How my children play in their kitchen LOL

My dh made Samuel and Ava this adorable kitchen set for Christmas. They absolutely love it and spend lots of time pretending to cook and serve us food. However, fixing food isn't the only thing they do. They love to play "hide the baby in the oven" as well! LOL









Ava also likes to put her babies in the oven, kind of like it is a baby bed LOL Children are so cute, I guess God made them this way so that you could live through the sleepless nights and temper tantrums LOL

Am I the Only One?

I have been looking at blogs for about a year now, and my favorite ones are all sewing, knitting or craft related. They also have beautiful photography. I know this is probably not the case, as a matter of fact several of the blog writers have stated such. But from the pictures, the houses always look perfectly decorated and perfectly kept. I feel like such a failure! LOL

My house never looks well kept unless I have cleaned it 5 minutes before. Seriously, within an hour, you can barely tell I did any housework at all. It is nearly impossible to keep up with. Now, I do have 7 children and they are homeschooled, so they are ALWAYS at home. There are no times during the day where there is nobody here to mess things up. All meals are eaten in my kitchen, so as soon as breakfast is cleaned up, it is time for lunch, etc. And yes, my children all have chores to do. There is a rotating chore list, so no one is always stuck with the least favorite one. All of the older ones are also required to wash their own clothing once a week. I do all towels, sheets, mine and dh's clothes and the 2 youngest children's clothes, so I still have quite a bit of laundry to do. Anyway, try to fit sewing time in here and you end up with a trashed house most days. It doesn't help that I grew up in a house with a mother who kept everything very neat and clean. Of course, I only had one brother who was 5 years younger than me and we went to school everyday. I really feel better when my house is clean. I find it very difficult to sit down and sew when the house is a wreck, but if I wait until everything is clean, I would never get to enjoy my hobby. I really do have some serious issues with perfectionism. I am a perfectionist who cannot even come close to achieving perfection. Some days it can almost drive me crazy!

Anyway, I said all of that to ask if I am really the only one who struggles with this? In my mind, all of you ladies in blog land always have everything perfectly in place, fix huge and creative meals every night and of course clean up the kitchen immediately afterwards ; ) And then retire to your neat and orderly sewing rooms to sew up some amazing creation and then photograph it beautifully to share the next day on your well written blog. LOL In reality, I know this is not true, and if this IS true for you, I don't want to hear about it!

I will share a picture of what my house looks like right now as I am writing this. I do intend on cleaning up after this blog entry, but I promise, it will be back to looking like the picture by tonight LOL I don't know why I needed to get this out, most days I really don't let this bother me, at least not much, but it has been a rough week.

I added an extra one of the dining room for good measure ; )
I won't even bother showing the childrens' rooms, they do not have my neatfreak tendencies at all! LOL Well, Isabella does, but she shares a room with her sister Sydney, I think at this point she has just given up, poor thing. Even my room, which is usually pretty neat, I have to have someplace to escape to, is a mess this morning :sigh:

Ballerina Blankie

I bought this blanket kit from Joanns over a year ago. I bought it specifically for the ballerina fabric in the middle of the blanket. It had this ugly flannel for the backing, but I found the ballerina fabric at my local quilt shop and used that instead. I added a layer of flannel in the middle to quilt it lightly and stitched in the ditch around the different fabrics. It helped to add just a little bit of weight to the blanket. I also added ribbon "taggies" along the edges because Ava has an addiction to tags LOL I figured I'd hook the girl up! Here she is with her new blankie this morning. Excuse the dirty dogfood dish in the corner ; )

Here is the blanket in the beautiful sunlight. I can't believe how much better pictures come out in natural light!
Here is a closeup of this gorgeous fabric. I have another yard and a little bit, don't know what I am going to do with it. I am almost afraid to use it, because I don't think you can buy it anymore.

A little home decorating

We have this wood padded covering for the hearth of our fireplace. The fireplace is huge and since we have had small children all our married life, dh made this so that no little heads will get cracked open. Those bricks are HARD! Anyway, we have to recover it every couple of years because the kids sit on it, stand on it, color on it, etc. It was in desperate need of a recover, I should have taken a before picture, it was nasty! My four year old spilled something brown and yucky on it, that wouldn't come off. Gotta love 4 year old little boys! LOL I think this print will help cover any spills. I love this Amy Butler fabric. I have left over to make some floor pillows. Hopefully will get to that this week.

Clothes for my babies

I have had these two projects cut out since like September. Two of my daughters, Sydney 11 and Isabella 10 were going to make these themselves, but once we started cutting them out we realized that they were too difficult for beginning sewers. So, Mom finished them : )

Just an edit to say if you click on the pictures, you can see the details much better. For some reason the pictures look out of focus on the blog.

The first one is Isabella's, she picked out everything, the pattern, the fabric, the butterfly appliques and the rick rack. I think it came out really cute. It is black linen, you can see my cat Zsa Zsa has been laying on it. She lays on all of my projects on the sewing table, little turd! This was my first time sewing an applique on. I think it came out pretty decent, I got the hang of it while doing the first one, so the second one came out much prettier.

Here is a picture of one of the butterfly appliques close up.


This vest is for my 11 year old Sydney, she picked all of her fabric and notions out as well. We decided on the machine embroidery once I started sewing. I have had my Kenmore 19606 for over a year now, and this was my first time trying out some of my fancy stitches. SO much fun! We used a silvery blue embroidery thread, I think it made the vest more interesting without being tacky.
This is a close up of the back of the vest. My first time making yo yo's, I got the tutorial from hellomynameisheather.

I made a bunch, but she only wanted these two on the back. There are so many things I can do with these yo yo's, I LOVE them. I will be using them on lots more projects.

Here is a close up of the machine embroidery.

I used a pretty blue circle fabric to finish the arm seam. I thought that more denim would be way too thick. I had some of this fabric left over from this project. I think it looks so cute, I wish I would have had enough to do the entire lining in.
All in all I am very happy with how these two items turned out, and so are the girls. I think they are planning on wearing them to church tomorrow. I will post some pictures of them wearing them soon.

Two posts in a row!

I can't believe, I am actually blogging twice in a row!

Here is one of my latest sewing projects. I made some embellished burp cloths out of some cute Alexander Henry vintage fireman fabric. Very quick and easy. I also have some matching bibs cut out, just need to figure out what kind of fabric I am going to back them with. I will share as soon as I have them finished. I am entertaining the idea of making matching sets of these to sell on etsy, but need to figure out when I will have the time to do this LOL The idea is to make extra money to buy more cute fabric. I recently joined a yahoo fabric coop and am going a little nuts. The fabric is at wholesale prices, but you can still spend a good amount before you know it!




Here is a my sewing corner in my bedroom. It is kinda messy, but that is ok because it means I have been sewing : ) I am trying really hard to sew at least a little bit each day. There are so many things I want to make and I am always a happier mother and wife if I get to play a little each day. I am supposed to have my own sewing room soon. My dh is supposed to convert part of the garage in the next month or two, the other half will be a game room for the kids. I can't wait, there will be plenty of room and I can leave my mess. I am really looking forward to this!





And just because she is so darn cute, here is my baby girl Ava. She was being such a good girl watching Wonder Pets while I took some pictures. Whenever I am sewing, she is usually in my lap "helping". She loves to push the buttons on my sewing machine while it is sewing! I hope this mean that she will grow up with a love for sewing : )



I am almost finished with a denim vest I am making for my 11 year old daughter, Syndey. It is coming out really cute, I used one of the embroidery stitches on my machine for the first time, lots of fun. I will share soon, I may actually have another post this week!

The New Year (half a month late)

Here are all of the grandchildren on my dh's side of the family. Excuse my oldest with the stupid expression in the back. This was the only picture that all of the little ones were looking, so this is the one we are using. Too bad, he looks like a dork, he is 15 and should be able to take a picture. LOL







Samuel and Ava playing with the brand new kitchen their Daddy made them for Christmas. Isn't it adorable, I was very impressed with my husband, I must say.







Samuel completely exhausted New Year's Night, they are so innocent and sweet when they are sleeping, aren't they? 2 minutes before this, he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off! LOL



Miss Ava and her cousin Stella. She is holding her cousin Macie's brand new puppy that she got for Christmas. She is a yorkidoodle and she is just the sweetest little thing.

So those are some of the pictures from New Years Day. The week after this the whole family got the flu : ( So, that was a bad week, to say the least. Of course, Ava had it the worst, her fever got so high (almost 105) I was scared to death. We were always able to get it to come back down, but still very little sleep for me, with the waking up every 30 minutes to make sure she wasn't getting hotter.

Anyway, we are back on schedule, started homeschooling a week late, and I have been having time to sew. Will have pictures of my latest projects soon.