I know it's Christmas, but this is one amazing halloween costume

Ok, ok, how can I bring up Halloween at a time like this?

Well, when you have a really good reason like my friend, Mary's untouchable talent you just have to give your hat tips whenever you can.

All of her siblings pick a theme each year for Halloween and assign each niece/nephew to a character. When they decided on Alice In Wonderland this year Mary knew the older kids would quickly scoop up the "easier" or more popular costumes, but what she didn't expect was that her little man was going to instantly set his heart on the Caterpillar of all things!

If coming up with a 3T size Caterpillar costume wasn't enough of a challenge imagine sewing it literally 9 months pregnant!

And then realizing you're just going to need another costume for the new arrival!

....and then, actually pulling it off with a week to spare between delivery and Halloween...

A.M.A.Z.I.N.G

Hop over to her blog to see more pictures of the rest of the cast and the adorable themed party decorations they had to go with it!

Remember the magic

We're going where Daddy??!!
I'm too excited to sleep!!

And to be honest, so was Mommy!


It all started when Daddy decided one Monday morning that he thinks we need to go to Disneyland before Sienna turns 3 and needs a child's ticket. I agreed like a good wife to a constantly planning husband would thinking that we had a few months to go and sure, maybe it'd happen after the holidays. Little did I know he meant...

Let's go to Disneyland this very week!!

As in why aren't we packing yet?!

Hold the Dumbo ride! He means business!

So we called my Other Mother who lives a short drive from "the happiest place on earth" and asked if they had any plans that week. Of course she did, but since she loves us so much she rearranged everything so that 2 days later she not only let us stay at her house, they decided to come with us!!

Who can resist joining in on the first family trip to Disneyland??

We managed to go on the perfect day, with the perfect weather and almost absolutely no lines at all! Can you believe that?! The best part of all was the we had some extra help to trade off sitting with napping children tucked snuggly in their strollers while Mommy and Daddy dashed off to some rides all alone!


The gentleman that I married always makes sure I get to take the splash in the face on the Matterhorn, but I still love him.

You're probably thinking, Matterhorn?! Aren't you pregnant?! Uuhhhh, yeah, about that, I made sure to hold the baby belly on the turns....

I guess that's the difference between pregnancy #1 and #3!

Or maybe it's my daring personality and I just can't help but pass it along to my kids inside the womb and apparently outside as well....
Yup, that's our 2 1/2 year old on her first roller coaster!

She LOVED it.

I, on the other hand, have to say watching her on that ride was probably waaay worse for this pregnancy than any Disneyland level coaster I rode on. But, she loved it and still talks about it weeks later.

We met all of the princesses and characters who Sienna proudly tells any available warm body that she now personally knows. Funny that she recalls the encounter as such a time of bonding when she was clearly too star struck to make actual eye contact with the characters or with the camera...

You may think little Jonah was too young to enjoy this adventure, but I'd have to argue that it's a magical place to be for a toddler with new walking legs!

He was on a mission and had the walkers to take us with him!


No Jonah should go to Disneyland without meeting his famous whale!

I'm pretty sure he has no idea what a whale is yet, because I don't think he'd be smiling like this after a few more years worth of references to his namesake....

When we got home we asked Sienna what she thought of her first and undoubtedly most spontaneous Disneyland trip...

I'm gonna guess that this smile means Disneyland definitely is the place where 2 year old dreams come true!

Ruffly Rocker T-Dress Tutorial

Ruffles and dresses??

Plus a t-shirt refashion??

yes please!

And as a bonus, look at all the rockin' 80's scraps that I got to use from my mom's fabric stash! I seriously remember picking out the hearts print when I was a little girl for a dress that I wanted!Even though my mom never got around to making me my lightening and heart dress, I think I'll forgive her and gladly steal it back to make a lovely dress for her lovely granddaughter. Fair is fair right?

I've seen these tutu dresses and ruffly shirt dresses all over the stores this season and I just love them! So here's my little mix of the two....

Wanna try??

Here's what you need:

• Cotton/Stretch T-shirt
• 1/2 yrd of stretchy or knit fabric for the base of the shirt
• Long strips of coordinating fabric and tulle about 4" x 40"
• Basic sewing essentials.. thread, pins, scissors, chalk, machine etc

Here's what you do:

Step 1- take measurements

Lay the old tee flat to measure the width of the bottom.

Step 2- cut out the base for the shirt part of the dress

Use the number you got in step one to cut the stretchy/knit fabric the same width. Old shirts work great for this if you don't have matching knit fabric around. Either way, make sure you cut the fabric after you've folded it over since you measured only one side of the shirt. The length is up to you. For a 4T dress I made mine about 10" long, but my little fashionista is tall like her momma.

Step 3- cut ruffles strips

In this case, I decided to go with 4 rows of ruffles, but you can easily adjust this by making each ruffle layer shorter or longer. For each row you'll want to cut a strip 1 1/2 times the total circumference (length around) your shirt.

Here's how you figure out what size strips to cut:

Shirt bottom measurement x 2 = total length around dress
13" x 2 = 26"

Total length around dress x 1.5 = length of strip to ruffle
26" x 1.5 = 39" but let's just call it 40" for a little wiggle room :)

For 4 rows of ruffles I made mine 4" wide. This gave me plenty of seam allowance and overlap room for my 10" long skirt portion.


Step 4- ruffle your strips
Ruffle your strips using the loosest settings on your sewing machine and gathering until they are the same length as your shirt bottom.

Step 5- sew your shirt bottom and first ruffle row to the shirt
Wrap the ruffle strip around the bottom of your shirt folded right side out so that the same sides of the strip and the shirt are touching and the bottom of the ruffle ends with the bottom of the shirt.

Next, wrap the shirt bottom around the 2 layers so that the ends are the same length and pin it all in place.

Carefully sew all three layers together using the zig zag stitch on your machine and stretching slightly as you sew. Make sure you gently stretch evenly from both ends and you're not pulling at all.

Sew the sides of the skirt part together along the side as you normally would for any skirt or dress. Similarly, connect the ruffle row by sewing them together at the side.

Some of you might sew the ruffles together before attaching for a cleaner seam, but I prefer doing it this way so I can adjust the ruffles as I go until the very end.

Step 6- Mark off lines for each remaining row of ruffles

I spaced my ruffles out every 3 inches so that I would have about 1" overlap between each one.

Step 7- Attach the remaining ruffle rows
I like the rough around the edges look for this rocker dress, so I left the knitted edges unfinished for each layer since they won't fray.

I also sewed the bottom ruffle layers directly onto the bottom skirt part with the top exposed since no one will see it and it won't fray either! Easy peasy!

Step 8- Finish 'er off with a decorative flower or bow
I used the scraps of the scraps to make a little flower for the side to blend the colors and break up the dress a little.

She loved it!

Now, you might not believe this, but the hardest part of the dress came after I finished sewing it...

Let me tell you, trying to describe "rocker" to someone whose musical plate mostly comprises of Rafi and Disney sing-a-longs was a little interesting. When she started dancing around like a ballerina I couldn't decided if I made progress or not...

But when she interpreted my rocker signing as roaring like a tiger was when I really knew I was a lost cause...

Eh, oh well, so clearly Mommy was never much of a real rocker herself...

Maybe we both can at least look cute dressed up as one from time to time!

A quick winter dress for baby and me!

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, bakers man

Make me a dress as fast as you can!

(pretty please, Momma?)

You gotta roll it, pat it, mark it with a "B"


And don't forget to make one for baby AND me!


YAY!!!!

Thanks Momma!

And how could I do anything less for that squeezably round little face?


But I'll tell you, when I sat down to make her pat-a-cake dress I was stuck. All I could think of was this adorable long sleeve peasant dress I saw at the Little Bean Workshop.

And then it hit me like a pie pan to the face. Isn't copying the highest form of flattery? And I DO love so many things on Amy's blog. And what better way to honor my personal #1 copycat than to copy this cute little dress that's stuck in my head anyway??

So I did.

In almost every single way down to the perfectly fitting argyle fabric that happened to be on sale at JoAnn's all week :)

It was so incredibly easy to make that I threw one together for baby too!

Then, to spice it up with my own little spin I put 2 teeny pockets on the front just the right size for those chilled winter hands to warm up in.

Thanks for the great tutorial from Little Bean Workshop!

Hard hats required for this birthday zone

Our little man had his first birthday a few weeks ago and I couldn't think of a more fitting party theme than this!

Our house quickly became construction central with dump trucks, building blocks, tools, dirt and lots of hungry boys hanging around.

Wait, that doesn't sound too different than normal!

Ok, a little different from normal... unlike our normal construction zones, this Birthday Zone was specially made for little diggers 3 and under!

Even the birthday cake was a just like playing in the dirt!

Jonah blew out his first candles in the back of his dump truck filled with dirt cake!

Each kid even got their own mini trucks to dig around their cake with.

When we weren't covered in chocolatey dirt we were very busy constructing giant cardboard block towers.

Well... actually they weren't so gigantic after all.

It's no surprise really if Jonah thought it was this much fun knocking over little blocks...

We could've expected our big block towers never to rise much taller than this...


The kids still had fun and loved helping Jonah break in his new favorite toy from Aunt Dani...

You didn't, did you?!

You DID!!

Our little boy has his very own, very manly, QUAD!

Adorable.

Here's the yummy, super manly (but could also be girlie with a slightly different angle) Dirt Cake Recipe!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 2 (3.5 ounce) packages instant french vanilla pudding mix
• 3 1/2 cups milk
• 1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 1 package of chocolate oreo cookies with creme filling

Directions

1. Smash, crumble or chop cookies into a small pieces. You can use a food processor or a meat mallet and a ziplock bag seem to do the trick :)
   
2. Mix the softened butter, cream cheese, and sugar in bowl until smooth.
3. In a separate large bowl mix milk and pudding. Incorporate as many of the pudding globs as possible before adding the whipped topping to the mixture.
4. Combine pudding mixture and cream mixture together.
5. Layer in a lined dump truck or flower pot starting with cookies then cream mixture. Repeat layers.
6. Chill until ready to serve.
7. Decorate with mini dump trucks, paper flowers, gummy worms, etc
   

Note: As with all cakes, they're not exactly easy on the diet, but the best secret I've discovered with this is that using fat free or low fat dairy ingredients doesn't really change the taste! I've been doing it for years and my husband has had no idea :)