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.

Teapot Cakes and Teacup cupcakes

So, this was my first attempt with fondant. I thought it was going to be kind of hard, but it wasn't at all, it's super easy. I googled fondant recipes and went with the one that said it was the best tasting people had ever had, and it was really yummy. I didn't have clear vanilla extract so I used almond extract. We had grandparents over for a mini family party and I practiced my cake. I had a monster of a time with the cake part. I intended to use two cakes and put them together. After making 3 cakes, 2 of which got stuck in the Pampered Chef bowl I noticed my teapot on the stove and it was this exact shape, so that was good enough for me, I guess it's more of a tea kettle. I was not happy with the handle and decided I would improve on that next time around. One of the kids asked if the handle was a donut, not exactly the look I was going for!
I added some milk to chocolate frosting to make it thin so it would look like hot chocolate. The marshmallows added to the effect. In some of the cups the frosting ran down the sides a little and I liked it.

After all, this was for Peyton's 3rd birthday so I thought I'd include a picture of her. We got her a doctor's outfit that came with medical tools and she was a very happy girl.

On her actual birthday we had some friends of hers over for a little tea party and I made a few improvements to my cake. This is the snack table. I tried to make it cost effective, kid friendly and tea party like food.

I made the spout, handle and lid a bit more decorative. I would like to learn how to pipe frosting, I'm not very good at it.

For the frosting this time I added baking cocoa to vanilla frosting and made it a little thicker.

Well, I have been trying to add a picture of Peyton with all her little friends that came and blogger won't let me add any pictures for some reason. It was fun and Peyton had a good time.

Clarification on the Crime Scene

Porter did not get stuck. Peyton tried to get him out while I was in the shower but she was only tall enough to open the tank, not tall enough to reach in far enough to get him out. She gave up and left the lid off, Porter took advantage and escaped. He roamed the house for months, always changing locations, his last location was under the treasure chest, not because he was stuck, but because he starved to death. Snakes can't get stuck anywhere they can get into, you would be amazed at the tiny places they can get to, the trunk was easy in and easy out. Poor Porter starved, apparently we don't have any rodents in our house to keep him fed.