Sewing With My Granddaughter

Last week my grandkids came to spend the night with us. I love these 2 so much, they have been coming to spend the night with grandma and grandpa since they were both just tiny, tiny babies.  I have to say that now at 4.5 and 7 years old, they are just so much easier.

My granddaughter Lilli just turned 7 and loves to craft. According to her ' crafts are my favorite thing'. So now that we are all settled in our new house, we decided it was a perfect time to get the supplies out and get started.

I figured starting with something simple, creative and free style would be the best.  We decided on a monster faced pillow. On a piece of paper she drew out a shape that she wanted. Then we traced it into some fleece and she did all the cutting. She cut a front and a back piece.

 

She took this very seriously, took her time and was pretty accurate.

 

 

 

Of course... no one does anything without help from Jack the cat!

 

Nothing gets done, until Jack is done being annoying.

 

 

Next it is time to start sewing on a face and giving this guy some personality. She decided to give him 3 eyes. She had to sew on 2 layers of felt circles and then a red button in the center. She hand stitched his mouth on. 

 

 

 

I didn't think to snap a picture of the rest of the process, but she cut some coloured rick rack and we folded it in half and made strands of hair for the top of his head. Once all of the personality was on him, she sewed him together, wrong sides together. She needed a bit of help going around the corners of his legs.

 

 

After a bit of stuffing he was complete! She was very proud of what she made as she should be. She has already asked for a craft box of her own stuff here, so she can sew whenever she comes to visit.

 

 

 

 It totally makes me happy that I think this girl will really enjoy sewing as a hobby, just like her grandma. It's such a fun way to spend time with her.

 

 

I did make one right along beside her....because I knew her brother would want one. He didn't have much interest in making one himself, he preferred to just tell me how he wanted it, while he went and played with his cars. ( then he thought I should set aside sewing altogether while I went and made him something to eat.)





 

I love this guy's little smile!

 

 

I definitely had a great day in the sewing room with these two. I think with being a grandma comes much more patience and a sense of knowing these kids won't always want to hang out with me. When my own kids were small it seemed that I was always just to busy to have very many days like this.... just making a mess and having fun. Oh if I could turn back time! 

Not much done!

Well there is not a lot going on lately, either in the sewing room, or on the renovation. I have injured my hand. I wasn't sure if I sprained it, or pulled a muscle or what. But since it seems to cause great pain with activity I have chalked it up to a form of carpal tunnel syndrome from overuse, with lots of weed pulling, branch cutting and painting.

When I was doing some yard work and hauling of branches to the dump it totally gave out and shot pain up my arm....so that's it for me. I have it in a brace and will be taking a few days off. We leave on holidays at the end of the week,( we are heading to the North Dakota State Fair, then checking out early Sturgis, the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore and whatever else we come across)  and hopefully by the time I am home in a couple of weeks, it will be all healed up and I can get back at it. This girl has shit to do!

I am looking forward to getting back to some routine and getting back into my sewing room! I have curtains to make, and angel dresses to sew. Be sure to message me early if you have projects in mind that you want to discuss.

 In the meantime....here is some early morning smoke/fog that I quickly snapped with my phone when I woke up a couple days ago. Even though this house is a big project, I never get tired of looking out every morning and seeing my view.

Our Latest Project!

Life got super busy since my last post. We sold our house just before the May long weekend. We got moved and I am currently writing from our new home. I am very excited and overwhelmed at the same time.

It has been our goal to be mortgage free well before we retire. We were lucky that we were able to make that happen, with about 20 years to spare. But the only way we could do this is to buy a fixer upper. Fixing is nothing new to us, and we have fixed and flipped several houses in the past. We do not plan to flip this one, and we hope to stay here for many years. We did search for just the right one. We searched MLS and looked at numerous ones but when we saw this one at the end of May, we knew when we saw the views.  The Pembina River is just across the street and down the hill nestled in those trees.

 

 

But along with these great views, comes a house that needs a lot of work. The whole house is on a hill, and that comes with it's own set of challenges. The kitchen and bathroom need to be completely replaced. The foundation needs some new footings, the garage needs to be torn down, and the yard properly graded and retaining walls built. But there is some cool features too. I love the old staircase and the 9 foot ceilings....and have I mentioned the view?? I will keep updating as we begin to make changes. For now all the interior will get is a coat of paint. We will spend the summer focused on fixing some foundation issues, and getting the garage torn down, and the front yard sloped rock garden cleaned out a new front door and hopefully a front wrap around deck that ties into the existing deck.  

Dining Room - before

Front yard- before

Kitchen-before

Living room-before

Staircase

Back of house- before

Deck of dining room-before

                                                                    front rock garden - before, but after all the weeds were chopped down.

garage-before

 

  Stay tuned and check back often to see our progress!

Time flies....

Oh where has the time gone? It's the end of April and I have not written a post since January. Oh well, its fine, I have been busy with other projects, which I will talk about shortly, and now I do have time to dedicate here.

I have restructured my sewing business and I now focus on specialty items. I will write all about them in future posts, but what I focus on is taking a wedding gown or special garment and totally recreate them into memory quilts, christening gowns, communion dresses or whatever else you want. I absolutely love doing this. It makes me happy....so I will leave alterations for someone else.

The other big project that I have been working on is here. Nourished Wellness!   I am very passionate about health, wellness and healing. So I have been studying holistic nutrition and offer services to help people change their eating habits. There is still so much to learn, and I am loving every minute of it.

So that's where I have been! But I am back, and I have lots of projects and pictures to post about. Stay tuned.

Grateful

I have not spent much time in the sewing room these last few days. Instead I have been working on a few personal things that are exciting....like the 30 Day Push Challenge. I have been learning to set priorities, goals and keep and cross things of a to-do list. In other words I am organizing my life and finding what is important to me and what I can let go of.

Lots of time has been spent thinking about my passions, my business, and my personal life...I will be making a few changes to my business and doing some restructuring and re-evaluating. I intend to have more health,  more laughs, more meaning to my life, less materialism and less stuff. We have some personal family goals as well, which I will make public as they become clear.

I am also making a dream list....its crazy the kind of stuff that shows up on the list if you don't sensor what you write and you just allow yourself to dream. One of my dreams involves some awesome wood stoves!! Some of them have shown up on my Pinterest board. http://www.pinterest.com/micheleoc/all-things-vintage/

I will be keeping a grateful journal as well. I don't know why humans get so caught up in what we do not have that we forget what we do have. Life is pretty amazing.

Anyway... I hope that January finds you staying warm, sticking to your New Years resolutions and counting your blessings.

A New Year!

I always love January 1. It is somehow a like a clean slate, even though we wake up and in reality everything is the same. But it's the thought of a new year, a better year and a fresh page that for me is cleansing, I am able to leave the past behind and try again.

2014 was not my best year. I didn't try as hard as I could have or should have. It was a year of a lot of changes for us. But because I love resolutions on New Years, this year I will do better and be better.

I have plans to improve my health and fitness. I have plans to sew a lot more, take more sewing classes and learn some new things. I love photography and plan to take some photo classes as well. We also are looking at some relocation ideas that we need to put lots more thought into.

I do not expect to have all the answers nor am I quite sure how my year will play out. I do know that I intend to be more grateful for the amazing life I have and complain less about what I don't have or have not accomplished yet.

Happy New Year to everyone!  Go out and live your best year yet.