Binkies and Briefcases

Yesterday was my birthday and it was AWESOME. My mom spent the night the day before so she was here to help me clean the house and get the kids ready for church in the morning. Abby wore her new sweater dress and got tons of compliments on it. Someone even asked me where to buy such an adorable outfit!

Then we made spaghetti & meatball cupcakes, which are just regular cupcakes with the icing squeezed from a ziplock bag to look stringy with strawberry jelly & malted milk balls on top. My grandparents came and brought a cake and we ordered pizza. So there was a lot of this:

and these:

I had a little fake-out because in the afternoon the doorbell rang and when I saw it was a guy about my age my heart skipped a beat thinking Eddie had come home, but it was my friend Kirsten’s husband dropping off a candle order I had placed with her because she is a consultant for For Every Home.

I got lots of cards, phone calls, and Facebook birthday wishes and gifts from family included a closet organizer that I had asked for, my new Serger (which is actually an early Christmas present but it happened to come this week for my birthday), money that I was specifically instructed to spend on myself, new earrings, and then there was the best gift EVER….

At about 6pm everyone had just gone home and I was giving the kids a bath when the phone rang. I ignored it because I knew it was Eddie calling from VA where he is on the current leg of his business trip and I figured I could call him back after bath time, but he just kept calling (3 or 4 times in a row) so I went and got the phone thinking there might be an emergency. Well, he told me he had just asked a friend to drop off a special present for me on the front porch. I told him it was just going to have to wait a second because the kids were soaking wet and naked, so he waited on the phone while I got them dried off and in their pajamas.

I went outside to see what it was and there was a Target bag sitting outside the front door. I bent down to pick it up and someone yelled “Happy Birthday!” I looked up thinking I was about to see our friend Josh (because he probably would have been the one Eddie asked to do a favor like that) but it was EDDIE! He had rented a car and driven 5 hours round trip even though his team had worked that day. He was only able to stay for about 3 hours, but HE CAME HOME!!! I have never cried tears of joy in my entire life until that moment. I didn’t even cry at our wedding, but I could not stop crying.

Oh, and what was in the Target bag? A new camera! He had gone to several different Targets because apparently it was sold out in VA, to get the Nikon L110 I wanted. He bought it from Target instead of another store because they had it on sale this week.

Eddie got to spend some time with the kids and tuck them into bed (poor Nicholas cried and begged his daddy not to go back to work again) and then we got to spend some time alone and play with the new camera and share some of my left-over birthday pizza & cake before he had to leave again.

Sigh. I’m starting to rack up a few birthdays over here, but that was the best one yet.

I hope the high lasts quite a while because it will make it easier to go back to reality and situations like this morning when the dog decided that 7am was a great time to dig this hole

which led to this bath

which made the tub look like this:

which left me scrubbing the tub and amassing a huge pile of filthy towels that now need to be washed while Nicholas unrolled an entire roll of paper towels so that he could get the “telescope” from the middle and Abby choked on a baby wipe because she has a weird obsession with eating baby wipes.

But at least I got to play with my new camera in the process!

No tutorial from me today because all I did was follow the directions from Brown Paper Packages and I used the sleeves from the same sweater I used to make the sweater dress yesterday. That’s right, you can make a jumper AND a hat AND pair of pants out of one sweater. (if it’s a turtle neck and you cut the neck horizontally to get double duty out of it.)

I used the band from another sweater to get a contrasting waistband, but if your sweater is big enough you should have enough to do it in the same color if you want.

I don’t know about you, but I am seeing this outfit in red with white trim for Christmas 🙂

Sweater Pants:

(Yes, my daughter is currently wearing a red shirt with purple pants. Don’t judge.)

Actually it is Grandma’s sweater. Re-purposed.

Remember how my mom gave me two entire trash bags full of sweaters?

What is a girl to do with all of these sweaters? Well, make sweater puppets, stuffed animals, Pottery Barn Knock-off pillows, and hats, of course.

And today I learned something even more awesome from the blog Smashed Peas and Carrots when I was Googling for more ideas about what to do with these sweaters. You can make toddler dresses out of them! Genius, that is, pure genius. Had to try it.

I made mine without the sleeves, though, because I liked the jumper concept and the sleeves seemed a little beyond my limited seamstress capabilities.

Start by tracing a dress your daughter already owns onto the sweater. This dress is shorter than I wanted the jumper to be, so I placed it up a little higher. Give yourself some wiggle room on the outside for a seam allowance. I don’t measure, I’m a really sloppy sewer, but Smashed Peas and Carrots says to leave 1/4 of an inch.

Cut along the line, I did both sides of the sweater at once to make things as easy as possible for myself.

Put the two pieces right-sides-together and sew from the arm hole (Where my finger is) down on both sides. Then sew the shoulder straps together, making sure to go back and forth a few times for stability.

My mom gave me a Serger for my birthday, but I don’t know how to use it yet, so I zig-zaged around the outside of the arm holes to prevent the sweater from unraveling. This gave a pretty cool ruffled effect, but it wasn’t what I was going for so eventually I decided to hem the arm holes. It’s not necessary to do both, just pick one or the other. (The arm holes also stretched quite a bit, so at the very end I sewed them shut a bit more.)

The neck is sort of hard to explain, but I’ll do the best I can. I cut the neck off of the sweater and pined it to the wrong side of the jumper. Then I zig-zag stiched to attach the two piece together. (Again, I wish I knew how to use that Serger that is sitting in its box on the kitchen table.)

Then turn the sweater right-side-out (Ignore the fact that it is still wrong-side-out in the picture below and just focus on the way the collar is folded. I was still experimenting at the point when I took this picture.) and fold the collar over the front. If your collar is cooperative it should stay like this, but mine wasn’t, so I stitched it in place.

At this point I also decided to hem the sleeves because I was going for a clean, classic look.

I made another sweater hat to match it. (That’s the 6th one this week!)

Now to wait for the little one to wake up in the morning so we can play dress up…
How stinkin’ cute would this be with some white tights and maybe a white long-sleeved shirt underneath?

Answer: This cute!

(The arm holes don’t really stick out like the pic on the right, but this was the best picture I could get to show the length)

It would have cost about $30 to buy this sweater jumper & hat on sale at Gymboree, but in this case I actually like my free ones better anyway. Not bad for an hour’s work after the kids were in bed.

Time for me to go do my happy dance. 🙂