Easter celebration

I love Easter... first off its not all about the bunnies and candy... Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!!! If that isn't something to celebrate about... I dunno what is!?

It was extra special this year b/c we were celebrating little Ceej's 1st birthday... can you believe it?! He is just a walking/talking/dancing/crazy lil man I tell you what. I decided to go with an Easter themed party b/c it fell later in the month this year. We were also having family in town anyway! I figured it would be nice weather too so we could have it outdoors!

It was crappy weather all week... but thank you Lord, it was decent on Easter. A little on the chilly side... but do-able for an outdoor party.

My sisters and brother-in-laws' all helped out for the party! We dyed eggs one night and the day of the party I arranged them in baskets with fake grass and bunnies for decor.

Thanks so much to my parents for letting me have the celebration at their house... no worrying about cleaning my house... haha! And they have a gorgeous backyard too :)

After chowing down on some yummy food! (Compliments to JG and his pulled pork sandwiches. They were DELICIOUS!!)........... It was time for the Easter Egg Hunt :)

Bubba was more interested in bugs in the yard than picking up his eggs... but after opening the eggs and eating some candy he got more excited about the eggs. Ceej needed some help finding them... but he did enjoy opening and closing them. My nephew and niece came to the party as well! It was lots of fun. And I think our Bunny Cupcakes were a hit :)

Easter Bunny Cupcakes
I found these cute little guys on the link above. I changed mine a little bit... but they turned out pretty cute! Note to self... DO NOT buy jellybeans from the Dollar Tree... yuck! They were old and icky... I warned everyone not to eat the bunnies' nose.

Old pair of jeans?.... turn it into a skirt!

Well for those of you who don't know...  I have two sisters... one lives here in Iowa with me... and the other is down in Tennessee... my oldest sister is the one down in TN. She is VERY good at sewing... infact she needs to give me some personal lessons b/c after seeing her sewing technique after mine.... I'm realizing I'm really terrible! (And I thought I was doing so well...). My middle sis is actually the owner of my sewing machine... she has just been kind enough to let me borrow it for an undetermined amount of time...

Anywho... for the purpose of this blog entry we will now call my oldest sis Frugal Fran... or FF.

FF has seen my attempts at recreations... and she asked me if I had any old jeans I didn't wear anymore... which of course I do! Who doesn't? They were/are stretch jeans and its like the stretchy part was getting too stressed... and it was kind of lumpy around the knees. I was constantly pulling them up and adjusting them b/c they were just soo worn out.

Here's the before photo!

I know you can't really tell how worn these are from this angle... but take my word...
I helped a little bit... but this was really FF's handywork... First she used the seam ripper to rip open the inside seams of each pant leg... After that I tried them back on.. and we figured out where to cut them off...

at first we did just under the knee.. but then I looked a bit like a sister-wife out on the compound so we ended up cutting it up further once we were finished!

Then FF took the seam-ripper and ripped up the crotch area so she could re-align the seam. It took her a couple tries to get it just right. She had done this project on a pair of her old jeans too... but with us being different sizes it took a little TLC to figure out just where the fabric needed to lay. Then she took it to the machine and stiched it up... After that was complete... she took the extra fabric from the lower half of the pant leg and cut a triangle shape to fill in the "V" gap that was created after the legs were opened up. Then she sewed that up too!

Here's the final product!

How we just did a stitch across the bottom... not a full hem or anything. I'm hoping after its washed a couple times it will fray and have some fringe on the bottom. Kudos to FF and her mad sewing skills!! If the weather would stay nice maybe I could show this bad-boy off :)

audiobook killer...

K so I just started that audiobook for the "Pretty Little Liars" series... its called "Killer" and let me tell you... IT IS KILLING ME... the girl they chose to read it is driving me crazy! I've barely listened to it for 20 minutes... I dunno if I can take it... also... I can't use the audiobook on my nook and that makes me really sad... I can listen to it on my computer but then I feel weird just sitting here with my laptop in my lap... listening.. so I start browsing and then before I know it I'm like wait... what did they just say!

Audiobooks seem to only work out for me if I'm riding in the car... not sure if I'll be able to make it through this one! I dont know why they have the other ones available as ebooks and these ones they don't... its kind of frustrating. I suppose I could break down and buy them... but I dunno... I'm pretty cheap and don't want to!

I have a project that I would love to post... but I messed it up so badly I have to go buy some new snaps or something from hancock fabrics.... also... my lil Ceej is turning 1 tomorrow!! Can you believe it?! I can't... craziness. The lil dude is walking all over the place now. We're having an Easter themed bday party for him... I'll do my best to take some photos of our decor and post on here :)

boys will be boys

I'm starting to realize how lucky I had it with Bubba.... he's a rare breed that one. He listens fairly well... he understands what I'm talking about... he knows when he's being naughty,and admits it... and then there's Ceej... since he is more mobile now he is into EVERYTHING. I have to "watch him like a hawk". I mean I always watched Bubba... but he never use to do the things Ceej is doing now. For example....... Here is a picture of the molding/trim around our door JDub put up a while ago.

As you will notice a big chunk fell off... that is b/c Ceej was banging the door against it repeatedly... and of course Bubba had to join in... and then here's my brand new curtain rods from IKEA... or lack there of... b/c while I was laying in bed with the boys watching Curious George Ceej had to use his super-anti human-strength and tear those down as well....

I will say it again....... he is freakishly strong... and that in combination with not always understanding... its reeking havoc on our house. He has also managed to rip up tiles on the kitchen floor. Yes, they are in terrible shape and need replacing anyway... but Bubba never picked at them... leave it to Ceej!! Maybe if I can convince JDub that he's continually doing it and trying to eat it that we can finally get the kitchen floor replaced... but I dont know how we would get it down with little ones around...

My neighbor has two raised boys of her own... and she informs me it only gets worse... oh joy!

Pretty Little Liars book review

So I've been reading this series by Sara Shepard called "The Pretty Little Liars".......... See I'm trying to get most of my ebooks from the library for free... b/c I'm cheap!!! I know they say never judge a book by its cover... but I totally do.

I mean that totally looks like an awesome book! A lil barbie-esq red hott mamma if I say so myself... So I started reading... and I was pretty hooked with the first one. I read it in about 3 days! (They're all under 350 pages... but still a feat for a stay at home mom constantly bombarded with children and other tasks along the way..) Here I am... a few weeks later... waiting for the 6th book of the series (there are 8!) and its starting to tick me off. They have soo many loose ends going on... and they usually only tie up one by the end of the book to leave 10 hanging for the next one... its like watching one of those "To be Continued" episodes on TV... but instead of having just one more episode before they wrap it up... there's 8 more!

The series involves a group of spoiled girls in private school... It starts off when them in their junior year of high school, but it goes back to when they were friends in grade school too... they were the best of friends... but then one went missing!? And as many friends grow apart... these did too. Years later they all started receiving weird texts and emails... from a mysterious A. This 'A' threatens to out all their dirty little secrets... OR ELSE. Its very dramatic!! LOL. I love all the drama b/c personally I like to be drama free in my home :)

I like ebooks alot. I just love my nook... but these last 3 are audiobooks. Sure I've listened to "books on tape" or whatever before, but its usually when I'm driving in the car on a long road trip. So I'll have to see how it goes on my nook...

I'm almost to the point where I want to go online and read a spoiler... but I hate spoilers!! I guess I'll just have to wait! In a way it is helping me with my patience... which always needs a little help these days.

Holey Green Tank Top Batman!

I pretty much live in tank tops around the house! Especially in the summer... So when I realized one of my favorite green ones had aquired some holes, I was kinda bummed. But then I had a nifty idea! Why not just cover the holes up with something else and no one will know... well now I guess they'll know... but yea.

So here's a pic of the holes... they were really small, but its not like I could just sew them shut w/o looking weird, so that's why I decided to cover them up.

I took the extra fabric I cut off from my Guiness shirt from St. Patrick's day this year and tried my best at creating some fabric roses! I just cut the fabric into little strips, having a flat end on one end... and a pointy end on the other. And then I just kinda played around with it.

As you can see the more I played around... the better the roses began to look... you can see my 1st one was not so hot... I hand-stitched them to make the fabric stay in place. At first I was using a light colored green thread but realized you could see it and it didn't look too hot. So I changed to a darker green... It took a while to get all these done... but I had a ton of extra fabric to work with. Hand-stitching was very time consuming.. I can't imagine sewing w/o a machine sometimes!

Then I did my best to arrange the roses on the shirt in a pleasant pattern. I've been working on this for a while now.... And its kinda funny b/c on http://www.newdressaday.com/ she even wrote about having holes in stuff too! I swear I didn't copy her... lol. But yea so here's the finished product!! I still have a ton of green leftover fabric I could make some more roses out of... and I might even make some more from time to time... and add to the existing shirt... but for now I am done! It took me forever.....

Again... JDub's idea of a good after photo is as far away from the piece I worked on as possible... so I did my own little closeup while layin on my hardwood floor in front of a mirror... I didn't realize how pregnant I looked before having him take the photo... but trying to get him to take another would be impossible...