A Few More Projects

My son owns a Leapster Explorer.  He loves it.  He has to earn games by trying to new foods ( which pretty much NEVER happens! or by doing things around the house. ) Basically we bribe him which I am TOTALLY okay with.  You do what you gotta do sometimes.  He really needed a case for it but I REALLY wanted his case to be able to hold the games as well.  All of the manufactured kind in the store only hold the actual leapster.  BOOOOO  I finally got around to making him my own.  I even did a tutorial for it!  However, after just a couple of hours of using it I found it's not very practically.  It would be an easy fix but I haven't had time to fix it yet.  Here's what it looks like.

The Leapster goes in the main pocket to the left and the little pockets to the right are for the tiny games.  There are 9 pockets and right now we only have 3 games so we have room to grow.  The part where I messed up is that I didn't close off the pockets with velcro.  this means that when my kid goes to close it, the games slide out very easily.  Not good.  I will fix it one of these days but for now we are just happy we have a case for everything.

The only thing I have worked on this last week was some wedding accessories.  I get request for wedding garters on etsy a lot.  Here is the latest

I made a tutorial for garters too!  Hopefully sometime this week I can post it.  Garters are actually SUPER easy to make.  I usually use satin ribbon and then it makes it even easier.

Then I made two hair clips for weddings. These aren't for anyone specific, I made them just because I thought they were cute and they have been getting a lot of people in the shop I am selling hair clips in looking for wedding stuff.  Not a single one of my hair clips has sold so I figured I'd better change my strategy.  I dropped them off today and the owner thought they were SO cute!  Hopefully that means someone will buy them.

So we'll see what happens.  I HATE not having time to do things.  I have so many hair clips in my head that I want to try to do but I am having a hard time managing my new time schedule with my son in school and my daughter needed mommy time.  I have also been trying to work out everyday which is proving to be difficult.  I know this isn't new.   Every mother struggles with time management and I know it's just a matter of time before I get into a good groove.  I am telling you that I am ADDICTED to pinterest!  I know this isn't knew to anyone yet either but I have been finding the GREATEST stuff on there.  Since we are going to be moving into a new home in 2 plus months I have been trying to find good decorating ideas and things.  Here's hoping everything goes well with the house.  The bank did not choose to foreclose since we had already gone into escrow.  Now we are going to do the inspection and hope things go well with that!  Cross your fingers for us.

Is anyone thinking about Christmas already?  I am NOT one of those people who start playing Christmas music at home or getting out my decoration before December 1st.  In fact, I don't listen to Christmas music at home at all.  I get enough of it when I go out.  I am annoyed that stores are already stocking up on Christmas stuff.  I DO however, start thinking about what I am going to MAKE people for Christmas.  I am hoping to make a lot of fun "green" things for people this year.  We shall see what happens.

Getting Crafty

I have been not the craftiest person ever, but I have had projects going non-stop it seems through out the last week.  I was asked to do some hair clips for someone's wedding.  They wanted some different colors then usual weddings which made it slightly harder to get the stuff to make them. They wanted black and red flowers, with feathers and netting.  I bet this wedding is going to be styling!  Here is what I made

The black flower is for the bride and the red flowers are for the bridesmaids.  You have NO idea how hard it was to find black flowers that were NOT roses.  I finally found a "bush"that was black leaves and I took those apart and glued them all together to form a flower.  Then the red flowers I had bought were bigger then the black flower.  I couldn't have that seeing as how it was the brides hair things, so I call ALL of the petals off and then glues those all together to form smaller flowers. It was a lot of work!  But I think they turned out great.  I also did a garter and some other wedding hair things this week.  I'll post later.

I had some drama when on Thursday my husband got out my external hard drive to get a picture off of it that someone had ordered on canvas from my etsy store only to find out that the hard drive was not responding.  It was the back up to my lap top which fried about e month ago.  So my back up to my lap top and the lap top were both gone.  This means I probably lost 10,000 pictures and most were from pregnancy with my daughter on.  So pretty much all of her baby pictures.  I was CRUSHED!  I balled myself to sleep.  We are hopeful that we are going to be able to retrieve them.  I'll let you know how that goes.  I'm crossing my fingers and SO GLAD, I was a good blogger on my family blog during those years so I know I have a lot of those pictures SOMEWHERE.  I am still pretty depressed but we'll see what happens.  I gotta run for now but I'll be back soon with more projects to show you !  Hope evryone is having a great Monday!!!

Chocolate Milk

My kids love chocolate milk.  Let me rephrase that.  My GIRL loves chocolate milk and my boy has kinda grown out of it.  Most of the time he wants regular milk now.  My girl on the other hand won't even drink regular milk any more.  First thing in the morning she has a sippy of chocolate milk for breakfast.  Can you blame her?!  I love having some nesquik milk for breakfast half of the time too.  Any ways.  If I had never of tried doing the South BEach diet I would have never thought to try less sugar.  I KNOW sugar is bad for you but I just had never really been concerned about stuff like that.  Do you know what?  I see the two of these in the store ALL of the time.

I would have assumed before trying the South BEach diet that 25 % less sugar would be LESS sugar.  Hmmmm  If you are a South Beach dieter you know that things that say NO SUGAR ADDED are usually allowed.  Like no sugar added fudgesicles are a yes when doing South Beach.  I always buy the no sugar added nesquik because it is also allowed.  Before that I always bought the 25% less sugar.  Well, the other day we were OUT OF CHOCOLATE MIX! Seriously OUT!  I knew that was an emergency for my daughter because she wouldn't drink plain milk.  I ran to the little market where we live and they only had the 25% less sugar and since it was an emergency I bought it.  A couple of days later I found the NO SUGAR ADDED.  When I got home I compared the two and was shocked!

25 %  less sugar has
60 calories
0.5 g Total fat
30 g sodium
14 g total carbs
13 g sugar

Sheesh

NO sugar added
35 calories
1 g total fat
70 g sodium
7 g total carb
3 g sugar

Man!   What a difference huh?!  I was shocked it was that much and I HONESTLY think the no sugar added taste much better, it however doesn't mix as well but that's okay.  Obviously the sodium is higher but I don't take in much sodium and neither do my kids so I'm okay with that.
So is this news to anyone else or am I the only dummy who didn't realize this?!   I mean really when you see "no sugar added" verses "25% less sugar"  I just thought LESS SUGAR meant it would have LESS sugar.  That's what I get for assuming right?

Hope this helped even one person.  :)

Yikes!

Any one else a total slob like me?  I am especially so when it comes to my sewing and craft stuff.  I think it is due to the frequency at which I use them.  You know what I mean?!   I can't wait until we get a new house and I have a creative space that is mine that I don't have to clean if I don't want to.  For now I am stuck with the kitchen and my crap is every where!  Here is what I decided to do to help the clutter.

Click here

The blog the Little Green Bean takes foam board ( which you can get at the dollar store for...well, a dollar! haha ) and cuts them up into 8 pieces and then wraps the fabric around it to store.  Um hello awesome!  I am in the process and my material already looks SOOOOOOOOOO much better.  I'll post pictures when I get more done but trust me if you have tons of fabric and you hate digging through it every time you need to make something check out the above blog post and consider doing yourself a favor!  It's super easy, super cheap ( which you gotta love ) and totally doable in a reasonable amount of time.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Thomas the Train

Here are the pictures of the Thomas the train hat I made for my friends boy last week.

I am sure it looks cuter on and I am crossing my fingers it actually fits him!  :)

This is with the Jack and Jill pattern from izzy and ivy. Very easy pattern and it gets easier every time you try it.

9-11

I remember this day like it was yesterday...

What do you remember from this day?  I am STILL kicking myself that I didn't save any newspapers from this day or any of the days after.  My husband was in Brazil on a mission for our church when this happened and he saved a Brazilian newspaper from this week!  He said it was really crazy being in another country. He said someone came up to him and asked if he was American and then said his country was under attack.  He didn't really believe him.  I'm glad he kept the newspaper!

Never forget all those who lost their lives that day.  Some willing and some not.  I am blessed to be an American!

HATS!

I got to sew on Friday and let me tell you it was SO nice!  My friend Sarah has a boy turning 3 who LOVES trains.  I made him a kind of conductor hat with Thomas the train on it.  I like how it turned out and now I am just crossing my fingers it fits!  They live in Texas so I can't just measure his head and make sure it fits.  Cross your fingers for me.  I'll post some pictures of it later.

While I was making the train hat Kayla grabbed it half made and said, "Oh mom I love it!"  So I told her it was not for her but that mommy can make her a new hat too.  She has been carrying around some Dora fabric like it was a blanket and I have been wanting to make her a new dress with it.  Instead I decided to make her a Dora hat!  I LOVE how it came out.

She was NOT into having her pictures taken with it on though.  I gave her my phone because she wanted to do a puzzle and I told her if I let her do a puzzle she needed to let mommy take her pictures.  Can I call a two year old a liar?!  haha  This is what I got

I got great pictures of the top of it!  So I said, "Kayla can you look up at mommy?"  So she did, however she brought the phone up over her face!

I got ONE good one

And then I got the look of death....

Well so much for awesome pictures of the hat but you get the point any ways right!  Oh yeah and I used the Jack and Jill pattern by Izzy and Ivy.  It's a great pattern and now that I have made it 6 or 7 times it gets better every time I make one!