This week, I’m linking up with Polly Want a Crafter, Motivate Me Monday, Made By You Monday, Make It Monday, More the Merrier Monday, Masterpiece Monday, Craftomaniac Monday, Make It Monday, Metamorphosis Monday, Making the World Cuter, Make It Yourself Monday, and Bedazzle Me Monday! Check out the projects in these links, so creative and so fun!

This is one of those projects that’s only hard in your head, once you actually get started on it you’ll find it’s no biggie and comes together really, really quickly. As long as you can sew, even a little, you’re good to go!

I made this for Wee One #2, but the same instructions apply for an adult, just bigger! She love, love, loves to dress up and run around and cause a lovely disaster in her cutest dresses. Making an inexpensive but adorable tutu for less than $10 makes a lot more sense than dropping $40 on one – especially if your wee one runs into the backyard and rolls around in the grass and/or dirt while playing princess and pirates!

Tutu via Prudent Baby
4 yards of tulle
matching thread
safety pin (I ended up using a hair clip!)
2ft elastic (to fit around your wee one’s waist)
sewing machine duh
scissors double duh

First, fold your fabric in half, widthwise so you have a wiiiiiide strip of tulle that is as long as you want the skirt to be. Now sew a small loop in the very top of all the layers to make a waistband. Then attach your elastic to a safety pin and feed the elastic through to the end. DO NO use a hair clip like I did. It was a bit of a nightmare.
Make sure you sew the end in place once you have fed the elastic into the waistband.
Keep feeding the elastic through to the end, it’ll be a little harder to work with the further through all the fabric you get. The wider your piece of tulle, the puffier the skirt will be. Puffier is always better when it comers to tutus. When you reach the other end, sew the elastic in place and then sew up the two ends to officially make it a skirt!
Next time, I’d use about twice as much tulle to make it even puffier!

My husband’s grandmother has always been super nice to me, and has always been helpful when it came to teaching me something new that I really wanted to learn. This past Christmas, she came to my rescue when I brought a kit for a homemade guitar strap that I had bought from Jen Stephens on Etsy along with a bag of skully fabric I bought specifically for the project and a really muddled look on my face. I had tried to make it happen on my own – I really wanted to make it happen on my own but I just couldn’t do it. The directions weren’t the problem I don’t think, it was my reading of them. Once Nanny took control of the situation, the project moved along pretty quickly and about half an hour later, we had a really snazzy guitar strap for one of our dear cousins on my husband’s side. I hope he loved it as much as I loved making it – I may even be able to make one myself next time!!

The cutting and the pinning were for sure the easiest parts. The directions were really clear and it came together no problem.
Sewing the fabric to the webbing was also not an issue, thankfully.
This is where I started to get a little confused, when it was time to sew the leather to the strap.
With Nanny’s help though this worked out with just two tries!
Voila!! Totally adjustable guitar strap!! It’s a really cool project because you could make it form Hello Kitty or Spiderman fabric depending on who you’re making it for!

I’m participating in Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

My WIP this week is a little sad, but it was just Valentine’s Day so I was buried in chocolate and red construction paper natch! I did manage to squeeze out some knitting time in the car this week and last night I knitted and knitted and caught up on some Law & Order SVU. Mariska Hargitay is so seriously hot. Like, dudes. I’m also really loving Danny Pino as her new partner, but I digress. I accomplished two repeats on this sock before attacking my husband and going to sleep. Lovely ending to our (does quick math) 13th Valentine’s day together.

The pattern in Flying Arrows by Helen Waittes, it’s a really simple (and really pretty) 10 row repeat, where every other row is the same so it’s fairly simple to zone into it. I may be a little sad when I’m done, but that’s no reason to knit slowly! I had intended to finish these as my January socks, but I got sidetracked by the cute baby legwarmers I posted last week. I think I will officially call those my January socks, even though they are legwarmers and they are so wee.

There is a lot going on around here that I am BURSTING to talk about but still can’t juuust yet. Soon! So even though I am mega super distracted, I am aiming to have these socks finished by this time next week so I’m casting on for my official February socks by then!

It’s been a super busy, super fun Valentine’s Day around here today! Here’s the parade of the love fest we sent to school!

First up, for the teachers, we made the same caramel corn as for Miss America but I halved it and made the other half purple. I packaged them up in baggies, and used these super cute tags from Our Best Bites – here’s the PDF for them. They say ‘Just popping through with a Valentine for you’. I used red and white baker’s twine that I just ordered from Keeley Behling to wrap them all up. There’s just something about baker’s twine that makes me feel like a serious domestic goddess. I also dipped pretzel rods in melted chocolate and rolled them in pink sprinkles, then wrapped those in parchment paper and tied with more baker’s twine. Love!!

These adorable little friendship bracelets were for Wee One #2’s class. They are just three strand braids that we made together; green/orange/blue for the boys and pink/light pink/purple for the girls. They’re strung through another sweet printable that says ‘our class would knot be the same without you’. Ha! I know, it’s mega uber cheese, but dudes please, it’s Valentine’s Day, what do you want from me?! The printable for these is from Dandee Designs over here.
These are my favorite treat I’ve ever sent to Wee One #1’s class. They are jumbo Rolos (the kind with 10 in the package) wrapped in red construction paper. I secured the construction paper to the wrapper with double sided tape so it couldn’t be seen and I also rolled half a black pipe cleaner in with it! Instant stick of dynamite! Love it! I made the labels in Photoshop with a similar font from the one it was originally pictured with. This idea came from Make It Do. Our oldest will be 12 this summer, so he’s borderline too old for this shit, you know? It’s hard to find ideas that still fit the holiday without being too lame for him to be down. This? Totally worked!
Wee One #2 wanted a little something extra for the kids in her class so we made a fairly classic chocolate covered Oreo for each of them and to keep it festive we added red and pink sprinkles! They’re pictured drying with the equally festive chocolate covered pretzel rods included in the teacher’s loot.
The Oreos were hard to package, because short of bringing a tray of them into the school, how do you wrap an individual chocolate covered Oreo?! My solution was to plunk each one in a pink cupcake liner, wrap with pink tissue paper and secure with — you guess it! BAKER’S TWINE. I need help, is there a support group for this sort of thing?

I have wanted to do this forever – it is infinitely easier than it seems and it seems crazy easy. No brainer and the wee ones are happy, happy, happy. I came across this recipe via Easie Peasie and tried it later the same day. Success!

Just mix 3 teaspoons of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup corn starch and 2 cups of water in a saucepan. Cook it until it starts to thicken and then separate it into jars and add food coloring! So simple! Wee One #3 watched me make it, and helped get the paper and brushes and easel ready. By the time we were set up to paint, it had cooled and she painted for almost an hour – creating an alarming number of masterpieces. Clean up was easy too!

I’m participating in Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

I have been very good this week and stuck with the baby legwarmers without touching the Flying Arrows socks at all. I have been spending a lot of my evenings doing research for something that’s sort of a really big deal but that I shouldn’t talk about until I have more details on it. Vague enough for you?!? That’s what has kept me from knitting, that and the very same something has me going on less errands lately so I’m not knitting in the car as much either!

This pattern (Socks for Mary Janes) really is alarmingly cute and would work so well on a little girl in Mary Janes. The little girl I’m making the legwarmer version of these for will look equally adorable running around her house in her little skirts and sneakers.

They are sooooo close to being done, just 4 repeats of 4 rows left and then I will ship them the 800 miles to her house.

This started out as a Work in Progress Wednesday but between that last sentence and this one, I finished them and had Wee One #3 model them for me.

These socks were knit in Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo DK in Paintbox Pink, on 3mm DPNs. What a cute name! The band just says #160, with a name that cute they really should make it obvious.

I really, really liked using this yarn. I bought two balls assuming I’d be using most of it on these little cuties, but I still have a few yards left on the first ball! When this little photoshoot was over, Miss Wee One #3 freaked out and didn’t want the socks I had knit her anymore she wanted to keep these legwarmers. When I asked why, she said, in her painfully cute not quite 3 year old voice ‘beeeeecuz they so peddy’. My heart melted, but I cast on for my friend Rachel’s kid, and so Rachel’s kid shall rock these. I’ll make another pair for my own kid this weekend.

I’m participating in Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

As you know by now, I’m a pretty monogamous knitter. If I have more than one project on the go, I will forget about other projects and they’ll never get done. Although there is the exception right now of my Beekeeper Quilt, which is more of an in-between projects project than an actual always-on-the-go kind of project. Other than that, I’m an extremely loyal knitter.

However.

I currently have two pairs of socks on the go because after being just a few rows into the Flying Arrows I’m making for the principal of my kid’s school, I was reminded that a wee little person I care about was about to turn one. The connection is weird and totally fueled by the internet. She’s my dear friend’s fiancee’s best friend’s kid. Yeah, I know. She’s way sweet and her mother and I are eerily similar so I set to work on finding the perfect sock pattern right away. The only trouble with socks for little people is it doesn’t take long for them to grow out of them. Sometimes, the kid grows out of the socks faster than it took to knit the damn things. Sooooo, legwarmers it is!! Plus bright pink legwarmers on chubby little legs is so freaking cute it hurts. You know it does.

So here is the one finished Flying Arrow sock. It’s actually a pretty quick knit and I haven’t had to rip it back at all. Score for me.

This is how far into the second sock I was before I tossed it aside to cast on for something wee and pink and cuter.
This basket of deliciousness is what will be taking up my evenings this week. I settled on Socks for Mary Janes, but because of the whole ‘babies grow way too fast to knit them cute stuff’ issue, they are going to be legwarmers. With no heel to turn and no toe to decrease to, I really have no excuse on these taking long to knit up. They really need to be knitted up this week because, yeah I have stuff to do! That stuff may or may not include posting a whole lotta recipes and crafty tutorials burning a hole in my hard drive – and it may or may not include this other basket of deliciousness. My Knit Picks order came in the same week that I finally caved and checked out the yarn store out here in the woods. Well, technically it’s actually in the closest ‘city’ to us (and I use the term city really, really loosely). They have a lot more nice yarn than I thought and I managed to hold back and only pick up 4 balls. Go me!!

As with so many of the neat little ideas I’ve been trying out lately, this one came to me via Pinterest. This is the original, inspirational pin, but the link is now broken. The gist of the post was the extremely simple recipe (one sec) and the idea of using a color other than black for the paint. I went with black because I was looking for a traditional chalkboard feel, but the blog I read it on went with pink! So cute!!

The idea of painting the jars to make labels came to me from Better Homes and Gardens, but in their example, they use a vinyl chalkboard sticker.

This project was way fun because I have pretty much always wanted to mess around with chalkboard paint and I’ve never had the opportunity to. All you need to start chalkboard painting ALL THE THINGS is:

-2 tablespoons non sanding grout (you can get the white stuff to make it easier to tint the paint to other colors, or black if you’re going with black)
-1 cup paint
-a mason jar or something to mix in
-a stick of some kind to mix with
-a sponge brush
-cute jars or boxes or canvas or whatever to paint on

I didn’t stress about leveling out my tablespoons.	I was pretty precise about the paint though.
I still can’t believe all these years – that’s all there is to it. Now I’ve got a cup of black chalkboard paint in a mason jar to paint whatever I feel like pretty much whatever I want whatever my husband hadn’t deemed off limits.
I bought some cute jars to make as gifts for my husband’s dear cousin Jenn and her husband, Adam. So first, I taped off a box with painter’s tape to make sure I had a clean edge.	Then I painted it – about 5 coats. Every time I went into the kitchen I’d check on them and if they were dry, I’d lay another coat on.
The next day, I took off the painter’s tape and held my breath a little. I was nervous I’d catch a paint blob or something and wreck it but it came off perfectly!	I didn’t know this till I read the (now sadly dead) blog post, but in order for chalkboard paint to ‘work’ you have to rub chalk over the surface, and wipe it off. Then presto, it’s ready to roll.
I want to make a zillion more and then I want to paint chalkboard onto, um, everything. And really, since you only need 2 tablespoons of grout and it’s only sold in boxes much, much more than 2 tablespoons, you can make batch after batch and potentially paint a pretty large area. Fun!!

Christmas vacation is officially over, so I have to officially go to bed at a decent hour. Ugh. All this ‘in bed before midnight’ stuff really cramps my style. Ha. The school bus carts off the wee ones just before 8:30, and the bus stop itself is about a 10 minute walk from our house. Anyhoo, I have been busy with the site this week and am now settling into actually adding useful content.

The site sidebar is a little different now, I love me some lists (as if that isn’t fairly obvious by now) so naturally I figured what better to fill the one thing that seen on every single page on the site! There are about a zillion links to fun and useful (and frequently updated) blogs and websites on my links page but my actual favourite blogs are over there in the sidebar —> I listed them alphabetically! No favourites among the favourites!

Freshly Pieced is written by Lee, a very talented (and adorable) quilter. She hosts a weekly ‘Work in Progress’ link up day for all kinds of handmade treasures! I post my in progress knits to this link up.

The LaMay Bakery is my friend Sammie’s blog, chronically life as an army wife with her wee one and her husband. She. Is. So. Sweet.

Mutant Supermodel and I live strangely parallel and often opposite lives! We are about the same age, have the same number of kids all in very close age ranges to each other and we both have a love for fiber (I’m a knitter, she’s a crocheter) – and while I’m coming into my 12th year of marriage, she is freshly (and happily) divorced. Her blog has a wonderful collection of resources for single mothers – and great posts in general from getting over a breakup to managing money.

Peas and Thank You is a veggie mom who made the transition from a pretty standard diet of meat and Diet Cokes. What I love most about her blog is that she is just so normal. She’s even a lover of bad television! I’m smitten. She’s the author of the cookbook I’m working through this year!

The Purl Bee is an endless source of inspiration for sewing, knitting, and crochet. Plus her blog is just so pretty!

Romi is a dear friend whose writing never fails to crack me up! This year has been very exciting for her because she has published two books and written a screenplay. The Book of Awful came first and then The Year of the Chick!

Snarkable is written (or I guess I should say will be written) by one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world. I have little doubt that it’ll be deliciously snarky and witty and will likely make your eyes water.

I can’t get enough of What I Wore. Jessica has been taking photos of what she wears pretty close to every day since 2007. She’s a designer and a pro blogger and is very sweet about answering questions from helping with an outfit to advice on working in the fashion industry. I droll over her daily photos. Love!

I also added a set of smaller goals to the sidebar as well that I’ll go on and on about tomorrow! How do you go about resolutions? I made 7 big ones and have 10 smaller ones. Thoughts?

Just a few days ago, I proclaimed to one of my best friends that I will not be making resolutions this year. Actually, it went more like this.

May: Did you see my new boots on Facebook?
Talea: I did, way to upload pics right away.
May: I know, right?! That’s my only resolution.
Talea: That’s it?! That’s your only resolution?! I’m sitting here racking my brain for more things to list!
May: I’m going to keep up my healthier eating, I’m going to work hard on my blog, but uploading pics quickly is my only actual reaolution.
Talea: Pfft.

Pfft indeed, Talea. Pfft indeed. So after thinking about it a little, I realize it is pretty lame of me to not make resolutions. Not because the idea of not making resolutions in itself is lame, but I always make resolutions and most of the time I do ok. One or two fail before spring – always. A couple more make it to summer/fall, and there are usually at least 1 or 2 that make it all the way into the following year and become a regular part of life.

Last year I didn’t make any public resolutions but privately I resolved to save as much money as humanly possible and be well on the road to buying a house in 2011. We ended up saving more than I ever thought could be humanly possible and we bought our first house on August 2, 2011!! Mission accomplished!

I’m feeling really ambitious about 2012, because so many exciting things about my husband’s job and his goals are really coming together and as much as I would looooove to go on and on about them here, it’s not really my place to talk about it all. I will say however, that I am incredibly proud of him and it makes me want to work so much harder on my own goals – especially goals I have come close to touching in the past but for whatever reason allowed myself to back away from. Some of my resolutions are to keep up past resolutions I’ve succeeded at, because if they fall off the list, I may stop being mindful of them! So first, things that need changing, followed by changes to keep up.

1. Maintain a vegetarian diet and take steps toward cutting out as much dairy as possible. I have said so many times that I could never be a vegetarian because I love certain foods too much to give them up or because there are some foods that are so ingrained in my life and our family’s traditions that I just can’t imagine what those traditions would look like without those foods. However, I have also said so many times that it’s just not possible to un-know stuff, you know? I’m not at all out to turn anyone else into a vegetarian – at all. My husband and kids eat meat and I will still prepare meals with meat for them and I will still blog about those meals, so while I am going veg, this blog/website is not.

2. Get down to my goal weight. Sadly this is one of those goals I’ve come close to hitting! I lost 50lbs last year and fell off the wagon when my Granny passed away. Once my emotions leveled out, I never got back into positive eating habits. I’ve been limping along again for the past two months and have lost some of that weight again. It looks like there is a very exciting move happening for our family in the nearish future that will keep me on track. More about that as details unfold here.

3. Blog, blog, blog!. There are hundreds of photos waiting to be posted about – really hundreds! Decadent desserts, healthy mains, super fun crafty projects, heaps of makeup photos and random tutorials. Partly it’s about finding the time to post about it all, but I have no doubt that I have that time, I just need to take it from somewhere less productive! I also have a pretty intimidating/impressive idea list of things that will end up being blogged about too. Even though this is technically #5 on my list, it’s defo one of the most important resolutions this year.

4. Keep up positive parenting. By this I mean keeping the kid’s feelings and hopes in mind when making decisions as well as the obvious not screaming and yelling and generally lashing out at them when they are, let’s say, difficult. I think it’s fair to say I have been developing this skill for the last 11 years but of course I can always get better. I’ve been being really mindful since I read How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk and even more so since I went to the workshop. Yes, I dig parenting classes. Anyhoo, treating our kids with respect is an ongoing resolution.

5. Keep up the domestic goddess habits. This is a goal I achieved a couple of years ago, where I have manged to keep cleaning and kitchen routines going – regardless of vacations and babies and visitors and moving and head colds and all the things that I used to allow to derail me. It’s an ongoing process though because messes happen every day and meals need to be prepared everyday. So I’m keeping it on the list!

6. Keep up the hair and makeup everyday. I know people think it’s funny (or maybe a little crazy) that I wear some pretty alarming makeup, including gorgeous lashes, out in the woods in my town of 300 people (maaaaaybe, probably less). On an average day, I see one other mom and two other dads at the school bus stop. I see my next door neighbor when he waits for his kids to get off the other school bus and 3 other people who walk their dogs past my kitchen window. That’s it. But they are not why I take the time to get snazzy everyday, I do it for my husband and kids. They claim I look adorable even without doing my hair and makeup and that’s incredibly sweet of them to say, but we all know how much more adorable I look with effort.

7. Help my husband with his goals. This goes without saying really, and my husband has said this shouldn’t be a resolution because I’m always supportive of his goals BUT, just like with the kids and the house, there is always room for improvement and I think it should always be on the list. He’s also way more supportive of my hilariously big dreams than pretty much any other husband I’ve ever met, so I think that calls for above and beyond, right? Right. <3 I feel like I should have 3 more for a rounded out list of 10, but 7 is where I'm at this year. I honestly wish everyone success in 2012 so that when we all sit down to write out our 2013 lists we are full of optimism and have a nice list of completed goals under our belts! Onward!!