Mr. Monkey

I made a sock monkey! This is another project from Amy Karol's "bend-the-rules sewing." It was fun and pretty easy. I'm amazed I actually made it. I didn't use buttons for the eyes or nose since I knew I'd be giving it to Kaeli. And she obviously knew it was hers as you can see below. Sadly, I knew it would happen, Mr. Monkey already has a wound on his cheek with stuffing coming out. I need to sew it up today. Kaeli isn't the gentlest with her toys.



Here is a picture of Wyatt taken while I watched him this week. The picture is a little blurry, but I love the drool. Oh and the baby items I've sewed work great! The next bib I sew I might either do velcro instead or do two snaps on each end to make it somewhat adjustable.

green polka dots!

I did more sewing! I got this fun cotton fleece the other day at the fabric store. From the left is a burp cloth, bib, wipe, changing pad, and a wee wee teepee.

Here are my hollyhocks. I love that they are doing so well and that the deer stopped eating them.

more sewing!

Once I get started on a fun new thing, I just can't stop till I get sick of it. So here are some more sewing projects I have done. I have gotten a ton of inspiration from Etsy.com and flickr groups. This is a soft cube with ribbon tags for a baby to play with. The corners aren't perfect, but it was my first try. I also made a bib with this fabric too, they all match Kaeli's collar now :-)

I went and picked up some new fabric yesterday to make more things with. I made a bib and matching changing pad. I used a hand towel (that just sits in the cupboard and never gets used, so it's practically new) for the changing pad and added SU! chocolate chip grosgrain ribbon to tie it together. I think I need some practice on how to get the towel and fabric to be smooth together, but it still looks good and will work!

Here are some of my vegetables! I think I might pick the zucchini today to eat.

Sewing

I got a cool book at the library and made two things from it today. I just used scrap fabric I already had. This is the book, Bend-the-rules sewing, by Amy Karol.

The first project I did was a dog collar. I'm anxious to go find some cool fabric at a store to make another! It was super easy. The book said you could buy the clasp at a fabric store. I have kept a couple old collars just in case I would need an extra, so I took the most worn one and cut it apart to use the pieces.

This bib was also quick to make. Soon, I'm going to be watching my friend's baby, Wyatt, part time while she goes back to work. So I thought it would be fun to make a bib for him, especially since he's starting on rice cereal. Hopefully it fits, I just followed the pattern. If it doesn't, then I might just have to make another.


Here are some pictures from my backyard.

Zucchini!

This was what my garden looked like when we got back from vacation (pic taken Aug 3). I cut two zucchini's off then and I just cut two more off yesterday and have some more to cut soon! A bunch of the radishes were ready to come out too. I didn't really like them though, pretty hot. Probably won't do radishes again, even though they are the easiest and quickest ever. Now I have some bell peppers growing on the two plants too. Don't know what happened to the lettuce though. When we got back they were no more... nothing at all. Before we left the picture shows that a few were starting up, so I don't know what happened.

Here are some shots of Kaeli playing in the field by our house.

Dan was out throwing the ball with me also. A day later we were watching the Olympics and they showed the story of the volleyball player loosing her wedding ring in the sand (and how they found it with a metal detector). Dan then looked at his hand and noticed his wedding ring was gone too. He had no clue that it was missing till the story. He also had no clue to when he lost it. He said sometimes it almost falls off, but he always feels it. So he thought it must of been in his sleep, we looked everywhere in the house and couldn't find it. We thought maybe it came off when he was petting Kaeli in the field. So the next morning we went and looked for it in the field, no luck. The next day I went back out and looked again, still no luck. We hadn't gone many places lately, so we were thinking of all the things he had done that he could of lost it. Another day later I told him I was going to look in the car for it and then he said yeah I was thinking the same thing. He thought he remembered trying to reach something that fell between the seat and that his ring was loose so he maybe lost it then. I went out to the car right then hoping that I would find it. I looked between the seats and didn't see it, then I was going to look under the seat and put my hand on the seat and it slid in the crack and I felt the seat bar and thought maybe it would be in there and I looked and there it was! Oh I was so happy to find it. I really thought we had lost it. I know rings get lost, but I sure wanted to find it.

I'm back

I'm back from New Zealand and Australia!

We were gone for 24 days. It was fun, long, good, bad, all of the above. We went for World Youth Day to learn about our Catholic faith and to have Mass with the Pope. We first went to New Zealand for a week and did some community service projects (cleaned up an old cemetary), learned about the culture there, had Mass and worship at a local parish. The parish was very nice and set us all up with host families to stay with. Our host family was wonderful. Terribly, on the last day we were there, I started getting sick (body ached and my chest was tight). The plane ride to Sydney Australia was terrible for me, but I survived. Then the plan was to go to the World Youth Day events. Our group (about 50) stayed at the same hotel (cheap one, but it worked well. My sickness got worse and I stayed in bed for the next 5 days. I pretty much missed all of the World Youth Day events. I made it to the Stations of the Cross, which was neat to see and the Final Mass with the Pope. I was bummed I didn't get to do the 7K walk to the Vigil or attend the Vigil Mass and sleep outside to attend the Final Mass, but oh well. I slowly started to feel better and then it was time to rent the RV/caravan for just the 5 of us (Dan, Dan's brother Stephen and two sisters Cheryl and Katey and me) to travel up the coast to Fraser Island. Dan caught what I had and was sick throughout the trip. So I did most of the driving which was fun, since it's on the left side of the road. I did pretty well until the end. I was getting too comfortable with it and forgot once. At a traffic light I turned left and went into the right lane, I realized quickly because lights were coming at me down the road and so I jumped the little median curb and went over into the left lane. All was well, just some jumbled passengers in the back of the rv.

Anyways, the trip up the coast was fun. It was a lot of driving though, but it was nice to see more of Australia than just Sydney. We saw wild kangaroos dead and alive. Surprisingly they are like deer here. The weather was on the chilly side. It is there winter, so we wore jeans and sweatshirts mostly and raincoats when needed. Once we got to Fraser Island, we took a one day tour of the island. It was fun. We spent about 30 mins at Lake McKenzie and that was probably my favorite of the whole trip. I wish we could have spent longer and I wish it was a little warmer. However, the sand was soo soft and the water was super clear.

We drove back towards Sydney and stopped at Hunter Valley vineyards. That was a neat day too. Then we got back to Sydney and went to the Opera House and saw the bridge better. We got a hotel ($200 for a small room with one queen size bed and another $200 for another small room with double and twin beds for the 5 of us), so we got a good night sleep before the long plane rides back home (3 hours to New Zealand, 12 hours to LA, 3 hours to Portland Oregon and of course stopping time in between).

Here is a picture of Lake McKenzie.




I posted some other pictures on my flickr account, click here to see them.