First of all, I need to apologize. Yes, I realize that I’m the absolute worst blogger in the history of blogging. And I know that if I don’t post anything new, there is absolutely no chance of anyone actually reading my blog. I’m sorry.

Now that we have all that over with….what did you give your mom for Mother’s Day? Really, I agonize over this every year. And, since my husband assumed all gift giving responsibilities automatically transferred to me when we got married, I have to come up with a gift for his mom too. Not that I mind. She’s a great mother-in-law. The best, really. But, I am not good a coming up with good gifts. So my neighbor came up with this one for me. Every year the kids come home from school with a piece of art and an order from. You can order something (mouse pad, apron, mug, tote bag…you get the picture) with your child’s art on it. I wanted to order tote bags for my mom and my MIL, but I didn’t have the heart to choose just one of my 3 kids’ pictures. And I knew that neither my mom or my MIL needed 3 tote bags.

So, my neighbor suggested that I scan the art, resize it, and just put all 3 in one of those collage frames. I resized the originals to 5 x 7’s and put them in a collage frame. I bought a RIBBA frame for $9.99 at IKEA. It turned out great, and I think it was a hit. Oh…you wanted to see pictures? I forgot to take one of the finished product, but here are my children’s art projects. Always happy to show those off.

Here’s Elizabeth’s bird. She’s in kindergarten.

…and David’s. He’s in 1st grade.

…and finally, William’s. He’s in 2nd grade.

I love them. I just love to look at kids’ art though. I need to decide how I’m going to display the originals.

As I alluded to in my last post, we spent a couple of days this weekend enjoying God’s creation and the company of good friends. We were invited to their land, about 2 hours southeast of Austin. While we were there, we enjoyed s’mores, hunted for Easter eggs, played cards, hunted for turtles, and cooked out. I also enjoyed taking some photos, but as usual, I wish I’d taken more. When will I ever learn that you just can’t take too many photos?

It must have been all the rain we got in the fall — the bluebonnets were spectacular!

Since my family refused to pose in the sea of blue for a photo, I found this cooperative longhorn who agreed to pose for me instead.

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It was great for the kids to just be able to kick back and relax…

I’ve always been fascinated with cows, so I enjoyed taking photos of the many that were wandering around.

The boys found these spiderwebs the morning we left.

Happy Easter!

We dyed eggs the Wednesday before Easter since we were going out of town on Thursday and weren’t coming back until Saturday. I didn’t want the pressure of having to do it on Saturday. The dyeing went fine. I think it was the first time nobody spilled a cup of dye. However, what was more memorable about that afternoon was the spontaneous paper Easter bunnies that the kids made while I was cleaning up the egg dyeing mess. I just love it when they come up with an idea on their own, work together, and make it happen.

And here are the completed bunnies. They took them to school Thursday and gave them to their teachers.

Ok…remember the boring looking IKEA drawers from the last photo on  this post? Remember I said they didn’t look the same now? Well…here they are.

Yep…I did that with some Amy Butler scrapbook papers (4o% off at Michaels) and some Mod Podge. I store my threads, clothing labels, sewing notions, and rick rack scraps in those drawers. They really brighten the room up.

I was thinking that I was pretty clever for decoupaging those drawers. Then something made me google “IKEA drawers decoupage.” Wait a minute?! I wasn’t the only one to think of this little project. No. Apparently, she did, and she did, and she did. And so did this blogger, and this one, and this one. And someone made a Flickr album with photos of these little decorated drawers. And look…she put knobs on hers.  There are virtually millions of these little decorated chests of drawers all over  the internet. And I learned they are called Fira, by the way. And that they are discontinued. I think this is my favorite. I love the faux bois.

What about you? Do you have your own IKEA Fira chests of drawers? How did you decorate yours?

If you’re looking for a fun spring break project, try this one. It’s super simple to make, and you only need 3 ingredients: school glue, food coloring, and Borax (I found it at Walmart). The recipe is here, on Martha’s web site. We saw it on her show earlier this week, and the kids watned to try it. I was skeptical, but the slime turned out really good. The kids are having a blast playing with it. I think we’ll have to make some more for Halloween!

Are you looking for beautiful yet practical baby gift that you can make in just a few minutes? I’ve put together this tutorial so that you can make your own burp cloths, just like mine. It does require a sewing machine and some basic sewing skills.

Here’s what you’ll need (supplies listed are for 1 burp cloth):

• a piece of fabric, at least 10 by 20 inches (I use cotton quilting fabrics)
• a piece of matching rickrack, about 20 inches long
• a piece of grosgrain ribbon (mine is 1 1/2 inches wide) about 20 inches long (this is optional)
• a cloth diaper
• sewing machine
• a quarter inch foot for your sewing machine is helpful, but not required
• iron
• pins
• thread to match your project

Before you start…machine wash, and dry your cloth diaper. This is an important step because the diapers are meant to shrink and quilt up. For best results, you want it to shrink before you sew the fabric onto it.

Let’s get started…

1. Press the cloth diaper. You won’t be able to get it perfectly flat because of the way it quilts up in the dryer. Just get it as flat as you can.

2. Measure across the short side of the cloth diaper. Add 2 inches to your measurement. This will be the length of the long side of your fabric rectangle. The short side of the rectangle will be 8 1/2 inches. For instance, my diaper measures 14 inches across, so I will cut a rectangle of fabric 16 by 8 1/2 inches.

3. Fold the fabric rectangle in half, long sides together and press so there’s a crease at the bottom.

4. Open up the folded fabric rectangle and sew the rick rack to the front side of one of the long edges of fabric, using a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Be sure to backstitch at the beginning and end of the seam.

5. Trim the ends of the rick rack flush with the edges of the fabric.

6. Fold the edge of the fabric so that the seam allowance faces the wrong side of the fabric, and press.

The wrong side of the fabric should look like this…

…and folded up, it should look like this…

*If you aren’t using ribbon on your burp cloth, skip to step 10.

7. Unfold the fabric, and stitch the ribbon to the long edge of the fabric, next to the rick rack, stitching about 1/8 inch from the edge of the ribbon.

8. Stitch the other edge of the ribbon down onto the fabric, stitching about 1/8 inch from the edge.

9, Trim the ribbon ends flush with the edges of the fabric. It should look like this, opened up…

…and like this, folded up…

10. Open up the fabric rectangle (if it’s not already), and place the long edge 3 1/2 inches from one of the short ends of the cloth diaper. The wrong side of the fabric should be facing up, and the rick rack should be toward the opposite end of the diaper.

11. Pin in place.

12. Stitch 1/4 inch from the edge of the fabric.

13. Fold fabric down so that the right side is facing up.

14. Turn the cloth diaper over, and bring the fabric up and around the edge of the diaper. Line the stitching on the rick rack up with with stitching on the diaper.

15. Pin in place.

16. Carefully fold the edges of the fabric around the edge of the cloth diaper. Fold the bottom edge in first, bringing it around the edge of the diaper…

…and the top edge last, on top of the diaper.

Pin in place.

Repeat on the other side. Now you’re ready to sew.

17. Starting at the lower left hand corner of the burp cloth, top stitch 1/8 inch from the edge. Top stitch around 3 sides of the fabric (every side except the bottom).

When you are stitching over the ribbon, keep your stitch directly on top of the previous stitch (from where you sewed the ribbon onto the fabric).

18. Congratulations! Your burp cloth is finished. You can personalize it with a name or initial, or leave it like it is.

Please, please, please…leave me a comment if you tried this tutorial. Or even if you didn’t. I’d love your input/suggestions and would be thrilled to see photos of your finished product!

Welcome to my new blog. It’s a long story that I won’t bore you with, but my old blog and all my old posts are gone forever. I’m still using WordPress, but I have a new design, thanks to Keely at Mod Melon Creative. Now my blog matches my store — something I’d been wanting to happen for a long time.

So, now that the slate is wiped clean, I’m just going to go right ahead and come clean with you about how, ummm, not clean I really am.  So we can just get that out in the open right away. I’m going to share photos of my sewing room with you.

Alright…here we go. Don’t judge me…

Yes, I’m the kind of girl who gets in a creative frenzy and just throws fabric all over the floor. And I know you’re jealous of my gigantic roll of Warm & White batting.

My cutting table, straight from Costco. It also doubles as a picnic table when we have cook-outs in our cul-de-sac.

See those natural wood drawers behind my sewing machine? They don’t look like that any more. More about that in a later post though.

Now you know the real me. I’m messy when I sew, and I don’t believe that “cleanliness is next to godliness.” So…what does your sewing studio, craft room, or other creative space look like? Leave a comment and post a link. I can’t wait to see!