Gingerbread Competition!

This year my siblings wanted to do something as a family other than music, so they set up a family gingerbread competition!  They got everything set up and all I had to do was show up and be creative.  It was so much fun!  And we all got a little competitive:

 This is my sorry attempt at making the Hogwarts Castle, complete with Hedwig, a dragon, and the Quidditch Pitch.

 My sister tried to make the manger scene and ended up putting them in an igloo instead of a stable.

 This is my little Hedwig.

 ... and Hogwarts before it snows.

Since my dad drives a school bus for a living, he decided to make one!

This is Halloween...

This Halloween I did what I have been wanting to do for many years.  Since I nanny and take care of kids on a daily basis, and I used to carry a giant bag that had anything you could think of in it, I used to fancy myself Mary Poppins.  I have actually been called Mary Poppins by family and close friends, so I decided to take it and run with it this year!  My entire costume cost $30 this year, as I bought most of it from Deseret Industries and other thrift stores.  I made the umbrella handle and the hat, and I borrowed the carpet bag from a friend.  I think it all came together pretty dang good!  One of the best things was hearing my students get so excited about my costume.  They couldn't remember the name of who I was, since none of them had ever seen the movie Mary Poppins. One of my students ended up calling me Harley Popper!  So cute.

Post-Halloween Post: Part 2

As if it wasn't hectic enough at this time of the year with everything going on, my brother asked me to make his costume, too!  And it was actually kind of fun to do, but it definitely stretched my limits as a seamstress.  He told me he wanted to be Dr. Strange, and we got set to work!  The under shirt and pants were easy to do: we just had to find a long-sleeved, navy blue dress shirt and navy blue dress pants.  These we found at Deseret Industries Thrift Store for, like, $2 each.  Then came the over-thingy.  It's not really a shirt, but it's not really a cape or anything like that either.  I guess it's more like a wrap.  Anyway, we found an old dress at Deseret Industries for $3 that looked kind of like a sailor's dress, with the big shoulder pads in it.  It was great.   It kind of looked like this.

Then, I taught my brother how to use a seam ripper and he ripped out all of the white trim, cut off the sleeves and cut down the middle so that we could make it into a wrap.  We saved the sleeves and cut those into big, long strips so that we could wrap them around the arms and legs of the costume.  He then used old boots from a former Halloween costume, and he ordered the belt and the pendant off of Amazon.  The last step was the cape.  The dang cape that took me TWO MONTHS to make.  This was the bane of my existence, but it really turned out well.  It is made from three different kinds of red fabric, one with no decor, and two with decor.  It has an lining, and exterior, and a border around the entire cape, as well as the shoulder patch, the neck patch, the standing collar, and most of the sewn-in designs on the exterior of the cape.  I had to sew the front so that it rested nicely on his shoulders while looking like there was little to no effort in holding it on.  Then, I sewed on some red straps that instead of tying in the front (because that would look tacky), he looped them under his arms and tied them behind his back.  When everything was all said and done, all he had to do was draw on the facial hair and add some white streaks to his sideburns and voila!

... and that concludes this portion of the Post-Halloween Posts!  Until next time, this is your DIY-er, Lindsay, signing off.

Post-Halloween Post: Part 1

I've been making my own Halloween costumes for about four years now, and each year I get a little bit more frugal (meaning not spending hundreds of dollars on so many things before actually figuring out what to do) and a little bit wiser (meaning knowing where to find certain things for really great prices, or even for free!).  This year I wanted to keep things more simple, and I had had the idea in my head for several months before I actually had the time to get started on my costume, and that idea was: Belle.  Most of the time, when one does Belle for Halloween, they do the big, foofy yellow ballroom dress that she dances in with Adam (the Beast).  I favor her simple frock, or her "before" dress, as everyone was calling it.  It goes with the song in the beginning of the movie that has the lyrics, "... but behind that fair facade, I'm afraid she's rather odd.  Very different from the rest of us, that Belle."  I have always felt this way, and have many times been called odd, weird or different, and I used to think that it was a bad thing, but now I embrace it!  Belle has always been my favorite Disney princess because she is the one I could identify with the most, and this year I was her for Halloween!  So enough about me; let's get to the costume!

I started shopping around for material or for a dress that would be easily altered into Belle's "before" frock.  I ended up finding this prom dress in the Halloween section of a Goodwill and got it for $5!  It totally had rhinestones and beadwork all down the front of it that I had to take out before I even thought about altering it.  

That, alone, took me a good few hours, so I watched me some "Gilmore Girls" while working on it.

I took out all of the little stitches that were holding the bottom "swooshes" of material in place and I cut off the top part of the dress, so that I was left with a skirt that was about 10 inches too long.  I measured and cut according to my height and waist, and then I hemmed the skirt and sewed a folded strip of a white bed sheet that I also got from Goodwill for, like, $2, onto the bottom hem of the undercoat of the skirt.  That was the easy part.

The hard part was next, trying to figure out how to make the part of the dress from the waist, up.  Eventually, I figured out how to use the leftover material from the extra-long skirt that I had to make the part that wrapped around me, and then I simply folded some of the same-color material and sewed it on for the dress straps.  The finishing touch of the dress was sewing a zipper on the back so that I could actually get in and out of the dress, although I couldn't do it on my own, and things got interesting when no one was around to help me zip or unzip!

After the actual dress was done, I cut and sewed the apron out of the same white bed sheet from Goodwill, and I got the white shirt from Deseret Industries for $2.  The shirt was long-sleeved, so I had to cut and hem the sleeves.  There was a big froofy (yes, I like this word) ribbon design on the front of the shirt that I had to take off, as well as the buttons, and then I sewed open the collar to make it look more square.  Adding the finishing touches of the blue bow, the hair and makeup, and my basket and book props, and I was good to go!

PS, I think this is what Belle would have looked like had she been drawn in the 21st Century...

Stay tuned for my next post on my brother's costume!

Music Hutch

So this post is somewhat normal... I think.  I have a tendency to start projects, like three or four at a time, and then not be able to finish them until much later.  That is exactly what happened with this one!  About a year ago I bought a small hutch off of a consignment site for about $25.  I was going to do great things with it, and I did, but the whole project took about a year to complete.  This hutch was very battered and worn.  It had no backing on it, and the former owner had painted it black because it seemed too far gone to save.

I bought this hutch to replace the drawers that I keep my music in because the drawers were full and I was accumulating music faster than I ever have, being both a choir director and taking part in another choir on the side.  The goal was to have something that I could display in my house that would look nice and go with the decor.  Then, about two months later, I decided that I always did things the conservative way and that I should shake it up a bit!  So instead of doing the olive green, sandstone tan and fiesta red, I got really whimsical and chose teal, purple and white!  Yeah, it didn't go with anything in my house, but that is what a sunroom is for, right?!  Anywho, I was able to take this hutch from all black, strip it, sand it, paint it and seal it, and I LOVE IT!


This is before:

This was the stripping process:

This was the priming process:

This was the first coat of paint:

And this was the final coat of paint, the sealant and the finished product!:

At the risk of making it look more like a dress-up closet for little girl's dresses, I added a little silver lining to the front doors to make them pop!

Even though this was fun, I don't think I will be doing such a big project anytime in the future.  But I will be posting Halloween costumes soon!

Valentine's Day!

I've never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day.  Part of the reason is that I never have a "special someone" to share it with.  This year, however, I have had such fun making cards for the kiddos I help teach at the school I work at.  They are very similar to cards that I have made for kids I have looked after before and they loved them!  As did these kids.  All you really need to make one of these cards is two pieces of card stock and a piece of colored construction paper. The first thing you do is fold the piece of construction paper in half hamburger style.  Do the same for one of the pieces of card stock.  Then on the folded card stock, measuring about an inch from the side, cut two slits about half an inch long, one on either side.  Next, take the cut card stock and flip the middle section inside out and crease it so that it stays.  Put this page inside the folded construction paper and glue down the edges, pushing out the center portion so that it pops out.  With the second piece of card stock, design and cut out whatever you want to "pop" up and then glue it to the front of the "popped out" piece.  Once this is done you can decorate the card however you like.  I wrote a little note to each of my kids in these.  I usually seal the cards with a sticker, since they tend to be a little big for regular envelopes.

Post Halloween Decor

Just a little side note: This Halloween was a fun one to decorate the outside and leave everything else.

Backyard Shenanigans!

This summer I had a project that was supposed to take a month and which ended up taking two-and-a-half months.  This was only because when I wasn't sick or out of town, I had to be careful of what I did because I was going to physical therapy for my shoulder that was always in pain.  The project that I did was my backyard.  The photo below that looks somewhat like the desert we live in was what it looked like before, and the other pictures are what it looked like after I was finished.  Pulling the weeds, cutting the grass, putting in a fire pit, edging the yard with brick and river rock, putting up the lighting and the picnic table and the patio furniture, and tilling and preparing the lawn to grow grass was all worth it.  Our backyard looks fantastic and it is ready for parties!


Before:

After: