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!

little curtains

My semi-new curtains! I bought the fabric ages ago from superbuzzy but never actually made them in to proper curtains (I had them pinned to the rod). The curtains came with the scallop hem and holes in the top for the rod but it was too wide for the window so I had to cut off the holes and make a casing for the rod to go through.

Ava playing on my bed.
I love the light in this room.
Unfortunatly I had the ISO set to 800 so they are really grainy.

My perfect Tree

Our Christmas tree (that hits the ceiling).

Notice the tree skirt?? My G.I.A.C. gave it to me for my birthday:). i put it on as a poncho just to see what it would look like. Christmas clown is all I coudl think of.

Don't ever mess with a disgruntled reindeer.

I made those antlers for our cat Mau Mau many years ago. He looked so cute in them.

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I have two funny stories about Emily and Ava to share.

1. The other morning when getting Emily ready for school, the lovely Ava decided to get up too. Usually I try and not make any noise and wake her because she disrupts our routine if she's awake. So she's up and in a wonderful mood (not) and while sitting at the kitchen table Emily farted and said, I farted! Ava says with a very pissy face, no I farted! And so it went back and forth with Ava getting more and more angry and insistent that she is the one that did it even though she didn't. 

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2. While I was sewing the other day Emily was singing 

1, 2, 3 leap frogs

4, 5, 6 leap frogs

7, 8, 9 leap frogs

10 little leap frogs leap...across the road...

So I said, then they get hit by a car...

She says with all seriousness,

no, they looked both ways. 

Too stinkn cute!

ein Weihnachtsbaum ist gut, but 6 are better!

More lovelies from the Fa la la la Felt book. I used wool felt from achildsdream. Oh wait, I didn't, I used the felt I got from a German store ..I went with Corinnea and have no idea where it was. A Childs Dream doesn't have some of the colors. I'm going to try some felt from heather Baily's site. it's wool and bamboo. It sounds nice but I've been fooled before! I used stuffing for most of the tree and then added plastic pellets in the bottom. The tallest is 7" tall and about 4.5 around.



 A "mug rug" from Kelly. isn't it CUUUTE?? I guess these are the big thing right now in blogland. I had  never heard of them until Kelly gave me this then I started noticing them on blogs. genius! Although I can tell you exactly how they came about. Someone was drinking coffee in her sewing room and spilled or left a ring of coffee on a pattern. She looked around and saw a mini quilt and thought " duh!! Finally a use for that tiny quilt!". or something like that.... it's genius either way.

 You know someone likes you when they cut into their much coveted stack (and I really mean yards and yards) of Celebrate Spring by Sandy Gervais for Moda. Heidi made this 1/2 yard bundle for me. She LOVES this line. In fact she bought out Sandy Gervais herself from her blog. I made this quilt, and this quilt and this mini out of the fabric a long time ago. Thank you Heidi:)

*I wish I had a pictures of the quilts Heidi and Mary A. have made using this line...that's a hint to send pictures so I can post them:)

The other night I made some chicken that required me to cook it in a skillet and then put the whole skillet in the oven to cook further. I took the skillet out with an oven mitt but then grabbed it a couple of seconds later without the oven mitt. I burned my hand VERY bad. It was excruciating and my hand was throbbing. I immediately got online and searched for some way to make it better. I found a site that said to wrap it in aluminum foil. WTF? So I did it. Like people said on the site, your burn (in this case my palm and fingers) will get really hot and hurt worse but then it will stop. It didn't stop hurting while I wore my foil mitt but did stop after I took it off, about 15 minutes of wearing it. And since then I've had NO pain, no blisters no nothing but some dry skin where the worst of the burns was. Either my burn was never really that bad or the foil thing actually worked. Anyone ever heard of this???