Toddler Shawl Tutorial

I had some fabric left over from a recent custom order so I decided to make a little something for my daughters.  There was enough to make 2 ruffled skirts but when I asked my oldest daughter if she wanted one, she promptly pouted and said no. We've been trying to teach her that her word is her word...so when she told me no, I said "ok, I'll just make one for your sister then."

So with the fabric I would have made the second skirt with...well, I wasn't sure what to do with it!

Until my 2 year old snagged a piece of the remnants and threw it over her shoulders.

A cute little ruffly, summery shawl!! 

I even have a bit of a tutorial but trust me, it's not hard! The hardest part (and I think any seamstress would agree) is getting the ruffles to all lay straight and flat.

Fold your fabric in half length wise and cut it to these measurements:

Cut a curve along the open sides. Hem the top (the longest edge) and the curved sides. This is a knit fabric, so it doesn't fray. I did NOT hem the bottom. I simply trimmed off the excess fabric under the last ruffle.  When you're measuring this type of fabric, remember that each ruffle is one inch long. So 10 ruffles = 10". This really helps keep a straight line when you're cutting down the length of a ruffle.

Once your edges are hemmed, drape it on your DD and decide where you want the ribbon ties to be. Ours ended up being 7-8" up from the bottom corners.  

We did a quick photo shoot this morning (before it reached today's high of 101*)...this is a time of day when my Annie does not like to be away from her "goggie." In most of the photos, I let her hang on to it...but nearing the end, I asked her to let me hold it for just a minute.

If you've never worked with ruffle fabric before, it can be tricky just getting the ruffles to lay flat (so they don't fold up in the seams you sew) and keeping them aligned in a seam.  I learned my lesson after my first couple of tries and I am happy to say that these seams lined up nicely!!  I figured out that you HAVE TO PIN EVERY SINGLE RUFFLE!!  It is time consuming but you don't want to seam rip this stuff as it will rip holes very easily. (Trust me, I KNOW.) So take the time to pin each ruffle. You'll be glad you did.

What have you been making??

Chocolate Pudding

The other day we had pudding after lunch.

and then a bath.



2 Months

I'm not one to do this much but life flew by with my almost 3 year old daughter and I feel like I don't have near enough pictures of her baby days. :(  Makes me sad.

So I am trying to rectify that with Ember!

My sweet girl still has all of her hair. About a week ago she began to smile at us and interract some with her siblings.  They are over the moon excited whenever she smiles!

If you look at the 2nd row left photo you'll see the only photo where I was able to capture her smiling.  When I showed the picture to my son (7) he said, "Ember smiles weird sometimes Mom." Haha! Yup. I know!

Oh sweet girl! Pink is your color!! 

You are 2 months old now baby girl. All of your hair is still there and people can't stop talking about it. Wherever we go that is the main topic of conversation, that and how cute you are.

You took to breastfeeding like a champ and just this week I pumped and gave you a bottle for the first time.

*you tolerated it*

Ha!  You drank 2 1/2 oz and I let you finish off with nursing since you weren't all that impressed with the bottle.  When you were 5 weeks old you began to sleep 5 hrs through the night and after just a couple of days, you stretched to 7...then quickly up to 9-10 hrs.  Now at 2 months old, I am confident that you will sleep at least 10 hrs each day.

I can't THANK YOU ENOUGH for that!!!

From weeks 4-8 you really preferred to be held...during every waking moment. Thankfully, you seem to be slowly coming out of that stage a bit which is a major relief for your mama. 

Yesterday, on your actual 2 month birthday, we took you to OSU hospital to visit with our friend who was in a serious car accident the day before.  Unfortunately we weren't able to see our friend, but you lit up the room for his wife for the hour+ we were there.  Having such a sweet 8 week old around never hurts :)

We love you more than words can describe sweet girl!

*******************************************************************************

If you missed my Summer Fun post this morning, go check it out!

Summer Fun: Splash Pad

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, we are working from a summer bucket list of sorts.  I really wanted to do something more with the list but summer is here and we're already DOING these things. So for now, it's a file on the computer.

Our most recent BIG event from the list was this past Monday when we took our littles to a local Splash Pad!!  The littles had so much fun splashing and jumping through the fountains. We don't live in a large metropolis so I got on the web and searched for splash parks or splash pads.

The closest large city to where we live had 4 or 5 of them in varying degrees of...size and enjoyment. There are closer ones, but the one we chose is an actual park with a splash pad.  Two of the ones I found are parts of large malls. Overall, the one we chose was family friendly and we felt would work best for our littles. 

AND THEY HAD A BLAST!!

Ick...trying to get her to stop drinking recycled water.

I find the physical differences between my 3 daughters hilarious! Their coloring is different, hair color and hair, build and size...not to mention personalities. It is so hard to believe at times, that they are sisters and all three came from my husband and me. :)

Playing with daddy: swinging in circles around the and through the fountain. When one does it, they ALL want in on it!

Waiting for the fountains to shoot upward :)

Mommy's turn to play and get a little wet with the girls.  It felt good cause it was hOOOt!

Ember's time with Daddy...he ALWAYS squins outside!

still tasting the recycled water...

This little stinker. Just climbed into the travel baby swing which is only meant to go up to about 20lbs!  After I made her get out she lays on the floor and looks up at me saying, "you gonna make me cry."

She's a cutie and still gets into trouble!

What are you up to this summer?  Come back for more summer fun ideas! We have some indoor ones as well!

Summertime Fun: Make Ice Cream in a Ziplock

 So, I haven't blogged about this, but we are working from a Summer Bucket List of sorts and what I am about to show you is one of those things on our list.  Sometime in the last month, I saw that you can make ice cream in a ziplock baggie.  

To say that I was skeptical is definitely an understatement!

Oh my word! This stuff is heavenly!  (Ok. I'm an ice cream connoisseur [I needed spell check for that word!] and this stuff was REALLY good!)

I found my recipe and tutorial over at 2 Little Hooligans.  I guess I never really knew the concept behind making ice cream otherwise I would not have been so skeptical.  Basically, you have your ice cream recipe: 1 cup half and half, 2 tbsp sugar, 1/2 tspn of vanilla extract and mix it up, put into a small ziplock baggie.  Fill a gallon size ziplock halfway with ice, then add 1/2c of rock salt.

NOTE: I found "ice cream" salt with the other cooking salt at Walmart.  It is simply rock salt.

Put the small ziplock inside the large ziplock and shake for 5-7 minutes.  After a few shakes, I lost dropped/lost some ice out onto the floor so I put the large bag inside another one. This did the trick and my bag didn't rip open anymore.  

My next problem was...

 

FREEZING COLD HANDS!!!

 

 So, I grabbed the closest cloth item I could reach: one of my sons t-shirts!!  A rag or kitchen towel would work perfectly as well. :) 

Before you know it...you'll have this!

I divied (is this a word?) up the ice cream between my three littles, added chocolate syrup to 2 of the bowls, and they dove in.

It tastes great. It's fun...it cools you off on a hot day and the littles can help too!  I definitely recommend that you all try this too...whether you have littles or not!  

Last summer, I was still working outside the home so we couldn't plan to do much because I had to be back in time for work.  This summer however, nothing is holding us back from a good day trip away!!!  2 mondays ago, we took the littles to a great place 45 minutes away that is an indoor showroom for swingsets, basketball hoops, and trampolines!!  For a small fee, children can play on all the equipment and wear themselves out!  This past Monday we found a splash pad to check out.  We packed our lunches and had a ball.  

Do you have any grand plans for this summer?

Homemade Laundry Detergent

In my longstanding attempt to cut back on the money we spend, I decided to try making my own laundry detergent.  It is supposed to be quite the savings as well as a good laundry cleaner. 

I first tried using this recipe:

1 cup 20 Mule Team Borax

1 cup Washing Soda

1 bar Fels Naptha Soap

All of which can be purchased at Walmart.

You grate the bar of soap (it looks EXACTLY like grated cheese!) and then simply mix it all together.  It washed just fine, but my clothes didn't smell nice...didn't smell bad, but not really nice. 

And I like my clothes to smell nice!

So I had read that you could do the same only use a bar of ivory soap instead.  I tried that except I made a much bigger batch.  This should last me roughly 6 months and it cost me about $12 to make.  I haven't figured out exactly how much is in there ( A LOT) but I think it's gonna be around 5c a load.

Honestly though, it doesn't smell much different.  My next thought is to add ground up dry lavender to it and see if that helps the scent.  If that doesn't work, I'll move on to a few drops of essential oils. 

In the mean time, this is a plastic pretzel bucket and I'm using an 1/8th of a cup measuring scoop.  Each regular size load takes a half of that scoop, and a large load takes a whole scoop. 

A few tips I learned the two times I made this: do NOT grate the bar of soap.  Cut it into chunks and run it through your blender with 1 cup of one of the other ingredients.  If you run it through alone it will just gum up the blades and won't run.  If you add too much overall, the motor really works too hard.  Blend 2 or 3 hunks of soap at a time.  Then mix in the last ingredient.

I found this website: Sugar Pie Farmhouse and used their larger quantity recipe.

Have you ever made your own?  How did you get it to smell nice?  I'm going to use this regardless, but I'd really like to try to figure that out. 

Follow my Frugal Living Board on Pinterest!

HAPPY LAUNDERING LADIE!!

Garden City, SC

So, I thought I would share a bit of our vacation with you...

My family, my sister's family, my older brother's family, and my parents all met up in
Garden City, SC for our family vacation this year.

The shore was beautiful...

My Shirley Temple lookalike claimed the beach as her very own giant sandbox. 

our beach access...every time I walked down it the song "Under the Boardwalk" would play in my head...

See? Curly Shirley (sorry. sometimes I call her that.) is still in the sand with her favorite beach buddy: Goonie Val (aka Grandma)

...still there...

my brother's oldest

my oldest...I love the reflection!! 

...STILL there...

the third 7 year old boy cousin (three boys born within a year of each other)

my spot is waiting for me

I'll share more pictures...only had a few uploaded in my computer. 

NOW...

to have an incredible summer with my kids!  We've got a nice little summer bucket list in the works, how bout you??

Vibrant Designs Baby: my new line!!

My BIG shop news???

I would like to introduce all of my wonderful readers to my newest line of products:

Vibrant Designs Baby

 

I took your advice and decided a separate shop would be the wisest route to take.  Below are just a few items that are now available in my shop as BYOF custom orders.  Each item is completely customizable to your specifications.

Please, go check it out and let me know what you think.  Is there something you were interested in that you don't yet see available?  Comment here!