Thursday randomness...

So...

I'm a lil' bummed.

(again, not to be confused with, "I have a little bum...")

I started working on a fabulous easypeasy sewing project last night with the intent of sharing it here today and my machine up and broke.

Wouldn't sew a stitch.

Sad day.

I even tweeted a pic of what I was working on as a little teaser...

I know, I know....could I BE any more vague?

And speaking of twitter, do you tweet?

I actually jumped on the twitter bandwagon years ago, before marriage and kiddos, but I mostly just creeped on my favorite celebrities.

please tell me I'm not alone in that?

Anywho... I actually tweet now and sometimes it's even interesting. Or funny. Or semi-gross, depending on what's just happened here. And sometimes, it's really good stuff, like the link to a great giveaway. I even share when there's a new post here on twitter, so- If you're a fellow tweeter, I'd love to connect with you! I'm MKMathews (so original, I know).

Now- back to machine news-  I must also tell you that I might be getting a brandspankingnew machine out of this since the hubs decided he was going to magically fix the machine himself.(If you know my hubs, this will not surprise you in the least) While he is usually quite handy and can fix most anything around here that breaks, he's never had his hands on a sewing machine.

 Ever.

 After becoming completely and utterly frustrated with the machine, I took off for one of my 'happy places'.

Target

I returned from a lovely stroll around the bullseye to find my machine with several pieces removed, all laying around my sewing table. (a.k.a. the dining room table) While he was able to put it all back in, it was, as I'm sure you've guessed, in a bit more of a mess than it had been before, so...

Hubs- don't be surprised when I tell you we have to purchase a new machine. Also, don't be surprised when I pick out a nice one.

Not the $99 one.

mmmkay?

Now seriously- moving on...

here's my boy at swim lessons, which he is lovin...

we got there a bit early today so that we could all swim BEFORE it was blazing hot, and then leave once lessons were over. This plan worked out great. We'll be doing this again.

new bathing suits all around from Target last night. Because just one a piece wasn't quite working since we're wearing them everyday. And just look at the cuteness....

Also love love LOVE that she brings Barbie. Again, I'm one proud momma.

And...they had suits with tutus.

Need I say more?

Now we're home and relaxing with some PBS Sprout.

Here's hoping that my machine is an easy fix and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

An arm I could handle, but not both.

We've got that whole kitchen thing going on....



So I trashed my dress...

Howdy friends!

Have any of you heard of the 'trash your dress' photo sessions?

I first heard of this concept (of pulling out your wedding dress years after tying the knot and doing a portrait session outside in unconventional locales) on Joanna's blog and loved what I saw.

After a quick google search, I came up with some pretty amazing images-

via

via

via

via

via

Cool, right?

Along with having the goal of actually getting my wedding dress to zip again after having multiple babes, was the goal to schedule a portait session like this so I'd have some rockin' awesome picstures to give my hubs for our anniversary. I thought they'd also make great gifts for my parents as well since they can never really have too many pics of me. (grin)

My friend Erin that took the awesome shots of my family after MM was born (including the pic on the left side of my blog header) was more than willing to traipse around with me in my wedding gown, and I am super excited to share the results with you. While I wasn't completely ready to 'trash' my dress, we did wade through some mud, sweat, and bugs in the extreme AL heat.

Are you ready?

Erin's mad photography skillz are about to knock your socks off...

my wedding rings!

pretty picture.

 total bugfest.

my three babes

and my personal fave-

Aren't her photog skills amazing?!

I am SO thrilled with the results and ecstatic to have these pics of me in the most beautiful dress I have ever worn. I must confess, though, that although it seems  I reached my goal of completely fitting into my wedding dress again, the last 2 inches of the zipper were a no-go. Erin used some industrial strength clips to keep it on me, and seeing as how I didn't flash anyone all day, I'd say it was a success!

Wouldn't you love a photo session like this? Or...is there a special occasion coming up that you'd love to have captured on film? Maybe you'd just like some updated pics of your kiddos, or your family, or yourself...

Erin would love to work with you-

Her website is HERE,

and you can also find her on facebook HERE.

pop on over and 'like' her page

I'm off to fill empty spots in my house with pictures of me.

Maybe I'll even stick a big one over the mantel ala Scarlett O'Hara?

"Oh fiddle-dee-dee....."

p.s.- for info on my dress + wedding, check out THIS post

Happy Father's Day and a weekly recap

Happy Monday friends!

Hope all of you had a wonderful weekend celebrating the Dads in your life!

First off- I must give a big welcome to my newest followers-

TipJunkie featured my wallflower project and my blog shot through the roof last night, so thank you TipJunkie, and thank you to those of you who took the time to look at my project!

I took a little break from blogging over the weekend (sorry Christa) and played and swam and surprised my hubs and worked on my tan (safely) and basically just spent an entire weekend thanking God for his blessings. We had amazing weather here in AL, albeit HOT, but still....quite beautiful.

 Since all of my posts last week were craft related and contained zero pics of my kids, I will now catch my family and friends (and whoever else cares to know) up on what we've been up to-

Finally took MM's 12-month pics with Bear. (I've taken a shot of all of my kiddos next to Mr. Bear on their birthday for each of their first 12 months.) I had this dress made for her party since her theme is Very Hungry Caterpillar. More info on the etsy shop and the lovely lady who made the dress HERE.

such a cute pose, but I'm not quite sure how she ended up with a drum stick in her hand. Ah well....

And- there's a peek at the new wallflowers in the nursery behind her.

My handsome hubs.

Not really a story here, just like to look at him.

And yes, that's an old school mower he's using.

The pool at the bottom of the slide was hubs idea.

Genius.

There's two of my three cuties.

Pretty sure number three was napping...

Star Wars legos.

All. the. time.

Her name is Eliza and this is where she likes to drink her fake orange juice.

She and her sis were also channeling Audrey on this day with their

"Little Black Onesies" that I picked up at Wal-mart when I was buying myself a tank for THIS project.

Her name is Eliza and sometimes she likes to brush her teeth for 30 minutes.

In a see-through tutu and princess top.

Thank goodness she put the tiara on the sink so it wouldn't topple off onto the floor.

Went to a cookout at the parent's house last week-

this is my seester's friend cookin up some grub.

As Wonka would say, "It's scrumdillyumptious"!

MM with the one person whose name she says the MOST-

"Pop Pop"

My mum (L) with my Mannie and Aunt.

My sweet Mannie and Grandaddy

And here's what I surprised the hubs with on Saturday. Since he'd be working all day Sunday, I enlisted my Dad's help to pick it up and have it waiting for hubs at the back door when he got home from a kayaking trip.

(Yes, I even made a bow. Because that's how I roll)

Oliver also surprised him with a Clone Wars lego that he picked out himself.

(O is requesting that I type its official name- the Cad Bane Speeder, for those who might like to know...)

Happy Father's Day to one amazing baby daddy!

We love you!

The one and only pic I took on Father's Day of us in the pool waiting for Daddy to get off work. We had a wonderful morning at church, lunch with my parents and grandparents, and then spent the afternoon swimming. Fabulous day!

Which brings us to TODAY-

it was O's first day of swimming lessons for the summer and he had a blast.

Here's to many more weeks of blazinghot days at the pool with my kiddos.

And- one last thing.

I'll leave you with a preview of what I gave MY Pops for Father's Day.

I'll share the details and more pics in a post later this week, but for now, here's a hint-

Can't wait to show you more!

craft #5: jazz up that bag

Happy Friday, friends!

Today wraps up a week-long craft-a-palooza here on the blog.

(If you're tuning in for the first time today, you can see the 4 other crafts from this week HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. And again, while this is a crafting week series, each post can stand alone, just like those Indiana Jones movies. You don't have to watch them all in order, but who doesn't want to see Harrison Ford four times in a row?

Am I right?)

Since the crafting this week has been all about using things you already have

or

spending the least amount of moolah possible, it seems only appropriate that the last craft of the week didn't cost me a penny.

While doing the great closet clean-up of 2011 a couple weeks ago, I came across some canvas bags-

exhibit A:

One of them is sporting the TCT logo and one of them was plain-jane. I got both for free- one as a gift and one from our church library so that we could use it to transport our library books back and forth.

I figured one or both of them could do with a little embellishment, so I went in search of some ideas...

along the way, I came across bags with:

crocheted flowers from HERE,

monograms and pretty doilies from HERE,

painted leaves from HERE,

and ruffles from HERE.

While each of the above examples is fabulous in its own way,

I decided to go a different route with my plain-jane bag and paint a pattern on it.

What's my favorite pattern at the moment?

Well friends, it still happens to be chevron.

Remember when I made my chevron with techron mantel?

 I pulled out my blue painters tape, and my measuring tape and I got to work.

Using the same tutorial I shared in THIS post, I measured every 2 inches along the top, and every 2 inches along the sides and made a tiny dot where each of those met using my jumbo pencil-

again, for a more in-depth tutorial on how to create a chevron pattern, check THIS post out.

Once I had connected all of the dots with a zig and a zag, it looked something like this:

(and did anyone else just sing, "connect the dots, la la la laaaa..." in their head or was it just me? Good ole' PeeWee)

As you can clearly see, the zigs and zags aren't very neat.

This is when you'll need to grab something very sharp, but do it carefully.

An exact-o is the perfect thing...

See the messy zag?

Take your knife, slice off the messy part, and...

a perfect zag!

Do that to all the zig-zags, and you'll have something like this:

Now it's paint time!

If you don't have any acrylic paints on hand, they are super-cheap at hob lob and Michael's. I just happen to have quite a few, so I looked through the colors to find one that suited my fancy...

Island green it is!

A beautiful turquoisy-green.

Yep, just made turquoisy a word.

It's official.

I also keep some of those cheap little 25 cent sponge painter thingys on hand for just such occasions, so I went to town with it painting in my pretty chevron stripes.

Once an entire side was finished, and my girls were up from their naps, I let it dry for a good 6 hours while we had some fun in the pool. Once the kiddos were in bed for the night, I quickly finished the other side, and this is why the other side went 'quickly'-

I kept the taped chevron stripes in tact when I pulled them off so I could reuse them.

Genius, no?

Genius, yes!!!

Well, ok- so I kept two of the stripes in tact because it didn't dawn on me that I could actually reuse them until I'd already wadded one of them up.

ahhh...live and learn.

Still, it was better than having to measure and mark off all of the zags and zigs.

Once the rest of the tape was in place, I quickly painted in the stripes and left it to dry overnight. The next morning, I had a cute little chevron bag all ready for some goodies!

Doesn't that look cute a-hangin' in our mudroom too?

And yes, that little cut-out area in our kitchen constitutes a mudroom.

I checked.

That's a princess Belle wand in the bag in case anyone was wondering.

So-

if YOU had a plain canvas bag, how would you embellish it?

Fabric or felt rosettes?

Maybe some ric-rac sewn along the top and bottom?

Maybe add a monogram to it?

Or maybe sling paint at it Pollock style?

oooohhhh...the possibilities...

And, because I likes me a good recap, let's take a quick look back at the projects from this week and just how insanely cheap they were to make-

Day #1- Urban Outfitters wallflower knock-offs

1 sheet of posterboard- $1

scotch sticky putty- $2.59

cardboard for the pattern- already had on hand

total= $3.59

Day #2- formula cannisters turned craft storage

formula cans, craft paper, ribbon- had on hand

chalkboard labels- $2.99

white paint marker- $2.99

total= $5.98

Day #3- framed houndstooth monogram

chipboard letter 'M'- had on hand

white posterboard- $1

houndstooth fabric- had on hand

11 x 14 frame- $5 at wal-mart

glue/glue sticks- hand on hand

total= $6

Day #4- fun with iron-ons

tee-shirt for O-man- $3.88

tank for me- $3.88

black makeup bag- had on hand

iron-on letters- free, thanks to my sis

total= $7.78

Day #5- embellished a plain canvas bag

canvas bag- had on hand

paints/paint tape- had on hand

total= 0

p.s.- I hope you've had as much fun as I did with craft week! I actually have a few other, more time-consuming crafts lined up that I'll be sharing sometime in the near future. Also...can't wait to begin sharing the progress we're making in the kitchen. For those of you reading for the first time, we're about to completely gut our 1960 kitchen and I'm oh.so.pumped. Stay tuned...

p.p.s.- the Jackson Pollock site I linked to above actually lets you paint Pollock-style using the curser on your computer! So cool!