How is our list coming?

Time to update on how we are doing with our Christmas list.....

Our list for our children:

9yr old daughter:

• Book pocket *DONE*
• Flannel night gown *DONE*
• Book marks
• Felt and ribbon hair clips

7yr old daughter:

• Book Pocket *DONE*
• Flannel nightgown *DONE*
• Book marks 
• Felt and ribbon hair clips

3 yr old twin daughters:

• Book pockets *DONE*
• Flannel nightgowns *DONE*
• Tutu's
• Felt and ribbon hair clips
• Baby doll pillow and blanket 
• Matching nightgown for baby dolls
• Crocheted owl families

2yr old son:

• PVC pipe water maze bath toy
• Flannel pj's 
• Felt car carrier
• Felt "race track"

10mth old daughter:

• Crocheted owl family
• Flannel nightgown *DONE*
• Crocheted baby hat and mittens *DONE*
• Apron bibs 

Total Spent: $4/100

Nightgowns everywhere I look!

Part of our Christmas tradition is to give each of the kids new pajamas on Christmas Eve. I admit I have a ulterior motive here. New pj's on Christmas morning look great in all those pictures you always end up taking while they open their presents.  I can't say I came up with the idea however, that credit would go to my mother. 

 Since we are doing a homemade Christmas you know making pajamas was top of my to do list. I went rooting around my fabric stash to find the ton of flannel I bought last year on Black Friday and never used....when what do I see. A bag with flannel scraps and a pajama pattern envelope. I open the bag and realized that the "scraps" of flannel are actually a night gown already cut out and labeled by my grandmother. A little more digging shows that my mother's name and size were on the pattern instructions.  The date on the pattern? 1970! No that isn't a typo my grandmother cut out these night gown pieces for my mother 40yrs ago! I was floored!  My grandmother taught me how to sew when I was about the same age as my oldest daughter so it just seemed fitting that I finish the gown for my own daughter. 

So here you have a night gown for a little girl cut out by her great grandmother, intended for her grandmother, and sewn by her mother. I will be honest I get a bit teary just thinking about it.

There were other pieces in the bag with the gown above. They however were for what appears to be a maternity gown for my grandmother. That puts the pieces at 1970-1971 when she was pregnant with my Uncle.  Since I don't need a maternity gown and I wanted my second oldest to have a special gown as well I cut the pieces down to make a gown for my 7 yr old as well.  I went with a simpler pattern for this gown. I am not the seamstress my grandmother was but I try.  This pattern was super simple to put together and start to finish I was done in an hour.

 It was so simple I used the same pattern for my three younger daughters as well. I however altered the pattern to leave out the bow tie on the little girls gowns. No need to fret about my little ones strangling themselves in their sleep on the ties.

So there you go, 5 night gowns for 5 little girls all for just the cost of the pattern, $4.  That is quite the deal if you ask me!

Baby Hat and Mittens!

I am a sucker for baby hats and little tiny mittens! They are just so stinking cute. My youngest little one needed a new hat and mittens for this winter so I decided to add them onto her Christmas list. I think she approves.........

 For the hat I used Bernat Easter Basket yarn and this pattern. I however altered the pattern and instead of the ruffle (which I didn't care for) I added a simple shell stitch instead. So adorable and simple!

 For the mittens I used this pattern, but as you can guess altered them to use the matching shell pattern from the hat.

Cute. Simple. Done!

Book Pockets

 My girls LOVE to take things to bed with them and needed an option for keeping things close but not under them while they were trying to sleep. I found this tutorial for book pockets and thought they would be perfect. I however altered the pattern just a bit. Instead of having them go all the way across the bed under the pillow I decided to use less fabric and have them go under the mattress. With them on top of the mattress I could just see them getting carried around the house and me constantly having to pick them up and put them back where they go. This way seemed much simpler.

I used flannel because it was what I had on hand and wanted to use up.  I cut  a strip (31in by 11 in) of my base light purple fabric, a 8x8in square of my light pink accent fabric, and a 5x5in monogram for each girl.  Here you can see it all cut and laid out. As you can see I incorrectly cut my "H" out. I had to recut it so that my flowers were going up and down not sideways!

 Then I started sewing.I first added my hems to my long light purple fabric. Then I used a zig zag stitch around the letters sewing them to the pink 8x8 square. Once that was done I centered the pink 8x8 square with letter on to the purple fabric (about 1 in down from the hem and centered between the sides. Using a zig  zag stitch around three sides (leaving the top open for a second pocket) I attached the pink pocket to the light purple. Once that was done I flipped the fabric over, right sides together, and stitched up the sides of the main pocket. You should in the end have a 10in deep decorative pocket and a 10in length of fabric acting like a "tail" behind the pocket. The "tail" will be slipped between the mattress and the box springs to suspend the pocket from the bed. If the pocket wants to slip out from between the mattress and the box springs because of the weight of the items in the pocket you can pin it into place under the mattress.

Book pockets done! Now on to my next project!

Homemade Christmas. The list!

This is our second "Homemade Christmas" and I am very excited to be starting on making the gifts for our children and family members. Last year there was a real learning curve for me. Having never done anything like it before and being massively pregnant with baby #6 I was in a bit over my head. This year however I am ready to go! I have also been very blessed this year to be able to find several things for my children for free. My son for example will be getting a little people farm with all the animals (free!) and a massive train set with tracks (free!) just to name a few.

Our list for our children:

9yr old daughter:

• Book pocket
• Flannel night gown
• Book marks
• Felt and ribbon hair clips

7yr old daughter:

• Book Pocket
• Flannel nightgown
• Book marks 
• Felt and ribbon hair clips

3 yr old twin daughters:

• Book pockets
• Flannel nightgowns
• Tutu's
• Felt and ribbon hair clips
• Baby doll pillow and blanket 
• Matching nightgown for baby dolls
• Crocheted owl families

2yr old son:

• PVC pipe water maze bath toy
• Flannel pj's 
• Felt car carrier
• Felt "race track"

10mth old daughter:

• Crocheted owl family
• Flannel nightgown
• Crocheted baby hat and mittens
• Apron bibs

We also have a list of things we will be making for family members, those however I am going to hold off on mentioning at the moment since I don't want to ruin the surprise if they read my blog.  I will update you with those items after they are received however :)

Our busy fall.

Wow I really seems like quite the slacker these days don't I? I took some time off of blogging this fall to help get my family situated into our new "normal". Things around here have been a whirlwind of activity it seems. I am just now 3 months later starting to feel like I am getting my footing again.

Lets see...

In August we went on a month long roadtrip to visit family. It was an amazing time but I am sure you understand that it was very taxing. Our kids did amazing considering the amount of time we spent driving and loved getting to see family members that they hadn't seen in months or in some cases years!  We spent lots of time on the water boating, fishing and swimming. As you can tell my little ones loved it!

After arriving back home in September we started the process of getting help for our 2 yr old son. He is still in the middle of the diagnosis process (don't get me started on how hard that is to get done!) but it looks like he is autistic. As I have mentioned before we have an autistic daughter as well. Our son however presents in a totally different manner. He can be quite the handful when he wants to be. In September we started his therapy routine which includes 2 hours of behavioral therapy and 1 hour of occupational therapy a week.  We just had a review done and will actually be upping him to 3 hours of behavioral therapy very soon. The therapy takes up our entire mornings these days and keeps us very busy. Little man needs tons of sensory input we are finding so we are adjusting our entire lives around his needs. It has taken me several months to figure out how to make this work and still keep the family going. More about this to come later.

In October things started to lighten up here and get a bit easier. Our son started to become more verbal and the therapy was starting to show in his daily behavior. We took advantage of the breathing room to do some fun stuff together as a family. Starting with some Halloween decorating, our new favorite thing to do is decorate our door for each different month.

It is now November. Where does the time go?! We are looking forward to Thanksgiving and have decorated our door for this month.

I am working on our second "Homemade Christmas" this year (more about that to come later as well) and keeping quite busy with the little ones. Our youngest has started to get more mobile now that she is 10 mths old (seriously where does the time go?!).

I hope you all have had an amazing fall and I look forward to getting to post more often now that things are slowing down here for us!