{this moment}

inspired by soulemama.

just make it!

i have a few large sewing projects on my to-do list at the moment, so of course i am procrastinating completing them. boo. instead i have found a few finish-in-the-same-sitting kind of projects that i just had to do immediately. so i did them. above and below are flannel wipes that i saw over at progressive pioneer and just had to make them. i made 30! it only took me 2 nap times (i measure all of my projects in nap times these days!). we use them constantly. the only thing i would change is that the tutorial called for a zigzag stitch around the outside, which you can see i did in the close-up below, but i wish i would have done an overlock stitch (sort of like a surged edge) because i had quite a few little strings to cut off after they had been washed a few times.

i also made a little crinkle toy for my friends new baby girl. i have made a few of these in the last few weeks, lots of babies around here!  i used the new sun chip compostable bag on the inside to make the crinkle that babies love so much. it is so crinkly! then i added some ribbon in a 'taggie' style.

saw this tutorial for reusable bags over at angry chicken and i just had to do make them, immediately. we have some bags that i made with PUL and velcro, but they took awhile to make and we have some that a friend of mine made for us but we just didn't have enough. i love these becuase they are just one piece of fabic, so there is no lining to deal with. they sew up super fast (i made 10 in about an hour) and i used scraps for a many of them. we use them every day!

they are the old school kind of baggie that just has a flap that flips over.  below is the back.

and here is the front with the flap flipped and closed.  i use these for dry snacks, such as popcorn, pretzels, and dried fruit.  for gooier stuff i use the bag lined with PUL.

last but not least i made these wet bags  from 'a lemon squeezy home' for cal and maeve.  cal needed one for school.  they play in water everyday and so wet clothes were coming home everyday in a plastic bag.  so now he had a wet bag that works perfectly!  it fits a bathing suit and a shirt with space leftover.

the wet bag in these pictures is maeve's.  it lives in the diaper bag to hold wet cloth diapers when we are out and about.  i lined both bags with PUL so they are waterproof.  i am very proud of the zippers!  i have never really sewn a zipper and had it look decent when i was done, but this time i actually broke out the zipper foot and voila!  they turned out pretty good.  i only had to rip it all out once, definitely a success!

now back to those big projects...

{this moment}

inspired by soulemama.

{this moment}

inspired by soulemama.

3.5

my little boy is three and a half today. i could not be more proud of the little man is he is becoming... curious, smart, loving, kind and adventurous. i am so lucky to get to watch him discover this big world and how he fits into it (and even his small attempts to change it).

yesterday when we were deciding what treat to make for his special day he said he wanted chocolate cake. i asked him what goes into chocolate cake and he replied, "lemon juice and lime juice that I squeeze and bread." hmmm....


happy half-birthday my dear boy!

blueberries!

:: cal finding the perfect berries ::

:: cleaning our berries ::

:: making blueberry jam ::

:: eating loads of berries! ::

we went blueberry picking with some friends last weekend, and we have been relishing our bounty all week.  we made blueberry jam, which turned out way better than two years ago (which turned out very thick...).  i decided to use the strawberry jam recipe from this book because the strawberry jam i made last month was the best. jam. ever.  it calls for three cups of berries per one cup sugar but we did six cups berries per one cup sugar, which is what i did with the strawberries too, and it was perfectly sweet.  

i also made blueberry sauce (which trader joe's carried and was a family favorite for pancakes and waffles, but they discontinued it :( and all i could find at other markets was blueberry flavored syrup... yuck!).  i found this recipe and it came out pretty good too, not exactly the same as the tj's one, but it will do!

i love picking our own berries!  i love that we get to enjoy our berries all year long and remember the sunny, summer days of berry picking!

{this moment}

inspired by soulemama.