lost in the commotion

So this past month has been crazy and fun all at the same time. I was getting the kids ready for school then sending them off to school and trying to get used to being here and there alone with D. He is loving being home with me alone though. My day now consists of getting the kids off to school then spending the day trying to get some stuff cleaned and organized while teaching my 2 1/2 year monkey more input... He reminds me of Johnny 5!!! Roaming the streets demanding "MORE INPUT!" He is a serious sponge. He would ask me questions all day if I let him and normally I do because he has this adorably cute face with big blue eyes and brown hair and cutie patootie dimples. It seems that this past summer has brought many questions to my children's minds. They are constantly asking "why?" and "how?" but they are now saying "teach me" I LOVE THIS.

A few weeks ago I had the wonderful privilege of taking my oldest to Joann's fabric store. She had asked to learn how to sew! I was so excited to even have her interested in sewing. She wanted to sew anything. I went through a few online blogs and found that perfect project for E. A pillow case for her bed. Straight lines and not too much difficult stuff.

We did have the boys with us when we went shopping for the fabric so it was an eventful hour. I have never spent less than an hour looking for fabric. Ever. Just ask my patient husband. He has learned to ask if I am fabric shopping when we go to a Joann's. Her bedroom is not what she wants it to be so this was the perfect opportunity to change the style and colors of her room. After much searching and deliberation we settled on black and white damask for the border and a solid brighter pink for the body of the pillow.

She was so eager to get started that she wasn't too happy that we had to wash it first. Poor impatient girl. Gets it from her mama.

Once we got it washed she helped me iron it all. She said that ironing was her least favorite part. She didn't like having to be super careful with the hot iron. So I did most of it. She is still only 8 and not quite tall enough to reach the ironing board at my level comfortably. She was ok with not being able to iron the whole thing herself.

With fabric spread over the kitchen table we cut out the rectangles then got to work.



E was very nervous after I told her that she could sew over her finger if she didn't watch the area she kept her fingers in. I had the machine turned to a crawl and she was off.



She worked so hard and was so patient. After about 15 - 20 minutes of sewing she had completed the whole thing herself. I didn't sew a stitch. I am so proud of her but probably not as proud as she is of herself. She dragged the pillowcase to every family members house so she could show off her handy work.



Instructions
1 yard 45" solid fabric
1/2 yard 45" patterned fabric
(We just measured the actual pillow then added 1" extra for the width and 6" for the length.)
sample pillowcase in the size your finished pillowcase will be
coordinating thread and bobbin
sewing machine
any emballishments you may want... lace, ribbon, appliques, iron on transfers... the possibilities are endless. I wanted plain and simple.

We cut the solid fabric as wide as the pillow case + 3/4" for seam allowances. Next the length saw cut 3/4 the length of the sample pillow case + a smidgen more for allowances, all with the fold as the length so we had the front and back. Then we cut the pattern fabric the same width also on the fold but only 1/4 the length of the sample pillow case with 6" extra for seam allowance and hem.

Match up the right sides of the width for the pattern and the solid together. Pin if you like... on this I am not a pinner lady. Straight stitch the width together.
Once this is stitched I press the seam toward the patterned fabric. Or the where the opening will be.

With right sides together you will iron the fabric length pressing the edge. Holding the fabric corners stitch the top width of the pillow case together. Now you can sew the full length of the pillowcase.

The last step you must iron the hem of the pillow. I chose to iron 1/4" inward then again 2" inward. She then had a 3 inch hem so it folds and lays nicely. After ironing I pinned the hem to try and keep it from moving and readjusting itself. Sew with fabric right side out and 1/4 from the edge of the fold.



All said and done she is hooked on sewing and now wants a machine of her own for Christmas. Maybe. Santa has to check his options. Her next project next week will be a purse. She is super excited about that too. Love her enthusiasm.

crazy days

We are currently in the process of looking for a new house. Looking for the past few weeks has tuned up a few promising areas then we weren't jumping up and down either. So we are patiently waiting for our house to be unearthed. Because we are looking for a new house and we have been renting for the past 7 years I am so excited to decorate. I haven't been able to paint my walls or make custom drapes because painting isn't allowed and drapes are expensive to make for a rental then move and not have enough to do a room or the dimensions change. So for the past 7 years I have just opted not to do anything fun that way. I am very eager to paint! Sew! and landscape. Having said that I will be posting fave sites/blogs that I am inspired by this week.

I have been a huge fan of One Pretty Thing for a while now but for the life of me don't know why I haven't given props yet. The site is wonderful. During the week they post 'daily inspirations for a handmade life'. LOVE IT. You can seriously begin making Christmas presents for everyone in your family today and be done by September. Absolutely a bookmark, tell your friends, shout from the rooftops wondermus must see site.

I have a few projects in the works for you with tutorials and pics. Hoping to finish soon. While this week is super busy with making a wedding cake for a gorgeous couple having a July 4th wedding. All while working on E's baptism dress for next week. She has picked out her favorite parts from different dresses that we have seen online and I will be making it in any spare time this week ie midnight. Of course I will post photos when the dress is finished.

beautiful sunset tonight

These past few weeks have been cool here in Arizona. One of the radio station DJs said that he overheard someone visiting say 'I don't know what everyone is complaining about. The weather is great.' Well not sure if that person is still here and enjoying the heat that has been hiding out somewhere else but this is the dry heat that everyone has told you about.

When the clouds are still in the air around 7pm I know that I will have an awesome sunset about and about 40-45 minutes to get someplace fun for pictures. With that in the back of my mind as we finished dinner I kept an eye on the skies. Low and behold we had beautiful clouds still on the horizon. Picture time! I grabbed the kids and my camera and loaded into the van quickly to find a place where there were no power lines in the shot. About 15 minutes away from our place was a perfect area with water and even ducks for the kids. They loved it. They kept tricking the ducks into thinking that they had food by throwing seed pods from the mesquite trees into the water. Yes I told them that it was mean. Didn't stop em.












Love this of the monkeys.

The shots that we left with after about 15 minutes of shooting. The only post production work that was done on them was some brightness brought down a third and the sharpness boosted 2 and contrast boosted 1. I use canon's DPP digital photo professional since I shoot in RAW. They were all shot with my 50mm 1.8 My kids left asking if we could bring bread for the ducks next time. Not sure babes... may be somewhere else next time. There was just a light post that is kind of hidden by the trees in the distance and that dark figure is not a person on the other side of the water it is a saguaro cactus. Mr. S asked how tall the guy was. What guy? oh the cactus. Really tall. I think that it was over 11 feet tall. At least.

Gross Cakes

Going through photos on my computer I realized that I never posted some of the weird cakes that I have done. These cakes were so fun to do. I have an awesome friend Amber and she has October as her birthday. Yes I said October... she celebrates from October 1st to the 31st love her! She had this awesome birthday a couple years back and asked me to make some freaky cakes. I can't remember where I found them but they were perfect for her.

This is a super tasty Kitty Poo cake. The majority of guests at the party couldn't make themselves eat it at all. Too lifelike I guess. So moist they didn't know what they were missing.

Here are the directions
1 box of yellow cake mix prepared as on the box
1 box of spice cake mix prepared as on the box
technically you can use anything you want really... just think few
colors since you want it to look realistic.
2 boxes of vanilla pudding prepared again if you want to use
another flavor just think of the color... banana would be good too.
1 package of crushed vanilla sandwich cookies (generic worked for me)
6 tootsie rolls
clean litter box and scoop (just for show)
Line the litter box with plastic wrap where the cake will touch about 1/2 to 3/4 up the sides. Don't worry it will stay put when you get all of the cake in there. After the cakes have cooled cube them and mix half of the pudding in carefully trying not to break the cubes. Spoon the mix into the litter box. Mix the second half of the pudding with the cake cubes and some of the broken cookies. Spoon these into the litter box. In a baggie use blue or green food coloring to dye 1/2 cup of the crushed cookies. Once this is all mixed and happy carefully mix the dyed cookies with the rest of the cookies and sprinkle over the cake in the box. Take the unwrapped tootsie rolls and microwave one at a time for 5 second increments until pliable/where you can squish them without working hard. Roll them in your hands until they are segmented and then pooish. I rolled them a tiny bit in the litter so they looked like they had been scratched on. Ya this is a totally gross cake to look at. Perfect for that cat lover in your life. You lined the box because it is not food grade plastic and it can be dangerous to eat out of. No chances taken here. Don't actually use the scooper to serve it either that is just for looks.


This next cake was fun to make. It took about a week though. I found this based on another cake website and can't remember where though. I did change stuff though. Yes the rat/cow is horrible. I know. I wish that I could take it off and do it over.

The cake is chocolate and the rest is actually chocolate formed into arm bones. I used seedless raspberry jam for the blood. The severed arm and bone fingers are all white chocolate and cake. This cake was also stared at and passed up by some for looking to gross. That was what she wanted, gross.

Gettin out there...

So in trying to get more 'out there' at the blogging level I found a fun site to participate in Alicia's Imma Momma blog photo challenge. She is going to post a lesson weekly with a challenge tied to the lesson then we get to link to her site and check out everyone elses pics. How fun is that?!?!? so this is my late entry. I guess better late than never right?


Swimming fun. E hated that I asked her to stop swimming for a second but gave me a bit of a smirk. Let me know what you think.

siggy

This is my new signature. Like it?

cupcake fun

Lately I have had fun with cupcakes. I don't know if it is because they are so little and cute or what but they are great to decorate. I love them. So for Scott's birthday I made a spaghetti inspired cake. I saw this picture while quickly flipping through a cupcake book. So fun and totally up his alley. The kids thought that it looked too much like the real thing and they kept pretending that they needed forks. M said that he only likes real meatballs. We all decided that the sauce and the meatballs were weird together. Not so yummy.




Can I say that my hands killed after piping all of this 'spaghetti'!

Then I had a friend's baby shower that I helped host. She is really a simple gal and loves Mariposa sooo we went that way. Butterflys baby! This was really fun and easy to make. Mind you time consuming but it was worth it.





Let me know what you think.

moved again.....

I've moved again. Not physically just internet wise. I found that I am getting enough photography that my crafie crafts are being forgotten. In other words I am just flat out forgetting to post them. Soooo I opened my second blog solely for photography.
brilliant blossomz photography
I promise to only post photography related.... ok fine sessions or personal photography there and crafty fun stuff here.

I have recently made some fun cakes and cupcakes that I will be posting soon. As soon as I upload from my camera. I am sooo behind lately. I just switched from my old 'brain' to a newer one. It is running much faster than my 10 year old one so I am indeed very happy and grateful to the wonderful family who donated it. Mr. D and Mr. M
have had fevers and been VERY clingy the past . . . going on two weeks. So they had overlapping illnesses I promise that I didn't let my boys stay sick and not seek medical treatment... only M needed it though. Killer ear infection. Really bad. He hasn't had one since he was 1 1/2! Man you are a healthy little boy. No other antibiotics or crazyness since then. and even then it was only the once. Ms E on the other hand was an ear infection that happened to have a little girl growing on it until she was 2. No tubes though. YAY. Now she is fine and almost 8! Man am I old or what. She is 8 and we celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary this past April. OLD OLD OLD!

fun images

Long Hard Night

As I sat up last night trying to figure out how to get myself 'out there' more as a photographer I became weary. I was going over and over in my head how there are so many awesome 'mommy' photographers out there ( a 'mommy' photographer is someone who is a child wrangler. Among her motherly talents and duties she has found a way to possibly make money while feeding her passion for photography. She is normally just as awesome behind the camera as she is in front of it.)that I was starting to freak myself out. Seriously I did. Then I remembered that I love photography. I truly love it and if I never sold another image or print if I never had another photo shoot I would still have my camera glued to my eye most of the day. So I wiped the sweat off of my brow and decided to keep plugging away at the advertisement side of the business. What is that side you ask well I will tell you. I am opening my site soon. My blog will still exist but I will have a site that will guide people to the blog and to my galleries. My calendar is slowly opening up for shoots as the majority of days taken by family vacations and other crazynesses is fading. I have now opened Friday's for shoots. My loving hubby is able to work from home or hang out with the boys those days which leaves me free. So if a weekend doesn't work with your schedule then Friday morning is now an option.

So most of the time I am fine working on my old dell. Old being the operative word. It is around 10 years old and very slow. To put it mildly. I was trying to figure out how to 'fix' this hunk of machine so that it would function more happily. I tried uninstalling any and every thing that I don't use. Removing any photos that I don't use often. When your camera images are 15MP you run out of room quickly after uploading 300+images from a photo shoot. So I am still in the process of unloading more items mainly digital scrapbook kits and burning them so that I can eventually use them at my whim opposed to waiting 5 minutes for each image to upload to photoshop then another 5 minutes while I close the image so I can use another image. So not fun. Hopefully soon I will be able to upload pictures quicker so you will be able to see more of my work.

Can you tell that I have been busy? I have had so much fun tweaking my blog. There are quite a few helpful sites that are out there one of my favorites is blogger university with Annie. She is awesome. There are so many different things posted to swich up your blog. Love her! If your blog is in need of some tweaking visit her site and I am sure that you will find something that you are looking for.

Here are some pics from recent outings.

We had gone down to Picacho Peak for a drive (ok really to see the Dbacks in spring training in hopes of getting some autographs . . . just in case you are wondering yes we did get autographs. yay! )This lonely poppy was growing through the rocks and was pretty small still. The rain had brought enough moisture to bring them up and hopefully more will join in soon.

This is off of Children's Cave trail.

see we got burnsies' john hancock and others.


I enjoy being able to take photo journalistic pics to tell the story. Posed shots aren't my thing. I really like candid shots they tell more of a story to me.




So the other day I was folding laundry in my room and heard giggling from the living room... to my surprise M came walking in the door laughing with this on his face. The kids had used some tape to fix a paper something and after lunch I forgot to hide the tape. This shows you what can happen if you don't hide the tape... the second is blurry since I had a really hard time not laughing. He kept telling me to stop laughing 'cuz I want a serious face Mom.'


This is with a bleaching action. I really like to distress and grunge up my scrap booking so this just fit. He was loving his pockets this day too.

This super sweet couple was in need of wedding shots from 12 years ago. So I got to follow them around and snap away. They were so great! Thanks again B couple.

I even got them to pose for a few personal shots.

ABC fun

Photography is a creative outlet in my life. This past weekend I had so much fun doing a shoot of things around the house that describe what the kids would relate to the ABC's. I had a FREE photo book from Shutterfly and I could pick any of the Creating Keepsakes designer books.... of course I chose the ABC book by Jessica Sprague. So fun!!! Here are some pics from that shoot.



These are D's 'P' is for pirates.





This is M's new violin. 'V' is for violin.



Who can forget 'c' is for cookie! yes I had to make cookies to get this shot, shuckie darn.



'W' is for wall-e. D's first movie love.

And lastly why wouldn't I use my own monster's names for their own alphabet letters?





'M' had fun taking pictures. Some normal faces from him this day. Gotta love his dimples... I sure do.





'E' didn't have a hard time just relaxing in front of the camera. She normally poses and gets weird with with smiles. So sweet.





So 'D' wouldn't hold still to get a pic.... or finish changing his clothes after breakfast. So naked shoulders and his impish shoulder shrug. My heart melts.

Love natural light shooting.

Pictures as Promised

My first wedding shoot. Such a fun day!

These are from my first wedding shoot. They were so happy (who wouldn't be on their wedding day?)
and so sweet. The first is a pose that the groom requested and the others were just fun. I really enjoyed doing a wedding. Everyone at the wedding was happy and it is always fun shooting happy people who know that there will be a camera floating around. The bride was georgous and the groom was beaming. These were with my grandpa's camera. Loved it. He has very nice glass. He really inspires me to take better photos. He has been a 'picture taker' for years. Some time I'll have to explain why he only refers to himself as a picture taker opposed to a photographer.

This is a senior shoot. Such a beautiful girl I know who will be graduating this year. She was so much fun to shoot. Beautiful green eyes and fun red hair. You be the judge.

I will post more pics later. If you have comments please feel free to post. I am constantly trying to better my photography skills. (you should see the stack of books I have from the library.)

excitement in the air

I have had so much fun these past couple months. My grandfather was sweet enough to accompany me on a few photo shoots while letting me borrow his camera equipment. He has a Canon Rebel XTI and I really enjoyed using it. After that it was all history. Scott my sweet hubby insisted that I purchase my own digital SLR and stop wishing. So I did a lot of ratings and review hunting and tested some out and found the camera that felt right. . . . cannon EOS 50D and I LOVE IT!!! Seriously I do. It is so fun. OK reading the manual is so not fun but I am taking notes in my own language not manual language so that I can do what I need to with it. I am trying to figure out all of the wonderful options that are with this camera. I don't like just leaving it on the automatic options. I also got a 50mm 1.8f and really like that glass. I wished that I had enough money for the 1.4 but I can save up for that one. I love the way that it throws the background so easily. That makes portraits so much easier to enhance and it really keeps the subject matter the real focus/ in focus. I will be posting a slew of photos from my December wedding and photo shoots this week.

So if I post here it is set in stone right??? Probably not but I want to make sure that I am practicing with my new toy every day so I am going to hold myself accountable and post weekly photos that I am working on. I will try and say what I was going for and stuff. I have a ton of books from the library right now and am having so much fun going through them. Kinda interesting since one of the books is from a popular wedding photographer from England. Well apparently we here across the pond are super late on trends.... hee hee. He was saying how in 2001 the angle photos were popular and in 2003 they were no longer doing that. Same thing with color popping black n whites. Hee hee
I get requests for these all of the time. Oh well. I don't mind having people request things that are so 6 years ago by England's standards. Since we are here in the desert we are normally a few years behind the rest of the country any way. Example... I remember being in California over a summer and my very beautiful trendy/stylish aunt making a comment on the capris and pedal pushers that were in a display window. And how she hated them when she was a girl. Since she has awesome legs I am not exactly sure why she wouldn't like them. Well that was in 1993. I don't think that they made it all the way to Arizona till later in the 90's. I graduated in 98 and didn't own a pair till 2000. So SAD.

Holiday Blues

We are getting ready to take down all of our holiday and Christmas decorations and it has got me a touch down. So I started looking at my stash of fabric and felt a tad better. I have made a cute skirt for E using a bit of fabric from the $1 section at Wally World and then some black velvet and black satin. Love it here is a link to the pattern. House on Hill Road it is super cute and way easy. I am going to make more using some of my 'dumb dots' and anything else that I can get my hands on. Then again I have some beautiful pillowcases that my beautiful aunt Bobbi found for me at thrift stores just waiting for me to make them into dresses for sweet little girls. (promise to post pictures of them soon in both pillowcase and dress form.)

Oh and I had my first wedding shoot this past week... New Years Eve to be exact. The bride was beautiful the groom was handsome and there was definitely love in the air. I'll post some of those pictures soon too.

Wonderful new year feel to the air... cleaned the closet and started on the bed room.

Custom Orders

Since life is so fun I thought that I would have more fun. I make custom layette sets for infants and toddler and childrens appliqued shirts. I really love working with fabric and textiles. I have had some making some custom sets recently. They tuned out so cute. Here are some pictures of a few of the sets. If I use minkee it is real Minkee Blankie. I love chenille flannel and soft fabrics for babies. So much fun. I will be posting some of my vintage style girl dresses soon. They are so girly.