Playtime

I thought I'd describe our morning a little to you, so you can get an idea of Katrina's creativity. I have no idea if all kids are like this, though I suspect they are, but to me, since she's my first, everything she comes up with seems particularly funny.

Daniel was napping and I introduced her to a new watercolor paint set. It's a pen/brush sort of thing. We drew for a few minutes (her favorite is stabbing the paper and making dots), while she named all of the colors.

I went and did some sewing while she kept drawing. Then Daniel woke up and I wanted to put away the paints. I got out some playdough. While Daniel ate, she kept coming up to me with the playdough and insisting I make snakes. So I made lots of snakes for her and she named each one "Daddy Snake, "Baby Snake, "Mommy Snake, "Nina Snake." She ended up with multiple baby snakes and Daddy snakes (the daddy ones are always the largest, of course). Then she handed me one and asked me to make it into a treehouse. I attempted to mold it into a model of the treehouse in her room (and did a fairly good job, I think!), then she wanted to go play in her room. So we headed to the room and she played with her snakes inside the treehouse.

Daniel gets bored really easily. I went through Katrina's toys trying to find things for him. However, Katrina would see and come over to take it away. "Nina car! Nina train!" Then she would hand him something else to play with, usually something really boring.

Katrina smashed one of her snakes flat on accident and brought it to me, calling it a "mit." She is obsessed with oven mitts and mittens. So then I had to turn all of the snakes into Daddy mitt, Mommy mitt, etc... Then she played with those for awhile, climbing on her shelves with them, putting them in a basket while singing, "Een up, Een, up!"

Around then she announced it was lunchtime and since it was, we went and ate.

Katrina is pretty funny. Ever since I taught her how to pretend to be an airplane she does it all the time. We live less than half an hour from the airport and so we hear planes all the time. She hears them no matter how quiet they are! We also get helicopters pretty regularly and she can tell the difference in the sound by now. She loves trucks and always points them out. The garbage truck on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is the highlight of her morning, and she loves the "meeman truck" (mailman's) truck.

Daniel is pretty cute and funny too, but in a different, babyish way. For instance, he likes to eat my face, grinning the whole time, and I like to think he's giving kisses. He is enjoying eating new, solid foods, like biscuits and more chunky things, though I have to put them in his mouth because he won't do it himself, he just holds the food and waves it. Today he had grapes (that I skinned with my teeth, that's motherly love!) for the first time and loved them, and liked whole peas much better than pureed peas. He also kept us up all night last night and the night before, so that's really frustrating. Especially because he is waking up at 6:30 or so and not falling back asleep, but being really demanding and fussy. They he sleeps again at 8 or so for 20 minutes and then gets up again. Sigh. Oh well.

So that's our day! Daniel took a two-hour afternoon nap, Katrina took none, and I got lots of sewing done plus made a yummy new recipe, biscuits and sausage gravy.

Bags, bags, bags

I'll eventually probably start a new blog just for my Etsy shops crafts, but I haven't gotten around to that yet, and I like showing off what I've made, so here are a few bags I've made so far. I'm definitely still working out little things like interfacing thicknesses and which seams I need to clip. Right now I'm working on my first batch of bags to actually sell. But I have a couple that I have made that aren't for selling.
This takes forever.

And a nice purpley one.

What I'm doing now is making the outsides of lots of bags and then I'll assembly-line the insides.

Those first two didn't have anything special on the inside but I will be adding a zipper pocket and credit card slots to the ones I sell.

This is one of the outsides I've completed. I love this fabric. It has a nice sheen.

I just hope my poor photography skills don't foil my selling efforts! Adam will help me set up a little mini-studio and hopefully our combined skills will show off the bags to their best advantage.

I have four others but they still need interfacing before I can finish sewing them up.

More dipes

I can whip out diapers pretty quickly now. It's super easy. Cut out PUL (waterproof outer fabric), cut out inner fabric, cut out soaker fabric (this time I used old shirts and other clothes). Sew soaker to inner fabric. In the past I've sewn it on the inside, but this time I sewed it on the outside for faster drying. Sew together inner and outer, leaving a hole across the top for turning. Sew leg elastic and back elastic directly onto the seam with a 3-step zigsag stitch. Turn, topstitch. Put on snaps. Done!

This was a new style for me. I've made one other like this and really liked it, so I made three more. They utilize foldover elastic (FOE).

Why hello there, old bathrobe, sweats, and flannel shirt.

I've been trying them out today and they work great! I loved making the fun diapers with lots of patterns, but now I really just want low-cost, functional diapers. I spent $6 on PUL, $6 on FOE, and with $12 I made five diapers and even have enough PUL leftover for two more if I want. You really can't get cheaper than that, even if you buy cheap eBay diapers.

Pictures

Very few words are needed for these pictures!

Don't be fooled by the pics, Katrina was trying to take it off, not put it on him. I put it on him. :]

Oh, and this is a half-finished bag for my etsy shop. Like it?

Piles of fabric for bags. They were all stacked neatly until Katrina moved them off of "her" spot on top of that drawer. She likes to stand there and interact with whoever is on the couch.

Katrina responding to my demand to "dance!"

And hiding from the camera.

Tidbits from this week

Katrina, pointing at Mommy's book: "Mommy!"
Me: "No, that's not mommy, that's a princess."
Katrina, pointing to a wedding picture of me, "Princess!"
Me, laughing, "You think Mommy is a princess?"
Katrina: "Mommy...princess."

Katrina: "6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 6, beep!" (imitating a microwave, I think).

Daniel now tries to kiss me, I'm pretty sure, because he goes after my face with his mouth open. He also responds all the time to the game How Big is Daniel? So Big!

We went to Adam's Court of Honor last night and Katrina found a soccer ball and went around to the other younger kids and kept trying to get them to play with her: "B-ball, Zat!" (Translation, "Basketball, Zach" to a kid named Alden who looks like Zach from nursery.), "B-ball, Ma" (Translation, "Basketball, Camilla!")

Other not-so-nice things: We had an Olive Oil bottle break two whole weeks ago and even though we cleaned the kitchen thoroughly and vacuumed the hallway next to it, yesterday I found a glass shard in Daniel's diaper. Yes, really. It had passed all the way through. He doesn't put things in his mouth, so it must have gotten stuck to his thumb, which he does put in his mouth. Then a few minutes later I looked down on the floor of the living room where he often plays and found another one. Then this morning I stepped on one in the kitchen and I think I might have a small shard stuck in my heel. :[ Keep in mind the bottle broke over two weeks ago and we haven't seen other shards.

Anyway, I realized I hadn't posted for a few days and thought I'd give a little update. I've basically been taking a sewing break since finishing my bag but I need to get to work on my Etsy bags and work on a few quick diapers because Daniel has three that barely fit him and one leaks, so I need to replace those.

Kid Pics

Last night Adam and I were treated to a night out. We went out to Olive Garden while his mom and sister came up and watched the kids. I love having dates--they are few and far between. When we got home I got out the camera and snatched some pictures. Katrina had just removed her shirt because she spilled water on it, but I had to share this picture because what is cuter than a little girl wearing her mommy's shoes?
Daniel really likes his jumperoo lately. Katrina likes to play with him while he's in it and his cousin thought it was pretty fun too.

When he gets really happy and excited Daniel starts jumping really high and then going wildly forward and backward. It's hilarious.

As we were saying goodbye I looked over and saw Jordan and Katrina hugging and kissing each other. I tried to take a picture but was too late. We made them reenact it.

Daddy and baby.

Then Katrina walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out some light reading material.

(The book is Modern Russian).

Have a great Sunday tomorrow!

Beautiful Leather Bag

I finished my new leather bag! I made this bag out of a hand-me-down leather jacket that was too small for me and that I never wore. I got the pattern from this blog. I added those stroller straps on the ends because I like that feature.

This bag was very fun to sew but definitely a challenge. I had to take apart all the seams on the jacket and do lots of measuring to make sure the pattern pieces fit on the jacket. I also made use of features of the jacket on the bag. For instance:

See the side of the bag? Pretty, right?

Surprise! A pocket! Both ends have pockets from the jacket. A nice place for sippy cups, keys, or whatever.

I added a zipper, which was not in the pattern. That was the big reason my previous bag wasn't cutting it for me.

Can I tell you how difficult this bag was to sew? I broke five leather needles on it. In fact, my universal needles did a much better job. My machine had real issues sewing through multiple layers of leather, such as in the straps and with topstitching. In fact, I only topstitched in spots around the top because it was too hard to stitch around the corners and above the straps. I also had to use a walking foot, which has teeth that catch on fabric. Also, the straps were supposed to be sewn together and then turned. The first time I did that it was so hard to turn them and Adam and I both labored over them before I finally had to give up and sew them another way. For the next set of straps I didn't sew them as small and it worked better.

The inside is made from an old denim skirt. I added a snap-in divider. The end pockets are actually pockets from the skirt.

And now, pictures in action. Every time I do this I realize how dirty my mirror is.

And I need to get dressed for the day before taking pictures next time!

Daniel woke up as I was taking pictures, so I snapped a few.

And I snapped a picture of my quilt on the wall. It's not framed yet so I just stuck it up with pushpins.

Show and Tell at Blue Cricket Design