Easter Recap

This year I got it into my head that I was going to make baskets for the kids.  So the night before Easter, around 11pm, this is what my desk looked like.

The three baskets took about 3 1/2 hours to make.  I ran out of interfacing and spent a significant chunk of time frantically searching through closets, and miraculously came up with a piece big enough to cut the rest of the squares.

The butterfly, bird, toadstool, and coordinating polka dot fabrics are all from a collection called Flo’s Garden.  I let my daughters pick which color they wanted before I made them.  The idea is that they can use them in their room when Easter is over.

I just love how they look all in a row.  The colors are so perfect for spring (and girls)!

We started a new Easter tradition this year.  A few months ago I took Bea and Esther to an estate sale—our first.  We found this bunny basket on a shelf and bought it for $2.  When we got it home we realized there were small egg ornaments wrapped in tissue paper inside.  So we thought we’d have an egg tree this year.

I asked my hubby to pick up a tree from Lowes that we could plant in the yard after Easter.  He came home with this flowering quince tree.

The girls hung them all up and we’ve had the tree decorating our front porch the past few weeks.  It’s time we find it a permanent place in the yard.

How cute is that little blackbird?  Some of the eggs had stickers that said “Made in China,” so they aren’t the priceless heirlooms I was hoping to discover!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!  Tomorrow it’s back to the old routine at our house.  I’m going to miss sleeping past my husband’s alarm clock.

They grow up so fast

My youngest baby is now 14 months old.  The time passes so quickly.  I have never made too many handmade things for my kids besides quilts.  I have spent hours staring lovingly at all the beautiful items in Anna Maria Horner’s Handmade Beginnings book, but actually making stuff, I’ve never quite gotten around to it.

For Valentine’s, I made everyone in my family a homemade gift.  New hairbows for the older daughters, and white-chocolate-chip-macadamia-nut cookies for the hubby.  But for the youngest, I got off my duff and made her an array of new bibs.

She will be wearing them for at least a few more months, and now that she demands to feed herself—which makes an unholy mess—they will get some good use before she’s too big to wear one.

Most of the materials came from my stash (fabric & Velcro) and I bought some really soft pink chenille from Joanns for the back of the bibs.  It wasn’t on sale, but with a 50% off coupon, a yard only cost about $7-8.  The flannel was super cheap—all the pieces were collected by me from the remnant bin that I check out every time I go in to Joanns, which is about once a week.  I found the Velcro in my sewing room stashed in a drawer.  I never used it before, but LOVE it!  There is no separate hook or loop piece.  Instead, the piece sticks to itself, so you don’t have to keep straight what piece you sew where.

The owl is my favorite bib.  I made two of these and two from the heart fabric (they were for Valentine’s, after all), so she has eight new bibs total.

The little owls have hearts on them!

I made two bibs to try out the pattern I drew before I committed to making the rest, and Ronnie wore them several times and they were washed in the washing machine and dried in the dryer, and they came out soft and cuddly and looking good as new.  I was a little worried since all the fabric came from Joanns, but I have a new faith in their flannel and chenille.

With a 1.5 yards of chenille, I was able to make 14 bibs total.  My cousin is having a baby this summer, so six of them will be for her baby if it’s a girl.  If it’s a boy, I’ll be buying some blue chenille!