Sewing Sewing Sewing

I have been sewing like CRAZY!!!

Seriously, there might be a slight manic to it all. See, I have this stash of fabric and want to deplete it enough that it doesn't spill out of my tupperwares for our move, but I already winnowed out the fabric I don't love. So what remains is all stuff I want to use rather than get rid of... And therefore I have had lots of sewing to do as part of my moving preparations! I've been averaging one completed project a week--- which is lightning speed for me!

I made these awesome leggings which I absolutely adore! I bought the double-brushed poly from printknitstudio.com  and LOVE the buttery-softness and the non-sheer stretch! I found a pair of LulaRoe leggings at Goodwill and used them for a pattern, so basically they are my own version at a fraction of the cost. It wasn't hard, but I did have to take the waist yoke apart and re-sew it because originally I made it too large (I gave extra seam allowance bc I figured I could always make them smaller). So happy with the result!

I sewed the girls Valentine's clothes. Fabric from Girl Charlee-- it has adorable hearts and flowers in a trendy tribal print! I did Gwen's first, so her tunic-style handkerchief hem dress (I used a square circle skirt, if that makes any sense) is exactly what I wanted. Gwen loves the spin! Caroline got the fabric remnants for hers, so a dress was out of the question. She wanted a shirt so she could wear it to school. From all the remnant pieces I managed to get the stripes to line up in the front, BUT the sleeve stripes are not symmetrical, which drives me crazy. But she doesn't care, so I am letting it go. I finally had to put a ban on that shirt because she was wearing it multiple times a week and I wanted it be special for Valentine's Day. At least I know she LOVES it!

Striped handkerchief hem dress with a drop waist dress for me. I got this fabric on clearance, so it was a real bargain, and I knew I wanted to use it for a dress like this. Trouble is that the fabric I had constrained me to certain things because I got the bargain lot cuts. For example, the stripe up the sides is a cool color-blocking design element, right? One that I HAD to use because the panels weren't wide enough. I rather like that element. I would have preferred the drop waist to be not quite so dropped with the skirt length making up the difference (right now the proportions feel a little off to me), but I just didn't have enough fabric for that. I like it even if it isn't destined to be my new favorite wardrobe item.

I made the girls these purple floral dresses. I love this dusty rose fabric from Girl Charlee and think these dresses turned out great! Comfy and cute, what more could I hope for?

I made a maternity dress that I suppose I could model for you, but it wouldn't quite look right. lol

I made this wonderful diagonally striped maxi dress! I think it is so flattering! I will do another post later with more info on my design and pattern-creation process for this one.

And guess what? 

Now I can close those fabric tupperwares!!!!!

Kiddo Valentine's Day

 Valentine's Day was more like Valentine's WEEKS around here. The kids made some new decorations for us to enjoy. 

and worked hard on their valentines for Grandparents. They LOVED making these bugs! And can you see that Gwen made origami hearts?

Making our valentines for classmates was fun and not TOO laborious, since there was a free printable (here), but it definitely required adult assistance. 

Caroline dutifully signed her name on the back of each one!

 Daddy tied the strings. Gwen was all over her list of names and chose a bubble color for each friend. 

 Okay, now who can tell me the difference between the above photo and the below photo?...

  If your answer was the tearful face in the background, you can see this was not a quiet activity of contentment all around.

 Now ask this boy why he is sad. 

 "I blow these red bubbles... please?"

 "Emmett's red bubbles." 

(intentionally not a question mark)

 distraction and placation: raspberries. 

 All in his mouth at the same time. Chipmunk cheeks! :)

 For the past couple weeks I have been baking lots of treats. Fun pink deliciousness! Sometimes I have helpers, but usually I bake while Gwen is at school. She is always very happy to help as my assistant chef when the confectioning occurs on the weekends!

 These pink oreo cheesecake cookies (recipe here) were a hit! The girls' favorite part? No eggs in the batter means more pre-baking sampling! lol

Enjoying the fruits of our labors. 

Cupid's Crazy Cafe was a huge hit again this year! All the free printables and blank menus here. I'm told this kind of mixed up dinner is more commonly done on April Fools. Yes, I'd say that makes sense! But we sure enjoy doing it for V-tines! They write down numbers on their menu without knowing the corresponding food item. 

 Each one of the kids (even Emmett!) helped me make a few heart-shaped chicken nuggets. Recipe here. And they were actually WAY easier than I would have thought! Not as convenient as frozen dino-nuggets, but considering how really healthy and delicious they were (JUST chicken breast, eggs, and bread crumbs!), and how well they went over on the kids, definitely a keeper recipe!

 Items from our line-up of potential foods were mostly healthy. That way I don't feel bad if they eat out of order. Heart cucumbers, heart tomatoes, heart nuggets... seeing a theme here?

The cinnamon roll was the exception. Gwen and Emmett both got that on their first course. I knew Gwen would eat everything no matter what, but I was concerned the sweet roll would throw off Emmett's food consumption. I needn't have worried. He didn't even eat it. I ended up eating it. He just wanted more strawberries!

and yes, on Valentine's Day I let them bring a 'friend' to the table to share the love. Emmett chose to bring his letters. Well, as many of them as I would let him put in front of him. I said 'no' to the whole alphabet. Sorry, bud. Did that break your heart? You'll get over it. 

We got a crazy visit from Cupid, of course... funny thing is Daddy happened to be 'outside taking out the trash' (cough cough) when Caroline booked it up the stairs ahead of us and peered out the back door in anticipation of Cupid's next drop. She was surprised that Daddy didn't catch a glimpse... close one! *wink wink*

Lovely Kiddo Projects

Did ya'll miss me?

I finally got a camera to replace our busted one. So now I can share my ordinarily entertaining days with you again!

First up: here are 2 projects I've done with the girls that I love! 

Doily Heart T-shirts

Original idea from cuttingtinybites. I bought solid colored shirts from a consignment store. I hoped to go cheapest and get them at Volunteers of America, but there weren't any shirts without designs on them. Oh well. It was still cheaper than brand new. :) I forgot to get a pic of the doily painting part. This is after the doilies are removed and we added pink 'jewel' accents.

Caroline got lots of help for this project. She couldn't squeeze the tubes with enough control to get the paint out in nice dots. 

Gwen wanted dots all over the place and even added a cute smiley face!

The hardest part was waiting the 24 hours to let the shirts dry! These girls were SO EAGER to try on their new shirts!

Dinosaur Valentines

These were so fun and easy! Adorable. The girls each got to keep one, the rest we sent on to Grandparents with lots of love. 

Gwen informed me that the baby is following her mommy and daddy dinosaur. 

Caroline loved em all!

I love all the fun things to do for holidays!

Valentine's Day Awesomeness!

Valentine's Day dawned with coughing, snotty-nosed kids and tired parents. We had special French toast (the Kneader's style chunky kind, but we used Pepperidge Farm apple cinnamon thick-sliced bread that I got for a dollar per loaf--- I adore our PF outlet and the 75% off savings there!) with caramel syrup and strawberries. Oh man, it was divine. But we didn't really savor it because we had to go drop off one car for an 'exam' early. By the time we went back down in the afternoon to pick it up and came back home, we'd probably spent at least an hour and a half in the car going back and forth. The rest of the day we tried to take it easy (we all needed rest to boost our immune defenses) and just enjoy a quiet day at home.

 Eric brought each of his girls a rose (I got one too)-- Gwen and Caroline loved them!
But I think they loved the surprise things from "Cupid" even more! Eric's family has a tradition of Cupid visits on Valentine's Day (kind of like ding-dong ditching only you drop-and-run at your own house switching doors while the kids try to guess where Cupid will hit next) This year our wing-ed naked baby friend brought balloons, elephants, Elsa/Anna rings, and chocolate. Exciting!

 Since Emmett is not going to bed early enough for us to put him down BEFORE a date out and we didn't want to bring him WITH us (because nothing says romance like a crying baby ruining everyone else's quiet evening, right?), we decided the least stressful way to spend Valentine's Day was at home. We've done this a lot (almost every year, actually) and we enjoy cooking for each other. We like to surprise each other, which really makes it quite fun and exciting! It worked out perfectly this year since we had sick kids at home anyway and going out would have been problematic. I was in charge of dessert and Eric took charge of the meal. Here he is preparing shrimp (which I wasn't supposed to really see...). Most of the ingredients were either thawing under towels (so I couldn't peek) or were in tupperwares in the fridge that I was instructed not to open. It was fun to be working together in the kitchen (I was preparing the girls' food) without knowing what he was up to.

The girls got a special dinner early so we could have a date dinner all to ourselves. Apparently the best part was the pink strawberry milk (which was chalky and gross in my humble opinion, but hey. Whatever floats your boat).

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess that I accidentally deleted ALL of our romantic dinner pictures from Valentine's Day off my camera. Irretrievable. I feel sick about it. So the following pictures are 'posed' the day after and do not quite capture the magic achieved for our special date, but at least the amazing food is documented!

On the menu: 

Gorgonzola risotto with pear-oregano puree

Castelvetrano green olive salad with red pepper flakes

Prosciutto wrapped pork loin pan-fried in rosemary/garlic olive oil and served on a bed of baby spring greens tossed with balsamic vinaigrette

Macadamia nut crusted Jumbo shrimp skewers deep fried and served with mayonnaise 

Some of the ingredients were quite challenging to find. Eric went to several stores before successfully locating the Italian green olives. And he wanted the best brand of risotto grain so he ended up ordering it online when he couldn't find it in stores. The things my husband does to impress me in the kitchen! Seriously, the man is amazing!

I got to help by making the risotto, which was lots of fun! I LOVE cooking with expensive ingredients, (I'd only prepared REAL risotto once before, in a cooking class), so this was a real treat.  Eric still wanted me to be surprised, so he asked me to focus on the 'fussy' risotto lest I see everything he was fixing up. So we were together laughing and enjoying each other's company all while NOT watching Eric too closely. There is something about cooking together that just deepens a relationship. Quite miraculous and wonderful. 

Eric removed a leaf from our table to make it cozier for two and we had lit taper candles. It was quite funny to have our private romantic dinner with Emmett next to me in the bouncy chair cooing and gumming his plush knight and the girls watching Pocahontas just a few feet away from us in the living room. :)

After the kids were in bed, we had dessert and some non-alcoholic drinks. 

 I was worried that my gift to Eric-- this dark chocolate cheesecake with raspberry-chocolate sauce-- would pale in comparison to the fabulous dinner we'd just eaten. I needn't (altered per Amber's suggestion!) have worried. The cheesecake (recipe from Seriously Bittersweet) was an adventure. Only my second cheesecake ever (the last one attempted 5 years ago), but it was delightfully simple to follow the recipe's instructions and tips... and it turned out beautifully! Not too dense, nice and fluffy yet moist and rich... I am pretty certain I'll be making more cheesecake in the future! My waist might not like that so much because I could eat this whole thing myself. Good thing Eric thought it was divine so he will end up eating it up before I can give in to temptation... at least, before I give in TOO much! :)

 Eric loves to fix up drinks for special occasions. He has collected some really amazing recipes-- all non-alcoholic!-- with wonderfully exotic flavors and combinations. 

 This beauty was a Tuscan Fresco: rosemary (muddled), white cranberry juice, peach nectar, lemon juice, simple syrup, and a hint of club soda. Wonderfully bright yet balanced with herbal depth... a foodie's non-alcoholic delight! The round ice cubes are especially aesthetic, don't you think? He does it for me. Aesthetics are romantic in our household. How bout yours?

I'd say it was a pretty successful Valentine's Day! The food was especially delicious and will be hard to top next year. Good thing we've got a full year to come up with something amazing!

We "Heart" Preschool!

Our Valentine's themed week was wonderfully rewarding! Caroline was especially excited for preschool and Gwen enjoyed it as extra fun when she got home too. I love it when the kids ASK to play with educational materials! At the end of the week we sadly had to cancel our Book Club Valentine's party because Caroline was contagiously sick with a nasty cold (some love should NOT be shared!). But we squeezed in all the learning activities during the week before she got apathetic and wanted to lay on the couch all day with someone rubbing her back. So here is what went down:

Capital/lowercase letter match. Just as simple as it sounds. I used a heart punch and card stock for durability and wrote the letters on myself. There are printables out there, but the ink saturation just seemed a waste. This was the easy alternative. 

Caroline is still challenged by lowercase letters, so I began with the easiest approach: I named the lowercase letter as I handed it to her and asked her to find the mommy. Next step up was to put 2-3 lowercase letters for her to choose from and then ask her to identify the "f" before pairing it with the "mommy". When she had that down, we transitioned to the hardest way: putting a large number of lower case letters out there and asking her to find their matches. We don't stay too long on challenging ones like this because Caroline still gets frustrated. So usually this is the 'crowning' activity before we move on. 

Another ABC/phonics activity we did was to put the heart over the letter that makes the phonics sound I was doing. Basic. I made this ABC sheet generic so that I can re-use it for all kinds of themes. You can use any kind of 'marker' to cover the completed letters, which makes it perfect for year-round use!

Caroline was singing "Red Heart Pink Heart" (a song we sing at her music class) throughout the lesson. Adorable. 

We did rainbow writing 'L is for Love' and 'H is for Heart' during the week. Caroline is getting pretty adept at this. I just have to remind her repeatedly to begin her letters at the top, otherwise she wants to start at the bottom of each.

This was our second time to do patterns. I originally introduced patterns in October, but she was NOT ready for the concept and it was a terrible failure. No big deal, I set patterns aside until last week when she tried out duplo patterns (during construction week. Sorry I'm all out of order on blogging) and she was getting the hang of it. So I brought them out again this week and she NAILED it! Just goes to show: if your kids don't like an activity, don't bang your head against a wall. Give it a rest and come back to it later! What fun it was this time around!

Gwen loved it too and spent a lot of time after school doing patterns. Candy heart patterns available for printing free from PreKinders. You'll notice I have a HUGE bag of conversation hearts. I needed a ton for a group game for our V-tines party that we didn't end up having. So now I've got a stash. :) I see science experiments in our future. :) Oh, and one last side note. Gwen laughed and told me she found one that said 'Pugs and Kittens' and I thought she was mis-reading 'hugs and kisses'... but nope. It said "Pugs and Kittens". How funny. 

One to one correspondence activity with a beautiful do-a-dot heart. Supposed to be red, but I am almost out of ink, so this was how it printed. Available for free printing from Gift of Curiosity. Of course Caroline ate the candy afterwards. :)

Caroline got a set of wooden shape blocks for Christmas and ADORES them. I knew she would love this activity. I found it for free printing at Playdough to Plato, but as I've already mentioned, my ink is low. Yellow always seems to be the first to go. So I had to color quite a bit of this AFTER it printed so that orange and green looked right in addition to the obvious yellow. While I was working away with my markers, Caroline kept asking when it would be ready. I told her 'after laminating.' Well, when we DIDN'T pull this out for our first day of Pre-K, she was offended. So I got it out anyway (even though we were officially finished for the day) and she played for about another hour. Yeah. An awesome activity!

One of our math activities was counting. Just plain ole counting. She would draw a heart, each with a number from 1-15 on it. She had to count that many M&M's into the muffin cup. Then she could eat one, dump it out, and pick another heart. 

In retrospect, I should have saved out the 11-15 hearts until the end. Her first 3 draws were from the teens and it was a frustrating way to start out. She would have done better with a 'warm up', I think. She kept getting sloppy and dropping multiple candies in while calling out numbers rapid fire. When she did this I made her start over. I want her to practice the one to one correspondence of counting so that she recognizes numbers aren't just a 'sequence' that we chant along like lyrics to a song. They represent actual objects, especially when counting. 

A simpler math activity was to create the number of tarts that the heart specifies. This was fun because playdough is always fun. The cute Queen of Hearts play dough mat was a free printable from PreKinders. The link takes you to ALL their Valentine's mats, but the one I used was the 'Toddler' mat because it has an unspecified number of tarts. I liked the open-endedness of this one. I paired it with my home made number hearts. 

Caroline loves sticking toothpicks into her play dough and asked if her tarts could have candles. Which then morphed into suckers? I'm not sure. But she pretended to lick them. So. There you go.

Gwen spent almost 2 hours playing with this and making cute mini tarts! She said they had blackberry sauce, marshmellow creme, and glowing candles. I'd say this play dough mat was a hit!

For our gross motor, we adapted BINGO into Heart-O. Got the idea from Mommy and Me Book Club, which is one of my favorite sources for our book club ideas. 

HEART-O 

(tune of Bingo)

"There is a shape and it means love. Heart is it's name-o. 

H-E-A-R-T, H-E-A-R-T, H-E-A-R-T, and heart is it's name-o."

blow kisses instead of clapping when you take the hearts away. Very cute!

Our favorite books were:

The Day it Rained Hearts (thank you Mama! You chose a great one to send us!)

Love, Splat

Plant a Kiss

Fancy Nancy Heart to Heart

Guess How Much I Love You

All the Things I Love about You

We also read:

I Spy Little Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse!

The Biggest Valentine Ever

Pete the Cat Valentine's Day is Cool

There were a few others that didn't get to us in time (that happens when everyone is requesting the same books from the library. Guess I have a few more to add to my own collection wishlist!). But if you can snag a copy, I've heard wonderful things about:

Brugal. Love Monster

Boynton. Consider Love

Sperring. The Shape of My Heart

Sheehan. Love is You and Me

Patricelli. Hugsy Kissy

Isop. How Do you Hug a Porcupine?

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you had a LOVE-ly time with your friends and family!