Mary Jencks by Emilie Daly

My sister-in-law has just had her dreams come true!  She is a fabric designer!  Not just any designer, but an amazing designer with beautiful modern prints.  I love all of her fabric!!  I just got my first order of her fabric this weekend!   It was so hard to choose my favorite prints, but I am so happy with all of the ones I got.  I am going to make Easter dresses for all of my girls.  Yep, Easter is in three weeks so I am going to be very busy.  My three year old chose these three fabrics for her dress.  It is going to be so cute!

You can order her fabric from Modern Yardage a new fabric company that just opened last month.  You can learn more about Emilie Daly Designs here: facebook
pinterest
website

Dr. Seuss Birthday Lunch

We celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday last week with reading books and watching some old Dr. Seuss movies.  The kids wanted a Dr. Seuss lunch.  This is what I came up with. 

I made PB&J sandwiches and cut them into a circle, with just a knife.  I then cut strawberries and bananas and put three of each onto a skewer with a cracker on the end.  I stuck the skewer into the sandwich.  For the whiskers, I used string cheese.  For the eyes and nose, I used Goldfish crackers.  All of these items are typical lunch food for my kids and it made a great sandwich.  Enjoy!  This would be great for a Cat in the Hat Birthday Party also.

Angry Bird Pizzas

 This is what we had for dinner tonight!  My girls LOVED making the pizzas and even ate very well. 

Thanks to Pinterest for the fun idea.  It originally came from this blog post: http://yummytastyrecipes.com/?recipe=51faa511d784ffd21fea4f93f8732506

Panda Birthday Party

It has truly been Panda-Monium around here lately. My daughter invited some of her best friends over to celebrate her 5th birthday. She has wanted a Panda birthday party for almost a year now. So this party has been a long time in the works. My biggest dilemma was figuring out how to keep twelve kids entertained for two hours. Thanks to Pinterest (for cute ideas), my Silhouette machine, Oriental Trading (for cheep Panda items), and my husband, sister-in-law, and my mom (for all their help) we pulled off a great party.

The invites

The inside said:

It's Panda-Monium

(chaos, mayhem, racket, uproar, hubub)

***** is turning five!

Come Celebrate with Us!

Friday March 13th

2:00 to 4:00 pm 

The party is at *****'s House

***********

***********

***-***-****

The night before the party, I thought of a great idea, a photo booth with props. I wish I had more time to make panda ears and mustaches and a few other fun things, but I did get these cute Chinese hairdos printed off.

A big hit was the panda bean bag toss.  I bought this on clearance from Oriental Trading Company.

Another hit, panda bingo.
Limbo. Yes, five year olds don't play by the rules and crawl on their hands and knees.

A couple fun panda crafts.

Panda cupcakes

Eating the cake and ice cream.

Thank you take Chinese food home boxes.
The goodies inside the boxes. Yes, my sister-in-law has already thanked me for giving her girls a couple panda bear clappers.

To finish off the night, we went to the brand new Panda Express that just opened in our neighborhood. It opened on Tuesday. We didn't even know it was open yet. All I can say is that she is so lucky it was open. The manager even gave her a little stuffed panda bear when she found out it was her birthday and she had a panda party.

It's DONE!!!

It's done, it's done, it's done it's done.... (do a happy dance, it's done and on my bed!!!!) Finally, I've finished my bedspread!!!! YEA!!!! I haven't had much time to sew for myself lately due to the success of my Dreaming of Stitches shop. I stopped taking custom orders before Christmas because I am expecting a baby in January. One goal that I wished I could get done before the baby comes is my quilt... call it nesting or what you may, I really wanted to get it done.

I started seriously quilting it again last week, I already had half of it done. Then I couldn't find my free hand quilting foot. (I'm afraid a little girl walked off with it or threw it out.) My sister-in-law let me borrow hers so I could finish my quilt. In less than a week, I finished all the quilting and all the binding. It's all done!!

I still need to finish the pillow shams and a few decorative pillows. (The shams are just a front right now and don't have a back.)

Here is the quilting details, the shadows help the quilting pop out. It took FOREVER to do the squares, thus the reason it took so long to do the whole quilt. But I love how it turned out.


And what two year old can resist jumping on a brand new bedspread?


Previous blog posts about the quilt:

I can't believe I finished the quilt top in May and that it has taken me this long to quilt it.
http://dreamingofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/05/im-in-love.html

Quilt progress in March:
http://dreamingofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/quilt-progress.html

I bought the fabric almost a year ago, I can say I finished the quilt in less than a year... barely:
http://dreamingofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-love-this.html

Minnie Mouse Birthday Party

Fun Minnie Mouse Birthday Party Ideas!

I created these invitations using my silhouette cutter to cut out the Minnie Mouse head and ears. It was so easy to let the machine cut everything out. The invitations were very cute and super easy!



I was given an old Mickey Mouse cake pan and was able to turn Mickey Mouse into Minnie Mouse pretty easily. I used canned chocolate frosting for the brown and then used a homemade frosting recipe for the rest. This took me most of the morning, but was worth it.

I found a cute tutorial on how to make your own Minnie Mouse pinata. Check it out here: At Second Street. Using just a cardboard box, tape, tissue paper, and crepe paper. It was super cute and lots of fun.

Instead of taking the time to make cute Minnie and Mickey party hats, I just asked the kids to bring their own Mickey Ears if they had them. I had a few extras that I scrounged up for those who didn't have any yet. The birthday girl wore her Minnie Mouse shirt and ruffle bum pants that I made for her for our trip to Disneyland.
We hooked the pinata up to the volleyball poles. The little yellow bat didn't make a dent in it so we got out the metal bat. The kids did a little damage there, but not enough (I guess I made it a little too tough.) So we let the adults have a go at it until all the candy was out of it. The pinata was the perfect activity to keep the little kids and the adults entertained.

Halloween Outfits!

New Halloween and fall onesies and legwarmers added to the shop! Super cute! Check them out! Last year I sold out of the Halloween legwarmers and pumpkin onesies. Get them before they are gone.