Amy Butler Birdie Sling

Got the Birdie sling done on Sunday after working on it all day, pretty much 9 to 5. By the end I never wanted to see it again! This pattern was preparation for tackling the Weekender Bag which I can't decide on fabric for. I used left over material from the trailer curtains and pillows, so it's all Rhapsody in Bloom by Maywood Studio fabric.
Did contrasting inner pocket fabric because I love the brighter rose fabric and added trim to those edges.










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Athena Breastplate construction

I was very inspired this year by the awesome website Take Back Halloween which has a ton of important or famous women costumes and how to make them with no sewing. I found it through A Mighty Girl's facebook page which I love also.

My 9 year old daughter has been addicted to anything with Greek gods or goddesses all year and it was no surprise that she was going to be Athena this year. The only problem was that I wasn't very excited by the white toga... and it's all about the challenge of the costume or I would just buy one off of the rack. :) Take Back Halloween had an amazing Athena costume which I copied as close as I could with dollar store or goodwill purchases. We did get the adorable Barn Owl that they advertised from Amazon, but other than that I was going for cheap! The helmet was a Goodwill (99 cent) Thor silver helmet spray painted gold and then I tore up a dollar store pink feather duster and red boa for the plume. Purple and Gold panels of curtains were used for the toga and were a good length (curtain's width is costume's height). I even found new gladiator sandals in her size at Goodwill - I got major love for that find! But, what to do with the lack of a Athena breastplate emblazoned with the ferocious face of Medusa? Take Back Halloween had a couple ideas about casting a stone face of Medusa, which somehow I put together with a Pinterest idea I saw to make a custom dressform from duct tape. Don't ask me how it came to me, just one of those late night musings as I was falling asleep. The next morning I thought about it all day and had to act that night! It turned out pretty awesome and my daughter loves it. My son wants armor now too, so an orange (his favorite color) chest plate is forthcoming for him.

What you need:

• old tee-shirt that will be cut up - form fitting as possible (ours was too big) = $2 from michaels
• duct tape - 2 from dollar store = $2
• spray paint = $5 
• non-pointy scissors - I bought dollar store ones so I didn't use good ones to cut duct tape = $1
• medusa head: 
•      zombie mask from the dollar store - or other "face" plastic type mask = $1
•      snakes - we got glow in the dark from dollar store - 3 packages of 4 = $3

Total = ~$14

I wasn't planning on documenting, so the pictures aren't too great and don't start at the beginning, but there are lots of duct tape dressform tutorials on pinterest that can be referred to.

1. Put a tee (nothing under it) on the kid
2. Have them take a deep breath and puff out chest
3. Quickly wrap tape around the chest, not pulling tight but wrapping it as flat as possible.
4. Rip off some lengths and go over the shoulders where you want your armor to go. You don't need to be precise as you can cut it down. Focus on getting it smooth and covering the areas that you want to show. I did about 2 layers.
5. Medusa head: I cut the zombie plastic mask down as flat as it could reasonably go, about an inch and a half around the whole thing to make it lay as flat as I could against the armor. Then I duct taped around the edges trying to be as neat as possible.

Here's what my daughter looked like:

At this point my step-mom came over and pretty much thought I was NUTS. My daughter saw my vision though, so I persisted. Husband just said, "I know you know what you are doing and it will be great, but I don't see it". :) 

• Use your blunt tip scissors and put your hand under the shirt between skin and shirt (to protect them) and cut it off the person straight up the back. At this point they will be very glad to breathe normally again!
• Figure out how you want the base of the breastplate, neckline and shoulders to go. I had to put it back on her several times to mark the general lines to cut. Don't worry about the marker as you will spray paint over this. 
• Lay out your snakes and hot glue them on when you are ready and like the layout

So then we had this: 

Finally after a coat of bronze spray paint we had....

The Goddess Athena!

Most likely I will put laces or velcro or something to hold the back together, but she doesn't seem to care that the back is open, and it is covered by the purple shawl so maybe I will just leave it be. 

Hope this helps someone!
Wendy

Modge podge and glitter girls skateboard

My little girl chose a beat up old skateboard at goodwill the other day for $9.99. It had obviously been used for all sorts of tricks as the bottom was all torn up and scuffed. Top was grungy and yuck. She had been eyeing the other girls pretty skateboards in class, so I was pretty surprised she had chosen this one. She let me know right away that we were going to decorate it. Tonight was the night...

1. Out of my spray paint stash she chose gold. We used three light coats and it looked pretty awesome, but to glamorize it more we threw on two types of coordinating glitter.



2. We printed out a bunch of Paris images and modge podged the bottom of the board. Trimmed the edges. I have been going over the edges several times tonight with modge podge and plan to seal with waterproof sealant too.

Pre-trim:



Sealed:

Train Case Remodel

Here's the Sisters on the Fly train case I made.


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Glitter Mingos

My sister somewhat dared me into this... The color is my trailer accent.



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Dinette cushions progressing faster

I'm recovering old icky ones with red check oilcloth.



- preview of new trailer look



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Gaucho cushions in progress!

One box of the three is done!
This is furniture finish fabric in Air Blue.





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Tile coasters

Inspired by pinterest... We did a ton of these for teacher gifts during vacation.

Pillow for the trailer

I've got quite a few crafts done on this vacation, yea!

I stayed up too late last night making this pillow for my trailer. It will match the curtains... The polka dot blue is the curtain fabric.

Kids Beach room Memorial... it's coming down this weekend

After 4 years of beachy-ness, my grand painting of a beach scape is going to be painted over since dh convinced the girl that she and her brother should have the small room. S is upset about painting over the painting, but is otherwise happy with her side of the deal which was getting bunkbeds. I also now have to paint her a jungle (her idea, not mine).

I have a huge painting of haystack rock which was over baby boy's bed, but is now trapped behind our massive headboard.

Sailboat is pretty tiny and was a quick add on that I meant to go back and fix up, but never did.

Horse is her imaginary horse "Boom", with S feeding him an apple.

Balloon has curious george in it, and I did it right before baby boy was born as they were sharing the room and we had to make it a bit more boy-ish.

More pics to follow.

S's Christmas Stocking

Long ago my mother made us each our own custom stocking for Christmas. It had always weighed on my mind that S and R didn't have one of their own. This year S helped me design hers. What started off with a small idea became huge as it usually does when she takes my idea and runs with it. Main shape of stocking matches mine and Shell's.

I thought it should have an owl as the main picture. She thought it should have an owl family... then a fox (she was studying them) and later the fox really needed a friend (rabbit???).

So, she helped me sketch it out, then hounded me for days about making it... really she asked me every day for a month if we could work on it. Finally I got the owls done. Then designed the tree, fox, branches and rabbit. Then she got to pick out the fabric for the background since apparently years of collecting fabric had not gotten me a single snowflake fabric! I got them somewhat sewed on, then did all of the embelishment at night on a trip for work. When I got home it was unveiled and the part she really wanted... sewing it together had arrived.

So here is the final product. Well, if S were here, she would say that her name isn't written on it in sparkles, but that is left for next year.

Baby Boy's Hungry Caterpillar Party

Probably the most crafty thing I did with this party was customize his shirt and pants. I am not sure I have a picture of the pants, but they had fruit and such being eaten on the bottom pocket. This shirt had the caterpillar across the front. They were made from printing onto iron-on fabric and there was a bit of drawing on the candle on the cupcake.

Here he is waiting for guests.

Fabulous cupcakes with gummy worms from my sister Shell of course.

Table set with stuffed animals from B and N... and B's vintage Happy Apple to be eaten by the caterpillar.

Grandma's Mothers day gift

Etched a vase at midnight last night!

Daring Bakers' September Challenge - Puff Pastry Vols-au-Vent

The completed challenge!

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

She was so disappointed that we weren't going to be able to eat the challenge that night, that she got to make a bonus... brownies.


The sliced dough, ready to go!


1 pound of butter goes in this dough!


Grandma's 50 year old rolling pin...


Envelope fold


Little helper. Practicing his rolling technique. It included jabbing the end of it into my dough!


Our cutouts... Sahara made other shapes and twisty sticks later.


Fresh out of the oven. I forgot to tamp down the centers of the vol au vents.

Torta Continued

Here's the pics from our continuation of the Daring Baker's Challenge.

The chocolate buttercream frosting turned out more like a glaze due to adding the butter while the mixture was warm... so that caused the candy decorations to slowly ooze down the cake. By the following morning, there was a big mess inside of the cake dome. Thank goodness I had put it on or there would have been chocolate everywhere.

Lots of dark chocolate, it smelled delicious!

Make-shift double boiler making the buttercream frosting, before the chocolate was added.
Sliced spongecake ready for the candy topping
Boiling, boiling, boiling... will it ever turn amber?
The ooze begins...
It may not have looked great, but it tasted wonderful!

Daring Bakers' August Challenge - Dobos Torta, a Hungarian speciality

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite

Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

Heres the freshly laid eggs from our chicken Cleo... see how yellow they are!

So, Baby Girl and I didn't get this all the way done, but I do have 6 fine sponge cake rounds ready to go tomorrow. I just got done with them about half an hour ago! S had to go to sleep so Cairo the pup helped me out.

Thick ribbons of yolk and sugar

Eggwhites folded in

The baked sponge cake... ugh, 5 more to go!

Finally... the stack of 6 cakes ready to go tomorrow to finish this baby!