Hanging with my Gnomies: the Costumes

 LAWN ORNAMENTS UNITE!

*Girl Gnome Costumes*

They're done! And photographed:) I'm really happy with how they turned out and the girls seem to like them. 

The run-down on where everything is from:

1. The hats are acrylic felt (used this tutorial to make them). The fronts are folded back. Make a test one out of pattern-ease first!!

2. The dresses are Oliver + S Music Box pattern and made from Kona Cotton. Both size 5 but with different seam allowances and lengths.

The Dresses were altered (see back photo) to exclude the buttons going all the way down the back and gathered at the waist instead of pleats.

3. The blouses are from Old Navy.

4. The aprons are made by looking and measuring an apron from a Raggedy Ann doll I've had since I was little. The fabric is bleached muslin.

5. The "eyelets" (Dirndl lacing guides) on the backs of both dresses are purchased from this Dawanda seller.

6. The wide ribbon on each dress is vintage ribbon purchased on Ebay.

7. Flamingos from amazon, ceramic mushroom the the PX many years ago.

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I bought a Samsung Galaxy S3 for super cheap off some guy working in the PX!! I am in Heaven. It's  my very 1st big girl phone; meaning one that can text easily and you can watch movies and all that good stuff like surf the web but most importantly is takes Instagram photos!!!! So be prepared to see a lot of those. I have wanted to do this since the 1st one I ever saw. They make everything look cool.

This was taken on the way to take the pictures. It's snowing here already!

Hold my Passport

Passport holder made using this tutorial. Made for Jenny B's birthday last month. She has to carry 3-4 other passports when traveling (not sure if she carries her husbands but she has 3 kids she carries for). I didn't use any stiffener in this because the 1st one I made I used peltex as suggested and that thing was a monster! The outside fabric and linings are all from the Heather Ross line Far Far Away 2 and a linen cotton blend I think so they are thicker than regular quilting cotton. I love it and wanted to keep it for myself:)

 I put initial stickers on everyone's passport so I can easily see whose is whose. The inside (below) got a little puckered at the top. 

These are the mushrooms I was talking about in a previous post. How cool are these?? For you Kelly:)

Ava's face is out of focus below. What am I doing wrong? Is it me or the lens? I have this problem with a lot of my pictures.

Pretending to be Zombies. Fake background? It looks like it doesn't it??

Zombie Silhouettes

When I saw this tutorial on Crafterhours for making your own silhouettes I had to make them. But I didn't have a projector.. until two days ago that is. I just had my 41st birthday (!) and received a gift certificate to Amazon from my wonderful Auntie Karen and promptly bought the projector with it. With Amazon Prime it arrived in 5 days.  I used Emily and Ava as models (can you tell who is who?). They do look a little like sleep walkers but not much I could do about that. I had help from my neighbors with the fingers as I had botched those. I used the projector and black poster board. **The cat and ghost silhouettes are Martha Stewart window clings from about 12 years ago.

And here is the view from inside.

Can you tell what this is? It's the side of my neighbors house (this view is in between two houses is why it's cut off and maybe hard to tell what's going on). My other neighbor put his TV projector out his bedroom window and projected stuff like the Thriller video and other music played to swirly stuff (like screen savers) on the side of my other neighbors wall. It was sooooo cool. He was seeing how it looked for Halloween night. Such a cool idea. It would be so cool to play movies in the summer or fireworks or a big game. 

 Some random things I made with my Silhouette machine. Bone garland...

 Bird and bat. There is a cat too. Love these! 

The measuring tape growth chart was bought ages ago from here. I did just see this DIY version.

And lastly here is what my BF in Japan gave me for my birthday: These Kokeshi mugs (also some antique Kokeshi dolls which I forgot to upload). Love love love them!!

Halloween Logs

My neighbor Becca (the one who modeled the apron) made these Halloween decorations for me for my birthday. She used logs found in the surrounding woods (are they big enough to be called  logs? or are they branches? or trunks of small trees? What constitutes a log?) anyway, I had wanted some of my own and she made them for me! The cape and hat are just poster board but I think foamies would be good if not cheapy looking but they'd hold up better in the weather. These would make fun kids projects too. 

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Ava has pinkeye. The day of her school pictures. What crap luck is that? But they were able to take her photo anyway and although she wouldn't really smile, I think they came out ok. I took these before we left to take the school photos. I'm in love with her outfit. The one in the forest is from earlier this morning at a little lake right down the road. There was a TON of mushrooms and I took pictures of her with them. The mushrooms were the red caps with white spots kind. 

Kürbisfest Schloss Ludwigsburg year 8!!

 It's that time of year again! Ludwigsburg Palace pumpkin patch and what I can't believe is that we've been 8 times! Since Emily was 3 months old. 

Just a warning and an explanation: 

There are a lot of photos below and one reason is I have family members who do not use facebook and this is one way of showing off the girls to them. So no crafting in this post just family photos!

This years theme was Switzerland. If you look at the previous years themes you'll see that this year was by far the most boring year ever! I was so disappointed but I (we) did still enjoy ourselves.

2011 Dinosaur theme

2010 Under the Sea theme

2009 Fairy Tale theme

2008 (part 1, part 2, part 3) Outer Space theme

and before that I didn't blog but if you look at part 3 of year 2008 you can see Emily at 3 months in her bear costume.

The Matterhorn

I got a little redundant with the next set of photos but I just loved them all:)

 I really hope we can go one more time as we leave Germany this time next year:( 

I have no idea where we'll go at this point and our chances of staying another 3 years here are pretty slim. As it is we will have been in Germany 10 years by the time we leave:) 

That's all folks! Thanks for looking:)