Lioness Livvy and Elephant Katie

The first weekend of October, the elemtary school in our school district threw Fall Fest. It was a super fun time complete with carnival style games, inflatable bouncy obstacle course, slide, and bounce house, food, a hay ride and more!

Since our Halloween's are a bit chillier here in Northeast Minnesota than in a lot of other places, my mom crocheted the girls two hats that are beyond adorable. At least we don't have snow yet (jinx?)

The girls LOVE them and got tons of complements. If you'd like one, or any hat for that matter, visit Fancy Bird Creations page on Facebook! This woman can crochet anything.

ROAR!!!!!!

A 12-Piece "Thank You!"

My mom and dad came up last week to give me a hand in multiple categories. One of the big goals my mom and I wanted to accomplish was to make a ton of post-baby freezer meals. So on Thursday morning at 7:30 (I know some of you get up way earlier than this, but not this tired mama), I dragged my tired butt out of bed and went to Sam's Club and bought a ton (sure felt that way with my giant 27-week giant belly) of bulk ingredients.

Once I got home we got started. When we finally finished around 1 a.m., we literally had made about a month's worth of meals. A huge "Thank You" was in order because there was absolutely no way I was going to get this stuff done without my parents being around.

For helping me more than she even knows, I made her 12 reversible placemats. Thanksgiving on one side and Christmas on the other. Two functions in one item! Love it!

Each placemat is topstitched sewn with coordinating gold thread and each placemat's topstitching is done in a different design. Waves, zigzags, double straight line, leaves, hearts, etc.

Lovely Liv's 18-month Dress

Featured here on our wall of art are two corduroy dresses for Little Lovely Liv's 18-month pictures! Well, one for Liv and one for Katie. Of course, I haven't quite gotten around to the pictures because it takes more than one adult to wrangle our two energetic kiddos. I made the dresses for fall pictures in our beautiful October autumn gold yard, but two days ago the wind blew so hard that all the leaves blew off the trees. And not only that, but the intent was to pair them with a nice cream colored turtleneck, which cannot be found anywhere! Ugh. You'd think I'd be able to find something on the vast Interwebz.

But you should have seen me go! I had two sewing machines and a serger threaded while working on both dresses simultaneously. Craziness! My husband laughed pretty hard when he saw me going at these dresses with two sewing machines.

The purple one is embellished with a cream and gold ribbon and a trio flower pin (which I also made for the dress). The pin can be removed from the dress for washing. The green one is embellished with a muted pink and green three dimensional embroidered and beaded iron-on applique along with the cream and gold ribbon. Both dresses also have non-functional (expensive!) buttons on the shoulder straps.

It was the first time I've worked with an iron-on applique. All I can say is that it takes a little more practice than I obviously have, haha!