Easter Mini Sock Monkeys are in the shop!

I finished these cute little sock monkeys today, and they're ready to go! They are disguised as bunnies, for Easter. Now that I've discovered how easy it is to make those tiny bunny ears, I'm going to have to make some for a few of Kade's stuffed animals too! Here are a couple pictures:

New Mini Sock Monkeys...

Look what I started today!

These teeny little guys and gals will be perfect for an Easter basket, or just to celebrate Spring! There will be six, and I'm planning to have them done and listed on Etsy this week. If you'd like to reserve one, please let me know!

Hope you're all having a lovely weekend! :)

Pretty Spring Purse

Last week I made a new purse for my sister-in-law. I think she might be the only girl in the family I hadn't sewn anything for yet, so I figured it was about time! I used the free Buttercup Bag tutorial from Made By Rae. I also added some changes- I enlarged it, added a top zipper, piping, and some pockets on the inside.

Do you find it hard to pick out fabrics for someone? I do! Especially for something like a purse, because I want to to be their style, something they'd pick out themselves! Here is what I finally picked out. I think it's really soft and pretty, perfect for a spring purse! I love the symmetrical design. I chose out a pale blue thick stripe for the piping and lining. I bought 1/3 yard of each fabric, and used ALL of it for the purse! Lucky guess!


These are bad pocket pictures, I should have taken them before I sewed everything together! I love pockets. I always have so much in my purse that it's near impossible to find my wallet and phone quickly, unless they are in their pocket.



I feel more secure with a zipper on my bags. This style of bag doesn't sit up really well, so it's nice to know that when I toss it in the car or on the table, nothing will fall out. The little ribbon on the zipper pull makes it easy to open and close.


The finished bag! There is heavy interfacing on the top, to keep it sturdy, and just medium interfacing on the bottom. I've made three of these bags now, I think it's a great pattern!



Now I just need to make one for myself one of these days!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We love this holiday at our house! This year, my son has been very excited about Leprechauns. They've been talking a lot about them at school. Their class leprechaun, Lucky, has been leaving little shamrock footprints around the classroom, and creating lots of messes while the students aren't there. At Grandma's house, some milk was left out in a little pitcher, in case the leprechauns were thirsty. In the morning, the milk, poured into Kade's glass, magically turned green! He was convinced that if he drank it, he would be magical just like one of them. Last night, they caused more havoc in Kade's room, knocking down his giant robot.

Kade had a class assignment to create a Leprechaun trap. Here is what we came up with! The three of us made it together, but Kade did a large part of the work, and made all the decisions.

We painted a piece of cardboard green, painted a gold road, and stapled shamrock wire garland around the pathway. The straw ladder leads up to the top of a painted and decorated laundry soap container.

Doesn't it look enticing up there? We wanted to lure the leprechaun to the top of the ladder to see the pot of gold. We put lots of signs around, because as we all know, they never follow the rules!

The cauldron holds a ton of gold
(little rocks that were rolled around in gold paint).

It sits at the back, so the leprechaun has to step onto the disguised trap to get to it, and he'll fall into our little playouse.

Inside, Kade made a very comfy pillow to land on so the leprechaun won't get hurt. The floor is covered in plush blue fleece carpet. The cardboard table holds a little bowl (the dome top of one of those quarter machine ninjas) filled with Lucky Charms cereal. A "TV" on the wall is on for his enjoyment. There is even a cute window, complete with curtains. But how come he can't see outside?

Peek-a-boo! There's Kade, lifting the secret flap on the outside to peer into this tiny playhouse and see if he has caught anything!

We hope we have made this little trap so inviting, the leprechaun won't even want to leave! I am excited to pick up Kade from school in half an hour and see what happened. But if we don't catch any this year, we can always try again next year!

Treasured

Wanna see some beautiful, creative collections of lovely goodies? Here are some treasuries for you, all with one thing in common- one of my handmade items is featured in each one!

Toddler tea:

Nature Nurtured: An Earth-Hugging Baby Shower:

la tendresse de bleu:

Sock Monkey Valentines Day:

Sugar and spice (and everything nice):

There is an Elephant in the room:

a m e t h y s t spring:

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:

A To-Do list

On my Custom Orders to-do list this week:

*Mini green camouflage sock monkey
*Mini blue camouflage sock monkey
(with a military patch on his tummy!)
*TWO spider-man sock monkeys
(these will take at least a month to complete)
*Chocolate brown Ellie Elephant with orange and cream polka dots
*Giant Ellie Elephant with patches made from
sweet little baby clothes (fantastic idea!!)

I better get working! But before I do that... Kade doesn't have school today, so we're going to have some fun. Right now he's watching morning cartoons, but soon we're going to play some board games (Connect 4 is up first), go to lunch and a little shopping, and make a Leprechaun trap! Great day.... I'll leave you with some photos of custom orders that I've completed recently!

Valentine sock monkeys for Mia and Ben:

An argyle sock monkey for Lucas:

A super tiny (6 inches tall!) sock monkey,
made out of fluffy newborn socks:

Redecorating the Kitchen

Maybe I should say "decorating" instead of "redecorating", as before, it wasn't really decorated at all!

A while ago, I found the cutest vintage canisters at the Goodwill. They are from the 70s. It's pieces of two different sets mixed together, they both have cute brown and orange mushrooms on them. I immediately fell in love with them! I have kind of been hiding them, because I didn't have a good spot where they would look pretty. This is what my pantry used to look like:

(This picture from Kade's 6th birthday is the only one I could find with our little bamboo-blinds covered bookshelf pantry in it!)

I decided it was time to make things a bit cuter, so I reorganized the pantry, displaying my vintage mushroom canisters on the top shelf.


I bought some fabric that I found on an amazing sale, and whipped up some cutrains. I used a tension rod to hang them under the first shelf. The cutrains can be opened in the middle, pushed to the sides, and quickly held back with some little white cup hooks.


Much better! I'm trying to think of some other little projects I can do around the kitchen to make it cuter. Maybe some cafe window curtains for the big mirror above the sink? Some matching mushroom decor (Jer already found me a lovely mushroom cutting board) like a wall clock, trivets, or salt and pepper shakers? Although, my little kissing frogs shakers from my sister look quite at home amongst the mushrooms, don't they? :)

The Venus Flytrap

A few weeks ago, Kade had a school assignment to choose a plant and make a project about it. He chose the Venus Flytrap, of course, because "Mom, it eats MEAT!!"


I love them too, in fact, I used to have one! But it died. I tried to catch some small bugs, but failed, so I fed it little pieces of meat, as a gardener at the nursery I bought it from told me to. However, it seemed to just spit the meat out. Doing research with Kade, I found out why- when a bug gets trapped inside, it wiggles to try and free itself. There are small sensor hairs inside the "mouth", and when the bug wiggles, that tells the plant that it has caught a live animal, not a piece of dirt or something. If what the plant catches does not wiggle, the plant opens and lets whatever it is fall out.


Kade chose to create a diorama of a Venus Flytrap habitat. Did you know they only grow in the wild in North and South Carolina? Pretty amazing! We also found out some other cool facts. Each leaf can only eat three times! After that, it turns black and dies, and new leafs grow. Also, it takes ten days to eat a fly! It also eats ants, spiders, other small bugs, and even tiny frogs!!

I have hundreds of bottlecaps that I use for making magnets. We decided they make the perfect little venus flytraps! Kade painted them green, and I helped him make tiny white hairs that we glued around the edges. I cut out red felt circles and Kade glued them to the inside. I hot glued green craft foam onto pipe cleaners to make the stems.


We had some plastic flies leftover from some Halloween project, so we used some of those in the diorama too! Kade even had the idea to tie invisible thread around one and hang it from the top, so it looks like the fly is hovering over the flowers.


It was a really fun project, although I have to say it was difficult for me to step back and let Kade do most of the work! haha. He wants to get a real Venus Flytrap, now that he has learned so much about them and finds them so interesting. Maybe we'll try again, I'll let you know how it goes, if we do!