Knit Bibs

Every time my daughters wear these bibs, people give them compliments (and ask if I made them).  I wish I had!--- but I do not knit.  My lovely friend Katie made them as a gift (umm, yes, the same Katie that brought me granola bars, I aspire to be such a kind and thoughtful person like her)! 
She said she made a basic washcloth pattern, but added the 2 longer sections to go around the neck.  Then make a button hole and add the button.  Since I know nothing about knitting, this sounds difficult to me, but she said it's easy.   If you knit, give it a try!  They're sure to be a big hit and get many "oohs" and "aawwhs."

Thank you Katie!

Do You Love Granola Bars?

Then you will want to make these.  From Smitten Kitchen.  LOVE.

This is picture from the Smitten's site, but mine look the same... so why bother taking my own picture?

I made a batch this morning.  There are 2-3 cups of "whatever you want" ingredients (you can make them as healthy or junky as you want).  This was my combination today:
2/3 cup sliced almonds
2/3 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips
1/4 cup each of pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds

I also added some honey while mixing it to make sure they were moist enough.   And then I accidentally left them in the oven 10-15 minutes longer than I was supposed to.... still turned out perfectly.  I always put them in the fridge to finish cooling so that they are easier to cut.  Oh one more ingredient note!  It calls for "oat flour"... which you can make by blending oats finely.  But I still have leftover baby cereal that I use (any kind works, rice cereal, oatmeal, whole wheat, whatever).

Thanks to Katie Rudy for bringing these to me shortly after I had the girls: I thought they were amazing!

Simon really likes it when I have these around so that he can take one for breakfast in the morning.  It makes me happy when my husband likes something I make.  Sigh.

Give these a try!

Key Fob

Saw these wrist key chains a few weeks ago on Infarrantly Creative, originally from the Idea Room.  Her fabric choice and perfect sewing construction created instant desire to make one for myself.  Enter: my so-so fabric choice and far-from-perfect sewing "science" (I guess that's what I'll call it) = a different version that actually turned out quite handy.
I didn't feel like waiting to buy a clip, so I repurposed my current (annoying) key strap.  Go Kats!

In hindsight, I should have left more length on the right side of the strap... I didn't leave myself much sewing room.  I also chose some really thick fabric, so I didn't add lining.  Since my fabric was so thick, I could hardly sew through all of it to attach it to the clip!  So I decided to use embroidery thread to secure the attachment.  I actually really like it...

Do I just like it because I'm the one who spent all the time sewing it?  Who knows.  Either way, it is MUCH more functional than that freakishly long IWU string that always tickled my leg while driving.  It's also the perfect size to throw around my wrist, or just let it hang out of my purse pocket (easy to grab before getting into the car...ehh, van).
So I highly recommend them.  To everyone.  And if you don't want to make one, hire me to do it so I can get more practice.  Thinner fabric would offer the look of the original one that I linked above.
Well there you have it.  Happy Wednesday!

Baseball Party

Christian turned 3!  I was planning on doing a soccer party, but Daddy Henry won out for baseball (and I'm glad he did!).
In addition to adults, we were only going to have 7 kids at the party (and that's including kids under the age of 2), so it was primarily aimed at pleasing the grown up bunch.  I am looking forward to parties that involve a whole slew of kids!  Anyway, we did the typical baseball invite, ball park food and decor.  It was a lot of work and I started way too late, but it turned out to be a lot of fun!  Oh yeah, and I realized the Dollar Tree is totally the place to go if you're throwing a party.

Decorations:  Yep, good ol' pinata (before and after)! I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  A scoreboard just for fun.  Streamers and balloons.

Food!  Hotdogs and hamburgers, cracker jacks, watermelon, IBC(!), and Emeril's fresh Strawberry Lemonade (I could drink this all summer!).

Cake and presents (thank you everyone!).  Great baseball cake from Mammaw Henry.

Oh yeah, and Christian sang the National Anthem into his lovely red horn.

PLAY BALL!  We made our own baseball field.  Fun for kids and adults!

(and see that wee-little person in the red shirt at the top right?  Yep, that's me.  And it's the ONLY proof that I was in attendance at my son's 3rd birthday party.  At least he'll know I was playing ball).

And the kids loved playing in the pool and sprinkler...

I thought that Christian would love hitting the pinata.  To my surprise, he refused to hit it (this may be a first he's ever refused to hit anything!), and he would not let Simon help him hit it.  So it was left to his cousins and the help of adult strength.  Once the candy came out, everyone was happy again.

And this little Orioles guy was lovin' life...

Pants to Shorts

It seems like this must be the oldest trick in the book, but regardless, it was something I thought of that was an "aha" moment to me.  Once it got hot out, I realized I only had 1 or 2 shorts total for the twins.  That just wasn't going to work.  I was planning on going thrifting or to consignment shops, but then I was like Wait!  I just put a few pairs of pants into storage bins that are too short for them.  Perfect! 

So from there, I proceeded to chop off the pants and either leave as is, or add the original hem back on, depending on the fabric.  It was also nice to choose the length of the shorts (as some are already designed to be so short, for a ONE year old!).
If you think you'd like to do this, but don't have much sewing experience, I still think you could.  As seen below, I cut off the pants, added the original hem back on (pin with raw edges at bottom and right sides together), sew, and you're done.  The only caution: if you haven't sewn knits before (like t-shirt material), don't stretch it as you sew! (it makes it stretch and ruffle)  I made this mistake on one of the legs and had to redo it.

  

I only did 3 pairs for now, and the purple one I didn't even hem (especially take note of that if you don't want to sew!).  

If you're thinking "I don't know about that"... you could always designate them as play shorts, ready for the wear and tear and tear that summer brings to little bottoms!  This would also be good for girl or boy.  The same day I made these, I saw this post from Dana at MADE (one of my top 5 blogs for sure!).

The way I see it: 3 free pairs of shorts!

Ironic

I saw this picture today from another blog, this bliss life.

And I was like, "WHOA!".... because it looks like the (much) better (and more expensive) version of what we did to our last kitchen in the rental:

See the resemblance?  Or course, we had to work with the current appliances, cabinets, and very limited funds, but it was much better than when we got there and it looked like this:

nice. :)

Did You Notice?

This is kind of old news, but I still wanted to point it out.  When I showed you the dining room pictures, you may not have taken notice of the gold light fixture...

It was too small for the room, especially with the high ceilings.  But the living room had a fancy glass chandelier... seemed a little out of place.  Can you see it way down there in the other room?

So we did a swap.  Well, my father-in-law did a swap... I just cleaned the dust off in between.  I'm not sure how much electrical knowledge you'd need to have to do this, but its probably a good idea to have someone do it who's done it before.  

Something else I did in the process was remove the grapevine-etched globes that sat around each candle on the glass chandelier.  This made it immensely more appealing, in my opinion.

Now I have this lovely guy in my living room... seems like another project for another day.