I Have Completed My First KCK One Diaper!

Now I just need to finish 23 more! It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. There are a couple of things that I will do to tweak my technique but other than that I was really surprised.






I was able to put in a welt pocket no problems, then I added the velcro.












I pinned the layers together. I was concerned about how easily the white inner fabric stretched.












I had to use tissue paper to keep my foot from sticking to the waterproof PUL fabric.












This went together really well on the first try too!


I was worried about how the elastic would go on, I was pleasantly surprised.














I put the last velcro pieces on then I top stitched around the entire diaper.



Devon was over for dinner and he demonstrated how to use the diaper. Wow! On the first try too. But then Devon is exceptional!

OOOPs!

I was trying to back up in front of our house. I had over shot the mark when I was parking. My wheels started spinning on the ice, so I remembered that someone told me that I should turn my tires when that happens. Well I guess I turned too much cause I went right up on the side walk. The funny thing is that I didn't even notice until I got out of the car and looked back when I was standing on the driveway. It gets even funnier, I went back to get it off the curb and it took me three tries. I left the van 1 1/2 feet from the curb, Bob will have to fix it when he gets home. At least it isn't on the curb any more.

This One is for my Brother Lance

I have a new favorite book. Its a picture book and it reminds me of my brother Lance. I think that everyone should check it out from their local library. It is by Julia Donaldson, I think that Axel Scheffler who created the pictures captured Lance, quite by accident. The inside book flap says this:
"What do you get when you take the scruffiest giant in town and buy him: a spiffy shirt, a spiffy pair of pants, a spiffy belt, a spiffy striped tie, some spiffy socks, and a pair of spiffy, shiny shoes?

Why, the spiffiest giant in town, of course!

And when some animals need his help, George quickly proves that he is also the kindest giant in town. From the popular creators of The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom, here is a fun-filled read-aloud that reminds us that having a giant-sized heart is even more rewarding than being the spiffiest giant in town."

I hope that you all get a chance to read this engaging book. Ashton loved it, I had to read it twice in a row. I am thinking about adding this book to my own collection.

Memories of Labor Day 2004

Devon Has a Good Time at Work

It looks like Devon is all decked out for Mardi Gras. He said that he is having fun at work. I remember when I was his age and working at the fabric store. I enjoyed my work and found ways to make it fun. I remember that during Christmas I walked around with a boa made of tinsel garland and jingle bells. So I think that this is a fun work time look for him :)

Snow Break is Over... Back to Shoveling

After a nice long smog filled break of two weeks, I am now going back to shoveling. I had meant to take a picture of how the place looked with all of the snow being melted off by the rain, but I didn't and now the rain has turned to snow and I have four inches to shovel.

It took Bob two hours to get to work today. I have to try to get out and go to the grocery store, if only I had gone on Saturday instead of scrapbooking all day. Oh well, it's all part of the fun right?!?

More Flowers

Here is an example of the boutonnieres that I am learning how to make. I think I have one too many petals in the front.


Overall I am very happy with the way that it looks. It will probably look really great out of the actual ribbon instead of this practice ribbon.

I am Going To Learn How To Make A Wedding Cake.

In the next few weeks I am going to make a wedding cake. I found a recipe, I am going to get the pans and I am going to give it a try. I don't think that I will be able to do all of the fancy frosting flowers but I think that I can do the beaded trim.


Heather Wallace said that she would be okay with ribbon flowers on her cake. I like the ribbon bands on this cake. It just has frosting dots, Heather said that we could use pearls or buttons. Any way my minds made up I'm going to give it a try, you know what that means... were going to be eating a lot of cake.

I Have Been Scrapbooking All Day!

Here are the scrapbook pages from Preference. I got a few more digital packages from Creative Memories, I am having so much fun!

Flowers

I promised that I would put this picture on the blog. This is the corsage that Mick made for Heather out of duct tape. I think that it is pretty and very unique.

Today I was taking a break from my adventures in diaper making to experiment with another project that is on my horizon. Brian and Heather are getting married in April, we found these pretty ribbon flowers in a book and we want to make them for the wedding flowers. I wanted to experiment and see if I can make them (and instruct any helpers that I can find in making them.) This is the picture from the book, pretty isn't it?

Here the stamens are attached to the wire and the first row of petals have been attached.

Here I have all of the petals for the remaining rows completed and laid out in order so they can be attached.

Heather took this one for me. I am carefully sewing the petals on layer by layer.


This is the finished product. I didn't have the silk ribbons that the book suggested. The shimmery ribbon was very hard to work with and I had to pull the wire out of the edge. I do like the sparkle that is gives to the flower but it might be better to use it for the bow that ties them all together. The brides bouquet is supposed to have eight of these flowers. It took me about three hours to make one rose. I know that they will probably go together faster once I get the hang of them. Needless to say this will be a very big project, I will need a lot of helpers to sew them all together. Overall I would say that I am very happy with the finished project. I texted a picture to Heather (the bride) and she said that it is beautiful. When I told her that I got the materials for $20 and that I could probably make her bouquet with the ribbon that I have she said "Oh good not that much at all then. Yay!"

We Have a Computer Again!

Its hard to believe how are lives are sometimes so dependent on technology. I have really felt out of touch with my family this whole week while we waited for our new computer to come. Its like a blessing and a curse, a blessing because it allows me to keep in contact with family who are far away from me and a curse because I sometimes waste time doing nothing of value on it. That said I'd like to catch up on a few things that happened last week.

On Tuesday Ashton and I made cupcakes. Cherry chip cupcakes to be exact. He took his job of licking the bowl very seriously. At one point he had his head completely in the bowl, he got batter all over his hair, so he had to get in the bath to wash it out.

Here he is waiting patiently for the cupcakes to come out of the oven.

Later in the week on Friday we went to the mall to play at the tree house. There were a lot of kids there. We stopped by the scrapbook store before coming home. We found Scooby-Doo stickers 75% off, wow! Then we picked a page of paper that we liked and some cool frog brads too. To finish off this artistic wonder he put his own thumbprints all around (some of them got on Aunt Dani's counter too). He thought it was funny to wear the crocheted ball bag on his head, like Santa he said.


On Thursday I finished another project, hooray. I had wanted this sweater to be a present for Heather for Christmas, but I didn't have time. I had to make the sleeve three times to get two that matched. What a relief to finally complete it. I hope that it will be the first of many that I create.


Yesterday I started my next big project. KCK One diapers for my sister-in-law Holly. Her baby will be born in 4 1/2 weeks so I really need to bust a move on this project. I practiced the welt pocket that goes in the front of the diaper so that the lining can go in, I feel pretty good about it so I began the task of cutting out all of the diaper outers. I hope that later today I can get the inners cut out. I'll have to let you know how it goes.

Preference!!!!

The morning of Preference dawned bright and early (especially for Heather because she was out late watching a movie and playing games at a friends house). The night before Preference all of her friends even the ones who weren't going to the dance wanted to hang out together. The plan was to go bowling but they forgot that Friday night is league night. Never fear this gang knows how to improvise, it helps if you have a friend who has a really cool game room. It was a really fun night.

When she did get up we selected her day-date outfit. Here it is...she looks great, she is even wearing a little bit of make-up. At 12:30 she was off to her friend Shauntyl's house to finish the last minute preparations. By 1:15 they were all at the mall having their scavenger hunt, Shauntyl and Trevor were the big winners. Heather and her date Michael Bronson finished up quickly so they could eat Subway. They split a $5 foot long BLT (yum!), three cookies and a large soda. Heather said that they had good fun trash talking the other teams about not winning (it would be good to remember here that their team did not win but came in second).

Part of the "day-date" was that the guys were in charge of making the girls' corsages and the girls made boutonnieres for the guys. Trevor showed all of the guys how to make flowers out of duct tape. (When Heather told me about this I thought Wow! that is really weird. I wasn't sure that it would look good at all. But it turned out really awesome!) The girls used silk flowers and some random smallish white flower to make boutonnieres for the guys. I think that you will agree when you look further down at the pictures that this was an extremely fun idea.

Here is the boutonnier that Heather made for Mick. She said that she needed a little bit of help from Shauntyl's Mom but other than that she had a good experience.

Heather calls in a change of plans to Mick's voicemail. Mick wanted Heather to meet his mom and dad so we needed to go pick him up and there wasn't enough time before everyone was set to arrive, 30 minutes is not enought time to get ready...so she made the call requesting more time.

Heather is all ready for her hair and make-up team (Dani) to fix her up.

I told her that she should pick through her hair first so that I didn't hurt her when I put all of the many hair products in. There were a lot to get Heather's hair to have that bouncy just got a perm look.

Voila, here she is all ready to put on her fancy dress and go off to the ball.


Drum roll please... Ta-da! Here she is Miss America (I'm probably prejudiced though)! I think that she looks like a princess. I think that she felt really pretty too.Like I said a princess, can I get a tiarra please?

Mick puts his lovely black and silver corsage on Heather's wrist. I will have to put a close up picture of it in a later post. The Band that it is attached to is a hair-tie with a black chiffon bow. I know it sounds weird but it looks great! Heather says pretty!

Heather had a hard time trying to get the corsage pin to go through the flower. I probably should have had her practice a little bit before hand, I think that we all remember the first time that we had this experince and it can be a little unnerving. They all joked about Heather stabbing him in the heart with the pin, Mick said it's okay because he's a vampire (Twilight?)

Heather said that her cheeks hurt from so much smiling. Her mom (Seaneen) was able to come over and snap some pictures.

I asked Heather while she was getting ready if her date was cute and she said "sort of", I think that she just didn't want to tell me the truth because then I'd never let her hear the end of it. They are just really good friends but they do look very cute together. It's great to see two young people smiling all the way to their eyes.

This is the whole group, Shauntyl, Trevor, Heather (the star), Michael (Mick), Natasha and Andrew. It was Natasha and Andrews first dance. Natasha is Shauntyl's sister.

This is one of my favorite shots of Heather. I can't believe that our baby is old enough to go out to a fancy school ball. She just gets prettier by the day and more confident in herself. i am really proud of her for having this experience.

Heather and Mick clown around like they are trying to get a truckdriver to honk it's horn. You can really see Heathers true personallity in this shot.

After pictures they all went to Shauntyl's where they had Subway for dinner. It was another BLT for Heather and Mick. When they finished dinner they played "What's yours like?", which is a game that Heather assures me is very fun. In fact she reccommends it to anyone who wants to have fun.

By 8pm they were ready to go to the dance. There wasn't enough room in the car so Mick was going to walk (luckily Shauntyl lives close to the school) Heather jumped out of the car (not while it was moving this isn't a comic book story - it's a fairy tale :)) so that she could walk with him. Trevor continued on to the school dropped the rest of them off then came back for Heather and Mick.

The theme of the dance was "You Are My Heaven", there were silver stars and white balloons all over the place. Heather and Mick danced three slow dances together. She said that there were other random fast dances that they all danced together. She did have one dance with Trevor. Mick took random funny pictures and they all had a good time. Trevor and Mick stole all of the giant stars from the wall and stuck them on Shauntyl and Heather ( I told you Heather was a star).

By 11pm Heather was home (this is her normal curfew). The group was going to watch a movie together but she thought that she needed to come home. After she changed her friends texted her asking for her to come and watch the movie so we gave her a curfew exception and she stayed out til 2 am watching Transformers with the group. I would say that she had a very fun time. She even got a goodnight hug at the door. What a fun time for Heather.



Here is a very informative video of Heather answering pressing questions about her thoughts about Preference. Heather says please don't watch (she doesn't know that by saying this everyone will watch it anyway...she is begging me to delete it but I'm not going to :) She says that I am mean, she wants to know why I am writing everything that she is saying. I'm laughing too much so I am stopping right now.