For my nephew.

I've badly been wanting to create baby things and you'd think with an 8 month old nephew and two 17 month old nieces I'd have plenty of opportunities. But I'm a slacker and rarely make them stuff. Well I recently made the nieces fleece jackets and little sun dresses but I didn't get pics so it's not worth really mentioning.

But I finally got around to making something for my beloved nephew! He's getting to be such a big boy and bigger babies always mean bigger messes so I made him a bib!





This picture isn't my nephew nor is it the bib I made. It's the picture from this blog which is where I got the tutorial to make my nephew's bib.

This is my nephew's new bib! His daddy likes elephants a lot so I found this material I thought would be perfect. I did change up the original a little bit. The tutorial recommends one layer of fabric and

one layer of flannel. I used just one layer of fabric and applied iron on vinyl on top of it :) That's why the crappy cell phone picture is shinny. I also added a pocket to catch what he might drop. The pocket is hard to see as I tried my best to perfectly match up the lines in the material's print. It's right there under the 3 big elephants. Where the brown line is above the peanuts. That was tricky to do. I made the width of the pocket a smidge bigger then the bib but when sewing I made the edges line up. This way the pocket balloons out a tiny bit to make an open pocket rather then a flat pocket. The inside of the pocket has vinyl as well so the entire thing is wipeable. Hopefully the pocket isn't so low that it's not functional. I don't have a baby to test it on until I give it to Nephew.

I'm pretty proud of it and hope when I give it to my sister-in-law she loves it. I think this is gonna become a go to baby shower gift as it took less then an hour from cutting it out to finishing sewing.

New Year

Wow. A new year. I've neglected this blog for a while now. I think it's time I spent some more time on this thing. I'm gonna do what I intended to do and use my blog more and my Facebook less.

So lets start with resolutions. I don't normally make them. They just make me feel like a failure because come on really who makes goals and achives them in a whole year? Okay I get that some make sense, go back to school, pay off this or that bill etc. But lose weight, workout more, clean my house more etc those never seem to happen. It's such a small goal for a whole year. I'd like to make some goals to improve not just this year but my whole life from here on out.

I'm starting with simplify. Simplify everything. Less time going places, less time shopping, less time spent cooking, less time and money spent accumulating junk.

I'm also trying to get our family to spend less at the stores and more time and energy making/growing things. I mean why pay money for produce when I can grow it in my backyard? Why pay $15 for pjs that have some cartoon character on them that my kids will outgrow in just a couple months when for less then $5 I can make them warm comfortable pjs in a color or with a print that they like, that I like and that is timeless. Why should I spend countless hours in the mall looking for a sweater or skirt that fits me just right and is in the right color or close enough then paying for alterations when in just a few hours I could sew something up or in a couple of sittings knit that perfect sweater?

My tastes tend to run towards simpler, more basic things anyways so why try to fight the mass commericalism that says I need to buy this trendy crap just because it's all there is when I can create it myself. I'll save money and save myself some stress at the same time.

Rambling post aside...my goals for this year can be summerized by saying simply this: I'm going to spend more time this year creating rather then buying. I'll be making more clothing, knitting more of our sweaters, washcloths, hats and mittens, I'll be growing more of our food, canning our food, making more foods from scratch and all in all being less dependent on going somewhere wasting gas to obtain the things that I can create for myself in my own home.

Oh I also plan on learning how to make soap this year. Like lye and fat create it myself soap. It'll be fun.