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Handmade Church Clothes

This was so exciting for me.  Matching but not overly matchy-matchy clothes to wear on Easter Sunday for the boys.  

Of Course there's no pictures of them both looking at the camera and smiling, but that's life.  This photo-shoot was actually the pre-easter trial run anyway.  I wanted to make sure they fit right.  Owen's is a bit big, if I wanted to have it fit perfectly, I should have used the 12 month pattern but I opted for 18 mo.  It looks good though.  The romper was downloaded from YouCanMakeThis.com.  It was quite doable for a novice sewer like myself.

About a week ago, I found THIS pattern for a little boy's tie.  I found the pattern so simple to follow, but I shortened the tie since D is so young.  I also used the interfacing from one of Andy's ugly ties.  It was perfect considering I really didn't have enough of this fabric to make Deacon a matching romper, and he's getting a bit old for these anyway.  

Andy found matching blue shirts with the tags still on at the thrift store for $.25 each!  Those were a great score and Deacon's pants were only a couple of dollars also.  They were in beautiful condition.  It helps to keep your eyes open at the thrift stores.  

A few ladies at church told me that they have sewing machines and really have no idea what to do with them.  SO... I'm thinking of starting a very small sewing group so that we can share our knowledge with each-other.  I just need to find some ladies that actually know how to sew so that they can help the rest of us!

Late in the evening, Andy asked me to hem the pants for a newer suit that he has acquired.  So we got them a few inches shorter so he could look classy for his first Easter Sunday as a minister.  Isn't he so handsome?

Easter Baskets

Easter baskets- basically breakfast.  Complete with cheerio filled eggs for the little one.

Painting Eggs

Sunday's Best

And the winner of the give-away is James Pavlic!  Congrats.  I'll get in touch soon.  

A giveaway in the spirit of music

Tonight I'll be playing again at the Sylvia Theater in York.  It is such a lovely venue to play at.  It is a turn of the century movie theatre turned concert venue-- but still a movie theater.  When they have concerts, they just raise up the screen and there's the stage.  Tonight's show will be filmed and televised on a local channel.  I'm pretty sure they will pass on the videos to me so that I can throw them up on my myspace page.

I'm really excited to play a new song that I've written on piano.  It's a really sweet lullaby that is so fun to play and sing.  I've been practicing it all morning so that I don't mess it up.  I hope it will be a nice way to close out my portion of the night.  The show will end with a grand finale of all three songwriters playing a cover song together.  Not sure what we'll play yet.  

I've been meeting more local musicians here in Rock Hill and am excited to start to work my way into the local community here.  There's a songwriter group that meets this Monday night.  I think I just may throw the guitar in the car and make an appearance.  

Finally, in the spirit of songwriting and music, I'd like to give away my album to a lucky reader.  All you have to do is comment on THIS post.  I'll announce the RANDOMLY CHOSEN winner on Wednesday, April 8th.  You can hear samples of the songs on my MySpace page.  (I just added more songs to my profile).

Cheers.

Bedroom Progress

I'm very happy with the color that I chose for the bedroom.  It is from Glidden (ICI) paints and the color is called Fossil Gray.  It is perfect.  After painting 6 rooms in this house, this is the first color that actually turned out exactly the way I wanted it to.  

I was about to run to the store on Tuesday to buy curtain rods, but as I was walking through our yard with a friend, we discovered all sorts of Bamboo growing near the edge of our property.  So I'm going to saw some off and make curtain rods with bamboo.  Won't that be neat?  I'm trying to figure out what else to do with all this bamboo.  

I would like to make some fabric art like this with our monogram on it and hang it above the bed.  I would also like to a nice summery bedspread to use and fold this quilt up at the bottom of the bed.  This quilt is quite special to us as it was hand stitched with over 4500 pieces by Andy's Grandmother.  It was a wedding gift from her.  Isn't it lovely? I really do love the feeling of sleeping under a nice soft and thin cotton quilt.

Key Lime Pie

My Mother in Law gave me this recipe about a year ago and I haven't made it until now.  Boy have I been missing out.  It turned out great and really wasn't much work at all.  It was a fun alternative to traditional birthday cake to celebrate the big 2-9 for Andy yesterday.  

INGREDIENTS

For the Crust:
1/3 cup plus 1 t. melted margarine
1 1/2 cup crushed graham crackers
1/4 cup granulated sugar

For the Filling:
Two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk
5 large egg yolks
Grated zest of 1 lime
1 cup fresh lime juice

RECIPE METHOD

For the Crust:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat the inside of a 9 inch pie plate with 1 teaspoon of the melted margarine. 

Combine the crushed graham crackers, sugar, and 1/3 cup of melted margarine. When the ingredients are fully combined, use the mixture to line the bottom and sides of the pie dish. Place the pie dish into the preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes. 

For the Filling:
While the crust is baking, in a mixing bowl, make the filling by whisking together all the ingredients. 

When the crust is baked, remove it from the oven and pour in the filling. Return the filled pie crust to the oven and bake for 10 minutes more. Let cool to room temperature. Then Refrigerate.

Don't worry, it's not our child crying

Andy was the one that woke up when the baby started crying. I was so tired and out of it when he woke up at 3:00am. I was trying to convince Andy that he didn't need to worry because it wasn't our kid who was crying. I was convinced I was right too. Andy ended up having quite the night with Owen - Mostly involving sleeping in a rocker that's not meant for sleeping - and I found the two of them sleeping together on the guest bed. I missed my photo opportunity, but I'm sure you can imagine the sweetness. Thanks for doing that, Honey.

The shirt that should have been an apron all along

This shirt was $1 from the thrift store.  It took me about 15 minutes to transform this teeny-bopper tank into a motherly apron.  That was fun.  

I'm planning on embellishing it a bit with some lace, but I ran out of thread in my bobbin, so that meant it was time to quit.

I think Devona would be proud of me.

spring chickens

Clever Nesting

My dear friends, Devona and Colleen have begun a project called Clever Nesting.  They have become quite the inspiration to me as they reuse and repurpose all things that most people throw away.  It is helping me think twice about throwing things into the trash or recycle.  Check them out and support their cause.