Painted Furniture, Repurposed Sweater, Dust Art

Last week when I went to put some laundry away I found this on my dresser. I found out this morning the artist was Benjamin and that it is me holding and ice cream cone and wearing a ring pop. My room gets dusty really fast and needs a good dusting every week, I give it a good dusting every TWO weeks. How's that for some honesty?
Sadly, I am so excited to get a new project started that I always forget before pictures, so, here is a door in it's before state. It is from a buffet that I inherited when my grandparents passed away. They had some amazing furniture from the 60's that was in very good condition, just out dated, I also refinished some bedroom furniture for Peyton the same way, using the same paint. I was 8 months pregnant or so when I did her furniture and apparently I wasn't blogging yet, so I don't have a post to direct you to, but you can see my sewing desk that is in the same room as this buffet and was done the same way. HERE is that post. These are just the doors after sanding and wiping them. As you can see, I didn't sand them very thoroughly where thay aren't flat, I'm a little lazy when it comes to sanding, that's why distressing is so appealing to me. Distressing is also nice when you have young kids in the home!

Here is my finished buffet that resides in my MULTI-PURPOSE room, (would be dining room) it holds some of my paper crafting supplies, stamping things, stuff like that. I love it, I think the original hardware looks great on it too.

A big thanks to my friend Yolawnda for helping me to get going on this project! Next up, staining my bathroom cabinets...

Once again, forgot a before picture! This was my favorite sweater at one time, I shrunk it a little and a moth had a small meal right in the front center. Never fear, save that sweater, it can be REPURPOSED (a word I am loving and becoming very familiar with)! I found this a few weeks ago and couldn't get it out of my mind. It directs you to square up your sweater pieces if they are contoured but I didn't, I liked the contoured shape. I was able to make 2 of them, I had to cut the sweater in half up the front because of the moth hole. I gave one to my sis-in-law for her birthday and one to myself! I love it.

Flowers make me happy and I'm trying to learn how to make as many different flowers as I can, so I can be like Caleen Beatty! I think that button is from her shared collection too, thanks Caleen.

I also added a little pocket inside for my cell phone, I made a few tucks in it too, so it isn't flat. I didn't add a magnet clasp like the tutorial says, I would have, but I didn't have one and this was a FREE project.

Hope you all aren't sick of my project posts!

My sister got married!

Saturday was a very special day for my family. My little sister Lindsay finally got married after a YEAR long engagement! It was a beautiful day and the weather was perfect. Lindsay and Steve Rowe were married out at the Sportsman's Club at 5pm in a wonderfully brief but sweet ceremony.
I was asked just a few days before the wedding to fill in for one of the bridesmaids. I was honored to do it and happy to find that the dress fit perfectly. It was strapless but I was allowed to wear a little white sweater that fixed that problem. The wedding party was to be there at 3pm for pictures so naturally Peyton and Dustin, mine and Morgan's sidekicks, came too. The kids were angels.

Peyton was not in the wedding party but I put her in her little dress that I made her over a year ago and she was adorable in Lindsay's wedding lavender.

Lindsay was beautiful and happy!

Now my mom's stress can come to an end, until she finds something else to fret over!

My sister Ami was here from Texas, along with her daughter Aubri (6) who is taller than Jacob (8)! The kids LOVED her, and she LOVED Micah! She plans on marrying him, don't worry, Ami is my step sister and therefore not blood related.

The kids toasted with their lemonade about 10 times. They were so cute and had so much fun. They all danced until it was time to go. When Peyton woke up early the next morning the first thing out of her mouth was..."When can we dance at Aunt Lindsay's wedding again?"

My cousins and Aunt and Uncle and my cousin's daughter Cassie (below) were all here from Southern Cal.

Morgan was another of the bridesmaids (she had 6 bridesmaids total!).

I got the honor of decorating their escape vehicle! Giana, her maid of honor completed it by tying on a few cans.

CONGRATULATIONS STEVE AND LINDSAY, I LOVE YOU BOTH!

Men's Shirt to Girl's Dress

I found this shirt of Tyler's in the garage in our "to get rid of" box. I was sad, at first, I bought it for him for Christmas a few years ago and I thought it looked really good on him. Apparently the sleeves were too short. Then, I came across this (MADE, dana-made-it) tutorial. It seemed a little out of my comfort range but I decided to tackle it.
This of course was the BEFORE shirt. Tyler had to help me draw out the sleeve pattern, and it worked, we make a great team!

Here it is all finished, and below, my model, complete with bed head.

My in laws took her to the Rodeo Parade on Saturday morning and here she is wearing it paired with her little red boots.

Perfect, she'll be wearing this to church on Sunday too. The cowboy hat she insisted on but it covers up her adorable little piggy buns. Like the hand on her hip? She did that pose all on her own.

Projects projects!

Ok, when I am not posting it is because I am living! You know, I am a creature of phases. My most recent thing has been cooking. I really want to make recipe cards using my digital scrapbooking stuff. I want to include pictures for all of them. These are going to only be things that I've made and really like and want to continue to make. I'm going to print them in 4x6 and laminate them and put them in a recipe box. This first pic will not go onto a card but I saw a cake like this when I was googling peeps pics for the scrapbook page below. I loved it and decided to make one for FHE.

Peeps Sunflower Cake.

We love Hawaiian Haystacks here and all the toppings are so pretty together. I never use a recipe to make them but I'm going to make a card for them. The cards could also be a great gift idea, I could even give a set to my daughter's in law right?

Grandma Kay called last Friday and gave me a recipe for french bread. The kiddos were spending the night at my parents house so we had the house to ourselves for date night. We made the bread together and played Sequence.

Next time I think I'll try to make it in a loaf pan. The recipe said to form it in a loaf but we'll see.

A seasonal favorite, made with lemons from our neighbors tree.

Lemon Bars

This is a new one for us, Bunny Buns. We got the recipe from The Friend magazine this month, it was a reprint from a 1980's issue. It has orange juice and orange rhind. The kids didn't like the rhind so I'll leave it out next time, I also want to make the glaze with orange juice instead of water. Oranges courtesy of Grandma Kay.

Tortilla Soup

Don't these pics look yummy?

I have also been sewing a bit. I found a link to an awesome blog (on Lindsey Davis's blog), MADE. There are tons of tutorials on it but the first one I've tried was this. They say it's the easiest skirt you'll ever make and it IS. The two tiered style is my favorite and it really isn't any harder than the single layered skirt. I'd like to get more ruffles and trims and have fun with it.

I don't have a serger but Teri Stringham (a friend) showed me a stitch on my machine that is almost like having a serger and I love it.

The great thing about making this for little girls is that you need hardly any material! You can even make two side seems instead of one so you can make use of your smaller scraps.

In the picture below Peyton wore the blues and greens skirt today and it looked cute even with her little pink Jumping Beans shoes from my Aunt Jan.

Another thing the blog inspired me to do was make my own bias tape. It was easy and rather fun. I made a little mistake with our curtains, I washed them and they shrunk about 6 inches! I thought I had washed them before and they had done all their shrinking. Well, I had washed one panel that I ended up haveing to take down. Anyway, to make a long story short, Tyler unstitched to bottom hem to make them longer and I made bias tape with the one panel I washed previously and sewed it on the bottom so they could be as long as possible.

Yes, the bottom strip is lighter because it was facing outside and got sunbleached. They still look pretty sad, but not as sad as having curtains WAY too short that show where our carpet is worn down to the pad and to the concrete in places! So, if anyone has long curtains sitting around and you want to give them to me, I'm not too proud to take them!

This is after the bias tape, pretty cool huh?

I also made some pillows with the leftovers. I used the middle meshy net part of an old bedskirt for the pillow forms inside, I feel so frugal!

Next up, I want to make Peyton a dress out of Tyler's old dress shirt, I have to draw my own pattern though and I'm not too sure of myself on that!

Peeps Freebie! (Link fixed for 2nd "HERE")

I hope no one got too excited and thought that they would get free actual Peeps. I made this little guy to scrap my Easter pics of Peyton from 2 years ago and thought someone may want it! Go get him here! Here and Here and Here and Here and Here is where you can get different versions of the peeps logo these are all png files and very quick to download! This is what I did with them, the background paper is from Summer Driggs "Owl Always Love Spring" freebie kit. The font I used for the date is "Gentle Redhead".

Forgot to tell you, NO MORE BRACES!

For the best picture of Micah ever, scroll down.
I have really been out of blogging mode and saw that the Porter pictures were still on the page and that I had to distract Peyton to scroll down to my scrapbooking blogs, I really don't need any of the kids to see that post!
So, first off 2-13-11, Tyler and I collect masks and Peyton wanted on off of the wall. I gave it to her and this is what she did with it...
Silly girl, I think I would have been scared of that mask as a child.

2-15-11, Micah got his braces off!

A little drilling, that's Dr. Freeman, best ortho, I highly recommend him!

This is my favorite picture. They left us alone with this contraption for a few minutes and boy did we have fun, I got a lot of great pictures but this one is the best!

Getting all gooped up for a retainer mold. Micah hates this.

He was a cute kid before but I think he sure looks handsome now with all those straight teeth, next on the list, Jacob.

Barbie Cakes (from Last January!)

I had an unfortunate accident with my camera last year and deleted many pictures, including all of the pictures from P's 2nd birthday party and her Barbie cakes. My mom had some on her camera, but of course, with the way we do things it takes a while, they get done, just not always right away! As you can see we made good use of my Pampered Chef bowl. Next time I do Babrbie cakes I'll use two cake mixes so the girls have more adequately sized skirts, they look like they must have very short legs!
What a cute 2 year old Peyton! She's grown and changed much in the last year.