Christmas Past

Merry Christmas Y'All!

Hi Everyone! Mother Bear here! It has been forever since
I last posted. I've repented and put on all the things I
have been doing for the past couple of months.
As you probably know, sewing and doing embroidery
designs is my passion right now.
I've fallen in love with putting mylar under my designs.
I love the shine & class it gives them.
I have so many things I want to do, but not enough
time to do them.
Alas, I'm just like every one else!
I have the bad habit of getting my inspirations at the
very last minute. I really need to find a solution to
this problem, but how do you make your inspirations
come when you want them?
I apologize that I am terrible at putting these posts on!
It is a huge lesson in frustration, so thanks for
putting up with pictures and text in crazy places!
This first towel was at the bottom, but something
happened, & it was gone, so here it is again!!
I need to sit beside my Cali gals and have them show
me how to do it. There's got to be an easier way!
I hope you enjoy the fun I've been having!

I love the Boo Boo Cuddly Bear. The
bear is just the right size for little ones
to cuddle when they have a 'boo-boo!'
It's made out of Minkie, as is the
bear on the bib. The burp cloth is just a
small one that could be used for a doll.

Thoroughly enjoyed making these Embossed Towels.

There are 12 different designs.
Santa, Moose, Boy Elf, Girl Elf,
Deer, Penguin, Gingerbread
Person, Bear, Girl Angel, Boy
Angel, Baby Girl Snowman,
Boy Snowman.

I LOVE MYLAR!!

Have a favorite color? Easy to please!

If you look really close, you can see how shiny the mylar makes these cute
Christmas Ornaments. I made one for every member of the family and gave them at
the family party. (Sent the ones to Cali, Montana, New Jersey, Arkansas).
With nine children, spouses, and
21 grandchildren, I need to get my
inspiration a lot earlier.

I love having towels to match the season. Now if I would keep
some for myself, all would be wonderful. I love
giving them away!

Wish you could see how shiny
and cute
mylar makes this bear!








I Love Mylar!

If you can't see it well, the Minkie on
the back side says, 'Baby Boy' all the
way down it. This is just a small
'Cuddle Cloth' that young children just love to hold and feel.

I hope you all are enjoying this beautiful new year.
My family & I have been very blessed and know
where these blessings come from.
Our Mother/Daughter retreat is in a month, so hope
that inspirations come fast & furious!
'Til next week! Hope you have a great one!

Barbara

{t-shirt ruffle skirt}

Do you have a littel girl who loves to wear skirts?

Do have some old t-shirts just lying around?

If so, then you have got to make these cute t-shrit ruffle skirts.

It's really easy and goes together pretty fast. 

I found a great tutorial on Pinterest from Sew Much Ado 

I've got a few more shirts I need to cut up to make some more skirts for my girls 

I love when I can just recycle things and make something new 

out of something I might would have given away 

Thanks For Stopping By

{birthday shirt}

I was asked to make this cute little shirt for my nephew who will be turning two this week

This is such a cute and fun shirt for any kid to wear at any age and guess what??

IT'S SUPER EASY TO MAKE....I'M NOT JOKING

Even if you are a beginner sewer you can do this...I promise

Want to make one? Here is what you'll need:

t-shirt

scrap fabric for number

paper or card stock

fusible webbing (Ashley from Make It and Love It has beautifully explained what it is HERE)

thread

iron

sewing machine

Here's what to do:

1. Print out from your computer or free hand draw the number that you want to use. Make sure it's the right size to fit your shirt. I like to use card stock because it's a little thicker.

2. Cut out the number.

3. Trace the number BACKWARDS (very important...if you don't do this then your number
will end up being backwards on your shirt) onto the paper part of the fusible
webbing that you are using. I prefer to use either Wonder Under or Lite Heat n Bond.

4. Iron the number onto the WRONG side of the fabric.

5. Cut out number again but this time it will have the fabric attached

6. Peel off the back of the fusible webbing (the paper),
position it on your shirt and iron it down

7. Stitch down. I stitched this as close to edge as possible...probably about 1/8 inch stitch.
I just eyeballed it

8. Now you are all done!!!

Now that wasn't that hard was it?

Ribbon Organizing

I've been a little obsessed with trying to clean out and organize my house. We live in a small townhouse and with 3 little ones needless to say we are running out of room to live. We are not in a position to move (darn it) so I've just decided instead of living in the crowded-ness (is that a real word) I'd try to make it better. When I took my Christmas tree down that just created this need in me to clean and organize out my house.Slowly I am getting things in order and so far I've taken quite a few trips to the good will.

All my crafting stuff was in the garage cause there was no where else to put it. It was driving me crazy having to go out and sort through the garage to find all the stuff I needed to sew or craft so I decided to clean out my downstairs hall closet and turn that into my craft closet. It's a pretty big closet under our stairs so it's not only my craft closet but also the coat closet, the diaper closet, the library closet, & occasionally serves as a hideout for my 2 older kids when they are playing spies.

My craft stuff was pretty disorgainzed. I mean just look at this ribbon box

What a mess!!!!

I had seen different ways to organize your ribbons on PINTEREST  like THIS

 I really liked this idea but I didn't want to spend money on a container like that so 

I looked around and found some cardboard that we has stored in the garage and decided to do this 

 

Look at that all nice and neat!!!

Now there is more room in the box to add more ribbon...haha

What I did was just measured my box and then cut pieces of cardboard to match the size.

I then sat while watching Season 1 of "Downton Abbey" on Netflix 

(great show....you should watch it if you haven't)

and wound all my ribbon on the cardboard and used little pins to secure the ribbon in place.

Super Simple and Super Cheap.......my kind of project 

How have you organized your crafts? 

Thanks for stopping by

Valentines Day Wreath

Hello there! Today I thought I'd share the Valentine's Day wreaths Jacki and I made last year. My goal for 2011 was to make a new wreath for each holiday, and this is the one that started it all!  It is by far one of my favorites from last year.

So, Jacki found the tutorial over at The Idea Room, which is an amazing place!  It really is like an idea room, and I LOVE it so go HERE for the tutorial!  The wreath was super simple, but it is time consuming.  Jacki and I got together with a couple other ladies to make these and had tons of fun.  What do you think?  Do you decorate for Valentine's Day?

Thanks for reading!

-Juli-

Linking to THESE amazing parties!!

little steps

If any of you read this blog you will probably already know that I like to sew, especially to quilts. 

My neighbor and good friend recently had the most adorable little baby boy at 

the end of December and this was the quilt that I made for them.

I got the pattern (Ziggy Baby/Little Steps) from Allison over on Cluck Cluck Sew

......a truly amazing quilting/sewing blog.

If you haven't been there go on over and take a look

Her quilts are simple, easy, and beautiful.

thanks for reading

a simple thank-you

Have you ever wondered over to "I Am Momma - Hear Me Roar"?

If not, you really should...it's GREAT and full of many wonderful idea.

Every Wednedsay is Wake-Up Wednesday and Cheri extends a good deed 

challenge out to all of her readers 

I decided that as part of some of my goals for the year it would be to participate in 

Wake-up Wednesday as often as possible and to try to include my hubby and kids as well

This week the challenge was to write thank-you notes.

We had a handful of people we could write thank-you notes to for all the many wonderful Christmas presents we just recieved.....you know grandma & grandpa's, aunts & uncles, & a few friends.

I did not have any thank-you cards on hand and didn't want to spend lots of

money on purchasing any either so I decided to make some and to persoanlize them as well.

So I printed out through Cost-co (love that place) some 4x6's of our most recent family picture and

double sided sticky tabbed (cause I using glue-sticks) them to cards that I just made out of white card stock that I had on hand. The cards are just a regular size sheet of card stock cut in half (hotdog fold style) and then folded each piece in half to create a card.

Look at that simple, easy, & cute personalized thank-you cards.

So for me to make 10 cards it only cost me $1.30 plus a little tax to make these cards 

since I already had card stock, envelopes, & double sided sticky tabs.

Can't beat that!!

So if you too need to send out thank-you's here is great way

MIA ...

Well hello there!!

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted!  Thanks to all the other lovely ladies for holding down the fort while I've been M.I.A!  The holidays were super busy (as usual), but now that they're over, I'm going to get back to business!

If you've read any of my posts, you know my love for hair accessories.  I made them for my two little girls to start with, and then for friends with newborns.  I enjoyed it so much that I thought it would be fun to start a little business selling them.  It's called  Juli's Bowtique, so check it out if you want! :)  So from time to time, in between other crafts, I'm going to share some of the new creations that I've come up with.  I'd love to know what you think of them!  I'm still new at this, so any suggestions are welcome (as long as they're nice :) ).

This first one was a custom order for a friend.  She told me the general idea of what she wanted, and then just let me create!  It was so fun!

Doesn't the teal make the peacock feathers pop?  Love it!  She also requested a small one with peacock feathers

I am loving the peacock feathers, especially since they are so popular right now!  What do you think?

Well, I hope your holidays were fantastic!  Thanks for reading!

Juli

{the pleated dress}

I recently got the opportunity to pattern test for a cute little etsy shop called 

 

"leila and ben handmade sewing patterns"

or check them out HERE  or HERE

The dress I made was

"The Pleated Dress"

It turned out super cute....don't ya think??
and those fun big red buttons came from my hubby's grandma's stash
she had a WHOLE lot of buttons

now to just make the time to make a matching one for my 1 yr. old

does anyone else make their girls wear matching clothes?

Family Traditions

it's me again....hope you aren't getting too sick of me posting

Christmas time is a time where I feel family traditions come out. My nephew recently had to do a school project on a family tradition and the only thing my sister could really think of was Christmas Family Traditions. By the way he ended up doing a report on getting Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve like a lot of families do. I think family traditions are an important part of what makes this holiday so great.

I decided to start a new family tradition. 

I stole got the idea from my good friend Rachel...(hi Rach)

What it is, is The Best Christmas House Lights Award

We went around looking at people's displays of  Christmas Lights 

We decided on a few that we thought were pretty good and 

then voted amongst those which one we like the best and gave them an award

Here is our Winner

 and here is the award we left for them
(in case you were wondering I just whipped up this little award in Picnik)

We had fun doing this and plan to do it again next year.

But next time we will head to a different part of town because the part that we drove 

around last night didn't seem to have too many wonderful and exciting light displays.

Do you have any fun family traditions you do??