Christmas is coming...

and I have been working round the clock over here to get all of the gifts made.  I have spent ample time looking over the wonderful things posted on Sew Mama Sew's Handmade Holidays and although I wanted to pick more, I finally decided on just a few things to mass produce for the kids and their friends/ cousins.  Next year I want to start earlier so that all of my gifts can be hand made.  I really am loving making them all but like always, I have bit off more than I can chew and it looks like some of these gifts will be arriving for Ukrainian Orthodox Christmas instead ; )  


So what have I made and what am I still working on?  Well these car rolls looked like they would be a piece of cake so I had to make them (six in total) but they took a lot longer than I thought they would.  Not sure if it was all the diaper changing, breast feeding, taxi driving, and cooking that needed to be done...never mind the cleaning ; ) but it ended up taking me 2 weeks to complete them all.  They came out OK but there are a lot of things that I will do differently if I do these again.  In fact, making these gave me the idea for an entire post that I would like to do on freezer paper stencils when Christmas is over and I have time to actually think and post again.  They are for my smallest children and my niece and nephews and because they are all five and under, I think they will forgive me the imperfections.


I have also been making a ton of rosette head bands that I found the idea for here  The tutorial is great but hand sewing was not the plan when I started to make all my gifts.  I saved the sewing part on 40 of the rosettes thinking I would knock them out during my Wednesday bible study and my Friday mom's group but when I got to Wednesday Bible study, I realized that I had forgotten my thimble.  Please note, DO NOT HAND SEW WITH OUT A THIMBLE unless you want a few small holes in a finger on your sewing hand.  It's Saturday night and I am still feeling the pain.  I am hoping to finish all of my rosette headbands tomorrow and post pics.  


I took a break tonight and went to my good friend and neighbor Jacqui's annual Christmas party tonight where I scored a Wal-Mart gift card in the gift exchange (wooooo hooooo!!!!!!!!!).  Needless to say, I have had one to many glasses of wine to take a great pic of the car rolls or the rosettes that I am working on but I plan to post them tomorrow (really I am going to do this this time).  So until tomorrow, have a good night and enjoy Christmas break!

finally, I'm back with pics

It has been a mad house of sewing, baking, concerts and class parties over here.  Makes me wonder how I ever thought I would get back here before the months end but here I am!  First up, the pictures of the money cuffs made for Yasmeen's guests at the party last month.  I believe it was nearly two weeks ago when I promised to post these "tomorrow" well never mind the tardiness, here they are:

the monograms were done freehand with the satin stitch

handy zippered pocket to put your $$$ in 

and a cute little 15 month old to model them for you...funny thing is that she put these on herself while I was busy, oh, I have a lot of fun to look forward to with this busy girl!

Remember that these were not my idea, I first saw them here and then followed that link to this tutorial..  The tutorial was great.  I added the piece of fabric with the monograms because I wasn't happy with the visible stitching after adding Velcro.  Also, I wanted to add more of the pink (Yasmeen picked the pink for the inside and I thought it was better out.  So we compromised and she loved them.

Now this morning I am trying to fit in a couple hours of work out side of the home before I finish making the rest of  my Christmas gifts and yes, I am way behind but still hopeful ; )  I am hoping that I can come back and post late tonight when I have gotten some more done.  I would love to show pics of the wonderful rosettes I've been working on and the car rolls that I have made.  I still have 3 skirts and few other odds and ends to complete before Christmas so off of this computer I am getting now!

Birthday Party and a great idea for Party Favors

 As I have shared with you all before, I think Birthday's are a BIG deal.  I love celebrating the lives of the ones I love.  You've already seen a pic from Yasmeen's "family party" in my last post but there was more.  We threw her "friend party" on the following Friday night with 5 of her closest friends.  Her slumber party was a success made possible by wonderful friends and our dear neighbor Jacquie who volunteered to drive us all to the ice skating rink at the Galleria (yes, on Black Friday!).  Here are some highlights  from the party.

gotta have balloons!

a root beer toast to the Birthday girl!

my wonderful neighbor and friend, Jacqui the driver

waiting on line to get ice skates

gotta love a turquoise hat with scarf to match!

little Evy joined the slumber party movie watching  fun

plenty of pillows and plenty of popcorn

a birthday breakfast with the little ones joining in

Evy scored the candy cane turned into a hat

 I also wanted to show off the party favors that I whipped up (late, they are going out with the thank you notes tomorrow).  I found the idea for the wrist wallets here where there is a link to a great tutorial here .  Yasmeen loved them and picked out the fabric from my monster stash of smaller cuts. 

but that will have to wait another day because I am running behind on all of my pics and editing.  Hopefully the post with the pics will be tomorrow.  I have to say that as much as I am enjoying this little blog, it is really a challenge to get to it and actually have all the photos of everything you want to share ready to go.  So until tomorrow...

and operation Birthday Surprise is complete...well almost

So the day has come and gone and here I am, still up!  I just had to come and post pics of just how much I was able to get done on the big birthday surprise for Yasmeen.  Her room is not yet complete but hopefully it will be before her slumber party on Friday.  My apologies for the pics but I was exhausted by the time I got to take a pic and the lighting left a bit to be desired.

The lamp shade is still not redone and I now realize that a few more pillows might be in order to give her that "sofa" feel that she so wants but I'm quite pleased with the progress.

The photo collage extends further to the left of this photo but the full pic came out a mess (even darker than this one) so I'll have to take better pics in the light tomorrow.

She absolutely LOVES this collage!

SUCCESS at last ; )

My daughter has been begging for posters to be hung in her room for a long time now.  Lucky for me, one of her best friends has a mom who really loves her and granted her wish this year.  She delivered and hung all three of these lovely frames filled with Yasmeen's pick of super stars.  Gotta say that I'd never sen Kesha before and am not so very impressed...I must be getting old.

Now all of the hodgepodge of posters are hung up in her closet and she couldn't have been more thrilled.

These are the two pillows that I kept saying I would post pics of.  The last one I did was the one with her name on it and that was fun.  I have never tried to "embroider" anything with my machine until this pillow and I learned a lot doing it.  Freehanding it is kind of liberating after all of those straight lines.

I leave you with a pic of the 11 year old herself.  She said that this was the best birthday of her life..I hope we don't disappoint her next year.

Happy Birthday my dear sweet Yasmeen!

I love you!

birthdays are super special...

That is why I am up at this ridiculous hour, working my arse off to finish Yasmeen's birthday surprise.  The pillows are almost done (one blind stitch left), the blueberry muffins are ready for breakfast, over 3 dozen cupcakes are baked and iced, ready to go...really gaudy flowers (hot pink and orange) are in a vintage vase by her bed.  There is still so much more to do and I am hoping it all gets done before my wonderful 11 year old arrives home from school.

I have been asked by a large number of people "why? can't you do it smaller?"  No, no I can not ; )  I was blessed with a family that celebrated my life (wait, they still do) ever since I was born.  It wasn't about large parties (although there were a number of those), it was just about celebrating.  My mother would wake us up with our favorite breakfast and one gift.  The whole family would sing happy birthday to you before you were even seeing straight.  Then there was dinner, a wonderful dinner in which you could request deep fried chicken mashed potatoes, and sopapillas all on the same table on the same night!  My mom is great ; )  It was magical every year...one special day that was always set aside for me.  I want my children to have that too.

Here are some pics of the crazy going on in my house right now:

cupcakes before the icing.. had to run to the HEB at eleven o'clock when I realized there was no more powdered sugar for the butter cream..ugh

There are 150 photos in total and as soon as I get home from taking her to school those bad boys are going up on one of her walls

ruffles, ruffles and more ruffles..

still need to be ruffled...

this lamp shade will be the home to the mountain of ruffles when I finish them

a ridiculous number of pics that look to be of the same cup cakes..

but there not!

34 kids will be in her classroom when these are served

and you know she'll want to deliver cupcakes to every teacher that she's ever had ; )

ran out of butter cream icing and it's too late to make more right now

time is slipping away from me..

So in true Wendy style, I have possibly bit off more than I can choose.  I finished pillow number four but the pics I took are horrible so I am waiting until pillow five is done to do a retake of them for posting.  I am in the middle of putting together a photo wall instillation for the big birthday surprise on Monday.  If I don't get back to blogging before then, I promise that I will post pics of Yasmeen's new room on Monday night...late...after all the dishes from the birthday dinner are done.  I am getting off of this computer now so that I can get to the rest of my list..

pillow week..day 7

After a long week of learning how to put a zipper in (it's really quite easy if you follow instructions...yes, I have a difficult time with that), I finally finished 3 pillows for pillow week.  It was going to be 7 and I was going to post very impressive photos...  but it's late and my house is a wreck and with limited clean surfaces for which to lay my pillows, you get to see some mediocre pillow pics at best.  No worries, I will show them again next week when I have completed the rest of them and they sit atop my daughter's bed in her (hopefully) finished bedroom. I should probably mention that the reason I decided to follow along with pillow week is that I thought it would be a great birthday gift for my eldest daughter Yasmeen.  She is turning 11 on the 22nd and I thought I would surprise her by actually finishing the bedroom decor that we started on 2 1/2 years ago (I know, I know..between diapers, breastfeeding, pregnancy, diapers, potty training and still breastfeeding...well you might know how it is).

Here they are!

This is the first one I did, then cut up and redid after trying twice to install a zipper to no avail.  I finally went with an envelope backing

So I did get a zipper done successfully on this one.  I figured simple stripes would be a nice break after all the pleating and ruffling.

The pompom trim is something I don't think I ever want to mess with on a pillow again.  I have to say that I wished that I could have made my pompoms and done something more like this one that Meg did at elsiemarley but there was no way with my week that I would have ever gotten it done.  Maybe next time.

This was my first attempt to piece fabric together, I think it turned out OK but I didn't get a great shot of it.  So now I am off to bed so that I can rest up for round two.  I promised my husband that I would have this part of the gift done by the end of pillow week (he doesn't know that it was over today so I'll just carry on till tomorrow is over ;)