{a dress....a nightgown....whatever you choose!!}

If you read my post from last week then you know that I have been without my sewing machine for awhile. Well I was more than over joyed with the UPS man rang my door bell

on Monday afternoon and dropped off a package for me. Yipppppeeeee!!!!
My new sewing machine pedal came and I couldn't wait to get back to sewing.

I had a list of projects to work on and didn't know where to start.

I decided to whip up this little diddy for my little one.
It is suppose to be a dress but with the material I used it really
looks more like a nightgown to me.
** note to self and any others who are using striped material....DON'T!!!!
it's a pain in the you know what to cut and match up all the stripes**

I came across THIS tutorial from inditutes for a peasant shirt but just
lengthened it into a dress. I think I angled it a little too much and that's why it
looks more like a nightgown than a dress to me. What do you think?

But either way she likes it. Stay tuned cause in about a month this little girl
turns 4 and likes to dress up so I am going to attempt using the same tutorial
to make a princess dress or two!!!

4th of July Ideas

I wasn't exactly going to post a list of ideas today for 4th of July. I made an awesome 4th of July wreath that I wanted to share, but yesterday my sweet 1 year old decided to push the laptop off the couch and broke it. All my pictures are on the laptop, so I won't be able to post those things til my hubby fixes it. Oh well!

So have you made any 4th of July crafts?

What are you doing for the holiday?

Do you have any fun traditions you'd like to share with us?

Here are some amazing ideas I found

This first one is from one of my FAVORITE sites Make It and Love It

I'm so wishing my sewing machine wasn't broken!!!
Arghh! I love that she did the ruffles for her girl, and just flat for the boy.
So cute, right?!

This next one is from Just Sew Sassy

I think I need to make one of these banners for my mantle.

Here's another thing I want to make for my mantle, made by RockNRegalia

I like the little pom pom garland. Really easy, but adds a lot of fun and color.

I LOVE this next one from This Little Project

I am in love with all the ruffles that are so popular right now!
I might try to do something like this, but with hot glue since I can't sew it.
Love Love Love!!!

Light your party with this next one from Sweet Something Designs

How cute are these?!!
As long as you don't have a trouble maker like my 1 year old, then these will be perfect! :)

Ok, so let's move on to my favorite part...the FOOD!!
Sorry they're mostly desserts! I have serious addictions to anything sweet!!
Check out these awesome ideas

I'm definitely going to have to make this one from 17 and Baking

I'm not sure how hard this is to make, but it looks fantastic! What a fun idea!

Check out this unique cake from A Place for Us

Oh my goodness. I need some frosting ice cream cake, STAT!!!!!!! Delicious!!

These jello jars are from Greene Acres Hobby Farm

What a fun way to reuse all those baby food jars! So cute!

And this last one is from Confessions of a Craft-A-Holic

I am so in awe of whoever came up with this idea! My kids would love it!
It's not necessarily patriotic, but it's a fun way to bring fruit to a party!!

I hope you all have a Fabulous 4th of July!!!

Thanks for reading!

Juli

Wedding Season

A good friend got married last week and these are the cards I made for the occasion!
I used the coral color because of the invitation and thought that the soft brown worked well with it.  Hope you enjoy!

 Sorry to my sisters and those of you who follow us.  I have not posted in a couple of weeks.  I have had a rough couple of weeks.  But be sure to come back next week and see what my new favorite treat is!!!

Anniversary Ideas

Tomorrow marks 12 years of happiness with my husband, Kent!
Yahoo!It is a running joke between us that it's the best years of our lives.

To be truthful, though, it is! As much as it's not all butterflies and flowers
in our marriage, I feel we are a pretty good match.
I love being married to my best friend!

So I thought I would stick with the anniversary theme and share some creative ideas of things you could do for the love of your life. I have not done all of these, but loved the thought though.

*Love coupons- These are great if you don't have a lot of money.
*CD full of their favorite songs or a couples play list.
*Surprise Getaway- Who doesn't want to be whisked off to some secret location, even if it's your quiet home with no children!
*Send them on a scavenger hunt! Possibly to places where you went while dating.
*Hide a small present, than give them clues on where to find it.
*Hide notes all over the house for them to find during the day. Each note telling them something you love about them.
*Breakfast in bed. Yummy! Especially if the kids aren't around!
*Write a poem or song.
*Create a scrapbook of your courtship or pictures of you dating along with letters you wrote to each other.
*Chalk Drawing- While they are at work, use chalk to write them a message.
*Share your journal entries from when you were dating.
*Bake a large cookie and write a message on it.
*Use post it notes to write love notes all around the house.
*Make a DVD collage of pictures, songs and videos.
*Kidnap your spouse and take them on a picnic. We love going down to the river.
*Take a class together. Our joke was that we have a pretty good marriage except our communication skills. (Isn't he suppose to read my thoughts?!) So we took an adult communication class through our school district. It was mostly about how to communicate when you're mad, which we really don't need. It was fun trying something new together though!
And lastly.
*12 months of dates. I did this last year for Valentine's Day and I know both of us loved it. It also gets you out of the same old dates. I LOVE this idea!

Hope that some or all of these ideas will help you in celebrating a special time in your life.
I am so happy to have such an awesome guy as my husband and that he loves me so much.
Happy 12th Anniversary Kent!

Jacki:)

{Baby in a Basket}

I haven't had much of the crafting bug lately.

Probably due to fact that my sewing machine pedal broke a few weeks ago.
I finally broke down and ordered a new one over the weekend cause as I was browsing on
Pinterest
I found many projects I wanted to do and most of them required a sewing machine.
So, I bit the bullet and decided to spend the money on a new pedal.
It should come next week and I am actually excited.
Over the past few days I have been making and re-making lists of the projects I want to do.

So here's my craft idea for the idea
(ok so it's not really a "craft" but a somewhat clever idea I guess &
I'm sure many a moms have done it too)

My 7 1/2 month old is all over the place and this morning as I was trying to get some things done up stairs she was following me around and destroying things
I didn't just want to put her in her crib in her room all by herself so instead I did this


my other 2 kids thought it was funniest thing EVER!!!
The baby in the laundry basket with toys.......who would have thunk it???
They think I am the silliest mom!!

I know I am her mom and all but isn't she just the cutest?? don't ya just wanna pinch those cheeks?

Gardening Bucket

My awesome mother-in-law, Vienna, had a birthday last week, and I wanted to share what I made for her. I was originally going to make this for her for mothers day,
but being the procrastinator that I am, it didn't get done in time!
So it ended up being the perfect birthday gift! Vienna loves to garden,
so when I found this idea over at Ladybird Ln, I knew I had to make it for her.
Here's how mine turned out

Isn't it great?? Carlee from Ladybird Ln put burlap around hers, and then made an adorable gardening belt to go around it. My sewing machine is broken, so I couldn't do the belt, and I thought it would add a fun touch to put the grand kids hand prints on the outside. I'm not going to do a tutorial since Carlee already has an amazing one, but I will give you some tips

First off, you don't have to buy your 5 gallon bucket. My husband works at a grocery store, and I had him ask the bakery if they would give us one, and they were fine with it. These buckets have pros and cons. They're free, but the reason I spray painted mine was because it had a huge image on the side reminding you that kids can fall into the bucket and drown.

Can you see it? This was after two coats of white paint!!
That's why I decided to paint it the blue color.
Another con is that it still had a huge label on it (ours was for butter-cream frosting!),
but I used my handy dandy 'Sticky Out' that I used for this post, and it took it off, no problem! Carlee used a Gamma lid for her bucket, which would have been awesome if I could have found one in time, but I couldn't. So I just used the original lid, and it worked fine.

Here are a couple pics of how I put the cushion together

Do you see my favorite new tool I just bought for myself?!!
Can't believe I've never owned one, but I love it! :)

Then I had my husband screw the seat to the lid.

I traced my kids hands onto fabric, mod podged them to the bucket with
a couple extra coats on top, and painted on the wording.
After it all dried, I covered it with a couple coats of clear sealant.

It didn't turn out quite like I'd predicted, but it's fun none the less.
At least it shows I put effort into making something for her. What do you think?

Thanks for reading!!

Juli

Linking to these fabulous parties!

Yummy Green Pasta!

Two years ago, instead of the typical Christmas Goody Plate,
we gave our family and friends a taste of the Roper Spinach Pesto.
Ever since we have had many of those family and friends asking for the recipe.
So here it is!



For our Christmas Goodies, we made the pesto and than stuck it with box of Barilla Pasta.
We than grated some Pecorino Romano and put it in a little baggie.
I loved it because it was most of a dinner and who doesn't love a dinner that is mostly prepared. I also love this pesto because you can make a few batches and than put them in the freezer. When needed just defrost and pour over pasta. Easy, Peesy!
This is also great for St. Patrick's Day!

So if the fathers in your life love pasta, try this out on them. Definitely a keeper!
Hope you all have an enjoyable Father's Day! See ya next week!

Jacki :)

{the fun sprinkler}

I found THIS IDEA while I wasting time on-line browsing through different blogs.
As soon as I saw it I knew we needed one at our house this summer.

If you wanna make one too here's what we used:

3- 5ft PVC piping pieces (we used 1/2" wide pipes)
4 - 15" PVC piping pieces (we used 3/4" wide pipes)
**to get these 4 smaller pieces we had to cut them ourselves with a saw**
3 end caps
1 hose connector
2 T-connectors
2 - 90 degree elbow joints

a drill & drill bits
(whatever size you want to use...we used 2 different sizes)
a saw
tape measure
pen for marking
PVC cement

What to do now........
assemble to it looks like this
(sorry I don't have step by step instructions or pictures but hopefully looking at the picture will give you an idea of how to put it together....it's actually very simple)

a few tips:
when working with the PVC cement you will need to have everything
ready in place cause the glue dries pretty quick

it's nice to have 2 people putting it together....
one to hole the pieces while the other is putting on the connector pieces

make sure you drill your holes before connecting it to the side pieces

after it's all assembled let it dry for at least an hour and then have some FUN
here's what my kids did......

they also rode their bikes and scooters through and pretended it was a car wash
it was a HIT with the neighbor kids & I am pretty sure it
will be out getting used almost everyday

Even Dad got in on the action!!!
(this is great man that put this together.....he's awesome!!!!))

This was a great way to start out our summer fun!!!

Are You Ready??

So are you ready for Fathers Day?!  Did our ideas last week help?  Well, just in case you're not ready, I thought I'd share some great ideas I've seen in blogland.  I'm still working on my Fathers Day gifts, because I'm just a last minute kind of girl!!

I found this first one over at Silly Eagle Books

I love having things that are personalized, and this framed questionnaire and handprint are just perfect!  This is definitely on my list of things to do!

This next one is from Holiday Crafts and Creations

My husband is so hard to buy for, so most often he gets a gift card to an electronics store.  I feel bad only giving him a gift card, but what a fun way to give a kind of lame gift!  :)

Take a look at these free printables from Shindig Parties To Go!

Amazing, right?  You could do so many things with those ties!  The possibilities are endless!! Oh, and by the way, her site is fabulous! There are some awesome ideas, so go check it out!

So I had a few other things that I was going to share with you, but this is the third time writing this post, and for some reason it won't let me attach any more links.  So annoying!! Whatev!!

Hopefully these will give you some fun ideas to show your man how much you appreciate him!
Thanks for reading!

Juli