I’ve been sew busy!

The last week was kinda crazy with a lot of family gatherings (it was the American Idol finale, after all), but now that I know where my sewing machine is, I’ve been having fun with it in my “spare” time. I already showed you some of the pants I made – after those pairs I made a pair of sweatpants for Gavin, and a pair of Cutie Patootie Hippie Pants for my granddaughter Salia. I can’t show you the sweatpants because they’re in the laundry, but here are Salia’s CPHPs…

(They’re a bit long – when I get to try them on her I’ll adjust that.)

If you’re interested in making pants like these, give it a shot – they’re easy! I just cut old t-shirts into approximately 3 inch strips and sewed them together to make a whole piece (the seams were on the right side). Then I traced a pair of pants to make a pattern. I won’t make a tutorial because there are already some good ones available – try this tutorial from If Only They Would Nap if you need one. I used a reclaimed bit of ribbing from an old sweatshirt for the waistbands on both pairs I’ve made, but the method in that tutorial would work fine, too.

And now I must ramble a bit…

Saturday my darling husband put up another shelf in the laundry/craft room for me to store my stash…

(Gavin still loves his dryer!)

Yesterday I spent some time playing in my newly cleaned crafting space, and I made this very simple pillowcase-style sundress for Kristi. I loosely followed this tutorial from A Spotted Pony. Kristi isn’t as pleased with it as I am. I love the lettuce-y hem on it.

It would work as a sundress or a nightgown – Kristi has chosen to call it a sundress. I might add some embellishments to the front, but we’ll see what happens. (If she decides to wear it at all.)

Another thing our family has been busy with lately is tae kwon do. I got to take the boys to their class this evening, so I snapped a cell phone shot. The three yellow belts are my guys. I enjoy watching them practice and learn, and I think this is great training for them. I am so thankful that this is available to them.

And a last note before my rambling is done – my darling husband, son-in-law, and second oldest son are currently in Denver picking up my new-to-me Suburban! I can’t wait to see my new car! Ken sent me this cell phone shot – it’s just a teaser, for sure.

Thanks for stopping by! I’m sure I’ll be back soon with more Suburban pictures and some summer shorts for my skinny toddler!

It’s Pants Season!

After having fun with Gavin’s Cutie Patootie Hippie Pants, I found this awesome tutorial via Pinterest – 10 minute pajama pants tutorial – from Calico. What a great idea! The quickest, easiest way to make jammie pants for kids! I gave it a try today, and I can foresee lots of comfy pants in the future.

I went over to our local thrift store today and found a few inexpensive t-shirts. The yellow pants that I made for Gavin were from a size 8-10 kids’ t-shirt, and I cut them to be an approximate 18-24 month size. For these I actually didn’t use the entire width of the t-shirt – it was just tooooooo wide for my skinny mini little man. I used a pair of his Garanimals pants as a guide to cut these out and did the elastic as instructed in the video. I actually ended up taking a bit more width out of the waist area anyway. He’s skinny, skinny, skinny!

(These are a bit long, so I have folded the waistband down.)

No, he’s not tired at all. Why do you ask?

After that success, I tried a pair for Kristi to wear to bed. These were made from a ladies’ size large, I believe. She and I are both very pleased with these. She says they’re comfortable.

Sweetness!

Cutie Patootie Hippie Pants!

I just made these adorable pants for Gavin. They are made from the kids’ old t-shirts, so everyone loves them. The bigger kids were all excited to find scraps of their shirts on his pants! I hear I have to make a pair for my granddaughter, so I will do a photo walkthrough when I do that pair. For now you can just admire my sweet little dude in his cutie patootie hippie pants.

It was a very Happy Easter!

What a wonderful day! It was full of great moments, family, friends, and fun. Here are some highlights…

Our day started with a Easter Sunrise Celebration…

We enjoyed a great breakfast there, and fellowship with our family of believers and some new friends…

Then we were able to go home and take a nap! Yay for naps! (After a 3-hour sleep during the night, a nap was a necessity!) After nap time and some food prep, it was time to head to Jenny and Phil’s house for our Easter dinner.

Phil is giving the kids egg hunt instructions. We had quite a crowd of kids!

We had a wonderful meal. I love this – a large group of family and friends. A few were missing though – we did not have Grandma (my mom), Grandpa (Ken’s dad), or Fancy’s family with us. We missed all of you!

We spent most of the afternoon/evening just enjoying the beautiful weather outside.

It was such a gorgeous day that the kids thought it was swimming weather! I was quite surprised that no one complained about being cold. They just had a great time!

One of my favorite moments of the day was when Jenny turned to Phil and asked, “Did you ask Dad about the stripper?” STRIPPER?? At an Easter celebration?? Are we reverting to the pagan observances?? Oh, wait…I guess not. It turns out she was talking about tools. Whew!

The Culp family and our family finished off the day by watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring until waaaaay too late at night. Did I mention that it was a wonderful day?

I took a blogging break

Hi friends! I apologize for the long absence, but I had to take a blogging break. After blogging daily for three years on my 365 blog I needed to take some time off.

This year has already been full of fun and excitement, and we’re not even a quarter of the way through it!

I guess I haven’t let my faithful readers of this blog know that our oldest daughter and her family moved back to Montana in December. We are so excited to have them here with us now! For the first time ever, all my children were in the same place on Christmas day!

Another thing I haven’t mentioned yet was Gavin’s New Year adventure. He was picked up by a sibling when he didn’t feel like being picked up, and he wiggled and wriggled until he fell. He fell straight down and broke his right leg. Poor guy – it was miserable for him and for me for the whole first week.

The really sad part was that he had started to walk on January 1, and he broke his leg on January 2. All that time spent on teaching him to walk and now we had to wait even longer!

Jenny and Philip found a wonderful house here in Stevensville in January, and since then we have spent a lot of time over there playing games and letting the kids rampage around the house. Isn’t there view wonderful?

Gavin got his cast off on January 30. It was a fast 4 weeks! He crawled around for a couple weeks, but then he started getting back up on his feet, and by February 24 he was a real walker. Whoohoo!

Life has been changing a bit for me over the last few months, too. Somewhere along the way – I’m not exactly sure when this happened – I became the Worship Leader for our church. This is a new endeavor for me, but one I am thoroughly enjoying. I am humbled that God would put me in this position. This is my new “theme song” -

Another change for me is coming up in the next several days. I am leaving my wonderful job at Muzeview to take a new position at Design By Jenn. Design By Jenn is my daughter’s Jenny’s company. I’m really excited about this new chapter, and about the work that Jenny and Phil are doing.

I haven’t said much about the older kids because there’s not much excitement going on with them right now, but that’s a good thing. They’re all getting their schoolwork done, doing their various activities, and behaving like children. At the moment, all is well in Scrivnerburg!

I can finally show my Christmas gifts!

I had to wait until after Christmas to share the gifts I made for the ladies this year. I found this tutorial over at Positively Splendid for a portable first aid kit. I thought they were a great idea, and now that I’ve made them I love them even more! Here are a few pictures of my gifts…

After I made all these pretty little kits I realized that the cute ribbon would be difficult to tie if one did not have full use of both hands (my mother, for example), so I made another one with an elastic strap instead of ribbon.

Everyone loved them! I have actually used mine a couple times already, and I love whipping it out of my purse to provide the needed bandage or tweezers.