It’s the most wonderful time of the year…. {W.I.P Wednesday}

Since we’ve already discussed my sanity before, we won’t even bother going in to that.

This year, after looking at the prices of Christmas pajamas and those adorable Christmas outfits, I realized {once again} that they are ridiculously overpriced, even if they are seriously cute! If I were to buy matching PJs and coordinated outfits for the kids it was going to cost around, $320, give or take. Yea, not something we have room in our budget for.

I, in a moment of absolute brilliance, decided that I would SEW all of those clothes instead. I got some adorable flannel to make bottoms for ALL of us, which cost me around $30 for NINE YARDS (Joann had it on sale for $2.79/yard). I purchased some beautiful reds and greens to make jumpers for the girls and rompers for the boys.

Then my MasterMind Blogging group, decided to do a little something {more on this VERY soon – I can’t wait to share it with you!}, that I now have another project to complete.
Well, all this to say that I now have 11 things to stitch to completion in the next 3 weeks. Are you laughing yet? I am.

What is it they say, “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity” {I think I cross it quite frequently}.

Yesterday, my mother-in-law, very graciously, agreed to take the kids for the day so that I could work on some of the mountain. I actually had a very productive day, only to realize at the end of it, that everything came out way too big. Oh yea. The dress I made for Ellie, fits Ave, but it’s too short to be a dress on Ave: Yup.

I’ve decided to look at it this way: I made outfits that will work for the next few years. No one will remember what they wore this year. So, I’m ahead of the game. {Yea, I’m not buying it either – Forehead meet palm}.


They are what they are.

I still need to stitch the inseam and hem on the boys; I intentionally cut the legs long, knowing that I might have to adjust for their cloth diapers, but I think I’m just going to hem them up, so that they can still wear these in a few years…I also need to do the buttons. I just need to finish the buttons on the girls, but I think, after seeing how big it was on Ave, I’m going to have to do some gathering at the waist.

I did however give up on my idea of making 3 Christmas stockings this year. It just was not working and I decided that I could live with them having stockings that I had not made. It also really helped that Lands’ End had an awesome sale {30% off + free shipping + save $10 when you bought 3 or more stockings+6% Cash Back via Ebates.com}: It worked out to $18 a stocking. I can’t even make them that cheap.
Now it’s on to quilting projects and Christmas pajamas. Hopefully I don’t manage to mess either of those things up.

So…now…if you would be willing to pray for me and the projects I need to complete I would absolutely appreciate it.

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Are you working on any projects for Christmas? I’d love to hear about them.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Stop the world - I want to get off!

It’s been a bit crazy, still, around here. The kids all struggled with Hand, Foot and Mouth, this past week. I had a couple of nights of not getting to bed until 5am, then being up for the day at 7am. Fortunately, my mother in law came and spent Friday night so that I could get some sleep.

Last night the kids seemed to be back on schedule. This afternoon I got home from a baby shower and Matt was on the couch, sore throat and a fever. Now I have a sore throat. I’m just praying I don’t get sick and that Matt gets over it REALLY fast.

I have about 5 or 6 posts, some already written, that I keep meaning to finish and get up here, but I just haven’t had time. I had a whole bunch of stuff I was going to say in this post, but now I seriously can’t remember them.

I did declare google-reader bankruptcy and cleared it out. I had over 250 unread posts. No way was I going to get to them and I didn’t really think that brow-beating myself was going to be productive. SO….tell me what’s been up with you, especially if I’ve missed something major (i.e. I didn’t comment on a post).

Also, since I can’t seem to remember what all I had planned on saying, what are your questions for me? Anything goes. Even if it’s something like what kind of PJs do I wear. What are some things you would like to see me do around here: Vlogging? Recipes? Tutorials? House or sewing projects? If you don’t want to leave a comment then feel free to email me jess.white05 at gmail dot come

Let me know :-)

Oh, and I’m not going to be doing the Creating Community through Comments Blog Hop in September. Just too many other things making demands on my time.  BUT I do still, encourage you to seek out new blogs and leave’em some comment love. Feel free to take down the graphic on your blogs.

DIY Hanging Jewelry Box

I’m not a big jewelry person, much to all of the females in my family’s chagrin. When I turned 18 and 21, those big, special birthdays, I wanted power tools. Yes I’m odd.


I do have some jewelry, special pieces and things only for getting dressed up. On a daily basis, I wear my wedding band, that’s it.

For a while I’ve really wanted some way of hanging up my necklaces and being able to see them. Matt had built me a jewelry box many years ago, but it’s a flat one, so things get tangled and you have to dig through it. Last year I had taken a mirror and put some cup hooks on it for Ave to hang her necklaces on {I think she has more than me, and always wants to wear one}, which worked great and got me thinking.

There’s gotta be a way to do something similar.

I had formulated an idea in my head, but didn’t give it too much detail. When I was cleaning out the dining room I found a piece of 3”x36” craft wood (measuring a little less than a 1/2” thick). I had already been toying with the idea of taking a clementine box (those wood crates the fruit comes in at the store) and altering that.

With a couple of cuts on our miter saw, a paint stirrer, some luan we had lying around, and some glue and nails I cobbed together my jewelry box.

I wood-filled and sanded, then slathered it with some primer, painted it the colors we used in our bedroom {LOVE leftover paint!}.

I got the same little hooks I used on Ave’s mirror at the hardware store, screwed them into the top, staggering them front and back so that I could get more pieces in.

I was kind of at a loss as to what to do for a hanger, then I realized I had all these cans of formula with really big pull tabs on them. I ripped one off the can, grabbed some crazy glue, and voila! Instant hanging tab {I will admit, I think I saw it on pinterest somewhere}.

Put my nail in the wall and hung this baby up!



It works great {so far}. I can see everything, nothing gets tangled, my earrings sit on the bottom and the paint stick keeps them in. I could’ve made it longer, but I was working with what I had. It would be really easy to make this whatever dimensions needed.
{You can see there, on the right, one of the necklaces I made for myself, from this tutorial}

Join  me at NotJustaHousewife!

W.I.P Wednesday

The other day I posted asking you to guess what I was working on. It was going to be my WIP post for this week, but I actually managed to finish it before that happened. Presenting Miss A’s dress for this Sunday’s festivities {the babies are being baptized}!

I had a bit of an unfortunate revelation last week. I paid the bills. Which of course made me face the fact that there really wasnt’ much room to buy Ave a dress. I decided it would be more prudent to use some of the fabric that I already had to make her a dress. But I needed a pattern, which can cost a lot of money. So I started googling for “FREE Little Girl Dress Tutorials”.

I found this awesome, AWESOME tutorial {Seriously! Go visit this blog, she has fantastic patterns and tutorials}.

Oh my! I am so proud of this dress! The entire thing is lined, there isn’t an unfinished seam in it! If my grandmother were alive today she might actually have told me I did a good job on it :-)

 

A couple of Christmases ago my mother-in-law bought me a serger, which I promptly thought to myself “What on earth am I going to do with this!?” I’ve changed my tune. Any seam that was visible I was able to finish with the serger. If I were to buy {or sell} this dress it would probably go for around $60 or more, that’s how professional this pattern was and what a difference using a serger makes.

The directions were easy to follow (I am not a clothes-maker) and I was able to figure it all out. I thought it was going to take me the better part of a week to do this, thus my WIP Wednesday post. I did it in 3 afternoons, with a total of about 4-5 hours of work.

Onto an actual WIP!

I’ve been working on this for a while and just got around to doing some more work on it.

This is the boys’ sail boat quilt. I had finished all of the boats a few months ago, but just finished all of the “Thrifty” blocks (left). Now I can start piecing them together. But there is a lot more work to go on this quilt. I’m planning on changing the crib size to twin size, which means adding in some stuff. I’ll be adding a border between rows 1 and 2 and 4 and 5, on which will I’m going to appliqué their names, both in letters and in the call flags for each letter. That alone is going to take a while.

  If you’re interested head over to FRESHLY PIECED and see what others have been up to.

Guess what I’m working on….

W.I.R. {Weekend in Review}

Well the weekend wasn't spent the way that I had hoped, but we have accomplished quite a bit in the past few weeks.

My dad hasn't been good again. He had 8 days straight of a pulse around 140-150, while also being in Atrial fibrillation (simply put, the heart's rhythm is all over and not steady). Fortunately on Thursday night it finally went down and back in rhythm. However, he is not physically feeling well after basically having run a marathon for 192 hours straight.

With my dad not well, it means that the burden of taking dismantling the store and the route have primarily fallen to Matt. Fortunately, things have gone smoothly, but it, of course, means that he hasn't been around home much to get others things accomplished. And we are most certainly on a deadline!

The store needs to be emptied and cleaned by the 1st, the babies are being Baptized the end of May, and we have a weekend in which we'll be heading to NH for our nephew's Baptism. In the "spare hours" we must {or rather Matt must} finish fencing in the yard, build a swing set, and I need to get the gardens done and the house cleaned. I think I'm going to be calling in some help toward the end: It's more than the two of us can accomplish alone.

So....What have we accomplished?

I've managed to rip up a section near our back deck and get a flower garden started {been meaning to do that for years}.

The garlic is waking up from its long winters nap!

I've gotten one of the tipis up for our squash...2 more to go; Matt has gotten about 1/3 of the fence done.

The first year we've had recognizable asparagus!

"God Himself Could Not Sink Her!"

Obviously He could, and did.

Growing up I was fascinated with Titanic, with the engineering, the glamor, the attention to detail that went into the construction of the world's most well known luxury liner. It was because of the movie that I wanted to become an interior designer and architect; that absolute attention to every single minute detail!

I saw the movie no less than 10 times in the theater: I kid you not. While Leo and Kate, as well as the rest of the movie was fascinating, it was the clothes that captured me. So much so that I sat through 8 of those viewings, in the dark, with a sketch pad.

When the movie Titanic came out the internet was not as prolific or well supplied as it is today. I didn't have websites to peruse for countless hours, I had a movie and myself, that was all. With those two things and a very, very steady hand I created.

I introduce to you, the Titanic movie themed paper dolls that I hand painted. So many hours of sitting at my desk, going back and forth with notes and whatever pictures I could find. I hand painted 13 dresses...some replicas from the movie, others my own designs, of 1912 fashion.

This was my favorite scene in the movie, when Rose gets out of the car, at port, and turns her head to look at the ship; such elegance! Of course painting this outfit was my absolute favorite, such beauty! I can just imagine the feel of the taffeta from that bow!

Travel Suit * Flying Dress * Kimono

Dinner Dress * Breakfast Dress * Swim Dress

All of the dresses I painted

I even have the sewing patterns inspired by the movie...someday I will have a Titanic dress. And, I will admit it, I have "le Coeur de la Mer" upstairs in our attic, tucked away amongst my dolls.

It was a different time, there were so many things {good and bad} about that time period that were fascinating. The first half of the 20th century is my time, the time I think I should have been born during.

The other part of the movie that absolutely enchanted me was the music. First off, I love James Horner's compositions: He not only did Titanic, but also Braveheart {another favorite of mine}. During the scene in which Rose and Jack are dancing, and she goes up on pointe, the band playing is fantastic. I searched and searched, for years, before finally finding out if they were real, they are: Gaelic Storm! Matt and I love their music. I'm hoping someday we might get to see them in concert.

Of course, the sinking of the Titanic wasn't just a movie, it was real: 1, 514 people died when she went down, some froze, some drowned, some burned. To me, just thinking about the devastation that was happening is mind blowing, I can't even imagine what it had been like to sit there in a life boat watching, clinging to the rails or whatever else you could grab as you plunged into that icy blackness, or worse yet, trapped below Her decks.

What were they thinking? What were they doing? One man's story I found absolutely fascinating, that of John Harper, a Scottish pastor who was crossing with his daughter on his way to Chicago. Even to the last he was concerned more with the souls of those who he knew would perish.

To me, the most spine chilling part of the Titanic story is the singing of "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" as the last hymn during Sunday morning services, the day the Titanic hit the iceberg...how foreboding those words were "for those in peril on the sea".

As we honor the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's demise, it is not only a fantastical time to be enthralled with, but a time also to remember the lives of those lost.

Best of March