There are two things you should know about our house …

1. I’m constantly changing things around. I’ve had my office in about 12 different locations since I moved into this house. I’m currently wishing I could put my desk in front of the window, even though I know that the late afternoon sun shines right in my eyes when I do that. Anyway, I change my mind a lot. I read that people with a lot of disposable income overhaul their interior design every 5 years. That sounds like Heaven to me.

2. We are not shy about dirt. Emma plays outside every day, the dogs practically live outside during the day, Emma jumps on the couch and chairs and bed with her shoes on, she eats snacks on the couch, we eat a lot of our meals in the living room (but we’re working on that), and we’re just generally not overly careful with our messiness. So while I would absolutely LOVE to have a white couch, I know that would never ever ever happen. And also? Our cushions end up on the floor at least once a day for optimal jumping from couch to floor.

All of that to say, I decided today that I wanted different throw pillows for our couch, and due to our nature as a not-going-to-have-President-Obama-sitting-on-our-couch-anytime-soon kind of family, they had to be washable.

But I’m not a fan of washing pillows, because 9 times out of 10, the washer gets imbalanced and slings water all over the laundry room.

Enter removable throw pillow covers!

I sketched something out in my handy dandy moleskine, and the rest was easy!

I just used some pretty green dandelion’ish home dec fabric I bought on sale a long time ago, and it took all of about 15 minutes to make it.

The back is just some white home dec material I bought for a project way back when I overestimated yardage like crazy. I thought it would be cool to do a contrasting stitch on the “hems” but then I remembered … I don’t sew straight! Oh well. At least it’s just for us.

I decided that I needed to use smaller measurements so it can be a more snug fit on the pillow, but other than that, I like how it turned out.

I made another one last night, and if I had more pillow forms, I’d make about 20 more.

Or maybe I’ll just make 20 more and put them in Etsy? Hmmm …

The best part is that I can take the cover off, throw it in the wash, iron it a little (oh, who am I kidding, I don’t iron) and then put it back on.

And then I can change them out every 2.5 months. Weeks. Whatever.

The last piece of the Easter outfit puzzle for Emma – a super easy headband made from leftover fabric using this tutorial.

The flower is just a mixture of flower shapes and circles held together with a pink button and embroidery floss – nothing fancy and straight out of my head. I hot glued a safety pin on the back so that it can be removed and applied to a dress or a shirt or a purse or a different headband. Plus, the headband is reversible, so I pretty much had to make the flower removable.

Throw in a pair of white sandals from Target for $7.99, and we’ve got a complete Easter outfit for less than $10.

Yes, I’m totally patting myself on the back right now.

I’m a good Southern girl who loves seersucker for Easter. I think my bloodstream is 2 parts seersucker, 2 parts madras and 1 part linen. So when it came time to think about Emma’s Easter dress, I decided to raid my Goodwill pile of clothes that’s been sitting there for months a while. Sure enough, I found a skirt that no longer fits me. And not just because I’m pregnant, either. *ahem*

It’s a green and white seersucker wrap skirt that I bought off of eBay years ago, and I wore it religiously as soon as Spring reared it’s allergy-ridden head. And then I had a baby and … well, my hips don’t lie.

In about 45 minutes, it became Emma’s seersucker Easter dress. It mostly took that long, because Emma wanted to cut the ribbon and choose the color of thread and iron the hem and break the rowing machine and catch the shards of fabric and string that fall out from under the industrial serger.

By the way, it’s not crazy longer in the back – the wind was blowing and due to the way it was hanging on the hanger, it just looks that way.

Total cost was $1.25 for the roll of light pink ribbon I used at the top.

I still need to fray check the ends of the ribbon and get her some white sandals, but other than that, she’s ready for Sunday!

Since it was a wrap skirt, it was very easy to just cut enough width for a comfortable dress and serge the sides together. A double blessing was that the skirt was cut on the bias, so the dress has plenty of flare. Then, I used a mixture of this and this tutorial to make the actual dress. And lucky me, the hem was already finished.

I can’t wait to get pictures of her in it on Easter morning. I’m thinking about making a matching headband with the leftover fabric if I have time …

Yeah, I know I should be resting and all of that, but Ken took Emma downstairs this morning around 8am, and I said, “I’ll be down in a minute,” and then promptly slept until 10am. Wheee! So I had more energy today than I’ve had in a while!

Instead of catching up on cleaning, which I so badly need to do, I sewed a couple of skirts for Emma.

These are SO SUPER EASY to make using this tutorial. On the first one, I followed all of the instructions just as they were (except I constructed the skirt with an industrial serger, so I didn’t have to sew and then overlock). But on the second skirt, I pieced together two pieces for the top layer and 2 pieces for the bottom layer to make the right width, because the fabric I wanted to use wasn’t wide enough (most of my fabric is leftover from converting prefolds, so I rarely have selvedge to selvedge).

I also added a few inches to the width of the bottom layer to add more ruffle. We love ruffles! I may add even more width to the next skirt, because I’m wild and crazy like that. ;)

When Emma puts them on, she says, “I look like a princess!” so that’s a winner in my book.

I also made her a twirly skirt using this tutorial, but it’s too late to take pictures for tonight’s post. I’ll get some action shots tomorrow.

Wow, I’m so surprised at the “I could have written this” responses to my last post. I honestly sat on that post for quite some time before I felt brave enough to share it, but now that I have, I feel like talking about it more! It’s always comforting to know that there are others out there just like me.

This morning’s message in church was about plugging into the power of God, and one of the ways we receive it is through the power of love. Well, my spirit has definitely been renewed just reading that we’re all going through similar things, and we all have our battles to fight. We have such love for each other, even though many of us have never met in real life.

The online community is such a powerful thing.

On that note, I took another baby step towards simplifying. Instead of going to a store and spending money on some cheap Made in China crap, I took some fabric and a sewing pattern and made a dress for Emma’s Baby. That’s her name – Baby.

{Emma was real original when she got the doll last Christmas.}

You see, Emma got a new doll and a gorgeous papa-made bed this Christmas, and included was several outfits made by Emma’s great-grandmother (my Mema). Well, now that this new baby doll (which Emma has named Princess) has wardrobe choices, Emma changes her clothes at least 10 times a day.

But as much as she loves Princess, Baby is her most favorite doll. So she asked me to make some dresses for Baby. ACK! I’m a fairly decent seamstress, but I have never made a baby dress, so I kind of panicked. Because if you’ve ever dealt with a two-year old, you know that you must finish the project they have assigned to you by the time they get up from their nap or they will flip the freak OUT.

Luckily, I did have a dress pattern that I had bought from Sarah at Bit of Whimsy Dolls last October when I had all these glorious plans to make all of Emma’s Christmas presents *ahem* – so I mocked up one from the original pattern and then figured out where I needed to enlarge it to fit Emma’s doll.

Lo and behold, it fit!

And then I made Emma a smiley face pancake for supper and she stabbed and ate the eye first.

The end.

lazy days skirt from oliver + s

took me all of 30 minutes to make this skirt, and that was only because i sewed up the waistband before i put the elastic in — it should only take about 25 minutes ;)

i foresee a LOT more of these to finally use up all of this fabric i’ve been hoarding saving

today is “national don’t use caps day”

at least, that’s what MY calendar says …

Twenty-four months ago, I looked like this …

27 weeks along

I loved being pregnant. Now, I was one of the lucky ones – no morning sickness, no obscene weight gain (34lbs), no stretch marks, light heartburn, little to no discomfort (other than my ribs). The only downside of being pregnant was that it couldn’t last longer. Oh, and the restless leg syndrome that had me putting bars of soap at the foot of our bed and doing crazy stretches at 3am.

on our babymoon to disney world

I understand if some of you now hate me and never want to read anything I write ever again.

And that’s okay. I understand.

I mean, you can hope that whenever I have baby #2, I’ll be sick as a dog 24 hours a day.

But please don’t.

Being pregnant for the first time was really amazing. In fact, it was so wonderful that I often think about trying for baby #2 JUST to be pregnant again. But then reality sets in, and I realize that we are paying our bills and that’s about it. Babies just don’t fit into the equation at this point in our lives. We’re okay with what starting our own business has done to our bank account, but we also know that having a baby right now just wouldn’t be smart.

But the actual point of this post was to say that twenty ONE months ago, I looked like this …

And then like this …

And then like this.

Even labor and delivery was a piece of cake …

6:15pm – water broke at our house
7:15pm – arrived at the hospital
11:45pm – got epidural
5:00am – started pushing
5:59am – Emma Grace arrived

Ever since then, life has been anything but easy.

But just as my pregnancy and then delivery was wonderful and amazing, so is our life with Emma.

She’s not the kid that’s going to entertain guests and make everyone laugh. She’s not going to be the kid who screams and yells to get attention. She won’t strive to be the center of attention or the class clown.

Instead, she will be the kid that everyone is drawn to because she’s so quiet. She’ll be the old soul that everyone falls in love with. She’ll be a listening ear and a strong shoulder for her friends. She’ll love everyone, no matter their faults or shortcomings. And she’ll be generous and kind.

Happy 21 months on this earth, my sweet soulful child.

You have brought us more joy and peace than we ever thought possible.

Emma woke up at 2:30am and 7am to eat. But then she slept until 8:30, so I can’t complain TOO much. I just wonder when she’ll sleep through the night again.

*sigh*

But here’s my latest creation to warm my blog today …

This is for a collaboration with a knitting mom, but I will definitely be making one for Emma STAT. <3 Maybe with snaps instead of ribbon ties?

All righty then, off to run some errands.

The cloth diapers hanging on the line that I took a picture of earlier today for Wordless Wednesday? Still hanging on the line at 1:03am.

It has just been one of those crazy days where I didn’t stop, and it seems like nothing went right. I ran some errands, but never found what I went out to get.

Then, I got home to realize that we forgot to pay ourselves from the business account this month. A day after all of our bills cleared. Thank goodness for an automatic credit line that kicks in.

Then supper (chicken fajitas) turned out kinda not that good … Emma didn’t like it at.all. She ate a banana instead.

So I’ve been working since she went to bed, but she keeps waking up. It’s just little whining spurts – I haven’t had to go in there, yet, but I’m just so sure she’ll for real wake up to eat in a minute. AND I need to go turn her ceiling fan off, but I’m afraid of waking her up.

[business talk]

The one great thing is that I just finished an absolutely ADORABLE top for a collab I’m doing with Little Bear Knitwear this Friday, but I still didn’t finish it in time to send to her so she could get pictures of the top and pants together. And I burnt my hand so bad on the iron that it made me sick to my stomach.

The part that I’m going to brag about for days? Handmade binding around the entire thing. Can you say HAND CRAMP??

[/business talk]

So I’m going to go out and get in the diapers, pop them in the dryer for a fluff cycle, try to turn E’s ceiling fan off without waking her up, charge my camera battery, wash my face, brush my teeth, pop an Advil for my aching back, change into pj’s and fall into bed.

See you all later this morning.

I finally got around to making a pair of pants for Emma. I still have about 4 unfinished pairs sitting on my serger table, but I was able to crank out one pair for this past weekend. We went and watched our niece play tennis, and it was a bit chilly. And since USC was playing later that evening, I went ahead and made these (but I do have the same fabric with Georgia Bulldogs).

Every woman that we met that day commented on the pants and how cute they were. I guess I should have taken along some business cards, huh?

Then, my attorney brother-in-law brought up a good point … can you sell items made with trademarked fabric? According to this website, “When someone releases fabric into the stream of commerce they effectively have relinquished control over the uses of that fabric.

While the pattern on the fabric may be copyrighted, the actual fabric itself is not. The pattern may include images of registered trademarks, such as the logo of the New York Yankees or a John Deere logo, etc.

Copyright law applies to the use of licensed fabric in the application of the first sale doctrine. Bear in mind, the term “licensed fabric” legally only refers to the fact the manufacturer of the fabric has a license to use the images on the fabric. It does not mean the fabric is “licensed” to the purchaser. “Licensed” products require an agreement between the owner of the product and the potential purchaser. Fabric is not “licensed”; fabric is sold.”

So I guess as long as I buy the fabric, I have the right to sell it as long as I don’t claim that I weaved the fabric myself. Or something.

Anyone who has experience with this, please feel free to weigh in!