Birthday Invites & Outfit

Monkey's 2nd birthday is coming up soon and I am doing a John Deere theme this year with a simpler hot dog cookout in the back yard since I'll be about 6 months along when it happens and don't want to do to much. I worked on his invite this week as well as sewed together his outfit, made him shorts and a appliqued tshirt. I am very happy how it turned out :-)

Popsicle Holders - Why didn't I thin of that

The age old dilemma, give your kid a popsicle and they complain about their hands getting cold so what do you do you wrap it in a napkin or paper towel or as my sister does you put it in a kids sock. Well no longer thanks to Stephanie over at Under the Table and Dreaming. She has a great tutorial on how to make one from felt here I however did not have any felt in the house so I decided to let Walker pick out whatever fabric he wanted for the outside and used parts of a scrap fleece blanket for the inside and this is what I came up with.

and here are 3 of the boys enjoying their popsicles with nice warm hands :-)

Boys shorts out of old ACU's

My husband went through all his ACU's and pulled out a BUNCH of ones that are too worn out to be worn anymore so I have a big stack of them and decided to turn one of his  pld pair of pants into shorts for my boys.

I cut out Walker's shorts so that I could have both the BIG cargo side pockets that are on either side of the pants on his shorts

Jordan's was cut using the bottom hem of the pants leg so it didn't have any pockets so I cut one of the smaller cargo pockets out and put it on one of the leg pieces before I sewing it together. I made both using an elastic waste.

I also made Jordan an appliqued USA shirt using part of Darin's old ACU sleeve left over from the purse I made myself back in Dec.

ACU diaper bag redo

Back when I first got my sewing machine I made a diaper bag out of a pair of Darin's old ACU's that he wore while in Iraq. I was pretty proud of myself that I did it from scratch with no real pattern and having no idea how to make a purse/diaper bag. It took me 3 days to make and I was happy with it for the most part but there were things I didn't like that I didn't know how to fix at the time. Here is what my bag looked like when I first made it

*the biggest thing I didn't like was the lining, I didn't know how to do a traditional purse lining like I do now, I hated all the seams showing.*



Well after months of learning and sewing and making 2 other bags since the first one I have learned how to do things that would help improve the look of my bag so I decided to fix the things I did wrong.

It still isn't as good as if I had known all I do now then but I'll get another shot once Darin goes through the rest of his worn out can't wear anymore ACU's.



My other purse I made a few months ago from ACU fabric that you can get at any craft store. I wanted a smaller purse that was still roomy enough to carry a few diapers & a wipes case for like a trip to the store or something, but small enough that on the few occasions I don't have monkey with me I can still use it as a purse.