Colur Block T-Shirt Dresses

With spring clearly on it's way it was time to clean out the kids drawers.  All stained, long sleeved, too short and too small T-shirts were gathered, put into a bag and taken out of their rooms. 

It felt GOOD.

 For the past couple of weeks I have been pinning dresses made from T-shirts and decided that it was time to go through my bag. 

 With the help of one of my sisters

 (who has made tons of repurposed dresses for her girls)

 we began picking out shirts that coordinated.

Then we started to separate clean

unstained tops

from stained bottoms,

 and stained tops from unstained bottoms.

my sister cut while I sewed

 Sleeves were shortened for the upcoming spring  season.

 Here's a trick from my smart sister,

 cut one sleeve off then place on the other sleeve and cut,

(so you take off the same amount without having to pull out a measuring tape.)

Clever girl

 Continue with other colours. 

Leave the side seams of the shirt sewn together.

Making nice tubes of fabric

 lay next colour below the layer you're going to attach it to.

If it doesn't match up

draw a line to connect the two pieces

(on the inside of shirts and sew up the line.)

 I really wanted grey in this dress and found some leggings that had a hole in the knee.

 Cut desired width

 (Leave seam allowance on the sides so that you can make a tube)

 Cut pants so that you have a strip of fabric

 (sew sides together to make a tube)

 continue with other colours

(each layer going down the dress should angle slightly so that you have an A-line dress)

 mix patterns as well as solids

 (keep the last layer's hem on the shirt so that it looks finished)

 For the sleeve we shortened them 

and then took  1" off the bottom of the cuff and reattached it to the sleeve

(right sides sewn together)

 so simple and a cute detail.

 and now you're done

I love that I got rid of four t-shirts (and one pair of pants) and ended up with one dress.

My husband will be happy too.

 Here's another dress using the same technique.

I love the last layer on this dress

it was a cute ruffle of an old shirt (came with the built in drawstring bow) gotta love the ease of that

 adding the bottom hem from one of the shirts makes a nice a collar too

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brassyapple

 

Cakes Galore

Well with the beginning of a new year comes a whole new year of birthday cakes. 

Since my oldest child was born I have made my kids a themed cake for their birthday parties.

  With four children and 12 years of making cakes that's a lot of cakes. 

 I thought I would show you a small portion of the cakes I've done over the years. 

* I feel like I need a disclaimer*

 I have no education in cake decorating.....

maybe someday

(it's just something my kids love

 and I love doing for them)

Superman

Strawberry Shortcake

  Princess Aurora

My Little Pony

Baby Jaguar

Perry the Platypus

My Littlest Pet Shop

Lilo

Little Einsteins

Kung Fu Panda

Backyardigans

Barbie

Kitten

and Handy Manny

I hope it's something they can look back on with

 fond memories and maybe do for their kids.

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Books, Books, Books

Well I 've been recovering from surgery for 2 1/2 weeks.  My incision is closed and will be a nice 3 1/2" scar, it healed nicely and I think in a couple of years you won't even notice it.  I'm still dealing with circulation issues and have a hard time sitting up for longer than 20 mins, which means I have not been able to come down to the computer very much to visit blogs and sites that I like.

What I have been able to do is READ. 

Thankfully I have had some great books and I thought I would share them. 

 In no particular order 

(although I was very excited to read the first one as it was just released this month)

This is the second book in a series called the Beyonders, I read it in 2 days. 

 (It was that good)

It had been a year since I read the first one so I had to reread it before the above book.  They are very  good and after the kids and I read them we have "book club". 

They are good clean fun.

( I need to visit a thesaurus and find another word for GOOD)

I have a couple of chapters left in this book called Unbroken, but needed to include it.  It is an amazing story of survival.  At the beginning of the book I kept hoping that this was a true story as the main character's life seems almost unbelievable, by the end I kind of wished that it was fiction as the story took a turn and I couldn't believe the things the main character had to endure. 

 I'm hoping it ends well.

 I"ll  have to have someone go to the library for me soon for more books. 

If anyone has a good book to recommend,

I'd love to hear about it.

Oh David, I Feel Your Pain

That's right David and I have shared some very personal moments. 

Jealous?.....well don't be.

To see what I'm talking about view the below video.

Watch the confusion on his face (0:05), it is exactly how I felt, except I found myself on the ground.  

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgOemKqIzEE 

Almost 2 years apart (since his happened on March 14, 2010)......freaky.

Here's my story.

On March 6th  I was playing squash with a group  of friends, something we've been doing for a couple of months.  My friends and I were 45 mins into our games and I stepped for an easy forehand. 

 When suddenly I heard a snap, felt something spring up my calf and found myself on the ground.  I instantly knew I had blown my Achilles tendon. 

My friends took me to the Health First Centre and within 36 hours I had emergency surgery and had my tendon stitched back together.  Here is a drawing of a torn tendon for those of you who are sensitive to blood.

and here's what it looks like for those of us with a morbid fascination for the GROSS things in life.

When I did it you could feel that the area was all soft and it looked like this.

These are not my legs.

(ha, although after wearing a slab cast for two weeks my left leg might look a little like them)

I am finally on the recovery and felt good enough to

sit up at the computer.

(Being unable to get out of bed is not as fun as it sounds.)

  I also wanted  to thank all of my friends and family

 who have nursed me, fed my family, babysat my kids, given rides, phoned me and given me great books/magazine to read.

  I have felt VERY loved.

I should be able to put pressure on it in 4 more days

 I will be perfectly whole and back on the squash court in 6 months.

Can't wait until September.

                                         

Dreaming

Is there something wrong with me if I'm having dreams about finding FREE awesome pieces of old furniture  to revamp and upcycle?  I hope the answer is NO and that it's just my subconscious getting stoked for warmer weather and the chance to paint outside again. (Right?  No need to see a specialist???)

 Not being able to paint furniture has been way harder than I ever thought it would be.  It also doesn't help that many bloggers live in warm climates and can paint year round....I'm trying not to be jealous and just enjoy the makeovers, but I'm really getting the itch to do some myself.

  So, to try and curb the furniture obsession I've turned to......EATING......sounds healthy eh?   I've been having fun trying out different recipes that I've pinned on pinterest

 and  I thought I would share the ones that my family, friends and I liked.

First are these pretzel bites

from

macaroni and cheesecake

They were so good that I literally had to remove all of the kids from the kitchen to keep their hands off them and their begging voices to a dull roar (seriously it was like a "kettle" of vultures swarming in for the kill).  The only change I made was I used cut up pepperoni instead of ham.  It gave it a little spiciness that my family loves.

Next was a

lemon pull-apart bread 

from

the whimsical cupcake

This was very easy to make and was devoured at our last party. I liked how easy it was to layer everything and the tang of the lemon was just right ( mouth watering in fact).

and last was this snickerdoodle recipe,

 and was exactly as the name said, "soft and chewy"

from

our best bites

I did make a small change to this recipe, I used 1 cup of margarine (you could use butter) instead of 1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup vegetable shortening .... oh and I added the 1/2 tsp salt even though it said to use it only if you are using unsalted butter.

Actually a couple of my fiends and I decided to test 3 snicker doodle recipes and see which one we liked. We each took a recipe and then traded 1/2 dozen cookies of "our" recipe with each other. Then came the hard part, tasting them!!! I think I ate close to a dozen myself. We let our kids and husbands try too and the majority picked this recipe as their favorite. ( It was a great way to try different recipes without having to make 3-4 different recipes..... I think we're going to try banana bread next.)

Well there you go three recipes that definitely are being added to the cookbook.  I'd love to hear of any other recipes that people have tried and liked from

pinterest