Off Topic Tuesday - The Necktie Onesie and Owl Bib

Yes, this post comes a day late - I've had a lot to coordinate lately (a good thing)! But I've also been trying to concentrate on gift-worthy items for boys. I have a whole outfit planned out right now. Look for that coming up sometime in the next few weeks, too, among other boy-focused items.

Don't you just love how androgynous babies are until you clothe them?? Ivy makes a good boy model :)

Gifts for New Boys

I can't believe it's already Saturday, and what a Saturday it's been! Beautiful here - 70 degrees and super sunny. We still have snow, but a lot less than before. I predict some hardcore flooding pretty soon if this nice weather keeps up.

Yes, these two silly little girls ARE missing a pair of pants, a shirt, and their shoes, but at 70 (after being 35 for flipping ever) it was HOT to them, so I didn't mind. They played in the running snow water, wrote with chalk on the driveway, and even stomped in the mud a little - just like kids should do.

And with spring always comes new babies! I love babies. Big, fat babies are my favorite. They're are lots of baby girls in my life, and not so many baby boys, so it's kind of tough to come up with a new baby gift for little boys.

Then I had an idea. I've seen these cute necktie applique shirts everywhere, so I decided I would make a necktie applique onesie for each of the new cute, fat, little boys. Here are a couple of tutorials I found to help me along:

The first tutorial is one from Pinspiring, a cute little blog inspired by fun finds on Pinterest.

This second tute is from CrapI'veMade.com. The name of the site is a little crass, but the idea is cute, so why not.

I haven't made the onesies yet, but I will tonight. Look for an update tomorrow if I can get some good pics.

Baby Ivy Turns 3 months!

A few days before Easter, Baby Ivy reached three months old. We had SO much going on that pictures had to wait until this weekend. So we did Easter and "birthday" all at once - time saving!

I made a crochet "Easter Egg" hat and bowl set for her as well as a matching birthday dress and and headband set. I got 24 great pics out of the photo session, but only shared a few here because I know you're busy, too!

Enjoy the photos!

Learning New Skills

While my mom was here to provide some much needed (and VERY appreciated) help around the house when my belly was on the verge of exploding out a baby and my two- and three-year-old were running amuck, I was looking for newborn photo ideas to freeze the first moments of baby Ivy's life.

In my many hours of searching, I found dreamy photos of fat little sleeping babies in crocheted stork pouches, and scrunched up sleeping in snug little crocheted baby bowls and cocoons. The more sweet photos I saw, the more I wanted those photo accessories.

Since I had my mom at my disposal and she is an avid crocheter, especially of fabulously fancy and adorable baby things (seriously, wow!), I naturally asked her how to make them. I saw her eyes twinkle so bright it was like seeing Venus on a clear winter night. She couldn't resist teaching me to crochet. So I made a stork pouch and a baby bowl.

And since we're poor, and we have an amazing Sony DSLR we got for Christmas last year, we opted to take newborn photos ourselves instead of dropping the money for a mid-quality Sears or JCP photo shoot. This meant I needed to learn how to photo edit for real. So I did some searching and found an immensely helpful post at it'salwaysautumn.

{{Plus it's unfathomably hard to pack up three small kids, myself, and my husband, take them to said photo outlet, and try to keep track of them all while directing a photographer who has no creative ability or autonomy. Harsh, I know, but when you get 5 or 6 good digital photos back that aren't even 1MB in size and are grainy when printed, it kind of doesn't equal the work you put into just getting there. At least at home I can be miserable and tired in comfort, lol.}}

I took Autumn's advice and used the many PhotoShop actions generously offered by The CoffeeShop to get some glorious results.And so then I edited our sweet dreamy photos (including the ones above) and came out with a few favorites: 

I love to learn to do new things! Have you learned any new skills lately??