31 Day Challenge: Day 30

Today was a lovely day filled with wonderful blessings and friends from years gone by (notice I called none of you old!).  I was able to visit both my former home churches for service today. 

First I had a wonderful time of fellowship with the church I started attending at the age of 12 after we moved to Kirbyville.  I was able to hug so many familiar necks and share stories and memories with loved ones.  To see children who are kids no more.  Children I once taught in Sunday-School are now older than me!  They made me feel OLD!

Then tonight I went back to my roots.  To the church of my heritage.  The church I have my first spiritual memories of, and where my Grandfather who was an awesome and mighty man of God pastored.  It is the church where my personal relationship with God began, Where I was baptised in the precious name of Jesus, and received the Holy Ghost.  I have so many memories of that place along with the building itself.  DO you know I dream of it?  Crazy that something that was a part of my life so long ago regularly is part of my night times now.  Anyway I think I have sufficiently expressed the importance of the people and the facilities as well as the Spirit of God that I always feel when I am there in my life.  So it is no wonder that being in service with them tonight was absolutely beautiful.

Nothing is more beautiful to me that worshiping my Savior with beloved family and friends. 
On that note for those of you who are reading and are believers, I am asking you to pray for a childhood friend of mine.  She is my age (32) and is facing surgery on what the doctors call cancer.  We are claiming her healing and she refuses to accept the diagnosis of cancer, but should they find any evidence of it when they take her into surgery tomorrow there will be 5 hours of surgery to completely remove the tumor from her neck and facial nerve, and then another 5 hours of surgery to reconstruct her jaw, teeth, nerves, and side of her face.  A grand total of 10 hours of surgery after which she will be placed immediately into ICU for a few days before going to a private room.  I am asking for you to pray that when they make the first incision it is only to find that there is nothing there and that our healer has already taken care of the problem.  We serve a mighty God and I know He is well able.  Please hold Alayna up tomorrow.  As well as her family (a sweet husband and two beautiful girls), and the physicians performing whatever procedures are necessary.

So many beautiful and nostalgic moments the past few days with today as the icing on the cake in what has truly been a walk down memory lane.

I hope your Sunday was wonderful, beautiful, and blessed.

Have a great day & God Bless!

31 Day Challenge: Day 29

Please forgive the lateness of these postings.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the internet coverage has been sparse on this trip!

So for day 29 my beautiful moment was watching my kids have a ball at Chuck E Cheese and my dad and brother have maybe even more fun play all the video games.  It was so funny and the kids loved it when at the end of the night my brother gave me a handful of tickets he had won.  This meant a much bigger prize could be had from the treasure area. 

Afterward we went to a fall festival in my home town for about 45 min.  Which was plenty long enough with the temperatures being in the 40's (Fahrenheit).  It was long enough for the kids to get candy from all the communities emergency response vehicles, have their faces painted, play some games, get prizes, and even for Madeline and the hubby to ride the mule drawn wagon.  It was a lovely (and blessedly short) 45 min of fun.

Then we went back to my dads house and had a great time just sitting around visiting.  I LOVE my family and enjoyed every minute I was able to spend and have fun with them!  Too bad my bonus mom (she HATES the connotation the word "step" brings so its always been bonus for her) was too sick to make it, but we enjoyed a visit at the house.

So many beautiful moments filled with family and fun.  I just wish I could have the family part WAY more often!  Once or twice a year is just too little!!

I hope you had a beautiful Saturday!

Have a great day & God Bless!!

31 Day Challenge: Day 28

I had two beautiful moments today.  The first was being able to attend my little brothers senior game (last home football game) at my Alma Mater.  He is a band geek extraordinaire.  He totally rock the trumpet, and this year the mellophone (like a trumpet with a bigger bell that gives it, yup you guessed it, a more mellow tone).  It was so great to get to see him strut his stuff on the field during halftime as the band did their marching maneuvers.  Its a great time! 
My next beautiful moment was when I surprised one of my very best friends by dropping by after I left the game.  I figured I'd get to talk for about 30 min and see her family before they went to bed for the night.  Instead I find out that her hubby and boys are gone to North Texas for the night so this morning they can hunt for kids hunting opening weekend.  Which means she was all alone and we could talk as much as we wanted to. So we pretty much re-created one of our old slumber parties from high school by staying up talking about everything going on in our lives until 3am.  That's when I finally left to go get my Hubby from my dads house where he was sleeping patiently.  So it ended up being a 5.5 hour gab fest! i love it when you have those kind of friends you haven't seen in a year, but you can sit down and it seems like it was just last wee you were together and you can talk talk talk and have a great time together.  I love my Bestie!!!

So those were the beautiful moments of my day yesterday.  I hope you had some as well!

Have a great day and God Bless!

31 Day Challenge: Day 27

My beautiful Moment (yes posted late because where I am staying for vacation doesn't have the most reliable Internet or cell signals) was arriving at my Mom's house in Texas safe and sound after a looooong 12 hour car ride with three kiddos 6 and under. So finally we are having a great time with my family and friends Beautiful times!

Hope you are having beautiful memories!

Have a great day & God Bless!

A Cutie Patootie Outfit

I told you I would be busy last week with my hiatus from posting projects.  And busy I was!  I worked this outfit out for my girls.  Only one of them is pictured because the other one just couldn't hold her eyes open any longer since I waited to snap them after church Sunday night.

Here is the finished product:

I made the skirt using two different sized fabric pieces.  The bottom two pieces came from a yard of fabric and the top three came from fat quarters.  Make sure this will work with your measurements.  Be sure to measure both the width you will need around your little angel as well as the length.  I like my skirts to run a little on the longer side for mine (especially now that its cooling off), but you may only need three strips plus a waistband or smaller width in your strips if you don't need them as long as I did.  Just keep in mind that this is NOT an exact science.  If they are not all the same width...OK it will add character.  I can honestly say not one of my strips was the same width as another, and I love how it looks!  Again if you want to be a perfectionist about it (and I usually am, but I wanted to get these DONE) that's fine.  Take the time to make them exact, but if you want it to have a degree of whimsy let them all be different widths.  The length of your fabric strips is the most important measurement here.  You will understand all of this as you read on.

So lets get started...

I started by cutting the fat quarters into 4 strips roughly 22 inches long and 4-5 inches wide.

Out of the yard I cut two strips 26 inches long and 4-6inches wide for the next to bottom layer,

and for the bottom layer I cut two strip 30 inches long and 4-6 inches wide.

For each layer I sewed two strips together making them (fat quarter strips) 44 inches long by 4-5 inches wide and (yard strips) 52 - 60 inches long and 4-6 inches wide.  I had both strips as the same fabric so each layer was the same on front and back (all the way around), but I am considering switching it up on the next one and letting the front strip differ from the back strip.  Still using only four fabrics for my layers, but mix-matching them.  It could be really cute.  I will have to let you know!

My top two layers are from the fat quarter 22 inches sewed together to make a total of 44 inches long.  I sewed the top two layers (not counting the waistband)  together since they were the same length.  

Next I gathered the very bottom layer to the 52inches needed for it to match the bottom of the layer above it, and sewed them together.  Now you are looking at two separate pieces with two layers each.  To combine them you will need to gather the next to bottom layer that is 52 inches long until it is only 44 inches long and sew it to the bottom of the top two layers.  

I hope this isn't too confusing.  To clarify the top two  layers are flat and not gathered, and the bottom two are graduated lengths gathered and sewn together.  This gives you a flared slightly A-line look.  You could do all of the layers in graduated lengths gathering each layer before attaching it, but I chose to leave my top two plain/ungathered.  Its just a personal preference.

Now that you have all four layers sewn together, and laid flat you will want to make your waist band.  You do this by taking the strip you have reserved that is 44 inches long by 4-5 inches wide and folding it in half making a tube.  This can be done two different ways.  You can 1. sew it inside out and pull it back through itself making the seam on the inside or you can 2. sew it plain and have the seam on the outside.  I did it both ways actually.  Let me tell you just do it the easy way, and leave the seam on the outside.  When you attach it to your skirt no one will be able to see it, and holding them side by side I couldn't tell which waist band was done which way without looking. Sew the tube you have made to your skirt making sure the seam is on what will be the inside of the skirt.  Then thread your elastic through the tube.  The best way to do that is to attach a safety pin to one end, and feed it through with the pin to grab through the fabric.  Just don't let it come open!  Ouch!  I neglected to say that you will need to measure the waist that you are wanting this waistband to go around.  My girls wear a 5-6 so I made their elastic about 19-21 inches long, but it really depends on the give that your elastic has.  After you have put your elastic through your tube you will need to sew the elastic on each end to each end of your tube of fabric.  This will gather the waist of your skirt in.   I also go to where the side seam is at and sew through the waistband and elastic a few times so that it wont twist while they are wearing it later.  Remember to go back over where you sewed your layers together and your side seams surging them or using a zig zag stitch to over-lock them giving them that finished look.  Either way will work.  

Now I cheated on my hem and used the fabrics finished edge that I knew wouldn't fray.  If you don't cheat like I did then you will want to put in an inch wide hem.

For the belt I took another strip  44 inches by 4-5inches and sewed the edges together like the waistband of the skirt, but I did do this inside out so that the rough seam would be inside.  I turned it right side out and threaded the elastic through it just like the waistband.  Sewing the elastic to each end of the fabric.

For the flower I took a piece of fabric that was about 36 inches long and 2.5 inches wide ran a small hem down the full length and the sides leaving on long length unhemmed.  If you wanted the frayed look then don't hem it, but I wanted a cleaner finished look.  Then I a ran a tight gathering stitch down the unhemmed length and pulled it tight.  I wound the gathered strip into a circle to make the flower and sewed the middle of the circle to itself.  This isn't the clearest instructions in the world, and I will make another one soon in order to really demonstrate how to do this.   Next I made a yo-yo out of a contrasting fabric and hot glued it to the center of the flower.  That served two purposes 1: it was stinking cute and 2: it hid all the center stitching I did to make the flower stay wound up.  Next I got reeeeaaalll professional (it was 3am and I just wanted it done to be honest) and hot glued a jumbo safety pin to the back of the flower. I used the pin attached to the flower to the two ends of the belt and hold it all together.  I do intend to go back and make an actual buckle for the belt other than just a safety pin on the flower, but hey it worked and looked soooo cute.  Bonus if the girls don't want to wear the belt you can just pin the flower to the shirt!!  We actually did this on one of them and it looked very cute as well!

Here is another picture of my oh so cute model hamming it up for the camera

The hair clip flower tutorial is going to be in a future post so keep your eyes peeled for it!

Hope you enjoyed my instructions (HAR) on how I made the skirt and belt on this cute outfit.  I will try to take more pictures of the process next time and get more detailed explanation.  For now if you have any questions feel free to e-mail me or comment and I will get right back with you.

Leave me a comment letting me know what you think and if you have any tips or tricks that I didn't mention here.  I am always up for learning something new!!

Have a great day and God Bless!!