'Twas the day after Christmas...

And all through the house.

Not a mama was sleeping, nowhere in this house.

The presents all opened, the cookies all ate.

While wrappings and boxes sat waiting in haste.

And me in my analness to have my house all organized.

Spent hours and hours, fluttering anxiously about.

Cleaning with bins and boxes and such.

When up from above there arose such a patter, now who could that be?

While its three little children coming running towards me.

Oh mama, oh mama, have you seen my new toys?

I left them right here, they must be hiding from me!

Now children, be calm and have no fear, your toys are all here.

Mama cleaned and organized and lined them all up.

In neat little stacks, tucked in boxes and such.

The children all stared at their mother in fear,

With thoughts of their childhood spent sorting and cleaning and such.

Then mama laughed and told them to go play.

Lucky for you your mama's favorite chore is to sort.

So go play with your toys, take them out of their bins.

Mama's playtime will come at the end of the day.

Lisa

Kindle Fire Case

My mom has a birthday in December so we sometimes go together with my brother's family and buy her a big birthday/Christmas present. This year we got her  a Kindle Fire (which is really cool and now I really, really want one).

So this morning I whipped up a little case for her Kindle.

It was really one of those projects that went together seamingly all too well. Where you think, "Since I'm wingin' this, really, I'm not paying attention and something isn't right."

It took me until I had the whole thing together to figure it out. Drum roll.....it's backwards! It doesn't open like a book. But I'm not sweating it, not a huge deal. I was going to create corner pockets to slip the Kindle into but when I tried it, it didn't hold it as snugly as I would want it to. My solution...stickly velcro.

The coordinating material strip down the backside is a handholder so when you fold it back to read, you can slip your hand in to hold it. The pocket on the backside is for the charger.

Not bad and I'm pretty pleased with it.

Hope mom likes it!!

Merry Christmas!!

Lisa

Christmas Pajamas

I like to make my kids at least one thing for Christmas. The tradition seems to be leaning towards pajamas. I didn't make pajamas for the baby but will work him into the tradition next year.

Both kids picked out their material awhile ago. I put it away so they'd forget about it.

Only two blankets and one Kindle cover left to sew!

Merry Christmas!!!

Lisa

Kids and Christmas Decorating

The kids have been chomping at the bit to decorate for Christmas. The tree and lights were put up on Sunday nite and tonight I opened up the bins and they went to town. Here is some of what they've decorated.

Thomas the Train and the bulldozer moving the construction trucks. The donkeys must have been really tired so Mary and Joseph took a train but the bulldozer needed to move the construction equipment out of the manger so they had a place to stay??

The snowman on mama's rocking chair.

And the elves hangin' out on daddy's chair.

Kids...never a dull moment!

Lisa

A simple kind of quilt...

I feel as if our house has imploded. I would like to think that we only have the grandparents to blame, however, we ourselves seem to have went a little overboard. It's hard because the kids are at "that" age where there is so much joy is the magic of Santa Claus. We did have a lovely Christmas with family and the candlelight service at church on Christmas Eve was truly beautiful and moving.

We have some organizational cleaning to do this week. The biggest project being cleaning out the "junk closet" in the living room and turning it into a toy/storage room. It's actually an old front entrance that we closed off and turned into a closet so it's a nice little 5x5 foot room.

I have two Christmas presents for the kids that I did not get finished before Christmas. They each were supposed to get a "kind of" quilt from mommy and daddy, however, I just ran out of time. Con was more than happy to get his Thomas the train blankkie this morning. I am calling it a "kind of" quilt because a quilt would cringe if they saw it!  :) My kids love textures so there is minky on the back side and a cotton woven on the front and I used satin quilt binding. Which I machined stitched on! I thought about doing yarn ties but settled for sewing a big X across it to keep it from bunching up. You gotta love a happy 2 year old!

Now I'm off to try to find the kitchen table and later to find some free patterns for Barbie Doll clothes because Daddy told Em, "Ask mom to make some." Thanks...a bunch...

Homemade Christmas

Time has really flown and I can't believe that it's the end of the year already. Connor turned one earlier in December and Emily turned 3 yesterday. Both kids really really enjoyed christmas. Emily is such a wonderful present opener. Even when she was opening Connor's gifts she would squeal with delight and state "OH WOW." Below are some of the gifts I made for the kids. Three pairs of new jammies for Connor, one gown for Emily along with a dress with leggings and a new purse. The purse is probably her favorite gift since before we leave the house, everything that is important to her at the time goes into the purse!





The pajamas are a pattern from Ottobre 6/2009 book. I'd never worked with ribbing before but love how they turned out...so did Connor and Emily. The dress and leggings I couldn't find a pattern I liked so I sketched out a quick bodice and added a skirt to it and the leggings were super simple to just draw out, cut, and sew.

The purse is reversible with a coordinating pocket on both sides. I also made some grocery totes but didn't get a picture before they were all given as gifts.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

It snowed!!! It is absolutely beautiful outside. Actually it's still snowing this morning. Schools are canceled and that really freed up our day. This afternoon we had an appointment at the school to write Emily IEP, a meeting with our pastor regarding Connor's baptism and the kids birthday pictures. The meeting has been rescheduled along with the pictures. Will have to call Pastor to see if he's still coming into town today. That gives me an entire morning to sew...at least in between refereeing the kids!

I really need to get Christmas sewing finished. Still have jammies to finish for the kids, Emily's new dress and gift bags for everything to be put into. Yesterday I finished a pair of jammies for Connor and am not sure what I was doing while putting on the ribbing around the collar but it is really stretched out and curly. So I will get to spend a while this morning pulling out all of those stitches...NOT fun to do on knit material.

Connor's baptism is also this weekend and I need to make his baptism gown...nothing like waiting until the last minute! I had hoped he could wear Emily's but my little bambino is quite the big little boy and is a little bigger than his sister was.

Blessing to all and I hope everyone (at least in our area) is enjoying the snow!