe because it’s convenient from her bed? There are pictures of us sleeping that we don’t recall her taking. Noooo that’s not creepy at all…
And these gems:


I can just imagine her cracking herself up over these. I know they got Bj and I rolling.

Getting ready for our first craft fair

Oh my goodness what have I gotten myself into?!?! Sciarrino and I have been crafting like crazy for weeks getting read for the Albany Town and Country Christmas Bazaar. The show is this weekend! It starts on Friday November 30th and runs through Sunday, December 2nd. We decided to participate on a whim. After all if you ever craft something chances are you’ve had someone tell you, “You should sell that!” Well we will have lots of goodies for sale, including burp rags, onsies, ribbon blankets, snack bags, ombre quilts, flannel wonky star quilts, and other simple baby/toddler quilts. We’ve made cards and crinkly baby toys. We have receiving blankets and even nursing pads. If none of that suits your fancy and you’re in the area we are one of, I believe, 100 vendors. Every item there for sale has to be made by the person tending the booth, so I’m really excited to see what everyone has for sale.
Here is a glimps of our booth, we mocked it up this last weekend.

Pretty much everyone I know and love has helped Sciarrino and I get the booth ready. Bj made these awesome racks:

He used this tutorial. My mother in law has been watching the girls and helping with ironing and sewing. My mom has been sewing and watching the girls. Her and my step dad took Tuesday camping last weekend and she had a blast. Glad she got to do something fun because we have been at home sewing like crazy!
And sweet Bennet helped me by modeling the crinkly toys.

Yum, yum, get it Bennie! I (or maybe my mom…) made lots since they are known around here as “baby crack”

So please come shop! Or at least stop by and say hi! I would love to see you! And I won’t be wearing my glasses (I like to pretend I have perfect vision) so don’t hesitate to come right up and say hey. I’ll have Bennet “I won’t take a bottle if my life depended on it” Garrison with me the whole time 🙂

Bennet vs. Tuesday

People say they look so much alike, but I don’t see it much. They look (and act!) so different to me. Here both at four months:


If you have multiple children do they look much alike? Did they grow to look more alike or more different? It’s so interesting to me how different, yet equally wonderful the girls are. I just love them so.

Four Months

Oh my sweet Bennet. I’m going to take a brief break from sewing like a mad woman for the Christmas Bazaar and update everyone on you at FOUR MONTHS.

Look how big you’re getting! I just took you to the doctor today and you were 24.25 inches tall and 11 pounds 12 ounces! You are my tiny little love. I’m glad you’re still growing so well because we’ve been having some tummy problems with you.

You’re such a happy go lucky girl that I was shocked when you stopped sleeping well and were so fussy. Then you got blood in your stool and I knew something was wrong. Mama had to cut out all dairy and you started feeling much better (then I accidentally had some cream in a peanut sauce and I’m so sorry because the next day was not good for you). I’m hoping all your issues go away by next friday, otherwise I have to cut out soy as well. Diary and soy are in so many things! But that’s okay because I love nursing you and can’t bare to give it up.

Oh my goodness your sister loves you so much. Sometimes a little too much, she gives great big sister hugs.

It was hard to get this picture because usually you’re just staring at your sister when ever she is around, it’s so very sweet and makes me so happy. Of course it’s hard to understand babies when you’re (almost) four.

Like why do you pull hair Bennie? Tuesday doesn’t understand.

I know, I know, you were just exploring your environment.

Don’t worry she forgives quickly. Of course you are rolling like crazy, and you just started scooting…. so when you start heading towards her toys we might have other problems.
3 months, 2 months, 1 month.

Ribbon Jar Blog Hop! (and a giveaway, yay!)

Hello wonderful people. I’ve been thinking about getting back into the swing of things in this space, starting with a blog hop! My first! Ok so I coordinated the blog hop, but still I’m excited 🙂 You may remember that I sold the Ribbon Jar to my mom last year, well she’s done a ton of work to my her site!

The Ribbon Jar is proud to offer 1,200 of the most delicious ribbons you’ll find anywhere. In addition we’ve started carrying a special selection of notions to help in your crafting adventures. From velvets, jacquards and ric-rac to specialty trims our goal has always been to make quality ribbon and trim available by the yard to every day crafters. We continue to offer Special Collections in jars and for more economical shipping our curated collections are available as ribbon packs. We’re so excited to have Amber participating in our blog hop and can’t wait to see her creative use of our ribbon!

I decided to make Pj pants for Tuesday and I. The totally awesome peacock feather ribbon was my inspiration, it comes in a big and little size, awe! I used two patterns, Butterick B5432 for me and McCall’s M6225 for Tuesday so this is going to be a tutorial about how I modified them.

Pj pants are pretty easy. Although you’d never know that from my track record! I tried about five times to make a pair for Bj and I can never get the rise right. So I caved and bought some patterns. Patterns makes things so easy! Who would have thought?!? They are a bit boring though, or I should say basic. Which is great because they can be fully customizable. I drafted a pattern for Tuesday from the printed pattern so I wouldn’t have to cut out the XS and ruin all the other sizes. Then I folded over the waistband so I could add one in a contrasting pattern (both fabrics are currently available at Jo-Ann’s, the total fabric cost for this project was 9 bucks!).

Here is were I added the waistband, after the inseam, crotch, and on outside leg seam was sewed up. My mom’s idea, and a good one. Just remember to make your button holes in the right place first before you add this piece on. And yes, I used my serger again. Man I am in love with this cheap serger, it makes everything so quick! I did reinforce the crotch seam with an extra stitch from my regular sewing machine.

I decided to make the waistband on my pants wider than called for. I simply cut off more of the top of the pattern, and then added the six inch piece of contrasting fabric (which I folded over to make the three inch waistband). A note on this pattern (Butterick 5432). I think it runs really big. I measured well into the large size, but I only had XS-Med so I made a Med. This is the result (I’m 5’4″ and about 140 lbs), and I even shorted the rise and a bit in the leg. Just an FYI if you try it, I think the Medium fit me just right.
Here is my tricky tip of the day:

I am all about using high quality ribbon (the only kind the Ribbon Jar sells), but when it can’t be seen what’s the point of wasting the really pretty stuff? My waist is quite a bit bigger than my tiny three year olds and I wasn’t really wanting to use two yards of this wonderful grosgrain for it. So I used herringbone instead! I love herringbone for everything and it does a great job here. I simply made an X on the back of the waistband after it was inserted to make sure this part never shows (I also secured the ribbon in Tuesday’s pants so it never comes out).

For the bottom I used the peacock ribbon mentioned above. There are a lot of different jacquards on the site that come in multiple widths. And there is other stinking cute stuff (this, this, and oh how about this?!?). Not sure about width in the metric system? Use their handy converter! Little bits of velvet (again in different widths) cover the join of the jacquard. Oh ya, I got tags, and I’m using them on everything, more on that later.

I do think the pants look the cutest on little Tuesday, but I’m trying embrace my post baby body so here is a shot of us together:

Night time kisses!

Love that girl.

One more pic 🙂
Here is the ribbon I used: 16 mm Herringbone, Olive Grosgrain with a Running Green Stitch 9mm, Blue and Green Peacock Feathers on Black Woven Ribbon 22mm and 38mm, French Velvet in 16mm and 9mm.
Now do you want some?
If you would like a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to The Ribbon Jar simply leave a comment by Tuesday, November 13th telling us your favorite ribbon on the site. This contest is open to all readers, domestic and international. For more chances to win please visit the other blogs on our hop. Good luck!

Amber @ Life in Color Wednesday, November 7th,
Ashley @ Cherished Bliss Thursday, November 8th
Lindsey @ LRstitched Friday, November 9th
Christina @ The Sometimes Crafter Saturday, November 10
Jen @ Betty Crocker Ass Sunday, November 11
Katy @ no big dill Monday, November 12
Melissa @ all buttoned up Tuesday, November 13
Julie @ Color Chic Wednesday, November 14

My Little Brown Hairstreak

Oh my silly Tuesday. She decided she wanted to be a brown hairstreak butterfly and went on and on about it’s beautiful tan color (the butterfly was pictured on this post).

The tan body was no problem. I pulled out an old Stretch and Sew pattern for a simple raglan sweatshirt type top and traced her leggings for the bottoms. It’s a little funky with the yellow ribbing around the collar, but I didn’t have another color that worked and I was NOT going back to the fabric store before Halloween, that place was a mad house!! I would like to mention again that I got a super cheap ($189) serger off of Amazon and except for top stitching, that’s all I used on this fleece outfit. It was so quick. One rest time people, ONE. Total side note here. But really I did not realize how easy these types of tops went together. You may see a lot more raglan sleeved tops soon!

So I finished the “nice tan body” last week, but then waited until the day before Halloween to get cracking on the wings, of course. I was going to go your standard wire frame covered in fabric route but nothing looked “real” enough for me. Then I came across this tutorial on YouTube, showed it to Tuesday and we were sold. Of course at 2AM on Halloween my hand was dying. I persevered and finished cutting it all out day of. I used amber colored cellophane (fitting, right?) and the wings were done… Oh except how to attach? I came up with a tan elastic harness. That was easy. I couldn’t figure out how to attach the wings to it. Many will not be surprised that I turned to my brad stash. They worked great. I used an old Moonshine Design universal eyelet setter to punch through all the layers. I don’t think they make these any more but I love this heavy duty tool, never lets me down. I did accidentally cut through the setting mat, but that’s my own fault.

My mom came over and put Tuesday’s hair in piggies because you know, EVERYONE does her hair better than me. And look at Bennet. Remember when Tuesday wore that shirt? Sigh. And we went to the patch that year. I was so much more on the ball. Tuesday went to the grocery store patch with papa on October 30th. Oops.

Look I’m in a picture! I do look a little crazy and like I have dandruff (glitter hairspray gone awry), but hey!

The first of many sister dress up pictures, I’m sure. Bennet is a chrysalis. The genius part was that Tuesday actually remembered that was the thing before you’re a butterfly and told our friend who asked what she was. I’ll be honest. I’m a huge fan of Zutano and this was a great excuse to get one of their little elf suits.

Bj carried around Bennet in the Baby Hawk and I attempted to get Tuesday to go up and ring doorbells. No thanks. She has been talking about this for weeks but when it came down to it? Um, just too spooky for her. So Bj went to get the car while Tuesday and I walked to Erin’s. Then we drove to my mom’s. She lives in a nice neighborhood and a lot of people drive there to trick or treat. This was so fun for Tuesday who got to spy on kids coming to the door (side note: super adorable Tuesday moment. I was going to take over door answering for a while and Tuesday asked, “Mama, will you be ok when the big kids come to the door? You won’t get spooked?”)l We had pumpkin soup at my mom’s and when we got home Tuesday had a brief moment of wanting to keep all her candy. But once she saw the toy I got her she handed it over (she ate a few pieces last night). Since she asked if the candy fairy was “spooky” (word of the day) I came clean and told her it was me.
I had fun making the costume and I’m glad she loved it. I wasn’t going to finish the sweatsuit all off (hemmed sleeves, etc.) but I did because it seemed like it would be a good base for a lot of different things. Maybe I can talk Tuesday into dress up one of these days. I don’t know, if it’s not “coffee shop” related, she’s usually not interested. Latte anyone?

Spider Web Skirt

Last year two of the Jo-Ann’s in town closed so they could make one mega Jo-Ann’s. For some reason when they open a new store they don’t use any inventory from old stores, so everything was on sale. It took me a while to realize this was happening and I didn’t get many awesome deals. But when fabric is 90% off it’s hard to pass up. Even if it is an odd stiff flocked taffeta type. That’s how I ended up with a lot of this:
 I made up this quick skirt for Tuesday by cutting a rectangle, gathering the material at the top with a long stitch length on my machine, hemming the bottom with my serger and adding a knit waistband to the top. I think I did something incorrectly there because there isn’t any give where the two fabrics meet. I’m not sure what to do about that. It works, but I don’t think a skirt like this would go over my rear very easily. Good thing Tuesday has a tiny hiney (as we say).

Tuesday prefers to only take pictures while making weird poses. The skirt is a little big, but hey, she can wear it next year!

I finally decided to give up on my mom’s old serger. It’s a beast that will serve someone well but I needed something very easy to use, and when I found this under $200 model on Amazon it seemed too good to be true. But it works great! Here I removed some technical part and only used three threads and one needle to do a sort of rolled hem. My first crack at it and I think it’s perfectly servicable. Sergers are so expensive in sewing machine shops, if you’re looking to dabble in knits or just want serged edges to things I highly recommend this one.

What is she doing with her hands? No idea. I kind of want to make myself a skirt out of this stuff too. I bought enough to make a giant tablecloth (I think that is what I was buying it for), but a skirt sounds like much more fun. I have to figure out the making it over my bottom problem though. Hmm, maybe I’ll stick with quilts and flat things for now. Actually right now I think I better go up to bed. Bennet has already been asleep for over two hours…. which means I’m in serious trouble tomorrow… damn you sewing machine and your allure!

Three Months


Oh I’m just a cute little baby…

LA LA LA I like to talk!

I’m such a happy girl.

HI INTERNET!!!
These are actually 3 months + 1 day, because 3 months ended like this:

Beware the big sister monster!
(side note: We are having issues with our heaters upstairs – thousands of ants invaded the outdoor component, YUCK – and the guy had to climb over piles of stuff all over our rooms, it’s chaos!)

3 months + 1 day they got along better. Though I’m not so happy that Tuesday told Bennet about all her no napping tricks. 30 minute naps are not my favorite. Oh and I’d take a bedtime before midnight. Or maybe more than three hours of sleep at a time. Le sigh. But it goes by so fast I shouldn’t complain at all. Let’s just hope I don’t fall asleep while bouncing Bennet on the exercise ball one night…. a real possibility.
(one month, two months)